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The Mühlhausens - the House of the Builders of the Fortress "Roztoky"

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2011

Abstract

At the beginning a not very known German house in the service of the Counts of Württemberg was able to get through brothers of Eberhard and Reinhard to Prague milieu, where it gained ground thanks to business and financial activities both in the government of Prague Old Town and at the court of the Emperor. The very first records of the activities of the brothers in Prague can be dated to the beginning of the 70ies of the 14th century.

Likewise the other members of Prague patriciate they soon began to expand to Prague country hinterland. Eberhard of Mühlhausen gained the fortress in Roztoky, which subsequently his brother Reinhard rebuilt completely.

There is also a lot of evidence of agile contacts of Reinhard with his original German homeland to the very last period of his life (he died between 1398-1400). Simultaneously we can perceive upgrowing number of indicia referring to gradual identification with the milieu of medieval Bohemia.

Some of the descendants continued to expand to the country and became the members of lower nobility (and so they symbolically returned to their roots). The House of Mühlhausen illustrates a unique example for the study of social and geografical mobility in the territory of Central Europe during the reign of the Luxembourgs.