ALBERT I. (c. German king and duke of tria, eldest son of King Rudolph I., was invested with the duchies of Austria and Styria in I282. On Rudolph's death in I291 Albert was obliged to acquiesce in the election of Adolf of Nassau as German king, but in 1298 he mustered sufficient allies to enable him to defeat Adolf at Gollheim, near Worms, was elected king at Frankfort on July 27, and crowned at Aix on Aug. 24. Pope Boni face VIII. declined to recognize him until 1303 when Albert ad mitted the right of the pope to bestow the imperial crown and promised that none of his sons should be elected king without papal consent. In 1306 he secured the crown of Bohemia for his son Rudolph, but tried in vain to impose his own claims on Thu ringia in 1307. His action in abolishing all tolls established on the Rhine since 12 5o, led to the formation of a league against him by the Rhenish archbishops and the count palatine of the Rhine ; but aided by the towns, he soon crushed the rising. Be was on the way to suppress a revolt in Suabia when he was murdered on May 1, 1308, at Windisch on the Reuss, by his nephew John, after wards called the "Parricide," whom he had deprived of his inheritance.
Although a hard, stern man, he had a keen sense of justice when his selfish interests were not involved, and few of the German kings possessed so practical an intelligence. He encouraged the cities, and not content with issuing proclamations against private war, formed alliances with the princes in order to enforce his decrees. The serfs, whose wrongs seldom attracted notice in an age indifferent to the claims of common humanity, found a friend in this severe monarch, and he protected even the despised and persecuted Jews. The stories of his cruelty and oppression in the Swiss cantons first appear in the i6th century, and are now regarded as legendary.
See A. L. J. Michelsen, Die Landgrafschaft Thuringen enter den Konigen Adolf, Albrecht, and Heinrich VII. (Jena, 186o) ; G. Droysen, Albrechts 1. Bemiihungen um die Nach f olge im Reich (Leipzig, 1862) ; J. F. A. Macke, Albrecht I. von Habsburg (Gotha, 1866) .