There were 115 eventful years in Innsbruck's history between the last Count of Andechs and the first Tyrolean sovereign from the House of Habsburg. For around 100 years after the last Count of Andechs, the Counts of Tyrol controlled the destiny of the province and thus to a large extent the city of Innsbruck.

Meinhard II of Tyrol (1239 - 1295) was able to expand his territory with skilful politics and a little luck. From his ancestral castle in Meran, he managed to unite the patchwork of what is now Tyrol into a more unified whole. Meinhard relied on a modern administration. He was assisted by Florentine merchants and bankers, the most modern business consultants in Europe at the time. In order to create a certain degree of legal certainty, he had a codified land law drawn up. For the first time, all properties in Tyrol were standardised and collected in a land register. Meinhard broke the episcopal minting sovereignty and had coins minted with the Tyrolean eagle as the coat of arms, following the Italian model. This curtailed the de facto power of the church. The bishops of Brixen and Trento were still landowners and landlords, but their fiefdoms were only formalised. In 1254, for the first time Land in the mountainsbut from the official Dominium Tirolisthe reign of Tyrol. He found his final resting place in Stams Abbey, where Tyrol's winter sports elite are trained today.

Sein Sohn und Nachfolger als Tiroler Landesfürst, Herzog Heinrich von Kärnten (1265 – 1335), zählte als König von Böhmen zu den wichtigsten Adeligen im Heiligen Römischen Reich. Heinrich war dank seiner Besitzungen in Südosteuropa einer der mächtigsten Fürsten. Er war ein eifriger Förderer der Städte, deren Bedeutung er erkannte. In Innsbruck förderte er den Bau des Bürgerspitals in der Neustadt. Ein männlicher Nachfolger allerdings war ihm nicht beschieden gewesen. Noch vor seinem Tod hatte Heinrich aber sichergestellt, dass seine Tochter Margarethe seine Nachfolge antreten konnte.

His daughter Margarethe of Tyrol-Görz (1318 - 1369) succeeded him as sovereign princess at the age of 17. The young woman thus became entangled in the maelstrom of the most powerful dynasties of her time: Habsburg, Wittelsbach and Luxembourg. She entered into a marriage with two of them, and at the end of her reign she was to bequeath the province of Tyrol, and with it the city of Innsbruck, to the third.

After the death of her father, she was married to Johann Heinrich from the House of Luxembourg, the son of the new King of Bohemia. Johann Heinrich was even younger than his wife and merely served as his father's foot in the door to the Tyrolean princely throne. He was a thorn in the side of the Habsburgs and Wittelsbachs, as well as the local nobility. His regency was a disaster. Strikes broke out at the Hall salt works, which were leased to Florentine financiers and were the centrepiece of the Tyrolean economy alongside the customs duties. Despite the financial problems, the courtly behaviour of Johann Heinrich, who was considered infantile, is said to have been lavish.

Without further ado, he was expelled from the country by the Tyrolean estates in 1341 with the support of Emperor Ludwig, a Wittelsbach, in a coup planned together with Margarethe. Described as beautiful but quick-tempered, domineering and sexually insatiable, Margarethe is said to have been less than enamoured of her childishly weak husband's horizontal performance. He is said to have bitten his wife's nipples during an unsuccessful sexual intercourse. A chronicler of the time who was sympathetic to the emperor spoke of Johann Heinrich's "inpotencia coeundi", probably caused by his youthful immaturity.

This news was skilfully spread throughout the empire to give the emperor the opportunity to appoint his son Louis of Brandenburg as Margaret's husband and thus as prince of the important transit country of Tyrol. The as Tyrolean marriage scandal The coup, which has gone down in history, caused a widespread crisis. Even the philosopher and papal critic William von Ockham, who is still well-known today, commented on it. The problem was not just the divorce in and of itself, but that Margarethe was not divorced from her first husband at the time of her second marriage. The emperor and his supporters considered the marriage between John Henry, who was considered impotent, and Margarethe to be unconsummated and therefore null and void.

The fourth important political power in Central Europe at the time, the Pope, saw things differently. Pope Benedict XII placed a curse on the emperor and his son because of the "unholy" marriage between the Tyrolean princess Margarethe and Ludwig of Wittelsbach. In addition to moral concerns, the Pope also had political reasons for doing so. Both he and the Habsburgs were in military conflict with the Wittelsbach emperor and wanted to weaken the influence of this dynasty.

This Interdictum was one of the harshest punishments for people in the Middle Ages. It forbade the holding of masses and the giving of communion in the country's churches. It was probably during this period that Margaret was nicknamed by the people Maultasch and was described as particularly ugly. There are no contemporary portraits that would indicate a deformed mouth. The images we have of Margarethe Maultasch today date from the late 15th century at the earliest, when the medieval marriage scandal was first historically reworked.

Margaret's reign was characterised by crises for which she was not responsible, but which were nevertheless blamed on her. The 14th century brought global warming, which resulted in a plague of locusts. This also led to crop failures and famines in Tyrol. But that was not all. From 1348 to 1350, Europe was ravaged by the plague. The disease travelled from Venice via Trento and the Adige Valley to Innsbruck. The Black death decimated the population dramatically. In some parts of Tyrol, the population was reduced by more than half. Not only the number of deaths, but also the gruesome way in which the victims died in great pain and physical deformity left an impression on the pious population. There is not much information on the outbreak of the plague in Innsbruck in the archives, but the consequences of the epidemic were devastating, as they were throughout Europe. In her will, an Innsbruck woman who fell ill with the plague spoke of the "common dying that is going on in the country".

People could not explain phenomena such as poor harvests and plague. Many saw the desolation of the country, which was plagued by wars, plague and climate, as a consequence of the papal curse and punishment from God and held Margarethe and her husband Louis responsible. The reasons for illness and misery were in fact probably to be found outside of papal curses and propaganda. Like many cities, Innsbruck had neither paved streets nor a sewage system or drinking water supply. Animals and people shared the cramped space within the city walls. The living conditions were unhygienic.

1350 was the first time the Lower city pool in today's Badgasse. Baths were not only used for cleansing, but medical care was also provided here by bathers according to the standards of the time. Bathers were travelling or local healers who treated the sick, stitched wounds or pulled teeth. The supernatural was considered real, even in medical care. The scientific approach of the few physicians of the time was not necessarily superior to that of the practice-orientated bathers. The prevailing doctrine at universities up until modern times was the Four juices doctrine. According to this theory, there was a balance of blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile in the body. An imbalance of these juices leads to illness. The balance was disturbed by a blasphemous lifestyle, poor diet, excessive sexual activity or miasmas in the air. Water also had a reputation for penetrating through the skin and destroying the Juice ratio in the human body, which is why you should be given a bath after bathing.

After the Wittelsbachs, Luxembourgers and Habsburgs had fought over Tyrol for decades, a happy ending was finally reached. Rudolf IV of the House of Habsburg intervened with the Pope and was able to negotiate the lifting of the interdict in 1359 in exchange for considerable financial compensation at the expense of Margaret and Louis. At the same time, a document is said to have been drawn up that is now considered a forgery: in this document, Margaret bequeathed the land of Tyrol to Rudolf IV and the Habsburg family.

This succession occurred soon afterwards. One year after Margaret's husband and Tyrolean sovereign Ludwig died in 1361, her son Meinhard III also passed away. If Filippo Villani's history is to be believed, although it was not written until around 1400, it is said that Meinhard III, who was already known during her lifetime as Kriemhild Margarethe, who was notorious for her deaths, may not have been innocent of both deaths together with a lover. As the mother of the last prince of the Tyrolean dynasty, Margarethe handed over the reins of government to Rudolf IV (1339 - 1365) of Habsburg in 1363 with the consent of the Tyrolean nobility. Tyrol was part of the dynasty that also ruled over the Archduchy of Austria.

The Dukes of Bavaria from the House of Wittelsbach refused to recognise this inheritance treaty, which declared their claims to Tyrol null and void. In 1363, they moved towards Innsbruck to rectify the law by force of arms. However, Rudolf IV had won over important local nobles to his side. The document confirming the Tyrolean inheritance may not have been genuine, but the real political balance of power favoured the Habsburgs. The citizens of Innsbruck, who were obliged to do military service, were able to successfully defend the city, which was fortified by Andechsburg Castle and the city walls. It may be an irony of fate that it was the Wittelsbach Ludwig who, as Prince of Tyrol, had the city walls raised and reinforced.

With the acquisition of Tyrol, the Habsburg family was able to close an important geographical gap within its sphere of power. By incorporating the city into the much larger territory of the Habsburgs, Innsbruck gained additional importance, while the actual capital of Merano was further marginalised. In addition to the north-south transport of goods, the city on the Inn had now also become a west-east transport hub between the eastern Austrian lands and the Habsburgs' old possessions in the west.

For the survivors of the great plague wave of 1348, there was an economic boom throughout Europe. Labour had become scarce due to the shrinking population, but greater resources were available per capita. For those Innsbruck residents who had survived the turbulent first half of the 14th century, better times were to come.

There are hardly any reminders of Margarethe Maultasch and her husbands in Innsbruck's cityscape, as her time was characterised by political and economic hardship. The wars and the plague almost brought customs revenue to a standstill. There was no money for grand buildings. Innsbruck was also not yet a royal seat.

But she is still alive in memories and legends. Margarethe "Maultasch" is one of the most famous female figures in Tyrolean history. Contradictory reports, motivated by various interests, which were written about her during her lifetime, leave room for interpretation. Her biography is suitable as a blueprint for a character in the TV series Games of Thrones. It is said to have been involved in the defence of Tyrol Castle against an approaching Veneto-Lombard army with "unbroken courage and manly determination“ and „with a small group of soldiers" led the defence and even led an escape attempt from the city. Her opponents, on the other hand, saw her as a man-hungry, insatiable and immoral vamp. Whether she was a ruthless murderer or an innocent pawn of foreign powers - we will probably never know.

Margarethe and her successor on the throne of Prince Rudolf IV of Habsburg are depicted at the fountain on the Rudolf's Fountain immortalised in stone on Boznerplatz, the former Margarethenplatz.