Introduction

The Landshut Wedding

Landshut, November 1475. The royal city is bursting at the seams. Thousands of guests have assembled to celebrate the wedding of George and Hedwig.

This is no ordinary wedding. It’s a royal wedding, charged with political significance. George is the son of Duke Ludwig of Lower Bavaria. Hedwig is the daughter of the Polish king, Casimir IV. This marriage alliance consolidates the power of Duke Ludwig’s house – both in Europe and on the German imperial stage. The emperor himself will escort the bride to the altar.

Duke Ludwig is known, with good reason, as Ludwig the Rich – and he has spared no expense to stage a stupendous, week-long celebration. Food and drink are not only being lavished on the guests, but on all of Landshut’s inhabitants. With the population doubling for the wedding, from 10,000 to 20,000, the logistics are mindboggling. A large kitchen has been set up in the streets. Town houses have been converted into guest quarters. Squares have been laid out with sand for jousting tournaments. The town hall has been transformed into a stage for sumptuous banquets and dances.

In the Hidden Landshut app, these events are re-imagined through the eyes of Anna, a young woman from a family of peasant smallholders who has come to Landshut to work as a maid. Anna is a fictionalised or composite character. Her uncle, who helped get her the job, was the real Leonhard Pannberger, the duke’s forage master.

With Anna you will discover not only the Landshut Wedding of 1475, but the Landshut Wedding of the present. The wedding remains famous today because of a re-enactment that began in 1903, driven by patriotism and the desire to develop tourism. Staged every four years, it’s now Germany’s largest historical festival, attracting 600,000 visitors.