Otto III | |
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Count of Burgundy | |
Spouse(s) | Elizabeth of Tyrol |
Noble family | House of Andechs |
Father | Otto I, Duke of Merania |
Mother | Beatrice II, Countess of Burgundy |
Born | c. 1218 |
Died | 19 June 1248 Niesten Castle, Franconia |
Buried | Langheim Abbey |
Otto III (c. 1218 – 19 June 1248), a member of the House of Andechs, was Count of Burgundy from 1231 and last Duke of Merania (as Otto II) from 1234 until his death.
He was the only son of Duke Otto I, Duke of Merania and his wife Beatrice, daughter of the Hohenstaufen count Otto I of Burgundy. He succeeded his mother as Count Palatine of Burgundy on her death in 1231, and his father as Duke of Andechs and Merania on his death in 1234. In the same year, he married Elizabeth, daughter of Count Albert IV of Tyrol. The marriage remained childless.
Still a minor, he remained under the tutelage of his Andechs relative Bishop Ekbert of Bamberg until 1236. When he came of age, he left the administration of the County of Burgundy (Franche-Comté) to King Theobald I of Navarre to engage in the struggle around his Bavarian possessions against the ducal House of Wittelsbach. He lost his position as a Vogt of Tegernsee Abbey as well as the ancestral seat in Andechs, but retained the possession of Innsbruck, which he elevated to a town in 1239 and put under the administration of his father-in-law Count Albert of Tyrol. In 1242 he gave Franche-Comté in pawn to Duke Hugh IV of Burgundy.