Otto I of Hesse
Landgrave of Hesse
Otto I (c. 1272 – 17 January 1328) was Landgrave of Upper Hesse from 1308 and then Landgrave of Lower Hesse from 1311 until his death.
Otto was born in Marburg, a son of Henry I, Landgrave of Hesse and his first wife Adelheid of Brunswick-Lunenburg. Following the death of his father in 1308, he inherited Upper Hesse, the "Land on the Lahn", which included Marburg, Giessen, Grünberg and Alsfeld. After his half-brother John died in 1311, he also became landgrave of Lower Hesse. This included the area below the Fulda, Eder, Schwalm, Werra, and the upper reaches of the Weser, with the residence of Kassel, as well as the towns of Homberg (Efze), Melsungen, and Rotenburg an der Fulda.
After Otto inherited the whole Landgraviate, he resided alternately in Kassel and Marburg. Otto had a long conflict with the Archbishop of Mainz, Matthias von Bucheck. In 1324 Mainz won the battle in the Lahnberg with help from troops from Amöneburg. In 1327, Mainz adopted Giessen with the help of troops from the Electorate of Trier, but the citizens of the town quickly enabled Otto to regain control. Only after Otto's victory at Wetzlar and with the mediation of King John of Luxembourg in 1328 was conciliation made possible.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Otto I of Hesse” as landgrave of Hesse. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as landgrave of Hesse. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q70868. VIAF identifies the subject as 96225608. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1272, 1328, 1308 and 1311.
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This entry incorporates text from “Otto I of Hesse” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.