The wedding of the eighteen-year-old Polish royal and Lithuanian princess, Jadwiga Jagiellonka, to the twenty-year-old Bavarian Duke George the Rich, which took place in the Wittelsbach family's main ruling centre, Landshut, in 1475, was the occasion for the most spectacular wedding in the Middle Ages. Although fate did not allow the newlyweds to live happily ever after, a stained glass window in the town hall commemorates this unique event.

Celebration

Marriage in late medieval aristocratic circles was one of the most important expressions of the representation of sovereign power. The nuptials usually took place, as in the case of Jadwiga Jagiellon and George the Rich, as a result of an agreement between the families. Negotiations of the princess's wedding contract conducted by Polish diplomats on behalf of her father Casimir Jagiellon, who was seeking to secure the south-western border of Bohemia, lasted more than two years. After an agreement on the marriage was reached at the end of 1874, Jadwiga set off in autumn 1875 with a wedding retinue of more than a thousand people on a three-month journey from Krakow to Landshut. The focal point of the celebration of the marriage of Jadwiga Jagiellonka and George the Rich was not the mutual taking of vows by the bride and groom, but the first, albeit symbolic, intercourse of the spouses, ritual feasts, dances and tournaments, during which the aura of power could be displayed in its fullest form. The wedding of the princely couple attracted more than 10,000 people to the 7,500-strong town of Landshut, including Emperor Frederick III. The celebrations lasted eight days and included, among other things, meals, dances and tournaments. The cost of the wedding was 60,766 guilders. Since the 15th century, this spectacular event, regarded as the greatest display of splendour in the history of medieval Bavaria, has fired the imagination of successive generations of Landshut residents.

Images of the wedding in the town hall

As the importance of the town, the frequency and the size of the meetings of Landshut's representatives grew, the meetings, which were originally held in a small building, were moved to the Dominican and Franciscan buildings and finally to the town council's own spacious building in the centre. Between 1860 and 1861, the building was merged with the two adjacent buildings to a design by Leonard Schmidtner, creating the current town hall building, modelled on a solution from Frankfurt am Main.

On the occasion of the extension, the interior was rearranged, decorating the rooms with frescoes of the most famous event in the city's history. On the wall of the Parade Hall, which served as a dance hall during the wedding in 1475, August Spieß, Rudolf Seitz, Ludwig Löfftz and Konrad Weigand, who were hired for the work, painted the wedding procession of Jadwiga Jagiellonka and George the Rich. While the duchess follows in her wedding dress in a carriage, her chosen one accompanies her on horseback.

Stained-glass window in the "dancing" Parade Hall

The new aesthetic programme of the edifice was complemented by medieval-style 'vitraux civils' with scenes from city life. The name, borrowed from the French to describe stained-glass windows in secular buildings from the 12th century onwards, has no equivalent in Polish. The popularity of this genre in the late medieval period was fostered on the one hand by the symbolic and metaphysical associations associated with the glass commonly used in sacred spaces, and on the other hand by the improvements made in their installation technique, which made it relatively easy to set the composition into window rays. Situated opposite the fresco with the retinue, the 'vitrail civil' depicts Jadwiga Jagiellon in a decorative embroidered gown and George the Rich in armour with a lance. The rulers of Bavaria-Landshut look into each other's eyes and together hold a shield with the Polish coat of arms - a white eagle on a red background, with the city's coat of arms in the corner. Above the princely couple there is an inscription, enabling clear identification of the portrayed: "Herzog Georg der Reiche 1479-1503 / Hedwig des Polens Köningstochter seine Gemahlin " (Jerzy Bogoaty 1479-1503 / Jadwiga daughter of the King of Poland his wife).

Intangible heritage

At the beginning of the 20th century, images of the wedding of Hedwig the Jagiellonian and Jerzy Bogoaty from the Town Hall inspired the establishment of the Association "Die Förderer". Every four years since 1902, the citizens of Landshut affiliated with this organisation have been preparing a reconstruction of the historic wedding procession, known as the 'Landshuter Hochzeit'. Almost 2,500 people are currently involved in organising the festival, which is officially listed in the national register of intangible cultural heritage.