Although fate did not allow the newlyweds to live happily ever after, the stained-glass window in the town hall commemorates this special occasion.

The ceremony

In the late Middle Ages, within aristocratic circles, marriage was one of the most important manifestations of sovereign power. Weddings usually took place, as in the case of Jadwiga Jagiellonka and George the Rich, as a result of an agreement between the families. Negotiations on the princess’s marriage contract, conducted by Polish diplomats on behalf of her father, Casimir Jagiellon, who sought to secure the south-western border of Bohemia, lasted over two years. Following the conclusion of the marriage agreement in late 1874, in the autumn of 1875 Jadwiga set off with a wedding procession numbering over a thousand people on a three-month journey from Kraków to Landshut. The centrepiece of the celebrations marking the marriage of Jadwiga Jagiellonka and George the Rich was not the exchange of vows by the newlyweds, but rather the couple’s first, albeit symbolic, consummation of the marriage, as well as the ritual feasts, dances and tournaments, during which the aura of power could be displayed in its fullest form. The princely couple’s wedding attracted over 10,000 people to Landshut, a town of 7,500, including Emperor Frederick III. The celebrations lasted eight days and included, amongst other things, feasts, dances and tournaments. The cost of the wedding amounted to 60,766 gulden. Since the 15th century, this spectacular event – regarded as the greatest display of splendour in the history of medieval Bavaria – has captured the imagination of successive generations of Landshut’s inhabitants.

Depictions of the wedding in the town hall

The first records of Landshut Town Hall date back to 1331. As the town’s importance grew, the frequency and scale of its representatives’ meetings, the gatherings – originally held in a small building – were successively moved to the premises of the Dominicans and the Franciscans, before finally being relocated to a spacious townhouse in the centre, which was handed over to the town council. Between 1860 and 1861, the building was merged with two neighbouring structures according to a design by Leonard Schmidtner, creating the current town hall, modelled on the design in Frankfurt am Main.

As part of the extension, the interiors were rearranged, and the rooms were adorned with frescoes depicting the most famous event in the town’s history. On the wall of the Ceremonial Hall, which served as a ballroom during the wedding in 1475, August Spieß, Rudolf Seitz, Ludwig Löfftz and Konrad Weigand were commissioned to paint the wedding procession of Jadwiga Jagiellonka and George the Rich. Whilst the duchess travels in her wedding gown in a carriage, her chosen one accompanies her on horseback.

Stained-glass window in the ‘dance’ State Hall

The building’s new aesthetic programme was complemented by ‘vitraux civils’ in a medieval style, depicting scenes from city life. This term, borrowed from French to describe stained-glass windows situated in secular buildings from the 12th century onwards, has no equivalent in Polish. The popularity of this genre in the late Middle Ages was due, on the one hand, to the symbolic and metaphysical associations linked to glass, which was commonly used in sacred spaces, and, on the other hand, to improvements in the techniques used to install them, which made it relatively easy to fit the compositions into window frames. Situated opposite the fresco depicting a royal procession, the ‘vitrail civil’ portrays Jadwiga Jagiellonka 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 jointly hold a shield bearing the Polish coat of arms – a white eagle on a red background; the town’s coat of arms appears in the corner. Above the ducal couple is an inscription allowing for the unambiguous identification of those portrayed: ‘Herzog Georg der Reiche 1479–1503 / Hedwig des Polens Köningstochter seine Gemahlin ” (Jerzy the Rich 1479–1503 / Jadwiga, daughter of the King of Poland, his wife).

Intangible heritage

In the early 20th century, the images of the wedding of Jadwiga Jagiellonka to George the Rich, which were housed in the town hall, inspired the founding of the ‘Die Förderer’ Association. Since 1902, every four years, the residents of Landshut who are members of this organisation have staged a re-enactment 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.