1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Eggenberg, Hans Ulrich von

EGGENBERG, HANS ULRICH VON, Prince (1568–1634), Austrian statesman, was a son of Siegfried von Eggenberg (d. 1594), and began life as a soldier in the Spanish service, becoming about 1596 a trusted servant of the archduke of Styria, afterwards the emperor Ferdinand II. Having become a Roman Catholic, he was soon the chancellor and chief adviser of Ferdinand, whose election as emperor he helped to secure in 1619. He directed the imperial policy during the earlier part of the Thirty Years’ War, and was in general a friend and supporter of Wallenstein, and an opponent of Maximilian I., duke of Bavaria, and of Spain. He was largely responsible for Wallenstein’s return to the imperial service early in 1632, and retired from public life just after the general’s murder in February 1634, dying at Laibach, on the 18th of October 1634. Eggenberg’s influence with Ferdinand was so marked that it was commonly said that Austria rested upon three hills (Berge): Eggenberg, Questenberg and Werdenberg. He was richly rewarded for his services to the emperor. Having received many valuable estates in Bohemia and elsewhere, he was made a prince of the Empire in 1623, and duke of Krumau in 1625.

See H. von Zwiedineck-Südenhorst, Hans Ulrich, Fürst von Eggenberg (Vienna, 1880); and F. Mares, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Beziehungen des Fürsten J. U. von Eggenberg zu Kaiser Ferdinand II und zu Waldstein (Prague, 1893).