Joanna of Pfirt

Joanna of Pfirt (; – 15 November 1351) was the Countess of Pfirt in her own right from 1324 and Duchess of Austria as consort of Duke Albert II from 1330 until her death. Life Born in Basel, Joanna was the eldest daughter of Count Ulrich III of Pfirt and his wife, Joanna of Burgundy. Inheritance When Reginald of Burgundy, the last Count of Montbéliard from the Chalon-Arlay dynasty, died in 1321, his daughter, Joanna of Montbéliard (Joanna of Pfirt's mother), inherited her father's domains. Joanna and Ulrich III had four daughters and no sons. When Count Ulrich died in March 1324, he left large estates in the Alsatian Sundgau, in the southern Vosges Mountains with the strategically important Burgundian Gate, and in the northern Jura foothills. Ulrich's surviving legacy was his two daughters, Joanna of Pfirt and her younger sister Ursula (1315–1367). Duke Leopold I of Austria was head of the Habsburg dynasty since the death of his father, King Albert I of Germany, in 1308. He concentrated on the administration of the family's Further Austrian territories in Swabia, while his brother Frederick the Fair rivalled with King Louis the Bavarian. When Leopold found out that the late Count of Pfirt's daughter, Joanna was still unmarried, he sent his younger brother Albert II to make the official request to Joanna of Montbéliard for her daughter's hand. With the lands of Pfirt, Joanna was an attractive party. Joanna ceded her domains (including the town of Belfort) to the House of Habsburg, whereby the dynasty could add a large contiguous territory in Southern Alsace to its Swabian possessions. The treaty between Joanna and Duke Leopold was sealed on March 17 at Thann.