V., Brandenburg was administered by
Bertold, count of Henneberg, who established the authority of the
Wittelsbachs in the middle mark, which, centring round Berlin, was the
most important part of the margraviate. The quarrel between King Louis
and Pope John XXII. was inimical to the interests of Brandenburg, which
was ravaged by the Poles, torn by the strife of contending clerical
factions, and alternately neglected and oppressed by the margrave. Trade
and commerce were at a standstill, agriculture was neglected, the
privileges and estates of the margrave passed into private hands, the
nobles were virtually independent, and the towns sought to defend
themselves by means of alliances. During the struggle between the
families of Wittelsbach and Luxemburg, which began in 1342, there
appeared in Brandenburg an old man who claimed to be the margrave
Valdemar. He was gladly received by the king of Poland, and other
neighbouring princes, welcomed by a large number of the people, and in
1348 invested with the margraviate by King Charles IV., who eagerly
seized this opportunity to deal a blow at his enemy. This step compelled
Louis to make peace with Charles, who abandoned the false Valdemar,
invested Louis and his step-brothers with Brandenburg, and in return was
recognized as king. Louis recovered the old mark in 1348, drove his
opponent from the land, and in 1350 made a treaty with his
step-brothers, Louis the younger and Otto, at Frankfort-on-Oder, by
which Brandenburg was handed over to Louis the younger and Otto. Louis,
who then undertook the government, made peace with his neighbours,
finally defeated the false Valdemar, and was recognized by the Golden
Bull of 1356 as one of the seven electors. The emperor Charles IV. took
advantage of a family quarrel over the possessions of Louis the elder,
who died in 1361, to obtain a promise from Louis the younger and Otto,
that the margraviate should come to his own son, Wenceslaus, in case the
electors died childless. Louis the younger died in 1365, and when his
brother Otto, who had married a daughter of Charles IV., wished to leave
Brandenburg to his own family Charles began hostilities; but in 1373 an
arrangement was made, and Otto, by the treaty of Furstenwalde, abandoned
the margraviate for a sum of 500,000 gold gulden.

Imperial control.

Under the Wittelsbach rule, the estates of the various provinces of
Brandenburg had obtained the right to coin money, to build fortre