When Rudolf von Habsburg, a relatively minor Swiss count, was elected German king in 1273, no one suspected that the Hapsburg age dawned. However, his defeat of the Bohemian King Ottarbar II outside of Vienna set the course for six centuries of Hapsburg dominance. The Middle Ages were the heyday of Vienna’s autonomy. By 1396 the people involved within the city government included burghers (upper middleclass) as well as tradesmen and craftsmen. Political and social tensions in Vienna were mostly reflected feudal quarreling within the Habsburg family, who lost the imperial crown upon the death of Frederick the Fair (1330) for more than a century. They re-ascended in 1438, when Albert II came to power.
The growing economy funded the city’s buildings as it was refashioned in Gothic style, including the church of St. Stephen's, which is now Stephansdom (St Stephan’s Cathedral). However, not all citizens enjoyed this time equally. Remnants early anit-Semintic Vienna is seen on an epigraph in the Judenplatz (Jewish Plaza), "In the Jordan-River where the body gets purified from all evil / also hidden sins are moving away / in the year 1421 vindictiveness raged through the city / to atone for the terrifying crimes of the Hebrew rats / once the world was purified by the flood / but now they paid their guilt through flames".
