I am doing a school project on the House of Habsburgs rise to power and I am focusing specifically on rudolf the first king of germany. I cannot find any primary sources on him and could really use some help finding them. I am looking for any documents written by him or about him during his lifetime. Also if the documents could be translated to English that would be very helpful.
There will be always to be said more (and I cannot dare to say I'm familiar with this period and era), but my provisional comment is below:
AFAIK (and as also formulated by Björn Weiler in his review of the latest biography of Rudolf of Habsburg here), there is no critical (in a sense of academically edited), printed edition of the collection of the documents issued by him in MGH (a basic source collection for the history of 'Germany'), and it has hindered the research on him greatly. I'll be even surprised that you can find any relatively reliable academic literature on him in English.
There seems to be mainly two narrative sources (chronicles) for his reigns:
The first is called Ellenhardi Chronicon (linked to the bibliographical information), citing Gesta Rudolfi by Godefridus de Ensmingen. This work was established almost in Rudolf's lifetime, but it was no translation either in English or in modern German available at the moment.
On the other hand, another one, chronicle written by Matthias of Neuenburg (or Nuwenburg) (linked to the bibliographical information) is strictly speaking not contemporary text of his lifetime (even the author Matthias was born in 1295, after Rudolf's death), but at least modern German translation had been published, so I wonder whether you can find the scanned pdf with expired copyright somewhere on the internet like this one (linked to the 2nd edition, published in 1899).
(Added:) As for the period before 1274 (i.e. the election of Rudolf to the king of Germany), some documents issued by Rudolf might be included in the following document collection: Nusse, Philippe (ed.). Les Regestes des comtes de Habsbourg en Alsace avant 1273. Altkirch: Société d’Histoire du Sundgau, 2005.
References:
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