False Waldemar

The False Waldemar (died 1356) was an impostor who claimed to be Waldemar, Margrave of Brandenburg, buried in 1319. After the apparent extinction of Brandenburg's Ascanians, Emperor Louis the Bavarian had given the march to his own son.

In the summer of 1348 an elderly man presented himself to the Archbishop of Magdeburg, declaring the funeral staged and himself a pilgrim returned from the Holy Land; chroniclers guessed he was a journeyman miller named Jacob Rehbuck. Backed by opponents of Wittelsbach rule, he won support across much of the march and was invested with it by Emperor Charles IV in October 1348.

Charles deposed him in April 1350 after an agreement with the Wittelsbachs. He then kept an honorary Ascanian court at Anhalt-Dessau until his death in 1356.