Where To Go in Germany ? (Part 2)

by History of the Germans Podcast on 1st January 20261st January 2026

32 destinations chosen entrely subjectively

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the second part of your Christmas bonus, my entirely subjective list of places to visit in Germany. Today we will cover the remaining Bundesländer, namely Nordrhein-Westfalen, Rheinland-Pfalz, Saarland, Sachsen, Sachsen-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein, Thüringen and two more places that I have chosen entirely because I can.

One of the legacies of the Holy roman empire is that Germany does not have just one place where everything happens, where politicians, entrepreneurs, bankers, artists, and actors travel on the same underground trains and eat at the same restaurants. Berlin is the capital with its political class of members of the Bundestag, journalists and lobbyist and at the same time a major gathering place for artists, musicians and thespians of all stripes and home to many tech startups. But the bankers are in Frankfurt, the headquarters of the major companies are in Stuttgart, Munich, Düsseldorf and spread around everywhere. Several of the major publishing houses are in Hamburg, the private TV stations in Munich, but none of these places have a monopoly on any of these activities. There are banks headquartered in Munich and major corporates in Frankfurt, there is great theater in Düsseldorf, Dresden and Schwerin, there are world leading companies headquartered in tiny towns like Künzelsau.

And that cuts through to the major cultural sites. Though the quip that there were 365 states in the Holy Roman empire is vastly exaggerated, there were once a hundred capital cities, from splendid Dresden to tiny Hohenzollern-Hechingen, each with its princely residence, cathedral, grand monastery and theater. The great artists either travelled from court to court, leaving behind their works here or there, or stayed in one of the free imperial cities, operating large workshops.

Therefore what you cannot do in Germany is to go to one city and see all the major treasures the country has “collected” over the centuries, as you can do in the Louvre or the British Museum and the National Gallery. In Germany you have to move around, see one thing at the time, always in the knowledge that its significant counterpart is a few hundred miles north, south, east or west of you. This is one of the legacies of the medieval empire that Germany has in common with Italy.

And hence we are going through each of the Bundesländer trying to pick out one absolute must-see and one place where you are likely to encounter fewer people. And as we have covered 9 Bundesländer up to Mecklenburg-Vorpommern already, the next location we will have to get to is Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany’s most populous state.

Nordrhein-Westfalen

If we talk about must sees, Aachen is where every upstanding listener of the History of the Germans will go, and it is undoubtably the right thing to do. The imperial chapel, with its Roman columns brought across from Rome and Ravenna and Barbarossa’s magnificent chandelier provided suitable surroundings for the coronations since Otto the Great. And if you happen to go there, take a look at the treasures in the Dommuseum, worth every second of it. And do not forget to listen to the ghoulish opening of Charlemagne’s grave by Otto III in episode 14 .

Bust of Charlemagne in the Aachen Dommuseum

Cologne

A close second place you should not miss is Cologne. The city has been mentioned 500 times already in the show and there are likely another 500 incidences to come. Germany’s most venerable and for a long time largest city has been the stage for events from the Prologue episode to the siege of Neuss we discussed in episode 214. As the seat of one of the seven Prince electors, a major pilgrimage destination and the main hub in the trade between the empire and England, Cologne often played a decisive role. Its history is so varied and significant, it warrants its own podcast, the History of Cologne by Willem Fromm.

Of the things to see in Cologne, the Cathedral and its shrine of the Three Wise Men is unavoidable. I would also recommend the Römisch-Germanische Museum, that displays items related to the long history of Roman presence in Germany and specifically in Cologne. And do not miss the remains of Cologne’s history as a free imperial merchant city and senior member of the Hansetag League. The Overstolzen House, a 13th-century Romanesque house, and the Town Hall, with its 16th-century porch, the Gürzenich, or Banquet Hall, of the merchants of the city (1441–47), and the 16th-century Arsenal are all reconstructed on the outside, though the interior has sadly been lost to war damage.

These alone would justify a visit, but what makes it a must see are the 12 great Romanesque churches including Sankt Gereon, Sankt Severin, Sankt Ursula, Sankt Maria im Kapitol, Sankt Kunibert, Sankt Pantaleon, Sankt Aposteln, and Gross Sankt Martin. Few places in Europe can boast such a density of sacral architecture erected between the 4^th and the 13^th century.

Once you have done this marathon, head down to Früh’s, Sünner im Walfisch or Sion for a refreshing Kölsch and the unique atmosphere of a classic beer house. If you do that, you have to take the S-Bahn down to Cologne’s eternal rival, Düsseldorf and taste their Altbier in one of their traditional beer houses like the Füchschen, Schiffchen or Uerige.

Essen – Zeche Zollverein

18 million people spread over 34,000 km² making Nordrhein-Westfalen one of Europe’s most densely populated areas, in particular the almost continuous urban landscape between Düsseldorf and Dortmund, otherwise known as the Ruhr.

I would love to say that the Ruhr is pretty, but that would be pushing it. There are pretty places though, like the Bredeny lake and its park with the villa of the Krupp family or the Schwebebahn in Wuppertal. Several of these cities are very old; Essen abbey boasts an Ottonian Westwerk and 10^th century artworks and Dortmund had been a member of the Hanse and still retains some vestiges of that time, whilst Mercator established a cartography business in Duisburg.

If people travel here from afar, it is usually related to football, or soccer for our American friends, given the region hosts some of the most successful and most storied clubs.

But there is another way to get an understanding what made this state where almost one fifth of Germans live. And that is a visit to Zeche Zollverein, a coal mining industrial complex that counts amongst the largest of its kind in europe. It operated from 1847 to 1986 and has now been turned into a museum, or to be more precise, one of the many buildings on the site is now the Ruhr Museum providing an insight int how this region turned into one of the largest industrial agglomerations in the world.

But what impressed me more than the exhibits is the sheer scale and awesome beauty the structure. It comprises two large complexes, the mine with its Shaft 12, built in the Bauhaus style that is the basis of the claim that this is the most beautiful coal mine in the world. And then there is the nearby coking plant, a 600m long behemoth. The canal that ran alongside once held water used to cool down the coke. Today it is used In winter as one of the coolest ice rings I can imagine.

Zeche Zollverein has a museum but is not a museum, it is a vibrant centre with 150 start-ups and corporations using the space, a range of cultural institutions, a branch of the university and shops. Since opening in the 1990s, Zeche Zollverein has become a weekend destinations for people from all around, including my cousin who took me there and left me speechless.

That is unfortunately all we can cover in Nordrhein-Westfalen, leaving such gems as Paderborn (see episode 19) and Münster for later exploration.

Rheinland-Pfalz

It is time to head down to Rheinland-Pfalz, the state created in 1946 from chunks of Prussia’s Rhine province, Rheinhessen and the Bavarian Palatinate. This is the land of the archbishops of Mainz and Trier, the Counts Palatine on the Rhine, the counts of Nassau and most significantly the various barons on their castles overlooking the Rhine river.

Which gets me to the must-see in Rheinland-Pfalz, and that is the Rhine valley, namely the bit between Mainz and Bonn. I know, it is on everybody’s bucket list for a visit to Germany, but so is Heidelberg and we covered that as well.

What is most fascinating is the gap between its preception and what it actually signifies in German history. Turner and Byron had made the rhine valley into one of the main destinations on the grand Tour and many a mylord travelled along citing these stanzas from Childe Harold’s pilgrimage:

childe harold audio – Google Search 2:11:20

The castled crag of Drachenfels

Frowns o’er the wide and winding Rhine.

Whose breast of waters broadly swells

Between the banks which bear the vine,

And hills all rich with blossomed trees,

And fields which promise corn and wine,

And scattered cities crowning these,

Whose far white walls along them shine,

Have strewed a scene, which I should see

With double joy wert THOU with me!

The river nobly foams and flows,

The charm of this enchanted ground,

And all its thousand turns disclose

Some fresher beauty varying round;

The haughtiest breast its wish might bound

Through life to dwell delighted here;

Nor could on earth a spot be found

To Nature and to me so dear,

Could thy dear eyes in following mine

Still sweeten more these banks of Rhine!

And as the boat floated between the Lorely and Katzenellenbogen the representatives of Thomas Cook sold the tourists steel engravings of Burg Katz, the Mäuseturm in Bingen or Stolzenfels castle which they would hang on their walls to dream of grim robber barons, helpless prelates and damsels in distress. All these images and dreams of the Romantic Rhine ended up in the rubbish bin when Germans and Brits faced each other across their trenches in World War I.

But that romantic yearning for crumbling castles, picturesque towns and to quote Byron again: peasant girls, with deep blue eyes, And hands which offer early flowers” was not an exclusively British obsession.

The Germans were at it too, Goethe, Hölderlin and Kleist started the literary tradition that peaked with Heinrich Heine and Clemens von Brentano, Schumann and Liszt composed piano pieces, symphonies and Lieder, Wagner’s ring of the Nibelungen takes place on the Rhine, before we get into the less salubrious world of the “Wacht am Rhein” and Carl Zuckmaier’s famous Wine, Women and Song. During the 19^th century rich industrialists and the Orussian royal family turned the castle ruins into what a fairytale gothic castle was supposed to look like.

The whole place is so drenched in narratives, myths and anecdotes, it is a dreamworld made into reality. A dreamworld that obfuscates its real significance. The Rhine had been the backbone of the European economy for centuries, the main transmission line that connected the Low Countries and Italy. Its castles were toll stations funding princely ambitions, may they have been territorial, political or religious all through German history. Its cities were centres of trade and innovation, its villages made the world’s favourite white wine etc., etc.

And it is gorgeous!. Take a trip down the river either on the train that follows the banks of the river, or on a ship or boat….

Trier

Going from one of the absolute top destinations in Germany we now go to one that is quite incomprehensibly overlooked, and that is Trier. Trier may not formally be Germany’s oldest city, but it is certainly the one that holds more ancient Roman buildings than any other in Germany, and could easily compete with better known places in France or Spain.

Augusta Treverorum became one of the four capitals of the Roman empire in 293 AD and grew to between 75,000 and 100,000 inhabitants. It retains its famous city gate, the Porta Nigra from this period, the Aula Palatina, the basilica that once served as the throne room of emperor Constantine was preserved as a church, making it the largest extant hall from classical antiquity, it’s cathedral goes back to a church commissioned again by the emperor Constantine, and retains much of the old structure, with later additions in the 10^th, 11^th and 12^th century. Trier obviously comes with the usual complement of amphitheatre, ruins of the impressive Roman bath, and a still fully functioning 2^nd century bridge. The Rheinische Landesmuseum holds more exhibits from Roman times, including the famous Wine ship of Neumagen that explains a lot about trade on the Moselle and Rhine and Roman navigation and the largest treasure of Roman gold coins ever found.

And if you have time, drop into the city library that holds the Codex Egberti, one of the great Ottonian illuminated manuscripts, a reminder that Trier was not just important in roman times but had been a crucial archbishopric throughout the Middle Ages and into the early modern period. Who could forget Baldwin of Luxemburg, brother of emperor Henry VII and eminence grise of the empire for most of the 14^th century.

Coronation of Henry VII – in the codex of balduin of Luxemburg

That is of course only a small selections of the delights of Rheinland-Pfalz. You will almost certainly want to go to Speyer as well and marvel at its great cathedral we described already in episode 25 or spend some time in Mainz, home to the most senior of Prince Electors as well as of Johannes Gutenberg (episodes 186 to 188), or follow the river to Worms, original home of the Salian emperors and site of the Nibelungenlied.

Saarland

Fortunately our next destination is not far. The smallest of the territorial German states, the Saarland is where we go next. And I have to make a grave admission, I have never done more than drive through. I will of course remedy that, but what it means is that for now I cannot offer any personal recommendations.

Amongst the things I found that could entice me to go to the Saarland is first up the Saarschleife, a gigantic bend in the River Saar caused by the stream hitting a hard Quarzite rock. It looks cool.

The other location would be the Volklinger Eisenwerke, the only fully intact steel works from the 19^th and 20^th century. There are visiting tours and a museum explaining how this enormous facility operated, as well as special exhibitions. So if you decide to skip the Zeche Zollverein in Essen, and you want to better understand Germany’s industrial past, this might be a suitable replacement.

Sachsen

Our next Bundesland is almost due east from here – it is Saxony in all its splendour. And when we talk about Saxony as in the kingdom and now Bundesland of Saxony, as opposed to the stem duchy of Saxony, we are talking about a state created by and for the House of Wettin. For much of the 17^th and 18^th century this principality outshone Prussia, its neighbour to the north. Augustus the Strong and then his son Augustus III were both electors of Saxony and kings of Poland. They maintained two capitals, Dresden and Warsaw where they made a credible attempt at competing with the Versailles of Louis XIV. This expenditure relegated the dynasty back to the second league, but left behind some of the grandest and most impressive baroque architecture on German soil.

In other words, Dresden is a must-see. Several of the structures that had been heavily damaged, even wiped out by the Bombing of Dresden in February 1945 but much has now been reconstructed. In particular the Frauenkirche has become a symbol of reconciliation and rebirth. The whole process had already started under the GDR government with the reconstruction of the Semperoper in the 1980s and continued with the almost complete rebuild of for example the Taschenberg Palais and the Residenzschloss. I worked in Dresden in 1991 and I had the chance to visit the building site of the Residenzschloss. Seeing the concrete walls of what is today the audience chamber of Augustus the Strong was one of the weirder experiences I ever had in sightseeing.

But whilst much of the city centre had suffered horribly, there are several absolute gems of the heyday of baroque Dresden that have survived largely unaltered. There is the Alte Gemäldegalerie that houses the collection of Italian renaissance art put together by the otherwise hapless Augustus III, and the Grüne Gewölbe, the treasury of the House of Wettin that had been made accessible as a museum in 1729 as a means to project its immense wealth.

Going a bit further afield, you may want to see Meissen where the principality started and its castle where Johann Friedrich Böttger established the famous Meissener Porzellanmanufactur, the first place where porcelain was produced in Europe. Porcelain was an obsession amongst aristocrats in the 17^th and 18^th century, but had gone into total overdrive amongst the German princes. Everyone had a porcelain collection, usually housed in small “Chinese” room full of mirrors and golden wall shelfs. In Dresden you had an entire palace to house the collection, the Japanese Palace in the Neustadt.

Today the collection is shown in the Zwinger, once part of the city’s defences but repurposed by Augustus the Strong as, a party palace, orangery, garden, just something very unique and strangely wonderful. A Japanese palace was of course not enough exoticism for the spendthrift Saxon rulers, so they had a Chinese palace too, in Pillnitz, just a few miles upriver. Pillnitz is of course not just one small Chinese villa, but three separate buildings, one on the water, one on the hill and one in the middle. And there is Moritzburg, the fairytale castle in a lake full of hunting trophies..and, and, and.

I am going to shut up now. And if you go to Dresden, just spare a few days for Leipzig too. Where Dresden was where the money was spent, Leipzig is where it was made. And today Leipzig is arguably the more vibrant of the two cities.

Bad Muskau

When it comes to overspending, the two Augustuses are hard to beat, but it can be done. The man who achieved that sheer impossible feat was Hermann, Fürst von Pückler-Muskau. He is today mostly remembered for Fürst Pückler ice cream, a mix of chocolate, vanilla and strawberry flavours he did not even invent himself but was just named in his honour by the Prussian court cook.

He was a famous dandy who kept a team of white stags to pull his carriage down Unter den Linden, but his true achievement was as a gardener. His two parks, one in Bad Muskau in Saxony and the other in Branitz in Brandenburg are absolute high points in European garden architecture. Laid out in an English style the park stretches 5.6 km² across what is now the German-Polish border. As you would expect, this is an artificial landscape of lakes and hills dotted with various follies and pavilions.

The sheer scale of the project pushed the man who was born as one of the richest nobleman in Germany deep into debt. In a desperate attempt to raise funds he and his wife divorced so that he could go to England and marry a wealthy heiress. That scheme turned out to be a touch too obvious and the British press made a mockery of the German prince’s attempts to woo an English rose. Pückler described events in hilarious letters to his now divorced but still much loved wife. She then published these letters to rustle up cash, which turned into a best seller. Like modern a day sailing youtuber, Pückler embarked on a new career as a travel writer. He journeyed across the Ottoman empire, even made it to Ethiopia and Sudan. One of the souvenirs he brought back from his trips was an11-year old Ethiopian enslaved girl that he installed in Bad Muskau where she promptly succumbed to the inclement climate, and probably just utter misery.

Money eventually ran out completely and Pückler had to sell his castle and gardens in Bad Muskau in 1845 and moved to Branitz where he could not stop himself and got gardening again. He died in 1871. Like his lifestyle, his religious convictions were at odds with the conservative world of 19^th century Germany. Since cremation was not yet permitted, he went around the problem by having his heart dissolved in sulphuric acid, and ordered that his body should be embedded in caustic soda, caustic potash, and caustic lime. These granular remains were then buried underneath a pyramid in his garden.

His life cries out for its own episode.

Sachsen-Anhalt

Moving swiftly, or in fact not so very swiftly on, we come to Sachsen-Anhalt. This is the land of Otto the Great who is buried in Magdeburg cathedral and his father, Heinrich the Fowler whose grave is somewhere underneath the abbey church of Quedlinburg. Even Barbarossa squeezed himself in on the Kyffhauser, which is shared between Sachsen-Anhalt and Thüringen.

Naumburg

And the must-see place here is also linked to these early medieval days, it is the Cathedral of Naumburg, and more specifically the Stifterfiguren, the sculptures of the founders of the church. These include the legendarily alluring Uta von Ballingstedt, but also the other 11, each carved by an absolute master of the craft in the 13^th century. If you are following me on social media you can find a post going through every single one of the 12 figures and their histories.

The second destination in this state is Dessau. This is another of these tiny capitals, in this case the seat of the dukes of Sachsen-Anhalt-Dessau. Not much of the old city of Dessau is left, apart from a ducal palace. But halfway between Dessau and Wittenberg, famous for Luther’s theses, is the garden landscape of Dessau-Wörlitz, a set of interwoven palaces and parks that cover an impressive 142 km²

But that is not the only reason why I would suggest to go there, the real attraction is the Bauaus. You can visit the original building where the Bauhaus school moved to after it had been more or less expelled from Weimar in the 1920s. It is a fascinating structure that, like much of the other ideas of the Bauhaus had enormous influence on the way the world looks everywhere from Texas to Tokyo. The Bauhaus museum is by the way not in the actual Bauhaus buildings, but in the centre of Dessau.

Schleswig-Holstein

Time to take our last trip up north and have a look at Schleswig Holstein. As a sailor, this is my place, along with Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. It is just stunningly beautiful if you have a soft spot for hard winds and sandy beaches.

Culturally the must see place is of course Lübeck, the queen of the Hanse. We did a whole series on the Hanse and the role of Lübeck within it, we talked about the art and culture that in the main centred here – episode 127, so I am not sure what I can add in this episode. Maybe take a marzipan safari. Whilst Niederegger has become the leading brand for German Marzipan, there are four more manufacturers in Lübeck and true aficionados prefer either Mest or Martens or Carstens or Lubeca over the better known fare. Lots to discover…

As for the second location in Schleswig Holstein, there are of course the islands, namely Sylt which provide a uniquely German summer holiday experience and of course any kind of water sports in the Förde on the Baltic shore, including but not limited to sailing.

But I would like to break a lance for the city of Schleswig, the seat of the dukes of Holstein-Gottorp who occasionally ruled Denmark, Sweden and Russia, though not all at the same time. There is an impressive palace here with gardens and the like.

Beyond that there are three unique and compelling things here. The first are the remains of Hedeby or Haithabu, a Viking settlement that dominated the trade in the Baltic between the 8^th and 11^th century. You can see reconstructed Viking houses and a Viking museum explaining the significance of the place in international trade.

In the 7^th century the Danes built a line of fortifications from Haithabu on the Baltic to the North Sea shore which remained the main Danish line of defence against invasions until the Schleswig-Holstein war of 1864. The great wall of China, begun around the same time, is admittedly more impressive, but lost its military function in the 17^th century.

And then you have the cathedral of Schleswig, itself a lovely gothic church with an impressive carved main altar. The funky bit is in the cloister. Like so many churches and monasteries, Schleswig too was given a massive makeover in the 19^th century. The creative renovation work here included the discovery and enhancement of a frieze underneath the massacre of the innocents. The frieze depicted various animals, including some quickly identified as turkeys.

This caused some confusion given the original decoration dated back to 1320. The only viable explanation was that the Vikings must have been to America before and had brought the motif of the turkey back from their journeys. That rapidly turned int0 a whole narrative of brave Nordic sailors spreading out to the American continent long before any Spaniard had ever held a compass. Under the Nazis the story that men from Schleswig had discovered America became canon. It wasn’t until 1948 that Kurt Wehlte used x-ray to prove that the turkeys were indeed a turkey placed there by the 19^th century “restorers”.

Thüringen

Congratulations, we have made it to the last Bundesland in alphabetical order, but by no means the least.

If you look on a map of the Holy roman empire from say after the peace of Westphalia, you see several large entities, Austrian and Spanish Habsburg, Bavaria, Brandenburg-Prussia, Saxony, Wurttemberg, Hessen, Brunswick etc. And then in between all these tiny places. And Thuringia is one of the regions where the chart says things like “various Saxon duchies” or “unmappable microterritories”.

Weimar

And here in Thuringia is the probably most famous of these duodez principalities, Sachsen-Weimar. This tiny principality whose political position was so insignificant, they did not have to contribute their own soldiers to the imperial Reichsmatrikel but simply paid an equivalent tax, managed to attract Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Martin Wielandt and Gottfried Herder to its court. And they came there and lived there during the absolute height of their fame. There is no real equivalent, unless you were to say that Charles Dickens, George Elliot, Thomas Hardy and Jane Austen had decided to live together in the grounds of Belvoir Castle. Very pretty, but a bit off the beaten track.

Weimar retains much that reminds one of these days when the country’s greatest writer was also the prime minister of the tiny state and walked across the park to have tea with the duchess and her court of local baronesses.

Weimar is of course also the place where the national assembly hunkered down to write the constitution of the republic in 1919, since Berlin was simply too dangerous.

Wartburg

Thuringia has many more of these smallish state capitals, including Gotha, home of Prince Albert and Meiningen, capital of the Duchy of Sachsen-Meiningen until 1918, complete with theatre and one of the oldest orchestras in the world. And of course Erfurt, beautifully restored to its late medieval glory. I could go on.

But the other place I would suggest you see in Thüringen would probably be on most people’s must see list anyway. But again, I actually do make the rules, so I can break them if I want to.

Perched high above the town of Eisenach, Wartburg castle offers sweeping views over forested hills that immediately justify the journey. This is where Martin Luther found refuge and translated the New Testament into German—an act that shaped the language and transformed European religious life. Walking through his modest room gives you an intimate connection to ideas that changed the world.

Beyond the Reformation, Wartburg is also a cradle of German identity. Medieval legends of competition between singers, the courtly life that disgusted Saint Elisabeth of Thuringia, and 19th-century nationalism all converge within its walls. The architecture itself is striking, blending Romanesque foundations with later restorations that reflect changing artistic ideals.

Equally compelling is the setting. Wartburg sits amid hiking trails and quiet woodland, allowing you to combine cultural discovery with nature. It is everything with everything on it.

Odd Ones Out

And that is where I could, or maybe should end it. But no. I promised you two more places that are purely subjectively my favourites amongst the must-sees and the not so well known.

Bamberg

And top of the pops, the place to be that others also go, at least for me is Bamberg. If you go and see one piece of art in Germany, make it the Bamberger Reiter. Yes, I know that the Nazi used him as an archetype of the Nordic race and national ideal. Which makes it even more ironic that he may or may not depict a Hungarian and was likely made by a French artist.

Put all this away in a box and just look at it. The serenity of the figure, the elegance of the shapes, the mystery of its meaning and the unusual position of an equestrian statue inside a church, all makes this wonderfully bewildering and captivating.

And the Dom is full of other wonders, the marble sarcophagus of pope Clement II that appears more Roman than medieval, the stunning carvings of Tilman Riemenschneider on the grave of Henry II and Cunigunde and the modest box that holds the remains of Konrad III stuffed into a corner of the crypt by his ungrateful nephew Frederick Barbarossa. And more 13^th century sculptures that take your breath away.

The city below too is stunning, one of the few that survived intact, including a town hall on a bridge across the river. There is an episcopal palace by Balthasar Neumann, not as breathtaking as the one in Würzburg, but still impressive. And in the Bamberg Museum you can see what may be the absolute pinnacle of Ottonian illuminated manuscripts, the Bamberg apocalypse.

And since you are in the area, nip across to Bayreuth, not necessarily for Richard Wagner, but to see the theatre, built for the wedding of a daughter of the Margrave in 1750 and still standing, almost unchanged in all its epic gold and red splendour. A unique survivor.

Weikersheim

And now for the very, very last place, Weikersheim. If we talk about tiny states with artistic and architectural ambitions far beyond its resources, Weikersheim takes the biscuit.

The state its capital had once been, Hohenlohe-Weikersheim ended to far beyond the border of the princely park. But still, they built themselves a palace in the finest 16^th century style. Its great knight’s hall sports a 40 metre long ceiling, decorated with hunting scenes by Balthasar Katzenberger, whose skill lay more in colouring in, than actual painting . On the walls count Wolfgang II ordered his hunting trophies to be displayed as part of plaster reliefs of the actual animals they belonged to. Once seen, you will never forget the Weikersheim elephant.

In the 18^th century another count of Weikersheim remodelled the castle again. This time it was brought up to the latest fashions of aristocratic living, complete with a defile of rooms for him and her and a mirror cabinet to show off their collection of Chinese porcelains.

What makes a visit so spectacular is that literally nothing had been changed inside and out since the line of Hohenlohe Weikersheim died out in 1760. The house became a secondary residence for another branch of the family and remained that until the family had to sell it to the state of Baden-Württemberg in 1967.

One consequence of 200 years as a secondary residence was, that the place was never heated in winter. The furniture and artworks have become so used to the seasonal changes in temperature and relative humidity that heating the castle would now result in the destruction of the decorations. So when you visit in winter, you very much keep your coat on.

For me Weikersheim epitomises so much about Germany. The fragmentation into so many smaller entities has led on the one hand to political insignificance followed by overcompensation in the 19^th and 20^th century, but at the same time has massively enriched the country. A place the size of Weikersheim in France or Britain would not harbour quirky works of art and a history all of its own.

I hope me droning on about places, gardens, cathedrals and coal mines has given you an idea of how diverse Germany is and maybe you found something you feel you want to visit…and in case you cannot join me on this year’s History of the Germans Tour and glide down the Main and Rhine Rivers this summer, there may be another tour in 2027.

Thanks for listening and usual service will resume on January 8^th when we find out how Maximilian of Habsburg fares as King of the Romans.

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SOLD OUT! History of the Germans Tour

by History of the Germans Podcast on 30th December 20255th January 2026

Come along!

The Tour is now sold out – We will keep you posted should we do another one

Hello friends of the History of the Germans. Great news, the tour is on!

We have set up a website where you can sign up. I have put a link in the show notes, as well as on my website History of the Germans in the Travel, maps and Books section.

We will be travelling on the passenger ship Iris, a converted classic Rhine barge. Travelling by boat is – unsurprisingly – one of my favourite ways to see the world. We do not have to get in and out of hotels, we have breakfast and dinner in spectacular scenery and can see the sights as most travellers did before the invention of the motorcar. Note that Iris has capacity for only 25 passengers in double cabins, so speed is of the essence…. Should there be more demand than we can fulfil, we will give priority to patrons.

So what are we going to do? Subject to the usual caveats, we are planning to meet in Aschaffenburg near Frankfurt and then travel along the Main and Rhine rivers via Frankfurt, Mainz, Eltville, Braubach, Koblenz, Andernach, Remagen to Cologne with a trip up to Aachen. The tour will end in Düsseldorf.

En route we will pass some of the most famous of German castles that made the Rhine Valley the dreamscape of Romantic poets. Among them are Rheinfels, the great defensive stronghold; Marksburg, the only Rhine castle never to have been destroyed; and Stolzenfels. Koblenz, with its vast fortifications, and the Remagen Bridge stand as reminders of the dramatic events of the 19th and 20th centuries.

As we reach the Rhineland, we encounter Schloss Brühl, a masterpiece of Baroque and Rococo architecture, before spending time in one of Germany’s most storied—and for a long period its largest—cities: Cologne, with its magnificent cathedral and remarkable Romanesque churches. A day trip to Aachen, home to Charlemagne’s chapel and its extraordinary cathedral treasury, forms one of the highlights of the journey.

Much like the podcast, this tour explores not only politics and history but also art, culture, and, of course, wine and beer. Visits to the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, the Landesmuseum Rheinland-Pfalz in Mainz, and the Römisch-Germanisches Museum in Cologne provide additional perspectives, complemented by wine tastings in Eltville and visits to traditional beer gardens.

This is an action-packed programme, though you are always free to remain on board, take a leisurely walk, or enjoy a drink ashore. You may also choose to explore independently, perhaps by bicycle, as the journey unfolds.

If that is something that you may find exciting, go to History of the Germans Podcast Tour – BikePlanet where you find more detail on the trip, dates, pricing, terms and conditions etc.

I hope to see you on the boat.

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Where To Go in Germany? (Part 1)

by History of the Germans Podcast on 25th December 20251st January 2026

32 destinations chosen entrely subjectively

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Transcript

A very, very merry Christmas to you all.

As you are still awaiting your presents, mine has already arrived, which is the chance to make this show. Despite all my occasional moaning and groaning about how much work it is, I have never enjoyed anything as much this. Who could have imagined that digging through often dusty books and articles and trying to put together an interesting and compelling narrative together for a discerning audience was that much fun. And the reason I can do all this is you, the listeners and patrons of the History of the Germans Podcast. So thank you, thank you and thank you.

Now let’s get to your Christmas present. I had promised you 5 to 10 places I particularly love and that are not on the standard itinerary for a trip to Germany. But when I shortlisted the places I particularly like, I noticed a bit of a pattern. They were all within a limited range, basically near places I had lived or that have some link to my family. That is human, but not exactly helpful. Because if you want to go to Germany and for some inexplicable reason choose not to spend all your time in either Hamburg or the sunniest, most beautiful and culinarily attractive area that is Baden, then this episode would be profoundly useless to you.

I clearly needed some discipline. The plan is now to go through each Bundesland and point out two places, one that is a genuine must-see, and the other a place fewer people go and that is still interesting in its own right. That makes it 32 locations plus 2 bonus ones where I will fully indulge myself by dragging you into deepest Tauberfranken. And I know that still leaves room for enormous bias, in particular when it comes to the larger or richer Lands. But note, this is my Podcast and a choose when I want to.

Still it is a lot. And I can imagine that you may want to play sections on one or two places you really like to your friends of family as a way to convince them of the wisdom of going to Germany. So to make it easier to find, I will set up chapters for each Bundesland. If you listen on a podcast app like Spotify, you can go to the episode details, find the chapters and navigate to the bit you want to listen to. Alternatively, you can go to the episode webpage on my website at historyofthegermans.com, where you find the transcript again with headlines for each Bundesland. The order of progress is alphabetically, again hoping this helps you find things.

Baden Württemberg – Heidelberg and Freiburg

And so, without any further ado, let’s begin with the alphabetically and in any other aspect first Bundesland on the list, Baden Württemberg.

Heidelberg

And the must see place there, no ifs, no buts, is Heidelberg. As I had mentioned before, it is here where I went to school, went through the trials and tribulations of adolescence and am therefore completely unable to be objective. But then, this is objectively one of the 10 most beautiful cities in Germany, its settings, architecture, history is just stunning.

Sure, it is an absolute tourism hotspot. But most of them are day trippers who leave for Frankfurt airport before nightfall. In the evenings this is still a city for the locals and students and you can get a decent meal and lovely glass of the excellent Palatinate wine even on the central square and the street that leads down to the Alte Brücke. We did talk about Heidelberg, its castle and university in episode 189 and 190 already, so check those out before you go.

If you happen to stay a bit longer in the city, you may want to go up the Heiligenberg the hill opposite the town. You can follow the Philosophenweg, a 2km walk that provides stunning views of the city and holds reminders of the 19^th century philosophers and writers who had made Heidelberg famous.

Blick vom Schlangenweg auf Altstadt und Schloss, Bild Juni 2023

If you climb further up, you come past the monasteries that once owned the surrounding lands before the counts Palatine arrived and built their capital here, and finally you get to see the Thingstaette. Opened by Joseph Goebbels in 1935 as the home to the Reichsfestsiele, the Nazi equivalent to the Salzburger Festspiele. It is an open air stage, allegedly inspired by Greek and Roman theatres. But that is where the comparison ends. The acoustics were terrible and complex amplification systems had to be installed so that the actors could be understood. The plays and events staged there were meant to induct the people into the National Socialist faith. It is much smaller than the Reichsparteitagsgelande in Nurnberg, but it still conveys some of that mishmash of Greco-Roman, medieval and Nordic elements that were used and abused to foster the Nazi ideology. Post war the place fell into disrepair and staged some of the coolest raves in the eighties and nineties…home to a very different German spirit.

And since we are here, you could also take a short train ride to Schwetzingen. The palace there was one of the houses the counts palatine moved to once the Schloss in Heidelberg had been destroyed in the War of the Palatine Succession. Its park, rather than the palace itself is the main attraction, featuring the classic far reaching baroque axes you would expect but also a more natural garden in the English style with dozens of follies, including bathhouses, temples, pavilions and of course the famous Schwetzinger Mosque.

Aerial image of the Mosque in the Schwetzingen Palace gardens (view from the southeast)

It is here, that in 1668 the Count Palatine Carl Ludwig ordered his gardeners to plant white asparagus for the princely table. This king of vegetables was a delicacy only available to the very rich who could afford the complex process of growing the plants under mounts of sand. It became more widely available when Max Basserman, a local entrepreneur established large scale agricultural production and found a way to keep them fresh in tins. White Asparagus is a German obsession, with various locations claiming to produce the highest quality, though of course Schwetzinger has to be the best. As I said, this is an entirely biased and subjective episode. So if you have never tried it and you are coming between Mid April and St. Johannis or June 24^th, give it a go. Not everyone gets why it is so special, but once you have fallen for it, you will wait every year for Spargelzeit.

As for my second recommendation in Baden-Württemberg, I was torn simply because there is so much. We talked about Stuttgart and Tübingen in episode 190 and 192, Karlsruhe in 191, Ravensburg in episode 193 and of course Constance and its council in episodes 171 to 174. It then boiled down to the monastery in Maulbronn, one of the best preserved Cistercian abbeys in Europe and the city of Freiburg. And as this is an entirely subjective show, Freiburg it is.

Freiburg im breisgau

The city founded by the dukes of Zähringen in the 12^th century (see episode 15) became the administrative center of the Habsburg ancestral lands, known as Further Austria. It has its university, which as you may have heard me mention, I attended, and which is still going strong.

Freiburg does not impress with oversized castles or dramatic location. Its charms are on a more human scale. Its main square, the Münsterplatz is pure delight. In its center rises its gothic Cathedral, that had been built as a parish church and hence has just one, not two towers. Nor is it the tallest steeple, but, according to Jacob Burckhart, the most beautiful spire in all of Christendom. It is so compelling that when the church of St. Lamberti in Munster, one of the city’s most venerable and largest, needed a new church tower, they built an almost 1:1 replica of the Freiburg Minster. It is also one of the few major gothic church towers in Germany that were completed during the Middle Ages. Cologne, Ulm and Regensburg all sport 19^th century spires.

The interior is of course impressive with its high Altar by Hans Baldung Grien and the gothic sculptures inside and out. But is again the human scale of everything that makes Freiburg so lovely. Sitting outside in one of the wine bars on the Münsterplatz, preferable the stalwart, Oberkirch and drinking a glass of the truly excellent Baden wine is hard to beat. We would go there as students, nursing a tiny glass and hoping one of these old duffer would turn out to be an alumni of the university who would happily foot the bill for the evening in exchange for reminiscing of his or her student days. And today, when I go, I am that old duffer and I pay for drinks and tell stories that only I find really interesting. It’s the circle of Life…

And do noy forget, you are in the epicenter of German fine dining. Baden cuisine can easily hold its own against the Alsatians on the opposite shore of the Rhine. The climate that provides more days of sunshine than anywhere else in Germany provides the produce needed to satisfy a demanding clientele. The city itself boosts 5 Michelin star restaurants and the surrounding area another 20 or so. If you go north from there to the small town of Baiersbronn, which can claim to be amongst the places in the world with the highest density of Michelin stars per head in the world, including two three star restaurants. I personally do not care that much about going to 3 star restaurants. But I do believe their presence elevates standards across a whole region. And that results in restaurants that receive what I believe to be the much more desirable Michelin award, the Bip Gourmand. That is given to restaurants that offer excellent quality food at reasonable prices, which is right up my street. If I could pass on one tip that makes life better, it is to download the Michelin guide app and seek out restaurants with the Bip Gourmand. It has never failed me and brought me to truly exceptional places. I am not paid to advertise this, this is simply a tip from me to you. And – you may have guessed – Freiburg and the Black Forest is chocker block full of Bip Gourmand restaurants.

Bayern – München and Regensburg

Enough about what Americans would call “my home state” and go across to Bavaria. You may know by now that my relationship with Bavaria is, to say it politely, ambivalent. But that may be nothing but envy of this blessed land. Or, to be more historically accurate, Bavaria is at least two lands, Bavaria and Franconia, and arguably the Upper Palatinate and Upper Swabia are also under Bavarian occupation.

Munich

When it comes to the absolute must sees in Bavaria – Bavaria, the answer has to be, as much as it pains me – Munich. If like me your spiritual homeland in Hamburg, then Munich is just wrong in any conceivable way. The ostentation, the language, the fashion, the undisguised arrogance… up here in Hamburg we look down on people in a much more sophisticated manner.

That being said, Munich is stunningly beautiful. My favourite thing is to go for a run early in the morning through the Englischer Garten and finish off under the arcades of the Hofgarten giggling at the pomp and pathos with which the 19^th century frescoes depicted the high points in the history of the House of Wittelsbach. The rest of the Residenz, one of Europe’s largest palace complex is definitely well worth visiting, in particular the treasury.

And once you are worn out of courtyards, state rooms, corridors and theaters, take a quick look around the corner at the Old Court, where my favorite Wittelsbach, Ludwig the Bavarian lived. Whilst he was really powerful, interesting and consequential, his palace is positively minuscule compared to those of his lesser descendants. Just saying…

The oldest residence of Wittelbacher to Munich city area (about mid 13 century). The tower visible in the picture and bay windows are late Gothic and date from around 1460th The Alter Hof is the protected cultural heritage of the Hague Convention.

I would not dare making a list of places to go in Munich, simply this is ultimately down to your interests and style, all possible variations thereof can be catered for. The Old Pinakothek hosts the art collection of the Bavarian rulers, who had been buying, inheriting and stealing stuff for centuries, the Lenbachhaus is home to masterpieces by the German expressionists and the Deutsches Museum is where you can hear all about Fortschritt durch Technik.

There is one art museum I would add to the list that few people go to, and that is the Villa Stuck. Franz von Stuck, whose house and atelier the villa was, was Germany’s most celebrated artist in the late 19^th century. His art oscillated between Jugendstil, the German version of Art Nouveau and symbolism. These striking pictures often diving into mild eroticism and dark myths has gone quite comprehensively out of fashion. But that may not last forever. Fashion changes, even when it comes to older art. I can remember a world where hardly anyone had heard about Caravaggio. And these late 19^th century artists, the Pre-Raphaelites, the Nazarener and Symbolists might be on the way up. So grab the chance to be able to say that you had been to Villa Stuck long before everybody else went.

Franz von Stuck: The Actress Tilla Durieux (1880-1971) as Circe. Ca. 1913. Oil on wood, 60 x 68 cm. Inv. 11370. Photo: Jörg P. Anders.

Ok where to go after Munich. Of course none of you would dare – or dare to admit –to visit that abomination in the foothills of the alps, that cardboard grandeur built by a pseudo absolutist who sold his country to fund his architectural fever dreams. There are 20,000 castles in Germany and you go for that one? Cinderella’s castle in Disneyworld is more authentic.

Ok, if it isn’t Neuschwanstein, then where. We have already covered a number of must-sees in Bavaria in separate episodes, Nürnberg in episode 153, Rothenburg ob der Tauber in episode 193, Augsburg in Episode 194 and Landshut in episode 197.

Regensburg

Let me break a lance for Regensburg. When I said Heidelberg is one of and not the most beautiful city in Germany, the place I thought about was Regensburg. Like Heidelberg, it old town suffered only little damage in World War II, which is a rarity. What you will find very often in Germany is that the area around the great cathedral or town hall is made up of late 20^th century structures, not all of which have aged well. The reason for that is not that Germans were keen to tear down the old and build the new in its stead, but that almost all cities had been bombed to the ground. Not the worst impact fascism had, but probably its most constant reminder.

In Regensburg you can see what a grand late medieval city looked like. Its stone bridge, built in the middle of the 12^th century had seen first Konrad III and then Barbarossa setting out for their respective crusades. Its cathedral is another masterpiece of Gothic art. And from 1594 onwards the estates of the Holy Roman Empire gathered here in the town hall of Regensburg, from 1663 in a permanent session.

This is where imperial laws were passed and conflicts between the different sates resolved, probably more effectively than they are given credit for. And there is the palace of the Thurn and Taxis family, the imperial postmasters, who gave their name to my favorite means of transport.

But the reason Regensburg is special is not the individual attractions, but the coherence of the whole city. There are so many corners that have literally remained unchanged for 500 years allowing you to fully immerse yourself in the world of the medieval free cities. And if you take into account how much bigger and richer Nürnberg or Augsburg were at the time, you can get an idea of the scale and beauty of these late medieval trading hubs.

Another interesting aspect of Regensburg is that the city, despite remaining the seat of a catholic bishop and home to three imperial abbeys, was a major center of the protestant faith offering sanctuary from religious prosecution and spearheading missionary activities. The two communities lived side by side for centuries which led to a duplication of institutions like schools, churches, hospitals and the like. There were several free imperial cities that operated on that basis, a sign that religious tolerance isn’t solely an invention of the 18^th century and thrived even in Bavaria.

Since we go about these things in alphabetical order, our next stop is as far as you can get from Bavaria, not geographically, but culturally, and that is of course Berlin, the home of people Bavarians call ”Saupreiß”.

berlin

What is there to see in Berlin? Pointing things out in the capital is a real problem for me, or more precisely two interrelated problems.

The first issue is that my favorite places in Berlin have closed. one permanently, the other temporarily. The Pergamon Museum where you can go through the market gate of the roman city of Millet and then the Ishtar gate of Babylon before hitting the Altar of the Hellenistic city of Pergamon, well that museum is closed at least until 2027 and only scheduled to fully reopen in 2030.

My other favorite was the Tacheles, an artist community that squatted in a former department store and proudly displayed a Mig 21 Russian fighter jet in the courtyard and other not quite health and safety compliant works. That lasted for a surprisingly long time, but closed in 2012 and has now been turned into luxury apartments, one of which recently sold for a cool 10 million Euros. Another sign that the times when artists and tech firms came to Berlin for its cheap rents and amazing spaces are over.

But even without the Pergamon and the Tacheles, there is no shortage of world class art in Berlin. From Nefertiti to Bruce Naumann, everybody is in Berlin. Check out not just the Museums but also the private galleries that make Berlin the capital of contemporary art in Europe.

The other problem I have with Berlin is that things move so fast. In most German cities not just the main historic sites, but even the restaurants and bars barely change. The top nightclub in Munich is still the same it was in the 1980s. In Berlin though, things move far to fast for me to keep up.

But I have a solution to this problem. Its name is Jonny Whitlam. He is a tour guide in Berlin and a fellow podcaster and on whose show, History Flakes, I have appeared before. Jonny really knows his stuff and is great fun to have around. I put a link to his website in the show notes.

Brandenburg

Surrounding Berlin is Brandenburg, and again the must see place here is without a doubt Potsdam, the true capital of Prussia. Yes Berlin was the official capital, but Potsdam is where Frederick II spent his evenings chatting with Voltaire and the intellectuals of the Berlin Academy and his mornings in very different exchanges with his strapping guardsmen.

Adolph Menzel – Flötenkonzert Friedrichs des Großen in Sanssouci

As you travel from Berlin to Potsdam you cross the Glieniker Bruecke, the place where the US and Soviets exchanged their spies. There you enter a landscape of interconnected lakes and royal and imperial palaces from the forbidding Neues Schloss built solely to prove that Prussia was not bankrupt after the 7-years war, Sansouci, Friedrich II’s pleasure palace, Babelsberg a 19^th century beauty and Cecilienhof, where the Potsdam conference consigned Prussia to the scrap heap of history.

Having seen this, the most appropriate thing to do then would be to seek the very beginnings of the state of Brandenburg-Prussia. So head for the Spreewald, famous for its intricate network of natural canals, lush forests, and wetlands, often called Germany’s “bayou”. It is also home to the Sorbs, one of the few remaining communities of Slavic peoples who once occupied the entirety of the lands between the Elbe and the Polish border. You can visit the Slavic castle of Raddusch, a replica of the circular fortresses that Albrecht the Bear found so hard to overcome, he had to resort to murder and complex back room dealing to get in, as we have learned in episode 106.

The other things you should do in the Spreewald is go on a boat trip through the canals, buy some of the exceptional pickled cucumbers, as regularly featured on my favourite Instagram account, DDR Mondbasis.

Bremen

Still stuck with the letter B, we are moving on to the smallest of the Bundesländer, Bremen. Small, but perfectly formed. The Rathausplatz with the ginormous statue of Roland, the Dom, the town hall and the Schütting is one of the greatest ensembles of Hanseatic architecture.

Do not be fooled by the peace and serenity of the location. Bremen’s history is a ruthless and bloody one, as we have seen in episode 126.

And underneath the Rathaus, in the Ratskeller you find one of the oldest wine cellars in Germany, which you would not expect so far north. All that goes back to a privilege from 1330, that reserved the right to sell wine for the city council. Like all monopolies, it did not initially strive for quality, so for centuries the citizens of Bremen could only choose between two kinds of wines, the common and the better. That may explain why Bremen turned into the home of world famous breweries like Becks and the main Coffee traders in the country. Still, things improved over time and now you will be offered the choice of 650 different German wines in the Ratskeller and you can gaze at the oldest still unopened wine barrel in the country, containing some I am sure delicious 1653 Rüdesheimer Riesling.

Bremen is, as I mentioned small and perfectly formed, which means everything is close by. So do not miss the Boettcherstrasse, just around the corner from the Rathaus. Built between 1922 and 1931 on the initiative of Ludwig Roselius, a coffee trader, it is a rare example of architectural expressionism, a structure that tries to replicate the ideas and aesthetics of the Blaue Reiter in a three dimensional medium.

The state of Bremen is actually two cities, Bremen and Bremerhaven. Now I cannot honestly recommend a visit to Bremerhaven, unless you want to see the place where some of your ancestors embarked on their journeys to New York, Rio de Janeiro or Buenos Aires.

What makes Bremen really special – at least for me – are the people. They have that Hanseatic openness with a brilliant dry sense of humor and charm.

Hamburg

As much as I love Bremen, if I ever were to move back to Germany, I would move to Hamburg, no two ways about it. Germany’s second city fits me like a glove. It has the space and the sky, the doorways are made for people of stature, they drive nice but not ostentatious cars, their sensibly sized houses are decorated in the best possible, not the latest fashion and they sport that healthy glow that comes from summer holidays spent on bracing walks on the north sea beaches.

The downside of all that style and restraint is that Hamburg cannot offer much in terms of splendid palaces, massive art collections or cathedrals with Puttos dripping from the ceiling. Tourists come and walk through the Speicherstadt, the world’s largest warehouse district, built along canals, entirely from brick between 1883 and 1927. At its end you find the Hafen City, one of Europe’s largest urban regeneration projects that culminates in the Elbphilharmony, a truly spectacular concert hall overlooking one of the five largest harbors in the world.

Wasserschloss in der Speicherstadt; aufgenommen von der Poggenmühlenbrücke; links: Holländischbrookfleetbrücke, rechts: Wandrahmsfleetbrücke

Much of the old city that once must have looked like Lübeck or Bremen vanished in a massive city fire in 1842 and then in the Hamburg Firestorm in July 1943. But what you see today has been built in the 19^th century and then again in the late 20^th, all – as one would imagine – in discreet elegance.

The best way to enjoy the true beauty of the place is by taking an Alsterdampfer, a passenger boat that takes you round the two lakes in the center of the city. You get to see canals and bridges, of which Hamburg claims to have more than Venice, the graceful white washed villas where perfect children playing on the grass that leads down to the water’s edge. Get off at Alte Rabenstrasse and grab a seat at Bodo’s Bootssteg, a waterside bar, order an Alsterwasser, beer with lemonade, stare into the sun and feel happiness.

Hessen – Kassel and Marburg

This is where I would love to end on, but the tyranny of the alphabet pushes us on. We have barely covered 6 of the 16 Bundesländer and the next one is Hessen.

If you come by plane, you will most likely arrive in Frankfurt, making this city an inevitability. But not a bad one at all. Frankfurt was one of the three “capitals” in inverted commas of the Holy Roman Empire. The Golden Bull determined that all emperors had to be elected in Frankfurt, a process that took place in a side chapel in the church of St. Bartholomew nowadays called the Kaiserdom. This goes back even further to the Franks of Merovingian and Carolingian times who elected their kings on the hallowed ground of their homeland, Franconia. The election was followed by a celebratory dinner in the Kaisersaal of the Römer, the houses that form the medieval town hall, whilst the people were given the greatest of delicacies, the sausage that became known as the Frankfurter.

And in 1848 Frankfurt witnessed the very first freely elected German parliament holding its constituent session in the Paulskirche. This first stab at democracy did not succeed, but at least we tried.

The opening of the Frankfurt Parliament in Frankfurt’s Paulskirche in 1848. Coloured, contemporary engraving. View at the President’s table, over which the portrait Germania by Philipp Veit emerges.

There are some great museums in Frankfurt, but if you want to go a bit further afield, I recommend two cities, Marburg and Kassel.

Kassel – Wilhelmshohe

Let’s start with Kassel, once capital of the landgraves of Hessen-Kassel. Whilst their old palace had disappeared in 1811, the grandest of the monuments of these otherwise monumentally awful rulers draws all the views, the Bergpark Wilhelmshoehe. 2.5 square kilometers of baroque and English garden design on a hillside that is overlooked by a 40 metre tall pyramid on its summit, which in turn is crowned with an 8.5m tall golden statue of Hercules. Beneath it runs a water feature that comprises a Baroque water theatre, grottos, fountains, two hydraulic organs, and several waterfalls. Water tumbles down the 350m long great cascade into the of course great pond, from where the once tallest fountain in the world sprays water 50 metres into the sky. That is what selling your soldiers to the highest bidder gets you.

The best time to visit Kassel is during the Documenta, an art exhibition that takes place every 5 years, always creates all sorts of controversies with resignations and accusations as only the art world can produce. Visitors and artists give this otherwise rather sedate town a particular buzz, a counterpoint to the overwhelming impression the Bergpark gives you.

MArburg

At the other end of the spectrum is Marburg, like Kassel once a capital of the Landgraviate of Hessen. Some cities have a university, Marburg is a university. During term time ancient medieval streets have a much more youthful flair than the surroundings would suggest.

And it was also once the home of Saint Elisabeth of Hungary, wife of Landgrave Ludwig of Thuringia. Those of you who support the show can listen to a whole episode about Elisabeth of Thuringia, whose life story of persistent abuse by her confessor is amongst the saddest stories about medieval piety I can think of. The Teutonic knights built a magnificent church over her grave, the Elisbethenkirche, and in 1236 once the apse was constructed her body was translated there. Emperor Friedrich II served as one of her pallbearers, a sign of the recognition she enjoyed a mere 5 years after her death.

We covered her daughter’s fight for her son’s inheritance and the creation of the state of Hessen in episode 186. Another descendant of Saint Eisabeth, landgrave Philipp, in the spirit of the reformation had her remains dug up and sold them off to catholic princes.

Niedersachsen – Hildesheim and Rammelsberg/Goslar

The next Bundesland on the list is Niedersachsen, Lower Saxony, or as we would call it, Saxony. Now in most cases the capital of the state is often a must see destination or at least in the top 10. Niedersachsen is the exception. Hannover, apart from a claim to speak the cleanest form of Hochdeutsch is sadly not very exciting.

Hildesheim

What is exciting, at least for history geeks like us is Hildesheim, the see of my favourite ballsy bishop, Bernward of Hildesheim. He was the tutor and later advisor of Otto III and rescued his lord when he rushed into an angry mob of Romans, brandishing the Holy Lance.

But beyond personal bravery he was also an enormously cultured man. From high nobility he advanced quickly through the ranks of the church but his true passion was mathematics, painting, architecture and the manufacturing of liturgical objects in silver and gold. And once placed on the bishops’ throne he embarked on a massive building program.

He left behind two masterpieces of Ottonian architecture, the cathedral of St. Mary and the church of St. Michael. St. Mary holds the greatest treasures, namely the St. Bernward doors, coast in Bronze around 1015 and completely unique in scale and quality of decoration.

And the column of St. Michael, where Bernward had Trajan’s column replicated in Bronze only that instead of Imperial armies, loot and prisoners of war, it depicts scenes of the old testament.

The Bernward Column in St. Michael’s (before 1810).

St Michael’s cannot offer the same level of treasures, despite featuring a rare ceiling made from 1300 pieces of wood and again extremely rare. But since St, Mary was rebuilt after Bernward’s death, St, Michael is clearer expression of the bishop’s architectural ideas. As the Unesco World Heritage convention acknowledged, quote: St. Michael’s is one of the rare major constructions in Europe around the turn of the millennium which still conveys a unified impression of artistry, without having undergone any substantial mutilations or critical transformations in basic and detailed structures. The harmony of the interior structure of St Michael’s and its solid exterior is an exceptional achievement in architecture of the period. Of basilical layout with opposed apses, the church is characterised by its symmetrical design: the east and west choirs are each preceded by a transept which protrudes substantially from the side aisles; elegant circular turrets on the axis of the gable of both transept arms contrast with the silhouettes of the massive lantern towers located at the crossing. In the nave, the presence of square impost pillars alternating in an original rhythm with columns having cubic capitals creates a type of elevation which proved very successful in Ottonian and Romanesque art.” End quote

Rammelsberg/Goslar

So where did all the money come from that allowed bishop Bernward to create his grand churches. For that we may want to go to Rammelsberg in the Harz Mountains where you can visit the silver mine that once provided the material wealth that propelled Otto the Great and his successors to the top of the political pyramid in western europe. The miners and engineers that worked there in the 10^th century passed their knowledge on to their sons who spread out across europe, bringing crucial skills to Saxony, Tyrol, Bohemia, Hungary, Sweden and, and, and; laying the foundation for the metal bashing industry that still forms the bedrock of the country’s economy.

And whilst there, you go to the other side of town and visit the Kaiserpfalz in Goslar, home of Emperor Henry III and his intended permanent capital.

Mecklenburg-Vorpommern – Schwerin and Mecklenburgische Seenplatte

And now we get to the 9^th Bundesland in the alphabet and last one for today, Mecklenburg Vorpommern. And here the capital is a must see, Schwerin.

Like Hamburg, there is a lake in the centre of town, but that is where the comparisons end. On an island sits a castle like no other. When the dukes of Mecklenburg commissioned a complete remodelling of their main residence in the middle of the 19^th century, they pulled out all the stops. This is often called the Neuschwanstein of the North, but that can only be an insult. Neuschwanstein was a stage designs inspired by the operas of Richard Wagner, Schwerin was built on the walls of an actual castle that dates back to the 10^th century and by some of the greatest historicist architects, Gottfried Semper, best known for the Semperoper in Dresden. The family that once reigned there is no less unusual.

As you enter, you pass underneath a giant statue of Niklot, the pagan Slavic leader of the Obodrites and opponent of Henry the Lion. We covered his life and story in episode 104 and the broader conflict between the Saxons and the Obodrites in episode 101. Niklot’s descendants once converted to Christianity, became the dukes of Mecklenburg who played a major role in Northern European history. And this was their home. Sure the 19^th century embellished things and the decorations are ludicrously over the top, but that is also its charm.

Wismar, Stralsund und rügen

What else is in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern? There are the Hanseatic cities of Wismar, Stralsund and Rostock that had made their regular appearances in the episodes about the Hanse and are well worth visiting for their brick gothic architecture. Wismar is the best preserved, whilst Stralsund gives you access to Rugen and its fantastic sandy beaches. By the way, Anglo-Saxons have a false impression of the Baltic, expecting its water to be very cold, they even use the term Baltic to denote freezing. Nothing could be further from the truth. Given the see is shallow and does not pull in much icy Atlantic water, it warms up quickly in summer, making Rügen, Hiddensee, Usedom, Heiligendamm and so forth ideal places for summer holidays by the seaside, in particular when you have small children to cater for.

And if you want a truly perfect holiday, charter a sailboat or bring your own. I did that two years ago and cannot wait to get back.

Mecklenburger Seenplatte

But there is one trip I have not done and that is still on my list, and that is sailing through the Mecklenburger Seenplatte, the system of interconnecting lakes between Berlin and the Baltic shore. There are allegedly over 1000 lakes and inland waters here, some quite busy, but also still many that are quieter. You can charter a sailboat or a motorboat from one of the dozens of charter companies and set off. The boats are tiny and not at all luxurious, but you can anchor in a secluded bay, go for a swim and sleep on deck looking at the stars. That would be my kind of thing.

So, we worked through 9 out of 16 Bundesländer, which means we are not yet finished. But I am. So, if you have been listening in bed whilst the kids are rustling about the living room in search of presents, get up and smell the Turkey.

As for me, I have already got my presents since we Germans do it on the evening of the 24^th. All I have to do today is get up, pack the kids in the back of the car and drive to my lovely in-laws for Goose and even more presents. Though as I said, the greatest of them all has already arrived.

So, thank you all so much for listening and supporting the show. And have a very merry Christmas. I will be back with the second instalment next week.

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Episode 219 – The Fall of Ghent

by History of the Germans Podcast on 21st December 20255th February 2026

Why there are no more City States

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 219 – The Fall of Ghent, or why there no city states no more.

The words High and Late Middle Ages conjures up images of fog rising up over a field where knights in shining armor are trading blows with double handed swords, mighty bishops overseeing the construction of monumental cathedrals and peasants toiling on the land as serfs.

The reason we see it that way goes back to the chivalric literature that celebrated the aristocratic lifestyle where tournaments and poetry mattered more than the humdrum world of business.

But let’s just take a look back at the High Middle Ages, the time of Richard the Lionheart, Saint Louis and Frederick Barbarossa. Who controlled access to the great endeavor of the time, the conquest of the Holy Land? Who re-opened up the connections to the wider world, from Novgorod to India and China? Who were the most ferocious fighters who neither expected nor granted any quarter? Who had all the money?

These were the great cities of Italy, of Flanders, of Picardie and Provence and of the Holy Roman Empire. Verona under the Della Scala in the 14^th century generated tax revenues twice as high as those of England, Venice capacity was sixty percent of what France could generate. And these cities fielded armies that, as we know, defeated the Holy Roman Emperors, even the most capable ones like Barbarossa and Frederick II time and time again. Their absolute dedication to fight to the end was evidenced by their extremely heavy and slow war carts, the Carroccios and by the bravery of the Flemish Militia at the Battle of the Golden Spurs. And the first European since Roman times to make to India and China wasn’t a Knight errant, but a Venetian merchant, nor were the vast lands on the Eastern side of the continent linked up by military force. The crusades, the grand project of the age was as much a venetian mercantile adventure as a religious pilgrimage, culminating in the sack of Constantinople in 1204.

I could go on, but the bottom line is that the medieval city states played a much larger military and economic role in the 1200, 1300 and 1400 than the 19^th century novels of Sir Walter Scott and the plays of Friedrich de la Motte Fouquet had made us believe.

At their height there were 65 free and imperial cities, maybe the same number of Italian city states, and probably several hundreds of cities that enjoyed significant autonomy from their sovereign. Today, the UN recognises only two city states, Singapore and Monaco, as well as the Vatican City as an observer, so, amongst us girls, there is only one real city state left.

What happened? Where did all these city states go? And why?

That is what we are going to discuss today, when we look at the showdown between Maximilian of Habsburg, widower of the last duchess of Burgundy and father of Philip, the universally recognised heir of the Low Countries and the Flemish cities, and specifically its largest, the city of Ghent.

But before we start a quick correction. Last week I mistakenly said that Margaret of York was the mother of Marie of Burgundy. That is of course incorrect. Her mother was Isabella of Bourbon, the first wife of Charles the Bold.

And as punishment for my mistakes, I cannot allow myself to wax lyrically about the benefits of supporting the show on historyofthegermans.com/support, but am limited to expressing our gratitude for keeping the show advertising free to Andy K., Patrick R., Sprocket Tinkerwind, Mani R., Vasilisa, Ethan B., Casper H, and John S.

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And with that, back to the show…

Last week, we left Maximilian pushed out of the guardianship and regency of the Low Countries. And worse, he saw his 2-year old daughter taken away to France to be brought up as a future French queen and his 4-year old son and heir Philip put under the tutelage of the Estates General. According to the chronicler Olivier de la Marche, Maximilian complained his life had turned into that of saint Eustace, whose son was taken by a wolf and his daughter by a lion.

Contemporaries as well as historians have regularly pointed out how vastly different the old emperor Friedrich III and his son were. Where Maximilian thrived in tournaments and war, Friedrich was always cautious and hardly ever appeared in person on the battlefield or in Tournament, Friedrich III was always secretive and closed, whilst Maximilian was open and engaged with anyone from barbers to barons, Friedrich’s court was a dour affair, in part as a function of the shortage of money, whilst Maximilian fully embraced the splendor of the Burgundian court and its never-ending sequence of tourneys, dances, musical recitals, solemn masses and grand entrees in stunning cities, the elaborate hunts in the rich forests etc., etc.

But they are still father and son. Both of them were interested in the latest developments in technology, in mining, minting, manufacture of guns and armor etc. They were curious about what they called the dark arts, from alchemy to necromancy, and had a habit of collecting precious stones. And when it came to personality, they both held the unshakeable belief in the destiny of the House of Austria and from that derived a persistence, even stubbornness that kept them going even when anyone else would have concluded that the chips are down and it was time to go home.

And it was this infinite resource and tenacity, that kept Maximilian from giving up after he had been forced to sign the treaty of Arras in spring 1483. This tenacity may be somewhat admirable from the distance of 500 plus years, but if you had been living in the Low Countries during these years, you would have preferred a more malleable duke.

The Estates General had intended for Maximilian to be ousted from his role as guardian and regent in all the lands of the dukes of Burgundy. But the estates themselves were not a balanced body. The number of delegates and their selection process had not been formalized, so that sometimes entire provinces were absent from the debates. And given the meetings were often held in Ghent or Bruges, the representatives of the cities of Flanders were usually over represented. And it was the cities of Flanders that were most adamant in their desire to get rid of Maximilian, whose wasteful wars and rapacious German administrators were destroying their lands, or so they said.

That view was not necessarily shared by everyone. Brabant and Hainault took a more favorable view of Maximilian, whose victory at Guinegate had protected these provinces from French occupation. Which is why Maximilian went straight to Mechelen, Antwerp and Brussels.

What happens next will be shocking to many fans of the Last Knight, the great chivalric hero. But we should not forget what he was fighting for. Not just for some piece of land he had hoped to rule thanks to an advantageous marriage, he was also fighting for the continued existence of his dynasty, whose survival in Austria was threatened by the king of Hungary, and even more importantly, he was fighting to one day see his children again, the boy and the girl who he had promised his dying wife to protect. With that much at stake, he did not take prisoners. The war in the Netherlands is turning even nastier.

His first act was to go to Liege where William de la Marck, the wild Boar of the Ardennes had not only unseated the prince bishop but had also split his head open with an axe. A battle fought outside the walls turned into a brutal massacre where Maximilian’s heavy artillery tore through the city militia. The terrified Liégeois threw the French out and let Maximilian in. The archduke, instead of punishing the murderous partman hired William into his army. William did get his just desert a few years later, not for his crimes but because he had betrayed Maximilian once too often.

Still raging with anger, Maximilian had all city councillors and noblemen in Brabant arrested who at some point had supported the French. They were tried and convicted and five of them were executed, including the mayor of Antwerp. This blood court led to a further hardening of position, not in Brabant, but across the border in Flanders. Led by Ghent, Bruges and Ypres, the estates established a regency council that comprised the city governments and several senior aristocrats, some of them members of the order of the Golden Fleece.

Though before Maximilian could turn his forces against his main opposition in Flanders, he had to deal with another problem, Utrecht. The prince bishopric of Utrecht, like Liege, had been an associate part of the Burgundian state and its bishop was chosen by the dukes. The current officeholder was David, an illegitimate son of Philip the Good, or as they called it at the time, a bastard of Burgundy. David’s position as bishop of Utrecht had been precarious, ever since his father had pushed his nomination against the opposition of the Hooks, and he had not helped things when he forced through a radical centralisation policy. When the death of Marie of Burgundy created a political opening, the Hooks in Utrecht captured their bishop and paraded him around in a cart filled with manure before putting him in jail.

That mistreatment of a member of the ducal family called out for revenge. Maximilian brought his heavy artillery before Utrecht and systematically pulverised the city walls. After 2 months the eminent citizens came out of the gates barefoot and with ropes around their necks, begging for forgiveness. The city was fined 40,000 gulden, ordered to dismiss all their troops, give up their privileges as an independent city and had to permit the construction of a fortress inside its walls.

Over the subsequent months he reestablished his hold over Guelders and Holland, took Arnheim and made peace with the duke of Cleves.

He now held the entirety of the North of the Low Countries and had his back free. It was time to turn on the rebellious cities of Flanders.

And another event strengthened Maximilian’s hand. King Louis XI, the wily adversary whose intrigues had sent Charles the Bold into his frozen death and whose spider’s web of allies and bribery agents had already brought 6 years of war and devastation to the Burgundian state, died on August 30^th, 1483.

The cities of Flanders sent an embassy to Paris to congratulate the new king of France, the 13-year old Charles VIII and renewed the treaty of Arras. Maximilian had the envoys arrested for treason before they could return to Ghent.

Then he declared the regency council dissolved. His agents distributed pamphlets claiming the regency council, including the knights of the Golden Fleece who served on it, had harmed duke Philip, his son and their hereditary lord. The regency council responded, stating that they were loyal subjects of their true lord, archduke Philip, and that Maximilian had been fighting ruinous and useless wars and had allowed the remaining cash to be taken out of the country by his corrupt German advisers. Hence the only way to protect the Netherlanders from eternal subservience to the Germans was if Philip was educated as a Netherlander, here in the Low countries.

Before we get on with this story, it may be worth while to ask the question, what the deep underlying reason for their objection to Maximilian’s rule was. Sure the points they made about corruption and the independence of the Netherlands from foreign control were truly felt. But if we go one abstraction level up, and look into Maximilian’s broader political objectives, we see something that is much more traditionally Burgundian. The young Habsburg wasn’t introducing new and foreign policy instruments, what he was doing was continuing the policies of Philipp the Good and Charles the Bold, who had tried to forge their diverse territories into one coherent and ideally contiguous state, a kingdom even. That would include one central appellate court in Mechelen, a central fiscal and administrative organization and a standing army.

All that sounds fairly modern, so why did the elites in the Flemish cities whose business network spanned the known world and who were more literate and better educated than most, why did they object? The reason we live – more or less happily – in centralized states today is because the state holds a monopoly on violence, protecting me from bandits and baddies, ideally from invasions too. The advantages of safe roads and borders should be evident to a Flemish merchant, but apparently it wasn’t. They were prepared to go all the way to thwart such centralization and modernity. Why?

One part is simply pride, pride in your city, pride in the long list of charters a place like Ghent had wrestled from reluctant princes that granted self determination and freedom. Freedom is always a great rallying cry, though it can mean very different things to different people.

Given my background and world view, I also believe there was a strong commercial motive her. And so it may be a good idea to go to the father of economic understanding, Adam Smith and one of his most famous quotes:

“In all countries where there is a tolerable security, every man of common understanding will endeavour to employ whatever stock he can command, in procuring either present enjoyment or future profit.[..] A man must be perfectly crazy, who, where there is a tolerable security, does not employ all the stock which he commands, [ ] in some one or other of those [..] ways. In those unfortunate countries, indeed, where men are continually afraid of the violence of their superiors, they frequently bury or conceal a great part of their stock, in order to have it always at hand to carry with them to some place of safety, in case of they being threatened with any of those disasters to which they consider themselves at all times exposed.” End quote. Source: Wealth-Nations).

Montesquieu makes this even more explicit:

“Great enterprises in commerce are not found in monarchical, but republican governments….An opinion of greater certainty as to the possession of property in these [republican] states makes [merchants] undertake everything….Thinking themselves sure of what they have already acquired, they boldly expose it in order to acquire more…” end quote

And to bring in a modern instead of an 18^th century source, here are Bradford de Long and Shleifer in their 1991 paper on Princes and Merchants: quote

“As measured by the pace of city growth in western europe between 1000 to 1800, absolutist monarchs stunted the growth of commerce and industry. A region ruled by an absolutist prince saw its urban population shrink by 100,000 people per century relative to a region without absolutist government. This might be explained by higher rates of taxation under revenue maximizing absolutist governments than under non-absolutist governments, which care more about general economic prosperity and less about state revenue.”

Bottom line, what the Gentenaars feared, beyond the impact on their personal freedoms and privileges, was the impact that a centralizing, authoritarian government could have on their business. The history of the Flemish cities is full of counts and duke whose political objectives were fundamentally at odds with the economic interests of the burghers, resulting in a never-ending string of uprisings and wars. This latest revolt against Maximilian was therefore nothing new or unusual.

If one was a betting man, the odds were very much in favor of the cities of Flanders. Ghent, Bruges and Ypres were the by far richest cities in Northern Europe. The networks of their merchants and the reputation of their cloth stretched across the whole of europe. They were home to the branches and counting houses of the bankers of Florence, the traders of Genoa, Venice, Barcelona and Lisbon, the merchants of the Hanseatic league and the wool-sellers of England and Wales.

And beyond the all important coin, they could rely on support from the French. Sure, young king Charles VIII was no match to his father, but his elder sister and the current regent of France, Anne de Beaujeu was. She became known as “Madame la Grande”, on account of her masterful management of France during the troubles following Louis XI’s death. Her father called her “the least foolish woman in France”, which is another black mark against an already thoroughly blackened reputation.

In any event, she was no pushover and French support for the Flemings, and in particular the Gentenaars, the inhabitants of Ghent and Bruggelingen, the citizens of Bruges was firm. I cannot believe I missed out on these most excellent terms over these last episodes. There is also Brugse Zotten, which I understand is very rude and will be reserved for next week’s episode.

There we go, the Gentenaars, Bruggelingen et. al. put together an army and recruit a suitable commander, Jacob of Romont, once a friend and lieutenant of Charles the Bold and – according to some – the true engineer of Maximilian’s victory at Guinegate.

As for Maximilian, his financial resources had never been great, but now, without the tax income from Ghent and Bruges, his tresury in truly dire straits. His debts had already built up to one million florins. But then…

Maximilian had, as we just described, brought Brabant, Hainault, Holland, Seeland, Guelders, Liege and Utrecht under his control. These lands may not be as rich in coin as Flanders, but almost as populous.

And these places followed Maximilian not just out of fear. When the Estates General established the regency council and their guardianship over little Philipp, they had set up a rotational system whereby the young duke was to be passed around the different provinces of his realm, so as to get to know their institutions and customs. But that never happened. The Gentenaars never let little Philipp stray beyond the walls of their city out of the justified concern that Maximilian may capture/free him. But that left the other provinces suspecting a takeover by the Flemish.

And finally, inside Ghent and Bruges, there were different factions. Not everyone was sufficiently concerned about the long term impact on their economy to bear the near term pain of a prolonged war, the burning of the countryside and eventually a siege of the city.

The division also had a social component. In Ghent the pro- French, pro war party relied heavily on the lower classes, led by a sock maker, Jan van Coppenhole and two other men, called Rijm and Ondrede, which in Dutch could be translated as Rhyme and Unreason, whilst the “friends of Austria” tended to be the upper classes of cloth merchants and long distance traders.

Hostilities began with Gent and Bruges arming two fortresses that overlooked the entrance of the Scheldt River, interrupting commercial traffic into Antwerp, right around the time the annual great fair was supposed to take place. Maximilian responded by first destroying the fleet of Flanders’ privateers before taking the two fortresses and hanging all its defenders.

The next target was the small, but strategically important city of Dendermonde. Maximilian disguised his soldiers as monks and pilgrims, even persuaded an abbess to provide additional credibility, and sent them into Denderonde. They got to the gate, and whilst the city guards were debating whether to let the abbess in, the pretend monks jumped off their carts and ran the guards through and secured the gate. Maximilian rode into the city with a large detachment and Dendermonde submitted.

The Gentenaars and Bruggelingen responded with a massive attack on Brabant, including Brussels. That nearly broke Maximilian’s alliance, but through sheer strength of personality he stiffened the resolve of the Brusseleers and raised the militia of Hainault that drove the enemy back.

Now it was Maximilian’s turn. He took the city of Oudenaarde where his supporters opened the gate. Again, Maximilian rode onto the main square, asked the citizens to yield, or he would unleash his mercenaries.

These successes had swelled the ranks of his army, which now counted 20,000, mostly men of foot. And he had some extremely heavy artillery that had allowed him to break the walls of Liege, Utrecht ad so many other places.

That was the plus side, but on the other side of the equation, the French now officially entered the war. M. de Crevecoer, who had risen to Marshall of France despite his extremely poor management of the battle of Guinegate, slipped 4,500 top notch French troops into the city of Ghent, reinforcing the 16,000 solider under Romont.

Maximilian’s senior officers advised against an attack of Ghent. The enemy forces were too strong and the walls reinforced. Still Maximilian was determined to get the greatest city in his land under his control and get his son back.

His solution to overcome the strength of Ghent was to play on the two greatest human motivators, fear and greed. When the wind stood in the right direction, he ordered his soldiers to burn the suburbs, including the extremely expensive and crucial windmills. As the smoke was drifting into the city, the Gentenaars feared for their livelihoods and streamed out of the gates to extinguish the fires. Meanwhile Maximilian’s army had advanced towards Ghent under the cover of the smoke. Once they deemed to be close enough they spurred on their horses and rushed down towards the gates. Some militiamen tried to fend off the attackers, but most of them ran back towards the gate. Everything happened so fast, a number of Maximilian’s riders had overtaken the fleeing Gentenaars and had gone through. The guards on the gate had to make a painful decision, wait for everybody to get back inside, which meant letting Maximilian get through, or let the gate crush down and leave your fellow citizens outside to be captured or hanged. They decided to drop the gate.

Maximilian’s attack had not succeeded, but it had rattled the Gentenaars. He sent messages into the city asking whether he ever had demanded as much in taxation and hardship as their new city government was now exacting. And all that to withhold his son from him? Was that destruction of their lands worth, just to live without a prince?

His supporters in the city begged him to halt the plundering of the countryside for 15 days, enough time they said to change the minds of their fellow citizens.

Maximilian granted them this reprieve and took his army away from Ghent to tackle the other rebellious city, Bruges. This time he opted for an attack by sea. He went to Antwerp and requisitioned a 100 ships, loaded his soldiers on board and went for Sluis, the commercial harbour of the great trading city. He captured a number of ships and threatened to burn and bomb those moored up in the inner harbour. That was enough for the merchants of Bruges. They opened their gates and Maximilian entered under great jubilation. He did punish the leaders of the pro war party harshly, confiscated all French ships in the harbour but confirmed the great city’s rights and privileges.

When news of the fall of Bruges arrived in Ghent, the radicals led by Rijm, Odenrade and Coppenhole prepared for a last stand. They seized what remained of the ducal treasury and sent it down to the mint to hire replacements for the mercenaries that were leaving the city every day. That was the moment the guilds sided with the patricians and overthrew the government. They put them on trial, accusing them of having called in the French and broken the peace. Rijs and Odenrade were beheaded, but Coppenhole managed to escape.

The Gentenaars opened negotiations with Maximilian. They accepted Maximilian as the guardian and regent for their lord, young Philipp, paid reparations of 360,000 Ecus and opened their gates. In return Maximilian promised not to take Philipp out of the Low Countries, grant a general amnesty and not bring more soldiers into Ghent than he had brought into Bruges.

When Maximilian arrived before Ghent, his son Philipp was awaiting him. The chronicler Jean Molinet described the scene as such: And when the son saw his father, he took off his hat, and as they approached each other, they did honours to one another; and when they came together, they embraced and kissed each other, whereupon the hearts of those who saw them were so filled with joy that they wept copious tears.” End quote.It had been more than 3 years since the two had seen each other. After Philip and Maximilian’s reunion, the young Count of Flanders was sent off to live under the guidance of his grandmother, Margaret of York, in her dowager town of Mechelen.

Maximilian entered the city of Ghent with 6,000 men. And this time, the victorious entry was not led by knights on horseback. Instead his army marched on foot, eight abreast, even his generals, most of them noblemen like the count of Nassau, the Lord of Montigny, the Lord of Palmes, and others had dismounted .

A whole string of battles, Crecy, Muhlberg, Morgarten, Sempach, Grandson, Murten, Nancy, Guinegate and so forth had proven the superiority of disciplined infantry over knightly forces. This was the first time the new military order was recognised in a victory parade.

But there were some issues that made the people of Ghent nervous. Maximilian had brought 6,000 of his best soldiers, not 500 as he had promised in the peace treaty. And these men may be disciplined in the field, in a city, particularly in a defeated city, they were not. Here is what jean Molinet tells us happened next:

“The following Monday, the eleventh of July, at about noon, four Germans went to the prison [..] on the grain market to retrieve three or four Germans who had been imprisoned there by the townspeople for attempting to break into their lodgings. The four Germans immediately took the keys from the prison guard, whom they locked up in a room. They opened two doors and approached the prisoners, but were unable to do anything more, for the guard cried out so loudly for help that many people from in front of and behind the prison immediately came to see what was happening, so that the Germans did not dare to leave. The people who had gathered in front of the prison, informed of the situation,[…] went to the town hall, where the court was assembled, and demanded justice […].

At this time, the duke found himself at the town hall, greatly astonished by this gathering and their unusual behaviour, asked the Flemings to go back to their homes; which they refused to do, saying that they were not asking anything of the duke, but wanted punishment for the said Germans. The duke agreed, but that was no longer enough for them; for by around six o’clock in the evening, they brought their banners to the old market, which they closed off with carts and set up their serpentines, bombards, culverins, falconets and other instruments of war.

Seeing this, the duke, wishing to know their intentions, sent the bishop of Cambray to them, who informed them that the duke was very displeased with them and sought to pacify them with gentle and kind words, but they took no heed of his remonstraions. At about ten o’clock at night, they left the Old Market, in battle formation, with all their weapons, and marched towards the ducal palace, reaching the bridge near the Augustinians, the Place Sainte-Vierge and the bridge where heads are cut off. When the duke learned of their departure, he gathered the Germans and his other men at Ten Walle, his fortress, and commanded each of them to carry the banner of St. Andrew’s Cross in front and behind them; and it was decided to attack the said Gantenaars and put everything to fire and sword;

But Monseigneur Philippe of Ravenstain and several good burghers of Ghent fell to their knees before the duke. He relented, and with the duke’s consent, the lord of Ravenstein and the count of Chimay went to appease the aforementioned Flemings. But they were rebuffed and lost many of their hats, coats, slippers and other clothing, which greatly displeased the duke; and worse still, the people of Ghent rang the great Roland, that is to say, the bell of alarm;

Maximilian then sent a small number of Germans and Angles to skirmish with them. They did good work on all sides; and drove people and animals into the river; and some Flemings were killed. {…]; the Gantenaars retreated to the old market. The duke then offered forgiveness, on condition that certain persons be taken from both sides to satisfy them for the injustices they had suffered; so they withdrew their banners to their homes at about six o’clock in the morning on Tuesday.

That same day, the Duke, accompanied by his nobles and a well-ordered group of Germans, came to the town hall at about nine o’clock, where, after much lengthy discussion, he demanded the imprisonment of the leaders who had instigated or were the cause of this armed uprising and mutiny. Five or six men were arrested that same day and taken prisoner.

The duke hastily brought back his men-at-arms who were in the town and castle of L’Escluse,; he also called his garrisons from Ath, Enghien, Tenremonde and Audenarde; and around noon, Monseigneur Philippe de Ravestain, accompanied by four hundred Englishmen, took up positions in the crossbowmen’s fortress located in front of Thostel in the town, where they spent the night in arms, the Germans moved into another quarter near the old market to subdue the said Gentenaars;

The Duke of Austria {…] had the people of Ghent themselves rebuild the five bridges that they had broken during the war, near his fortress in Ten Walle, so that he could leave as he wished.

The people of Ghent had built on their fish market a staircase eighteen to twenty feet high, on which stood four lions, one bearing the arms of the king (of France), another those of Duke Philip, the third those of the county of Flanders, and the fourth those of the city of Ghent. The duke had the king’s arms removed in broad daylight and replaced with his own. The duke had the artillery of Monseigneur des Querdes, as well as that of Ghent, taken to his fortress; and the people of Ghent returned to him his tapestry, his cross, his library and other jewels amounting to a great treasure; and they offered to pay him one hundred and twenty-seven thousand gold escudos within a year.

The mutineers who started this dispute were tortured to the number of forty. On Saturday, seven Gantenaars were executed, two of whom had paid twelve hundred pounds of gros. End quote.

Maximilian had achieved what no other Burgundian duke had been able to do. He had subdued the rebellious city of Ghent by military force. Not even Philipp the Good had achieved that.

Which gets us back to the initial question, why there are so few city states left.

In previous centuries Ghent and most other medieval cities have been able to withstand the power of territorial princes. The Hanseatic League had defeated the king of Denmark, the Lombard league of Italian cities pushed out the emperors Frederick Barbarossa and Frederick II, countless German cities shook off the overlordship of their bishops, dukes and counts during the 13^th and 14^th century.

From the middle of the 15^th century, that process went into reverse. Many members of the Hanseatic League came under the control of local princes, some venerable places like Mainz faced financial collapse and had to seek shelter with a territorial ruler, the Italian cities were taken over first by local tyrants in the form of the Signoria and then by the great territorial states of Milan, Venice, Florence, the Papal States, Ferrara, Mantua and a few more.

The still prevailing theory argues that this was the result of changes in methods and scale of warfare. The use of artillery and infantry required early modern armies to be trained to coordinate across the different arms, something that required either a standing army or the use of mercenaries. Either of these were exponentially more expensive than warfare had been in previous centuries. Only larger state entities were able to deploy violence on this scale, making city states obsolete.

If we look at the events of Maximilian’s campaign to regain control of the Low Countries between 1483 and 1486, I am not sure it supports this theory. Maximilian’s resources were limited compared to the combined force of Ghent and France. His success was built more on cunning, personality and the internal divisions amongst his opponents than brute force of his army.

There is a countertheory that says that the formation of modern, territorial states was actually a phenomena on the European periphery, in France, Prussia, Austria-Hungary and Russia, whilst in the areas that formed and still forms the economic heartland of europe, the famous Blue Banana that is made up of Northern Italy, Western Germany, the Low Countries and England had remained somewhat fragmented exactly because the cities had the resources to fend off the pressure of larger territorial entities, which again allowed them to benefit from the absence of absolutist rule.

This question, whether the scale and structure of the military forced consolidation or whether there were other drivers in play will be a constant companion in the episodes to come.

Either way, for Ghent this affair had long term dire consequences. The 8 years of constant warfare, the destruction of the land and the uprisings unsettled many of the richest merchants and entrepreneurs. Antwerp, not far away in Brabant seemed a much more stable centre of operations, away from the French border. And after all that had happened, Maximilian was now intent to promote his duchy of Brabant over the unreliable Gentenaars and Bruggelingen. A slow exodus to Antwerp and Brussels began. That exodus will accelerate even further, when the Flemish cities attempt for one last time to get rid of Maximilian three years later.

But in-between Maximilian will return to Holy Roman Empire where things have gone seriously wrong. The same day Maximilian entered Ghent in triumph, Matthias Hunyadi, the king of Hungary did the same in Vienna. His father, the emperor Friedrich III had become homeless, the ancestral lands were lost. The Wittelsbachs were stretching their mitts out to gain Tyrol from the feckless Siegmund and the Turks, the Imperial Reform, everything was stalling. The victor of Flanders, the ruler of the Burgundian Netherlands was needed back home.

How he fares there is what we will discuss, well not next week, since next week is when I will drop you some travel advice, but the week after that. And then there is Yuletide, which, in the German tradition, takes place at midnight on the 24^th of December, exactly as it says in St. Luke, not on the 25^th as these godless Anglo-Saxons believe. And with that caveat, Merry Christmas to you all.

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Episode 202 – Arms and Armour

by History of the Germans Podcast on 16th August 202517th December 2025

How Germany became the centre of the most advanced industry of its day

In 1550 Spanish court records show that the Augsburg armorer Kolman Helmschmied was paid an advance of 2,000 ducats for a full armour for king Philipp II. The final price for this piece was 3,000 ducats. At the same time Raphael could charge at max 170 ducats for an altarpiece. Even the Renaissances’ best paid artist, Michelangelo received just 3,000 gold florins for the painting of the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. Armour, along with tapestries, were the most valuable artworks of the 15^th and 16^th century.

That was just one set of armour made for the most powerful monarch of the time. But what about the thousands of soldiers he commanded, did they have armour? Oh yes they did. Not quite as sophisticated and certainly not as decorated, but they did. And where did these thousands of helmets and breast and back plates come from? From the same places where their prince’s fancy metalwork came from, from Nürnberg and Augsburg. Their swords came from Passau and Solingen and their firearms from Suhl.

How come these mostly southern Germn cities became the armories of Europe whose output clad the armies that fought the never-ending wars of the 15^th, 16^th and 17^th century? How did they supersede Milan, the centre of weapons production in the preceding century in terms of quality, scale and availability, and create a tradition of metalworking and entrepreneurship that lasts until today?

That is what we will look at in this episode.

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A narrative history of the German people from the Middle Ages to Reunification in 1991. Episodes are 25-35 min long and drop on Thursday mornings.
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Ottonian Emperors (# 1- 21)
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How come these mostly southern Germn cities became the armories of Europe whose output clad the armies that fought the never-ending wars of the 15th, 16th and 17th century? How did they supersede Milan, the centre of weapons production in the preceding century in terms of quality, scale and availability, and create a tradition of metalworking and entrepreneurship that lasts until today?

That is what we will look at in this episode.

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 202 – Arms and Armour which is also episode 17 of Season 10 “the Empire in the 15^Th Century”.

That is what we will look at in this episode.

But before we start the usual thanks to our great patrons whose unwavering commitment keeps this show advertising free. And you too could bask in the soft glow of the appreciation of your fellow listeners by signing up on historyofthegermans.com/support. This week we send our warm regards to Pete H., David S., Annette F, Luis, Louis, Daniel, Stephen G. and Christian G., , , who have already done so.ardy, whose upcoming book you can find in the book recommendations, and Eamon M., whose generous help at historyofthegermans.com/support keeps the enjoyment coming.

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And with that back to the show

I am approaching this episode with no small amount of trepidation. I know that several of you have a strong interest in arms, armor and fighting technique. And some are taking their passion so far as to learn and apply these techniques in real life as y kids would say. In other words, there are some serious experts here who will catch me out mercilessly when I am getting things wrong.

I on the other hand cannot really distinguish between a rapier and a broadsword. My interest in the topic of arms and armor is purely from a history and economic history perspective. So. if you are looking for a deep dive into the different types of armor and weapons, how exactly they are used, you will be disappointed. I did look for a podcast that I could direct you to if that is what you were seeking, but am afraid I could not find it. There is however a whole world of YouTube videos out there that do a brilliant job at explaining things.

What I can do though is give you an idea how the economics of this business worked and why this amazing industry cluster in southern Germany came to be.

That being said, I will start with a very brief rundown of the development of arms and armor in europe before we go into the question why Nurnberg, Augsburg, Passau and later Suhl and Solingen became the dominant manufacturing hubs for land-based arms and armor.

Armor is as old as human combat. To win a fight you first have to survive it. Hence every time a new weapon was developed, it was immediately followed by the invention of a way to deflect it. And every deflective tool was immediately followed by the development of a new offensive weapon, which created a new tactic to diffuse it and so forth and so forth. Knightly amour as we find it in every half decent museum had its predecessors in ancient Greek helmets, the ornate breastplates of roman emperors and the scale armour of the Persian cataphract.

What interests us here is the armour and arms in europe since the Middle Ages, which followed the same pattern. Every new form of arms and armour is a reaction to a new threat posed by an enemy with a superior technology.

When this podcast started in 919, that threat were first and foremost the Magyars, horse archers who could attack swiftly and release their composite bows on their enemies. And the response of in particular Henry the Fowler, king of East Francia was armored knight on horseback.

This armour consisted mainly of chainmail, rather than plate. This was helpful against Magyar arrows and even more against swords. Swords at the time were too brittle to be used for stabbing. Instead, early medieval warriors were slashing at their enemies, a move chainmail could deflect.

Chainmail never went away and was used for centuries thereafter. However, as external enemies had been defeated and the Europeans moved on to fight each other, military tactics changed.

The preferred weapon alongside the sword was the spear or lance. Up until the 12^th century European warriors used their spears in the same way as we see Native Americans using them in Westerns, i.e, overhand or by thrusting them forward.

The first shift in fighting technique was implemented by the Normans. These guys were, to use a technical term, nutters. So far, armored cavalry had used horses as transport to get close to the enemy where they would be lobbing their spears or slashing their swords before returning back to the line to get a new spear. The Normans came up with the idea to use the horse as a weapon. So, instead of turning around after the spear had been launched, they simply kept going at full tilt into the midst of the enemy forces.

I might have told this story before, but a few years ago I went to see the Palio in Siena. And before the actual race, the carabinieri stage a full-on cavalry attack with swords drawn around the course. I do not think I have ever seen anything more terrifying. Anna Komnene, the daughter of the Byzantine emperor Alexios Komnenos said about these nutters in 1148: “A mounted Frank is unstoppable – he could smash through the walls of Babylon”. End quote.

And that was before they employed the couched lance, aka the kind of fighting with lances we know from medieval tournaments. That came in the very late 12^th and early 13^th century. Fighting with a couched lance means that the lance is held under the Achsel and retained by various kinds of contraptions. The impact of a couched lance on an opponent is roughly factor four of the impact of a lance thrusted or thrown.

This shift in tactics drove a vast number of changes. The focus is now not just on get close to the enemy and then apply whatever weapon one has at hand, but it is all about the speed and the force of the clash between opponents. Getting this right is tricky, seriously tricky. It requires years and years of training. Which is why they invented tournaments at exactly this time. It is to hone their skills in a comparatively safe environment.

When attacking, the knight will aim his lance at three potential targets, the head, which is extremely hard to hit, but would have a catastrophic impact on the adversary. The shield or body, which is a bigger target, but is a lot less likely to do catastrophic damage, or the horse, which leaves the enemy unharmed but would result in an immediate removal of combat capacity.

Chainmail provides very limited protection in this kind of warfare. As we go through the 12^th into the 13^th and 14^th century, new forms of protection emerge. The head is the first to get covered in more sophisticated helmets of varying construction. Breastplates are developed that are supposed to deflect the impact of the lance and finally the horses are getting covered in iron.

The efficacy of a couched lance can be improved if the butt is attached to some form of rest. That rest could be integrated into the breastplate, allowing the rider to use more of his body to deliver the impact. Hence, we find all sorts of attachments to the breastplate that holds the lance.

Couched lance combat has a couple of drawbacks. It is quite inaccurate and a knight who has missed his target will find himself in the midst of the enemy forces, or worse, is unhorsed and needs to continue fighting on foot.

By the 15^th century that has become seriously dangerous, but in line with improvements to armor, sword technology had also advanced. They are now often made of steel, which is harder and less brittle than iron. Swordsmen can now not only cut, but they can also thrust without having to fear their sword will break in two. Which is another nail in the coffin of armour purely made of chainmail.

Gradually plate armour covers more and more of the body. Legs and the back are getting covered and by the mid to late 15^th century we arrive at the kind of armour we can see displayed in all their grandeur in the Metropolitan Museum, the Kunsthistorische Museum in Vienna, the Royal Armouries or one of my favourites, the Wallace Collection.

Even though infantry becomes more important on the battlefield during the Hundred years’ War and firearms show their enormous power in the Hussite Wars, plate armour is still produced and used in vast quantities for almost 300 years thereafter. Because it was still effective.

For one, the absolute top end quality plate armour could sustain the impact of a musketshot, but more importantly, firearms remained one shot weapons well into the 19^th century. Hence a phalanx on armoured riders could still run down a line of arkebusiers busy reloading their weapons. Therefore, military tactics developed that combined firearms with pikemen and heavy as well as light cavalry well into the 17^th century.

The other important factor is that armour is not just a military tool, but also fashion. I took part in the Wallace Collection’s summer school about arms and armour this year and the curator Keith Dowen and the armourer David Edge compared renaissance armour to modern day cars. A spectacular armour, like the one OttHeinrich of the Palatinate or emperor Maximilian would wear, was like driving a customised Ferrari or McLaren. These were status symbols that combined performance at the outer edge of what was technically possible with beauty and bling. These were, along with tapestries, the by far most expensive luxury goods in any princely household.

This is an audio show, so it is simply impossible to describe some of the most astounding pieces made in the 15^th and 16^th century, but I can completely see why some people put Helmschmied, Lochner, Negroli, Wilhelm von Worms and Konrad Seusenhofer on par with some of the great renaissance painters. And that is at least what their contemporaries believed. As I mentioned, in 1550 Colman Helmschmied charged the Spanish court 3,000 dukats for a full armour, whilst Raphael at the absolute height of his fame commanded 177 dukats for an altarpiece. In other words, you could get 15 Raphaels for one Helmschmied.

There would be lots and lots more to be said about the functionality and decoration of armour in the 15^th and 16^th century, but this is not what we are here for. The question we want to answer is why the most magnificent machines or war and masterpieces of art were produced in Nurnberg, Augsburg and Innsbruck and at the same time, why these, together with Passau and later Suhl and Solingen, became the Arsenal of Europe, the place you went to when you needed to equip 5,000 cavalry in a hurry.

Each of their stories is slightly different, and since we have done Augsburg recently, let’s focus on Nurnberg first.

To make armour, in particular to produce it at scale and at the desired level of quality, there are a couple of basic things that are needed.

Water is crucial. To hammer a sheet of metal into shape was extremely labour intensive. Armourers used water mills to drive hammers to first grind the metal ore and then to flatten the steel. Watermills also drove polishing wheels used to smooth and polish armour and to sharpen swords. But crucially, to produce high quality is steel is all about heating the metal to the right temperature. Watermills drove bellows that pushed a consistent level of oxygen into the forge, keeping the temperature steady, In the case of Nurnberg, the Pregnitz was diverted across multiple mill canals that powered water mills throughout the city, not only for armourers but for all sorts of other trades as well.

The next thing an armourer needs is charcoal for the forge, and again it has to be charcoal of consistent quality to keep the temperature steady. . Nurnberg was famously surrounded by poor soil, one of the reasons Barbarossa had granted them free imperial status in the first place. And that soil was therefore still covered in forests, ideal for producing the valuable charcoal.

Then they need iron ore. Thanks to the rapid expansion of all sorts of mining activities during the 14^th and 15^th century, there were multiple sources of iron ore or iron ingots accessible to Nurnberg artisans. But one mountain held and still holds Europe’s largest deposit of the most valuable iron ore, an iron ore that was already marginally carbonized called Siderite or FECO3 to give it its scientific name. That mountain is the Erzberg in Styria, the ore mountain. Do not get that confused with the Erzgebirge, the Ore Montains on the border between Saxony and Bohemia. This is the Erzberg in Styria. Styria was under Habsburg control and once the Habsburgs became emperors, the empire’s foremost cities, like Nurnberg, Augsburg and Passau had ready access to this valuable ore. And mining was and is a capital intensive business. Where could capital to run an open cast iron ore mine come from – correct, the bankers of Augsburg and Nurnberg, who happened to also be the guys who bankrolled the armourers.

Transport infrastructure was crucial. There is no point making vast quantities of helmets, breast plates and gauntlets and then not being able to deliver them to the customer who is readying for war. When Nurnberg was founded, it was not at the crossroads of any major roads. But by the 15^th century, the city had bent Europes flow of goods to its will. New routes have been established that all went through Nurnberg. The Via Imperii that comes down from Stettin on the Baltic then through Leipzig goes all the way to Rome via Venice intersects here with the Via Regia that links Krakow with Paris. Other routes link Nurnberg to other key nodes like Prague, Augsburg, Vienna and Regensburg. By 1500 the city on the Pregnitz sits like a spider in the middle of central Europe’s trade routes. On top of that, Nurnberg merchants held trading privileges with 70 cities across the empire and beyond, making their wares materially cheaper than their competition.

To speak business strategy for a moment, another factor that leads to the development of industry clusters are demand conditions. In an ideal scenario, there is already some major local demand for the product that gets the industry to enough scale to compete internationally. This why a lot of the latest tech is developed in larger domestic markets like the US and China, rather than say, Belgium.

I guess you know where we are going with this. These last 15 episodes have introduced you to a veritable plethora of local conflicts, the Mainzer Stiftstfehde, the seemingly never-ending Bavarian wars of succession, the fight for the Low countries and these are only the ones I selected for being the more juicy and meaningful ones. The Holy Roman Empire in the 15th century was a never-ending rigmarole of armed conflicts between princes, princes and cities, cities and emperors and any other combination thereof, plus there were the larger wars, the ones against the Hussites and ever more importantly those against the Ottomans.

So, domestic demand was not a problem armourers needed to worry about unduly.

Nurnberg’s lead in arms and armour manufacturing kicked off with a rather mundane-sounding invention, mechanised wire drawing. The very first wire-drawing mills in europe opened in the city in 1368. Long, uniform metal wire is produced by pulling metal rods through successively smaller dies. As you can imagine, this was brutally hard to do by hand. Using waterpower to deliver a consistent amount of pull made the process infinitely faster, cheaper and delivered a much higher quality product.

The wire drawing process was one of Nurnberg’s most closely guarded secret. Master wiredrawers had to be Nurnberg citizens, they weren’t allowed to leave the city or take apprentices from abroad. The secrecy around this process was materially tighter than it was on the armourers themselves.

Having access to large quantities of cheap, uniform wire gave Nurnberg an initial leg up in the armourers’ business, since chain mail consists, yes of wire. The Nurnberg chainmail became famous for its strength and durability, it gained its own brand name, the Nürnberg Ringpanzer. Yes, I know you have been waiting for me to say the word Panzer on the podcast for ages, and here it is.

Wire drawers were not the only metalworkers in Nurnberg. One of the city’s main exports were on the one hand rather mundane things like knives, scissors, spoons, basins and funnels, but on the other side there was also a long tradition of producing high-end mechanical works. Regiomontanus, who we met last week, alongside his theoretical mathematics and astrology tables, also produced precision instruments for astrology and navigation. And he was by no means the only one. Nurnberg became famous for the compass or is it compasses they produced. Reading glasses were another speciality. And then, further up the artisanal food chain were the various kinds of gold and silversmiths.

But what of the armourers themselves. How did they become – together with those in Augsburg and later Innsbruck and Greenwich – the foremost producers in Europe.

I think three factors were crucial here, competition, specialisation and co-ordination.

Master armourers in Nurnberg were only allowed to employ two assistants and one apprentice. That prevented the establishment of large, dominant producers. These small producers were in constant competition with each other for lucrative orders. Other than in most cities, large orders did not have to be passed through the guild who would distribute them equally amongst the different masters, but would be given to merchants. The merchants would choose who to subcontract to, based on their reputation for quality, reliability, speed and price.

This competitive pressure spurred the armourers on to constantly strive for improvement. One of the key criteria for the quality of armour and swords was the balance between hardness and flexibility. Steel could be hardened by quenching, aka first heating it up to a high temperature and then rapidly cooling it in cold water followed by tempering, a second round of heating but followed by a very slow cooling process. The trick was to find the right balance between initial temperature and length of the quenching and tempering that hardened the steel but not letting it become brittle. Getting this right involved a whole lot of experimentation and required to improve temperature control of the forge. The latter depended on the quality of the charcoal and the consistency of the air blown into the fire. The German armourers kept tinkering and tinkering with this process until they got it right. Their main competition, the armourers of Milan had chosen to protect flexibility by quenching their steel in less conductive liquid, like oils. That prevented brittleness but failed to achieve the hardness desired.

Alan Williams from the university of Reading did analyse two pieces of late medieval and early modern armour made from similar steel for its metallurgical properties. He concluded that the Italian armour from 1570 scored 183 on the Vickers hardness scale, whilst the German piece scored 514 on the same scale. In other words, by the 16^th century, German armourers were producing armour 3 times harder than the North Italians who had dominated the market in the early 15^th century.

The other thing that made armour great were the mechanics of it. A full armour was supposed to weigh no ore than 25kg to ensure the knight could get up and continue to fight once unhorsed. So, the harder the steel got, the thinner and lighter it could be, which in turn meant more and more of the body could be protected without exceeding the weight limit. And these parts of the body that could now be covered, the legs and arms are full of these complicated connecting bits we call joints. And to be able to fight, the joints need to remain able to move. The German armourers developed sliding rivets and ingenious articulations that let a knight move freely inside what was essentially a metal exoskeleton. Again, master armourers constantly competed with each other to produce ever more elaborate versions of these complex mechanics.

Apart from competition, the other reason German armourers got so good was specialisation. To become a master armourer, the apprentice had to produce his masterpiece, i.e., a piece of armour that showcased his skills and that was of such quality it passed muster with his fellow armourers or the authorities. And depending what kind of piece it was, a helmet, gauntlet, sword or breastplate, this became the only product the newly minted master armourer would be licensed to produce. Those who made helmets were not allowed to branch out into breastplates and vice versa. So the new master would make say helmets on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, He would make helmets In January, February, March, April May, June, July, August September, October, November and December, Helmets this year, next year, the year thereafter and from then on to the day they either died or got bored and left. Dead or bored, he would get better and better and better at it. This is what business people call the economics of experience. And economics of experience are so much more powerful than the better-known economics of scale. Any, even the smallest improvement in the way helmets are made apply to all subsequent helmets until the next round of improvements appears, which again brings the process up again further, and so on and so on.

Radical specialisation was something happened across all kinds of trades in Nurnberg. Nurnberg registered 114 individual artisan guilds. They for instance differentiated between makers of “rough” wire, makers of fine wire and makers of silver-plated wire.

Which gets us to the third reason artisans from Nurnberg and Augsburg churned out such astonishing product, co-operation. A full suit of armour consists of dozens of components, helmets, plates, mail, gauntlets, swords and so forth. Each of these were made by different master artisans. And when it came to the top end luxury armour, the kind of stuff emperor Maximilian paid almost as much for as pope Leo X paid Michelangelo to paint the Sistine chapel ceiling, a whole lot more trades got involved. There were the silver and goldsmiths doing the decorations. When we see armour today, it is mostly polished into a bright shining silvery colour. And quite a lot of armour was indeed polished to that colour, requiring a polisher to do that work. But some, maybe even most armour, was colourful. One process was called blueing, where the metal was burnished until it achieved a peacock blue colour. The Wallace collection holds a piece of armour they believe was originally blue with contrasting shining silver-coloured elements. Other may have been straight up painted. What exactly they painted on this armour is largely lost because the Victorians decided that all and every knight was one in shining armour – no space for fancy-coloured fighters.

The great artists of the time, Albrecht Durer and Hans Burgckmaier too got involved. They designed armour for their clients and painted them wearing it afterwards.

So, who co-ordinated all these trades. It seems that for the top, top end armour the superstars of the industry, the Helmschmieds, Lochners and Seusenhofer most likely had control of the project and chose their suppliers and decorators.

When it came to the commissioning of vast quantities of what is called munitions armour, i.e., armour designed to be worn by simple soldiers on campaign, the coordinators were usually the great merchants. This again was one of the unique advantages of places like Augsburg and Nurnberg. The great mercantile houses, the Fuggers, Welsers, Imhofs and Tuchers had the contacts to the imperial and princely courts to secure orders of such magnitude. And not only that, they would also offer to provide financing to the prince and emperor. And on the other side of the bargain they would also provide finance for master armourers to build up stock after having financed their suppliers as well.

Holding stock was extremely capital intensive. But it could come off spectacularly. Having 500 helmets in stock when the duke of God knows where is finding himself in a bit of a pickle, commanded a massive premium over helmets that arrive when the duke’s capital is already burning. Which is why having five hundred helmets available for pick-up wasn’t something unusual in Nurnberg in the 16^th century.

And these helmets were not just available, they were also of predictable quality. Nurnberg was somewhat unique amongst the free imperial cities in as much as the patricians had broken the power of the guilds. After a failed uprising, the council had taken over much of the guild’s role, including the supervision of quality standards and the branding. Wares that met the standard set by the city council, i.e, the merchants who bought and sold the merchandise, were branded with the letter N.

Quality control is what saved the German makers of arms and armour from the fate of the much more famous makers of Damascus steel. True Damascus Steel was undoubtably superior to the European product. Still the Mughal emperors on the 17^th century preferred European blades from Solingen. Why? Damascus steel is hard to get right. Abd it did not come from Damascus or any other specific place, but from all kinds of places all over the East. There was no central authority that controlled the quality of the end product. So lots and lots of producers were manufacturing what they called Damascus Steel, some of it was of stounding quality, but much of it was not. And nobody could tell which was which. The brand deteriorated.

At the same time the town of Solingen developed its own steel making process and kept such tight control over the quality, that the name Solingen until today stands for top quality knifes, worldwide.

This combination of skill, branding and finance is what made in particular Nurnberg the go-to place for massive orders. The only place to that could match it in terms of mass output were the Habsburg armouries emperor Maximilian established in Innsbruck. He had brought several famous armourers from Augsburg and Nurnberg to Innsbruck. What these artisans did there was on the one hand create spectacular luxury armours for the emperors, but the other, more important function was to arm the imperial armies. And free from the shackles of the guild regulations in Augsburg and Nurnberg, huge workshops could be set up that exploited the resulting economics of scale.

Whilst Nurnberg focused more on volume production, Augsburg took an almost unassailable lead in making the world’s finest luxury armour. Augsburg had already established itself as the home of Europe’s foremost silver and goldsmiths. These guys now brought their skills into the world or armour. Go into any museum of armour and look at the star piece in their collection, it will almost inevitably come from Augsburg.

Ok, that is not 100% right. The museum will likely also hold a astounding looking Italian armour from Milan or Brescia, from masters like the Negrolis or the Messaglias. These are wonderous contraptions covered in elaborate decorations mimicking mythical animals or modelled on ancient Greek or Roman styles. They sparkle in the sun and look fantastic when the emperor enters a city on triumph. What they are pretty useless at, is protecting the wearer against even the most feeble blow from a sword.

Which gets us to the last reason why the centre of armour production shifted from Milan to Southern Germany. And the answer is the third most powerful force on the known universe after compounding and human stupidity, pot luck. Arms manufacturing needs war, but it is important that it is the right amount of war. And Northern Italy in the late fifteenth century got the wrong amount of war. The so-called Italian wars that pitted France against the Habsburgs, the Italian states against each other and the papacy pitching in at various points, these Italian wars were a disaster for Italy.

Machiavelli in the last chapter of the prince appeals to Lorenzo de Medici quote “Italy, left almost lifeless, waits for someone to heal her wounds, to put an end to the sackings of Lombardy, the extortions and plunderings of the Kingdom [of Naples] and of Tuscany, and to cleanse the sores that have festered for so long.”. Whilst Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo created the greatest artworks the world had ever seen, the Italian cities they worked were regularly sacked and their industries smashed. And one of these industries that could not keep up in these conditions was the Milanese armourers.

The success of the German armourers did not just produce their own industry cluster. The metalworking industries in general were all cousins. A city known for armor often produced other metal goods: cutlery, tools, machinery, clocks, scientific instruments, you name it. In 1621, of the 3,700 master craftsmen in Nuremberg, about 600 worked in ironwares. The techniques used for one product often fertilized another. The skill to draw fine wire (for mail armor or for strings and cables) helped in making mechanical clock springs. The ability to cast cannon and mix alloys informed bell-making (Nuremberg and Augsburg both cast huge church bells). And the presence of gunsmiths and metal engravers in the same city led to some cross-pollination – for instance, the beautiful engraving and etching seen on luxury firearms and armor was often done by artists who also worked on printing plates and fine art. It’s not a stretch to note that the city that printed the Nuremberg Chronicle and built the first pocket watches (the famous “Nuremberg eggs” by Peter Henlein) was the same city exporting the best mail shirts and muskets. The cultural flowering of Nuremberg in that era – the “centre of the German Renaissance” – was enabled by its prosperous crafts economy of which arms-making was just one pillar.

Nothing lasts forever though. The downfall of the great southern German cities did not come with the gradual decline of the use of armour. That was compensated by their equal prowess in the production of firearms, both handguns and cannon and all kinds of sophisticated instruments.

What broke them was the wrong amount of war, aka the 30 years war. Nurnberg stayed neutral and was protected by powerful fortifications, but their markets had been wiped out by the end. Moreover, their customers, the emperors and princes began introducing standing armies using standard equipment. State-owned arsenals were able to deliver these cheaper and more efficiently than the fragmented master armourers. Nurnberg and Augsburg declined and it took until the industrial revolution before they gradually came back to life.

Nevertheless, some elements of the early success of German industry in Nurnberg and Augsburg survive to this day. The Mittelstand, the backbone of the German economy consists of comparatively small, family-owned businesses that have risen to global leadership in their field through fierce competition, extreme specialisation, co-ordination and quality control.

And this seems to me a good point to end our journey across the empire in the 15^th century. There are many more topics we could have explored, the dukes of Brunswick and those of Pomerania, the involvement of Brandenburg in the wars between Poland and the Teutonic Knights, the silversmiths of Augsburg, the sword makers of Cologne and Passau. But 15 episodes in, it is time to move on. The next season will pick up when we last had a closer look at the Habsburgs, i.e., when Rudolf the Stifter invented the title of archduke. And take the story all the way to Charles V. I hope you will join us again when that kicks off in a few weeks’ time. In the meantime I will drop episodes from other podcasts I admire into the feed. Give them a chance. They are really good in their own way.

And do not forget, you can support the show by going to historyofthegermans.com/support and make a contribution. I have not much to offer, other than my heartfelt and for the most generous, eternal gratitude which should make you feel even more generous.

See you soon!

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Episode 201 – Mapping the world

by History of the Germans Podcast on 17th July 202517th December 2025

How two Germans invented America

When you enter the great hall of the Thomas Jefferson building at the Library of Congress in Washington, the first exhibit you will be facing is their Gutenberg Bible. And it is one of the finest Gutenberg bibles around, one of only three surviving pristine copies on vellum. This was the kind of bible that was so expensive to produce, it bankrupted Gutenberg. When the Library of Congress bought it in 1930, they paid $375,000, roughly $7.5m in today’s money.

But this is not the most expensive piece in the library’s collection. That would a work by two Germans, Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann. And it is not even a book, but a map. Not a small map, it is 2.3m or 91 inches wide and 1.3m or 50 inches tall. And this map, printed in 1507 claimed to be:

A DESCRIPTION OF THE WHOLE WORLD ON BOTH
A GLOBE AND A FLAT SURFACE WITH THE INSERTION
OF THOSE LANDS UNKNOWN TO PTOLEMY
DISCOVERED BY RECENT MEN

And the authors wrote that the three continents known since antiquity, Europe, Africa and Asis, quote “have in fact now been more widely explored, and a fourth part has been discovered by Amerigo Vespucci (as will be heard in what follows). Since both Asia and Africa received their names from women, I do not see why anyone should rightly prevent this [new part] from being called Amerigen—the land of Amerigo, as it were—or America, after its discoverer, Americus, a man of perceptive character.” End quote.

This fourth part, they said was “surrounded on all sides by the ocean”. And indeed, in the left lower corner we find a fourth continent, a thin, stretched thing, with few place names and a western shore that hints at the Peruvian bulge, unmistakably, South America and then to north of it a very indistinguishable blob of land.

This map, proudly displayed as America’s Birth Certificate, is full of the most intriguing mysteries. How did Waldseemüller and Ringmann know that the Americas had a western shore, when it was only in 1513, 6 years later, that a European first glanced the Pacific?

How did the name America stick though Amerigo Vespucci had never led an expedition, not even commanded a ship? But most of all, why was this first map of America drawn not by a Spanish or Portuguese navigator, but by two Germans in the employ of the duke of Lorraine, working in St. Die, which is as far away from the sea as one can get in Western Europe.

And then, more generally, what did the Germans have to do with the discoveries, the maps and globes that told the world about them? That is what we will explore in this episode.

History of the Germans

HotGPod is now entering its 9th season. So far we have covered:

Ottonian Emperors (# 1- 21)
– Henry the Fowler (#1)
– Otto I (#2-8)
– Otto II (#9-11)
– Otto II (#11-14)
– Henry II (#15-17)
– Germany in 1000 (#18-21)

Salian Emperors(#22-42)
– Konrad II (#22- 25)
– Henry III (#26-29)
– Henry IV/Canossa (#30-39)
– Henry V (#40-42)
– Concordat of Worms (#42)

Early Hohenstaufen (#43-69)
– Lothar III (#43-46)
– Konrad III (#47-49)
– Frederick Barbarossa (#50-69)

Late Hohenstaufen (#70-94)
– Henry VI (#70-72)
– Philipp of Swabia (#73-74)
– Otto IV (#74-75)
– Frederick II (#75-90)
– Epilogue (#91-94)

Eastern Expansion (#95-108)

The Hanseatic League (#109-127)

The Teutonic Knights (#128-137)

And this map, printed in 1507 claimed to be:

A DESCRIPTION OF THE WHOLE WORLD ON BOTH

A GLOBE AND A FLAT SURFACE WITH THE INSERTION

OF THOSE LANDS UNKNOWN TO PTOLEMY

DISCOVERED BY RECENT MEN

How did the name America stick though Amerigo Vespucci had neverled an expedition, not even commanded a ship? But most of all, why was this first map of America drawn not by a Spanish or Portuguese navigator, but by two Germans in the employ of the duke of Lorraine, working in St. Die, which is as far away from the sea as one can get in Western Europe.

And then, more generally, what did the Germans have to do with the discoveries, the maps and globes that told the world about them? That is what we will explore in this episode.

The music for the show is Flute Sonata in E-flat major, H.545 by Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach (or some claim it as BWV 1031 Johann Sebastian Bach) performed and arranged by Michel Rondeau under Common Creative Licence 3.0.

As always:

Homepage with maps, photos, transcripts and blog: www.historyofthegermans.com

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To make it easier for you to share the podcast, I have created separate playlists for some of the seasons that are set up as individual podcasts. they have the exact same episodes as in the History of the Germans, but they may be a helpful device for those who want to concentrate on only one season.

So far I have:

The Ottonians

Salian Emperors and Investiture Controversy

Fredrick Barbarossa and Early Hohenstaufen

Frederick II Stupor Mundi

Saxony and Eastward Expansion

The Hanseatic League

The Teutonic Knights

The Holy Roman Empire 1250-1356

The Reformation before the Reformation

Ep. 201 – Mapping the World, or how Germans invented America

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 201 – Mapping the World, or how two Germans invented America, which is also episode 16 of season 10 “The Empire in the 15^th century”.

A DESCRIPTION OF THE WHOLE WORLD ON BOTH
A GLOBE AND A FLAT SURFACE WITH THE INSERTION
OF THOSE LANDS UNKNOWN TO PTOLEMY
DISCOVERED BY RECENT MEN

And then, more generally, what did the Germans have to do with the discoveries, the maps and globes that told the world about them? That is what we will explore in this episode.

But before we start another big, big thank you to all of you supporting the show. Not only financially, but also with your emails and messages of encouragement. As you can imagine, solo podcasting can be a bit of a lonely pursuit and feedback, in particular your incredibly nice feedback, makes this so much more enjoyable.

And today we should appreciate Gijs C., Gary W., James M., Vincent V., Fabian S., Mike K., Joseph C., Duncan Hardy, whose upcoming book you can find in the book recommendations, and Eamon M., whose generous help at historyofthegermans.com/support keeps the enjoyment coming.

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And with that, back to the show

Maps have always exerted a huge influence on the human mind. I know that if I publish a post on social media with a map in it, it attracts two or three times the audience of my usual posts.

Mapmaking might go as far back as 7000 BC when the neolithic inhabitants of Chatalhoyuk in Turkey painted a plan of their town and two distant volcanos onto the walls of a house. The British museum holds the oldest known world map, the Babylonian world, a map that dates back to 600 BC. The story on how that had been identified as a map is one of the BM’s best tales by the way.

Maps are not created equal. They do differ by accuracy, depth of information and most importantly, purpose. Political maps emphasise the borders of countries, states, counties, constituencies etc, geographical maps may look at features like mountain ranges and rivers, the distribution of mineral deposits or fertility of the soil. Sailor’s charts care about depth and maritime hazards and give no heed to what is on the land, unless it is a church tower or a lighthouse, whilst the Michelin guide divides the world up into places to eat, and those where better not to.

I guess after 200 episodes observing our protagonists, not just the kings and emperors, but also the monks, merchants and mercenaries criss-crossing the known world, I do not have to tell you that medieval people were anything but static.

Hence it is not surprising that they made maps. How many is hard to say, but there are several that have come down to us. Amongst Anglo-Saxons the mappamundi of Hereford cathedral is probably the best known, whilst the German equivalent, the Ebstorf map is the more famous here.

Being the History of the Germans, we obviously focus on the Ebstorf map. First up, it is huge, a circular image of the known world, 3.5m by 3.5m. Created around 1240, the original was lost in an air raid on Hannover in 1943, but we have several very detailed facsimiles.

For modern observers it is extremely difficult to get one’s bearings on this map. For one it is oriented towards the east, not the north. Then at the centre of the map sits Jerusalem. Asia makes up the top half, europe the bottom left and Africa the bottom right. The mediterranean is a giant Tin the centre with Sicily in the shape of a heart. The three continents are surrounded by a thin band of one continuous ocean.

Where it gets even more confusing is when you look closer. The map is extraordinarily detailed. It comprises 2,345 entries, 845 pictures, 500 of which are buildings, the rest rivers, waterways, islands, but also 45 persons and 60 animals. And these are on the one hand comparatively modern cities and features like Antwerp, Riga and the Brunswick Lion. But then it also depicts buildings and cities that are known to be long gone, like the tower of babel, the lighthouse of Alexandria and Carthage. And then there are missing elements, like Cairo, the largest city Europeans regularly travelled to at the time, and instead it features entirely mythical locations, like the place where Alexander had imprisoned Gog and Magog and the earthly paradise, complete with serpent and apple.

So, what was this map for?

The map reflected the sum total of the historical, scientific and theological knowledge of the time, which meant whatever knowledge of the ancients had made it through. Pliny the elder was a particular favourite whose odd notions about the impact of the phases of the moon on the mental state of Monkeys and the like were perennial favourites. Biblical stories were of such great importance to the pious, they were considered contemporaneous, even if they had happened thousands of years earlier.

There was a major devotional element here. The map shows that the world is a confined space, held together by Jesus Christ, who sees and hears everything from his vantage point at the top of the map.

What this kind of maps, the mappamundi, were utterly useless at was to guide a sailor from Venice to Constantinople and further on to the Holy Land. But we know that at the same time these were made, Venetian, Genoese, Pisan and Amalfitani sea captains carried crusaders and trading goods to the east and back. To achieve that they had what we have today, compass, maritime charts and pilot books. No, seriously. There are three maritime charts still in existence that were most likely produced around the same time as the Ebstorf and the Hereford Mappamundi, in the 13^th century.

These maritime charts have no pictures of saints or exotic animals on them, nor do they share the wisdom of Pliny the Elder. These are utilitarian charts that tell you what course to steer and how far you have to sail to get from Palma de Mallorca to Palermo or from Ancona to Alexandria. It tells you where the submerged reefs and rocks are and where dangerous currents run. And they are pretty accurate, which is truly astounding as they did not use latitude or longitude to pinpoint locations.

And then there is the scale of the effort. The so-called Pisan map covers the whole Mediterranean and the Black Sea plus bits of the Atlantic. There are roughly 1,000 topographic sites named in the mediterranean part alone, and all of these are on the coast or in the water, making this an incredibly dense map.

Which begs the question how this information could have been gathered.

One option is that it was a compilation of regional charts, but given every region had different measurements for miles and feet, it would have required a standardisation down to the map’s reference mile, which was 1.25km. Not an easy task.

Some have argued that these charts were originally developed by Greek or Roman sailors and then copied and adjusted as trade routes changed and cities rose and fell. But there is no mention of maritime charts in Roman or Greek sources at all.

So, in all likelihood the makers of these maritime charts gathered the information from the ship’s captains who came in and out of their hometowns. Most cartographers were themselves retired seafarers which must have helped.

What bewildered me is that according to the almost unanimous opinion in the literature, the medieval navigators did not use a logbook or other form of noting down the position, course and speed throughout a voyage. This only came in during the 15^th century when explorers ventured out to find the route to India. I find that incredibly hard to believe. The maritime charts did not feature latitude and longitude, meaning to determine a position the skipper would have to constantly check the angle and distance to at least two landmarks, which changed all the time. And once on the open sea, he would have to remember exactly for how long he had stayed on which course at which speed. Not impossible but just hard to believe. If there had been logbooks, they would have been a huge help to cartographers confirming the accuracy of their charts. But apparently, they could keep all of that in their heads.

Accompanying these charts were Portolans, something we would call today a pilot book. These are books guiding sailors through the entrance to ports, tell them what they will find there in terms of fresh water, provisions, facilities to make repairs etc.

They even new about compass variation, i.e., the fact that magnetic north and geographic north are not identical, and that this variation was not the same everywhere, and that it changed over time.

It is just mindboggling to think that they knew that but believed that bears cups would have to be licked into shape by the mothers.

As one can imagine, these two traditions of mapping the world started to coalesce in the great maritime republics, in Venice, Genoa and Pisa and the seafaring Iberian kingdoms. One of the most famous of these hybrid maps that combine the historic and theological content of a mappamundi with the accuracy of the maritime charts is the so-called Catalan Atlas, produced in Barcelona as a present for king Charles VI of France.

This map, created in 1375 not only incorporated the maritime charts of the mediterranean, but also new information about places, the ancients knew little about. Marco Polo had travelled to China in the late 13^th century and a trade in Chinese silks developed rapidly thereafter that brought Genoese traders to the courts of the Mongol rulers and further into Mainland China. Their reports are included in the Catalan Atlas. The Canary Islands had been discovered in 1339 and its original population wiped out by disease and slaughter. So, they, i.e., the islands, not their inhabitants, too make it onto the map.

So far we have two mapping traditions that fused into one in the 14^th century, the medieval Mappamundi that tries to educate about the way the world is or should be and the maritime charting tradition that cares about where exactly places are and how to get there.

And in 1397 a third technique for mapmaking appeared, or more precisely, re-appeared. In 1397 the emperor of Constantinople, Manuel II Palaiologos sent an ambassador to Venice, asking the western Christians for help in the defence against Ottoman attack. This ambassador, Manuel Chrysoloras would become one of the catalysts of the Renaissance. Chrysoloras was not just a diplomat, but a classical scholar, philosopher and teacher as well. Whilst his ambassadorship was a failure, and no soldiers came to Manuel’s aid, his cultural mission was a huge success.

He had brought with him copies of classical Greek works that had been lost to the west for centuries which he translated into Latin. He taught the intellectuals of Florence and Bologna to read Greek and published textbooks that were enthusiastically received. Within less than 100 years Greek, which had largely been forgotten, returned to the curriculum of the educated classes all across the continent.

Chrysoloras never returned to Constantinople but established a constant flow of Greek books going west. He died in 1413 en route to see the emperor Sigismund to discuss a suitable location for the Great Church council, that would ultimately be held in Constance (episodes 171-174).

Amongst the treasures he carried in his luggage was a work by Ptolemy, the 2^nd century Greek mathematician. This work, the Geography would revolutionise the way maps were drawn.

If you put Ptolemy’s Geography into a search engine, it will inevitably show you a map. But there are no maps by Ptolemy that survived from antiquity. What was found in 13^th century was a book with instructions on how to create a map of the world and 26 regional maps. And so in around 1295 Byzantine scholars created a world map from the instructions Ptolemy had left a 1000 years earlier.

The reason this worked was down to Ptolemy’s great invention, longitude and latitude. The medieval maritime charts did not show a long-lat grid that almost every modern map now features. What they showed were rump lines, connecting lines between points on the map that showed the course to steer if you wanted to get from A to B. These rump lines criss-crossed the map as commerce, not geography demanded.

Ptolemy’s genius lay in his realisation that to convey a three-dimensional object, aka Planet Earth on to a two-dimensional surface, aka a map, it required some form of projection. This was a minor problem when designing regional charts but became a huge one trying to depict the entirety of the known world.

And in this context, we need to clear up one constant misunderstanding. Very few people in the Middle Ages believe the earth was flat. From the days of the ancient Greeks, people knew that the Earth was spherical. The first globe was produced by Cratos of Mallos in the 2^nd century BC and Erotosthenes had accurately calculated the circumference of the earth based on the difference in the angle of the sun between Aswan and Alexandria.

Fun fact, the term Antarctica goes back to the ancient Greeks. It means literally, land of no bears, being the opposite of the Arctic, which translates as “land of the bears”. Sadly, that had less to do with intrepid travellers checking out the fauna on the North Pole, but with the star sign of Ursus Major that hovers over the north.

Going back to medieval understanding of the spherical structure of the earth; emperors from Charlemagne onwards received an orb as a sign of their power over the entire earth, not a flat plate but. Medieval maps were circular, and for instance the one Al Idrisi produced for king Roger of Sicily in 1154 mentioned that the earth was a sphere as something that was common knowledge.

So, when Columbus set off to seek a route to India by going west, the concern was less that his ships would fall off the edge of the world, but that the journey would simply be too long to be survivable. Given the circumference of the earth was known, as was the eastward extent of Asia thanks to Marco Polo and other Italian travellers, one could estimate the distance from Seville to the Philippines or Japan at ~20,000 km or ~13,000 miles. Given Columbus ships were averaging 90 to 100 miles a day, the whole journey would be 150 days, well beyond the capacity to carry water and food of contemporary ships. Columbus got around that problem by mixing up Roman and Italian miles hence pretending the world was 25% smaller and by stretching China and Japan out further east than the reports warranted. In his pitch to Ferdinand and Isabella he claimed the distance was just 2-3000 miles. Some historians believe he did that deliberately. How he thought he would survive is then unclear. He may have hoped there would be islands along the way where he could find food, water and timber.

Ok, back to Ptolemy. Thanks to the curvature of the earth, two-dimensional maps will always get some dimension wrong, be it the surface area, the shapes, distances or direction. Which is why Ptolemy suggested to create globes, rather than maps. But he also recognised that Globes are difficult to produce and awkward to handle. So, he offered three types of projections, each with advantages and disadvantages. That question of projections is the content of Book I of Ptolemy’s geography.

The next 6 books contain 8,000 place names with their longitude and latitude, covering the whole known world from China to the mythical island of Thule, in the far, far north.

Ptolemy’s maps were a revolution, and copies were produced at a rapid pace. In 1409 the Geography was translated into Latin and as we heard in episode 172, was one of the central intellectual debates at the Council of Constance.

What is interesting is how little the early copyist and publishers changed on these ancient maps. They showed the world, its roads and cities as it was in around 200 AD. Little heed was given to fact that in the intervening 1200 years many lands have been discovered or at least better understood, cities had vanished and new ones had emerged. Germany, an empty forested swamp in the 2^nd century AD was now a thriving place full of cities and roads, as was Poland, the Baltic and Scandinavia.

In 1427 the Cardinal Fillastre, an important protagonist at the Council asked the Danish traveller Conradus Clavus to create and then add a map of Scandinavia using the Ptolemy’s system of longitudes and latitudes, which he did, adding Greenland and Iceland as a bonus. But that was the exception. Mostly people just copied the ancient maps and left them as they were.

So we end up with the scenario where we have on the one hand maps based on the medieval mappamundi concept but containing some very accurate maritime charts , the information gathered from the intensifying trade with the East, the Canaries, the Azores the Cape Verde Islands and the coast of Africa, whilst at the same time the leading intellectual lights used a hugely advanced mapping methodology to present even more massively outdated information.

It was a German, Donnus Nicolaus Germanus who was the first to fundamentally revise and improve Ptolemy in 1466. He translated or replaced the antique place names in Italy and Spain with modern names and a more accurate view of northern Europe. We know little about him apart from the fact that he was likely German given his name and that he worked in Florence and Rome.

In 1477 pope Sixtus IV ordered two globes to be produced by Nicolaus Germanus, one a celestial globe and one a terrestrial globe. We know that these globes were produced because there are bills preserved in the Vatican library and the marquise of Mantua asked for a copy to be produced in 1507. They were probably destroyed in the 1527 sack of Rome.

That made Donnus Nicolaus Germanus the first person we know for certain to have produced a globe since antiquity.

By now Gutenberg’s printing press had radically changed the way information was distributed. Maps became an important product for printers. Several Ptolemy-based maps were published in Italy and Germany in the 1480s. But as people compared them to the information contained in the maritime charts it became clear that Ptolemy, for all his innovative mathematics, was full of inaccuracies.

In 1489 Henricus Martellus, another German, produced a world map that applied the longitude and latitude system of Ptolemy on the latest geographic information available. And latest really means latest. Barthomeu Diaz had rounded the Cape of Good Hope in March 1488 and returned to Lisbon in December 1488. Less than 2 years later Martellus map shows Africa as being circumnavigable and even some shapes in the Indian ocean that were previously unknown.

Before we go further down the route of German mapmakers, we have to mention someone else, Johannes Müller from Königsberg, not Konigsberg in Prussia but Konigsberg in Franconia. Since Müller was already extremely common, he called himself Regiomontanus, the latinised form of his hometown. He was probably the most influential astrologer and mathematician in the generation before Copernicus. As you know I dabble in all sorts of topics, literature, art, architecture, theology, philosophy etc., but I draw the line at mathematics and linguistics. That is not something I know anything about, nor do I feel capable of talking about it. So, if you want to know about the Regiomontanus Paradox and his contribution to the development of calculus you will need to find another podcast.

But what I can talk about and what matters for our subject here is that Regiomontanus, alongside his mathematical works, produced a practical guide, the Ephemerides. These are tables showing the trajectory of astronomical objects, in particular the planets, their position, speed and direction of movement at specific time intervals. These tables are naturally useful to Astronomers, even more to astrologers, but absolutely crucial to navigators sailing into the Southern Hemisphere.

One of the features of the Southern hemisphere is that you cannot see the polestar anymore. The Southern Cross and Sigma Octantis are reasonable replacements, indicating South, but the Portuguese sailors following the African coast did not know that. What they could do instead is use the angles of the planets from their current location and time to determine where they were. And for that, they needed a reliable table telling them where the planets should be on that specific day and time. And that is where Regiomontanus came in. His tables, called the Ephimerides were more accurate and more detailed than anything else contemporaries had access to.

Regiomontanus developed and compiled these tables when he lived in Nurnberg in 1474. Nurnberg may not have a university that funded this kind of research, but what it had was a large number of rich merchants who combined commercial acumen with scientific curiosity. These men were happy to finance Regiomontanus’ efforts and the publication of his tables in 1474. These tables were a huge success and were still reprinted 300 years later. At least one copy made it to the university of Krakow, where a certain N. Copernicus drew some literally earthshattering conclusions using this data.

In the last third of the 15^th century astronomy and geography were considered two sides of the same medal. They called it Cosmology. Regiomontanus did consider making maps and as we have seen some of the terrestrial mapmakers worked on celestial globes.

Add to that scientific endeavour the rise of the printing press and we can see why the great free imperial cities of the Holy Roman empire became a key node in the distribution of knowledge about the planet. Nicolaus Germannus modified atlas was printed in a luxury edition in Ulm in 1482, in 1486 Johannes Reger published a set of maps together with what he called a Registrum, which allowed to cross-reference all of Ptolemy’s placenames with the modern notations.

Over in Nurnberg, Hartmann Schedel compiled his famous Nürnberg chronicle which included two maps. One was a world map, a combination of Ptolemy’s geography and the weird and wonderful elements of the medieval mappamundi. The second map was something completely different. This was a map of Germany and central Europe, the very first ever printed. It used the longitude and latitude now familiar to cartographers, but where Ptolemy had shown just empty space and swampy forest, it presented the magnificent Hanseatic cities, the trading centres of southern Germany, Krakow, Warsaw and Gdansk, the capitals of the Baltic states and even Moscow and Lviv, but strangely not Kiev.

The man who produced that, Hieronymus Münzer, was another one of that circle of intellectuals that emerged in Nürnberg. He undertook a journey to Spain and Portugal on behalf of the emperor Maximilian to find out more about these new discoveries. This produced one of the most detailed descriptions of the Iberian Peninsula in the 15^th century.

Because of the quaint half-timbered houses and the lack of an overseas empire, the idea has taken hold that 15^th, 16^th and 17^th century Germans spent most of their time at home whilst Spaniards, Portuguese, Dutch and English set out to conquer the world. But nothing could be further from the truth. As we heard in the season about the Hanseatic league and about the Fuggers, German merchants were going almost everywhere. They connected east and west and north and south. They had representatives in Lisbon, Antwerp, London, Bergen, Riga, Novgorod, Cracow, Budapest and Venice. Much of the timber the Portuguese caravels were made of came from the forests of Prussia, their design a development based on the cog. The copper and silver they traded into India and China came from the mines and smelters of the Fuggers, Welsers, Hirschvogels etc. In fact, these metals were pretty much the only European exports the much more advanced societies of India, China and Japan were interested in.

Amongst the crews of the Portugues explorers who set out into the unknown in the 15^th century were almost always Germans. They were hired to operate the artillery. Germany had become highly regarded for the guns they produced and the gunners who had trained to operate them. The Portuguese called them Bombardeiros Alemaes and hired them for most expeditions. In 1489 the Portuguese crown standardised its naval artillery to German-made bronze guns and their experienced gun teams. Of the 18 men who survived Magellan’s circumnavigation, one was a German, Hans de Plank or Juan Aleman.

Which gets us to the most controversial figure in the history of German cartography, Martin Behaim. So, before we go into who he was and what he did, there is one undeniable thing that is associated with him, the Erdapfel, the oldest terrestrial globe in existence today. As we know it is not the oldest globe ever made, that was the one created in the 2^nd century BC by Cratos of Mallos. And it was not even the first one made after antiquity, that was the globe of Nicolaus Germanus in Rome.

All that being said, it is still the oldest Globe in existence. And it is intriguing in as much as it was produced in 1492, in other words just as Columbus was stepping ashore in the Bahamas.

Given timing this globe does not show the Americas and obviously neither does it show Australia or Antarctica. So, what did Behaim put in the space where America is? Islands, lots of them, some known, others invented. The Canaries and the Cape Verde islands, today the jumping off points for an Atlantic crossing west and the Azores, the staging post 2/3rds on the way back east were already known. But then he put dozens, even very large blobs all over the surface and gave them names like the Antilles and the island of St. Brandan. Japan ends up being more or less where Florida is.

The Germanische Nationalmuseum in Nurnberg that holds the globe says in its description; the continents are too big. But it would be more accurate to say the planet is too small. Which may be down to Behaim subscribing to Columbus’ view that the planet was a lot smaller than it actually is and hence sailing to China or Japan was feasible in one go.

Which also ties in with the purpose of the globe. It was obviously not something one was supposed to take on a voyage. It was certainly meant as a piece of decoration, ordered by the city council of Nurnberg to adorn their city hall. It conveyed the message that Nurnberg was at the forefront of intellectual developments, was plugged into the worldwide flow of information and had extraordinary artistic and mechanical skills. None of which was actually an exaggeration.

But its main purpose was commercial. Like the Mapppamundis the globe is covered in text, but this text does not contain biblical events or spurious facts about exotic animals, it is about business opportunities. Where best to acquire rare materials, like pearls, precious stones, spices and luxury woods. It is here to entice the Nurnberg bankers and merchants to get involved in the financing of these journeys. It is first and foremost a spherical pitchbook.

So far, so good. A fascinating object from literally the year that changed history, and maybe a depiction of what Columbus expected to find when he sailed west, but why does it get almost everyone who writes about it so hot under the collar.

David Blackbourn in his excellent book “Germany in the World” describes the maker of the globe, Martin Behaim, as a “slightly raffish man of affairs” whose exploits are almost “grotesquely exaggerated”.

On the other end of the spectrum sits the polish historian Wojciech Iwanczak, who entertains the idea that Behaim held an important role at court and in the commercial world of Lisbon during the time of the discoveries. According to him, Behaim introduced Regiomontanus’ Ephimerides to the Portuguese and was appointed to the Royal council of navigational experts. Behaim might have participated in at least 2 journeys down south, one leading to the discovery of the Congo. Iwanczak even suggests Behaim may have known Columbus and might have shared his views on a journey west.

I initially wanted to design this whole episode around Martin Behaim, the great explorer, scientist and cartographer, a bit like I did with Johannes Gutenberg. But in the end, the evidence was all a bit too flimsy. It is a typical German story in as much that Behaim was pumped up relentlessly in the 19^th century, streets and schools named after him, statues erected and even one of the oldest locomotives was named after him. The Nazis then went stratospheric, claiming Behaim had been the one convincing Columbus to sail west, then he had discovered Brazil before Cabral and had sailed around cap Hoorn before Magallan.

Which created the typical post-war backlash, where any claim to fame was dismissed on the basis of a lack of explicit contemporary sources until nothing was left than the story of a conman who died a pauper in Lisbon in 1507. And now everything is so convoluted and vague that even the Germanische Nationalmuseum, treads a careful balance not dismissing the previous storylines but being sufficiently vague not to get caught out. So here you go, Martin Beheim, explorer of far-flung lands and master cartographer, or exploiter of gullible city fathers, God only knows….

Which gets us now to the final piece, the map in the Library of Congress they call the Waldseemüller map and America’s Birth Certificate. At first glance it is just another world map, a larger one at 2.3m by 1,3m where Europe is based on the Ptolemy maps and the rest is based on maritime charts, Portugues and Spanish discoverer’s logs and reports of travellers to the east.

Where it differs is in the long stretchy landmass in the bottom left-hand corner that is surrounded by water and that bears a name that became familiar to all of us, America. In the copious notes the authors explain that they named America after Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian navigator who went along on four or maybe only two voyages along the South American Coast, and wrote two letters home about it, letters that had been massively bigged up by publishers and had become early bestsellers.

What has confused scholars for centuries is how Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann, the two makers of the map, could have known or could have guessed that America was a continent when most authorities, including Columbus himself, believed the lands re-discovered in the west were part of Asia. And to rule one thing out, Amerigo Vespucci had never claimed that America was a continent. He might have called it Novo Mundus, New World, but that is not the same thing.

And then comes the even more bewildering part. Not only is the positioning of South America fairly accurate, the map also shows the Pacific coast of South America with its characteristic bulge north of Chile. All that 6 years before Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the isthmus of Panama and became the first European to officially report the existence of the Pacific Ocean.

How this was possible is the kind of question that sells books by the wagonload and got the Library of Congress to pay $10million for a map.

So let’s take a look at some of the theories – I cannot do all of them because at some point I want to go to bed today, and so might you.

The simplest idea is that Waldseemüller and Ringmann had made it all up. They had Vespucci’s exaggerated reports of the discoveries along the Atlantic coast of South America and spiced it up by showing the continent surrounded by water. The key witness for this theory is Waldseemüller himself. In 1513 he produced another map that did not show a new continent in the West and did not call it America. In the explanatory note he said quote: “As we have lately come to understand, our previous representation pleased very few people. Therefore, since true seekers of knowledge rarely colour their words in confusing rhetoric, and do not embellish facts with charm but instead with a venerable abundance of simplicity, we must say that we cover our heads with a humble hood.” end quote.

But this admission does not mean they had just willy-nilly made up an ocean that nobody had even thought of. That would be very much out of character. Waldseemüller and Ringmann provide references for much of what they show, quoting sources, ancient and modern for the better-known regions and the records of travellers for the parts of Africa, eastern europe and Asia not well known to the ancients.

And there is a further aspect. The two mapmakers had been hired by duke Rene II of Lorraine to create these maps as a prestige project. The duke wanted to impress his peers by setting up a humanist school in his duchy, and that humanist school had to produce something that would be widely respected as a great piece of scholarship. If Waldseemüller and Ringmann had consciously been making things up, they would have made their duke the laughingstock of europe, which could get very uncomfortable.

There is a variation of that theory which has to do with the size of the world they show. Waldseemüller and Ringmann’s map is in the main based on Ptolemy’s geography. In fact, both authors had initially been hired to produce a revised version of the book, rather than to draw up maps. It was only when the fake letters by Vespucci circulated in Europe that they decided to create a map instead.

But where their map differs dramatically from other maps based on Ptolemy is in scale. This is one of the earliest maps that assumes 360 degrees for the circumference of the earth, rather than the 270 degrees for instance Behaim showed. In other words, Waldseemüller and Ringmann believed or knew that the Earth had a circumference of 40,000km. And they knew the distance from Europe to the Caribbean and South America. At which point the cartographers had to make a choice. Either they assume that Asia stretches all of the way to the Caribbean and east coast of South America. That would make it a landmass that covers 50% of the Planet. A continent of that size did not match up with what Marco Polo and other travellers had reported. So, the only logical conclusion was that there must be an ocean between Asia and the newly discovered lands; admittedly a very bold assumption, but a justifiable one.

Dr. Martin Lehmann from the University of Freiburg took a closer look at the political environment in which the map was created.

As I mentioned, Waldseemüller and Ringmann worked for duke Rene II of Lorraine, a prince on the western edge of the Holy Roman empire at a place called St. Die. St. Die is roughly 100km from Strasburg and 80km from Nancy, in other words, in the middle of absolutely nowhere, hundreds of miles from the Sea and even further away from Lisbon, Cadiz and Seville.

Since the map is correct in many respects, there is at least a theoretical option that it was based on information from voyages that had been kept secret. Which leads straight to the question how such incredibly valuable secrets could end up in the hands of two guys hired by a mid-level prince in a dark forest? Makes no sense, or does it?

Spain and Portugal were in a fierce competition, not over who could find America, that was not interesting at the time, but over the route to India and even more important, the route to the Spice islands of Indonesia and the Philippines. Being able to obtain these spices at source would cut out the middlemen, aka, India, the Silk Road and Venice, and the enormous margins that paid for the palazzi on the Canale Grande. In this race to get to the Malaka islands, the Portuguese travelled eastwards, whilst the Spaniards, who were a lot later to the game, travelled westwards. In 1494 the two sides agreed the treaty of Tordesillas that is often described as Spain and Portugal dividing the world between themselves. But that is not quite true. What Tordesillas said is that Portugal had the exclusive right to sail eastwards and Spain was free to seek their fortune in the west. May the best man win.

So, both sides were racing to the same spot, roughly 1200km north of Australia. Which means neither side wanted the other side to know what they were up to. That is why very few maps were published in Seville, Lisbon or Cadiz where the explorers made landfall and the best information about the new discoveries could be obtained. Both the Spanish and the Portugues surely produced maps, but they were only made accessible to the select few. And they kept voyages secret. For instance, it is widely believed the Portuguese knew about Brazil before the official discovery in 1500.

But all that secrecy had its drawbacks. This was a winner takes all race. Both sides wanted to send as many fleets as possible in the hope that at least one of them makes it through. It was a venture capital approach which needed venture capitalists willing to share some of the costs and risks of the voyages. This was the 15^th century equivalent of the streaming wars, the race for AI leadership or the rush to dominate the ride sharing industry.

And where were these financiers? With the Italian banking houses in decline, it was the Southern German mercantile firms, the Fuggers, Welsers, Imhoffs, Tuchers etc., that were the obvious business partners for the Iberian kings. But if you wanted to get them on board, you needed to lift up the skirt a bit. That is the reason Martin Behaim was allowed to put a fairly detailed map of West Africa on to his globe, information that almost certainly came from Portugal.

And that could also explain the astounding accuracy of the Waldseemüller Map. If the Portugues had information about the West coast of South America and would have wanted to share it, they would probably have used someone in the German lands. But I personally find it hard to believe they had managed to sail up the whole of the west coast of South America to Panama and then made it back, all before 1507. And what for, this was the route they had ceded to the Spanish. And the Spanish are unlikely to have furnished the information, since they would have insisted on naming the continent after Columbus, not Vespucci.

Which gets to the next twist in the theory. Let’s put yourself into the shoes of a Portuguese strategist in 1505/6. You cannot know whether or not the Spaniards are in with a chance to make the race. But if you could find a way to slow them down, that would certainly be worth something. What if you could convince the Spaniards that there was an enormous landmass and another Ocean between them and the spice islands. Maybe that could discourage them from sending lots of ships, and more importantly it could hold their investors up from funding these efforts.

And who could be a better vehicle to convey this message than a group of humanists locked up in a village in the Vosges mountains trying to impress their ducal sponsor. Like journalists at a minor newspaper, they were looking for the great scoop that would put them on the national news. So it may be that the Portuguese suggested to Waldseemüller and Ringmann that South America was surrounded by water, even though they did not know that for a fact. That may also explain why the letters published in 1503 and 1504 and attributed to Vespucci are unlikely to be by his own hand and are full of exaggerations and inaccuracies. It could be part of a larger sting operation.

But, as my father-in-law used to say, if it is a choice between cockup and conspiracy, 9 out of 10 times, it is just cockup.

Irrespective of whether Waldseemüller and Ringmann were duped or dupers, the name America went around the world. The original print run of their map was for 1,000 copies. The name America then shows up on the so-called green globe in Paris from that same year. Then again on the Jagiellonian globe of 1510 produced in Krakow. Johanns Schöner who was the owner of the only surviving copy of Waldseemüller’s 1507 map, includes America in his two globes. From there it meanders across Europe; between 1520 and 1540 reprints and slightly revised versions of Waldseemüller’s map are published in Vienna, Paris, Strasburg, Basel and Zurich. Finally in 1538 Gerard Mercator, he of the Mercator projection, published a world map where he was the first to declare the existence of two continents, South America and North America. Once the term had been embraced by the foremost geographer of the time, despite vigorous objections from the Spanish side, the naming had become irrevocable.

There you have it; the name America came about because a bunch of German humanists stuck in the back of beyond either made up or were made to make up a continent that then actually turned out to be real. And people say that Bielefeld does not exist….

Thanks for listening. This was a bit of a long one and I apologize. I was carried away by far too many fascinating facts. But if you have listened all the way I guess you liked it too.

Next week will be the last of our deviations around the Holy Roman empire in the 15^th century. What we will be talking about is Arms and Armor, the greatest of the German exports in the 15^th and 16^th century and beyond. Shah Jahan, the great Mughal emperor and the man who commissioned the Taj Mahal, counted 200 Firangi swords amongst his most valuable possessions. Firangi means foreigner, but originally Franks, meaning Franconians -not Frenchmen – since most of his steel blades came from Solingen. How Germany gained its reputation as the source of the finest weapons and amour around is what we will discuss next week.

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Episode 200 – Divide and Lose

by History of the Germans Podcast on 3rd July 202517th December 2025

The Leipziger Teilung

When two brothers, Ernst and Albrecht of Saxony divided up their enormous inheritance that comprised Thuringia, Meissen and the electorate of Sachsen-Wittenberg, they not only undermined their power base as the de facto #2 amongst the imperial principalities and planted the seed for a conflict that would play a key role in the Reformation but they also laid the foundations for the modern Länder of Thuringia and Saxony.

And this division was not driven by the usual family feud but came after 20 years of largely harmonious government and a shared childhood trauma. Why they took, or had to take this fateful step, is what we will discuss today.

History of the Germans

HotGPod is now entering its 9th season. So far we have covered:

Ottonian Emperors (# 1- 21)
– Henry the Fowler (#1)
– Otto I (#2-8)
– Otto II (#9-11)
– Otto II (#11-14)
– Henry II (#15-17)
– Germany in 1000 (#18-21)

Salian Emperors(#22-42)
– Konrad II (#22- 25)
– Henry III (#26-29)
– Henry IV/Canossa (#30-39)
– Henry V (#40-42)
– Concordat of Worms (#42)

Early Hohenstaufen (#43-69)
– Lothar III (#43-46)
– Konrad III (#47-49)
– Frederick Barbarossa (#50-69)

Late Hohenstaufen (#70-94)
– Henry VI (#70-72)
– Philipp of Swabia (#73-74)
– Otto IV (#74-75)
– Frederick II (#75-90)
– Epilogue (#91-94)

Eastern Expansion (#95-108)

The Hanseatic League (#109-127)

The Teutonic Knights (#128-137)

As always:

Homepage with maps, photos, transcripts and blog: www.historyofthegermans.com

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So far I have:

The Ottonians

Salian Emperors and Investiture Controversy

Fredrick Barbarossa and Early Hohenstaufen

Frederick II Stupor Mundi

Saxony and Eastward Expansion

The Hanseatic League

The Teutonic Knights

The Holy Roman Empire 1250-1356

The Reformation before the Reformation

Ep. 200 – Divide and Lose, the Leipziger Teilung

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 200 – Divide and Lose, the Leipziger Teilung, also episode 15 of season 10: The Empire in the 15^th Century.

And big thanks to all of you who responded to the question I asked last week about whether you enjoy going down the various rabbit holes that opened up as the empire fragmented. I was expecting a somewhat biased result – after all, anyone who was keen on a straightforward and more rapid narrative is unlikely to listen for two years in the hope such an acceleration may finally appear. But what I did not expect was that so many of you contacted me on various channels to tell me they enjoyed these deviations, even going so far as to describe them as the core and main value proposition of the show. So, no further debate, we will continue our meandering walk around the empire.

And since this is the 200^th episode, instead of mentioning those patrons whose turn it is to have their names called out, I will today honour 11 patrons of the show who have been supporting continuously from as long ago as 2021 have hence made an outstanding contribution to the show. And so, in no particular order, I want to thank Margreatha H., Tom J., Misty A. S., Nathan S., Peter F., Simen K., Sherylynn B., Ed and Karri O., Nina B.R., Michael B., and Warren W. Normally I would say that you should bask in the warm glow of the admiration of your fellow men but ,sweating in 35 plus degrees heat as I guess many of you are as well, I wish you to be fanned over by thousands of fans…

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And with that, back to the show

If you are, like me, a huge fan of the tv drama Succession, you may imagine that disputes over the inheritance of great wealth are always a ballet of broken alliances, foul accusations and backstabbing that Shiv, Kendall and Roman performed to such utter perfection and ended with all of them losing.

But it does not always have to be like that to create an equally disastrous outcome, as it happened to Ernst and Albrecht the sons of Frederick, elector and duke of Saxony. To explain why they divided their lands and fatally weakened themselves, we need to get back to where we left off in the story off the House of Wettin in episode 107.

They had only just emerged from an all-out conflict between father and sons. This turned from family squabble to dominating political issue for the empire when king Adolf von Nassau concluded that the Landgraviate of Thuringia would be the asset that could propel his family from little counts to proper princes. Well, it didn’t. When it was all over, in 1307, the last man standing, Frederic the Bitten was confirmed as the lord of all the ruins.

His lands may have been broken, but they were extensive. The Landgraviate of Thuringia with its great fortress-palace of the Wartburg and the margraviate of Meissen where the cities of Dresden and Leipzig were rising. For the next hundred or so years, Fredrick the Bitten and his successors rebuild the economy of their devastated principality.

And they were very successful at doing that. As we mentioned in episode 107, their territory contained several silver mines that provided a big chunk of their income. And as their economic fortunes improved, they were able to acquire more of the adjacent territories, some by purchase, others by more aggressive methods.

They also played the grander political game very astutely. When Ludwig the Bavarian emerged victorious in his war of succession, they formed a marriage alliance with him, which they immediately ditched when Ludwigs fortunes declined, and the pendulum swung to the Luxembourgs under Karl IV. They then took full advantage of the complete collapse of imperial authority under Wenceslaus the Lazy and Ruprecht of the Palatinate. Net, net, the overall possessions of the house of Wettin grew by about a another third during that century. I could give you a list of all the little counties and lands, which would bore you to infinity and beyond, so I will instead put a map into the transcript you can find on my website: historyofthegermans.com. The link is in the show notes.

When we get to Sigismund and the Hussite wars, the House of Wettin became even more indispensable to the emperor. The Wettiner lands bordered the kingdom of Bohemia. Relations between the margraviate of Meissen and Bohemia had been close for centuries – they had traded both goods and blows, their rulers held lands either side of the borders and information and ideas moved seamlessly between the two. The university of Leipzig got its big break when Wenceslaus expelled the German speaking professors from the university of Prague.

The intellectual exchange also brought subversive ideas going round in the early 15^th century. Several of Jan Hus predecessors, associates and followers had come from or gone to the margraviate of Meissen, most prominent amongst them Nicholas of Dresden.

As one can imagine that once the councillors of Prague’s Newtown had hit the pavement in 1419, the Wettins became extremely concerned these dangerous concepts could take hold in their lands too. To snuff it out at source, they enthusiastically followed Sigismund’s call for an imperial war against the Hussites in 1420 and 1421. How not so well this went you can hear in more detail in episodes 178 following. After a string of defeats, first before Prague, then at Kutna Hora and Nemecky Brod, the emperor Sigismund gradually handed over responsibility for the fight against the Hussites to the margrave of Brandenburg and the Wettiner. Most of the action between 1421 and 1433 was led by these two, including the devastating battle of Aussig, where in 1426 the whole of the Wettin force perished (episode 182 if you are interested).

This kind of effort demanded a reward, and that reward was a new set of titles for the House of Wettin – that of electors and dukes of Saxony.

In the Golden Bull of 1356 (episode 160) the emperor Karl IV had awarded the electoral vote of Saxony to the dukes of Sachsen-Wittenberg. These dukes were members of the House of Anhalt, the descendants of Albrecht the Bear (episode 106). These guys had been rather minor figures in imperial politics of the 14^th century despite their elevated rank as prince electors. Their territory was rather small and not particularly rich, at least at that time. They never made a bid for the top job and could not even fully leverage their electoral vote due to their cousins in Lauenburg making competing claim.

And in the early 15^th century the family was befallen by some bizarre mishaps. Though there were a good dozen male members of the family around in the 1380s, by 1422 they had completely died out. Some failed to reproduce, and others died in battle, which was standard, but then all the sons of the reigning duke, together with six-page boys and their tutor died when the tower of their caste in Schweinitz collapsed. The last of the line fried in a burning farmhouse a few years later, leaving this fief vacant.

As per the covenants of the Golden Bull, Sigismund had to award the fief and the electorate to another prince. Several threw their hats into the ring, Fredrick of Hohenzollern, who just a few years earlier had already received the electorate of Brandenburg, then the Elector Palatinate, some of the other Anhalt princes, and from the house of Wettin, Frederick the Belligerent, margrave of Saxony.

Sigismund pretended it was a hard choice, but frankly he would have been mad to give a second electoral vote to the margrave of Brandenburg and the Count Palatine on the Rhine who were already electors. The other princes from the House of Anhalt were all non-entities who could not help Sigismund with his never-ending to-do list and his money problems, so Frederick of Meissen, rich and powerful prince and bulwark against the Hussites, was the natural choice.

And with that in 1422 the titles of elector and of duke of Saxony came to the House of Wettin, where they would remain until the end of the Holy Roman Empire.

You may have noticed that I have not mentioned many names of individual margrave and landgraves from the House of Wettin. The reason is not just that there were a whole lot of them, and they were sharing just four first names amongst them. The other is that all these Friedrichs, Georgs and Wilhelms did get two things right. First, they found enough opportunity to expand their share of the inheritance by going after their neighbours rather than their cousins, and secondly, they dropped their sperm count.

So, by natural causes in 1440 the further enlarged Wettiner lands were again under a common government, led by two brothers, Fredrick II and William III. Frederick was the elder by 13 years which meant he ruled alone for a fairly long time. By 1445 the younger, William III became disenchanted with the idea of being the second in command. Egged on by his councillors he demanded a division of their lands. The way this was normally handled by the House of Wettin was the same we use at home for dividing up cake, i.e, one cuts the slices and the other one chooses. Usually, the eldest does the slicing and the younger does the choosing. Only one territory was excluded. As was set out in the Golden Bull, the electorate and the duchy of Sachsen-Wittenberg belonging to it, had to go to the eldest son.

Once the brothers had agreed they wanted to divide it all up again, the elder, Frederick presented his suggestion for the division, William turned it down. Then Frederick said to William, o.k., you do the slicing, and I do the choosing then. All went o.k., in as much that Frederick accepted the slicing and then chose the part that comprised Thuringia. At which point William said, no, I wanted Thuringia. Friedrich said, this is no way to do business, and the whole case was put before a commission comprised of local princes, including Brandenburg, Hessen and the archbishop of Magdeburg. They sided with William, granting him Thuringia, leaving Frederick with the other bit, the lands around Meissen, Dresden and Leipzig he did not want.

That is the moment where even Frederick, who carried the moniker “the Gentle”, had enough. You cannot both divide and choose. And war was on.

Some have claimed that the devastation this Saxon brother’s war wrought on Thuringia was worse than anything either World War II or even the 30-years war managed to do. We have no way to assess that, but the way the war was conducted makes this not improbable. Both sides sought out allies amongst the neighbouring princes whose sole reason for taking part was pay and plunder. And amongst these neighbours were the Hussites of Bohemia who broke into Thuringia on several occasion, largely unopposed on account of their fearsome reputation gained under Jan Zika and the two Prokops. Anyone who did not get behind the walls of one of the major cities in time, ended up raped and slaughtered, their fields burned, their vineyards pulled up and their villages set alight.

We did talk about the Hussite Cherry Festival in Naumburg in episode 182. It is most likely the siege it refers to took place during this war between the brothers. Naumburg celebrating the event for near 600 years now, may be an indication of how traumatic this Hussite invasion had been.

The whole thing lasted 4 years and ended in 1451 with Frederick accepting the decision of the commission and took the Meissen lands, whilst William received Thuringia.

This rather disastrous war had a follow-on that would in turn traumatise the future heirs to the house of Wettin. There was a knight, Kunz von Kaufungen, who had served the elector Frederick during the brother’s war but felt he had not received the agreed reward for his services. He sued the prince, and after proceedings before various courts, the parties met for negotiations. They traded arguments back and forth. Frederick made clear he was not going to budge, and Kunz von Kaufungen left the hall of his lord.

As negotiations had broken down, according to the medieval understanding of the law, Kaufungen was now allowed to enforce his claims by way of a feud. Kaufungen found some supporters who shared his legal position and on the night of the 7^th of July 1455, 16 armed men entered the castle of Altenburg and kidnapped the two sons of Frederick, called Albrecht and Ernst. The idea was to use them as a pawn in the next round of negotiations. The two boys, 12 and 14 were put on horses and their captors tried to bring them to one of Kaufungen’s castles. Kaufungen and the other nobles who had joined his feud, had sent Fehdebriefe, a formal declaration of hostilities when they rode away with their hostages.

Frederick ordered all his subjects to hunt down the kidnappers. Kunz von Kaufungen was the first to be apprehended, already on the first day by colliers who freed Albrecht. A few days later the nobles who had joined the attack surrendered and released Ernst in exchange for freedom from prosecution.

Six days later, Frederick, whose moniker “the Gentle” may actually be a bid of a misnomer, had Kaufungen and his brother beheaded. Over the next few weeks several other co-conspirators felt the wrath of the enraged father.

This event had two outcomes. First, by executing Kaufungen and his friends, the Prince Frederick asserted a different, a modern understanding of the law. What Kaufungen did might have been allowed under the medieval rules of feuding, but were a capital crime under Roman Law, which was more and more penetrating the practice of the courts.

The other, even more material impact of the event was the trauma it inflicted on the two boys. They both attributed Kaufungen’s act quite accurately to the Saxon Brother’s war. The conflict had so weakened princely authority and finances, that even minor nobles felt entitled to challenge their lord, first in court and then in the field. They committed to never letting that happen to them should the time come.

Which is why the brothers accepted their Father’s last will and testament that set out that the land should not be divided between them – and this is now important – the elder brother was supposed to rule the land both on his own and his brother’s behalf. That was not outright primogeniture, more of a sort of unlimited guardianship. The younger brother was not disinherited but was just obliged to stay out of the way and was given a generous pension.

The system worked brilliantly for the next 20 years. Ernst was formally in charge, but he did give Albrecht a bigger share in the government of the estate than he had to. Ernst focused on domestic politics, improving the economy and repairing devastation from the brother’s war, whilst Albrecht’s interest lay more in external relations and chivalric exploits. The brothers lived together in the castle of Dresden, thereby preserving the ability to react rapidly to the ever-changing political environment.

Success followed success under the joint government. Their father had already achieved a permanent settlement between the Wettins and the Kingdom of Bohemia that ended the perennial border conflicts.

The brothers fought a number of feuds against neighbouring counts and incorporated their lands. And they used their substantial resources to place two sons of Ernst onto important episcopal seats, Magdeburg and Mainz. A sister became abbess of Quedlinburg, and when she faced a rebellion of the townspeople, her brothers came to her aid, making Quedlinburg dependent upon them in the process.

Albrecht even put his head in the ring for the crown of Bohemia when his father-in-law, Georg Podiebrad had died. The attempt was ultimately unsuccessful, but 10 out of 10 for trying.

The rise in their political profile came alongside a material economic boom. Leipzig had already established close links eastwards along the Via Regia, but in the 15^th century this route via Breslau and Krakow to Russia, Ukraine and the Baltic states was taking trade away from the Hanseatic League in the North and the older route via Regensburg.

In 1466 the city of Leipzig gained the right to hold a fair, the event that turned into the Leipziger Messe, until today one of the great industry get-togethers only rivalled by the Frankfurter Messe.

In 1480 a printing press was established there, the beginnings of Leipzig as one of the main centres of publishing in Germany.

And on top of that the brothers hit another jackpot in the world of mining. The original mine in Freiberg had already been a major source of income that had allowed the family to sustain the many self-inflicted pains of the previous century. But in 1470 another deposit was discovered in Schneeberg, triggering a silver rush, or as the Germans called it at the time, a Berggeschrei. The deposits discovered at that time included not just Schneeberg, but also Annaberg-Buchholz and Marienberg. I just found out that the most famous one, Joachimsthal, just across the border in Bohemia was owned by descendants of Kaspar Schlick, chancellor of the empire and hero Silvio Aneas Piccolomini’s, aka pope Pius II’s, erotic novel mentioned in episode 184. Sorry, you wanted more cross-references, and that is what you get.

The good news continued. In 1482 their uncle, William III, the man who had fought their father in the Saxon Brother’s war, passed away without offspring. William had remained erratic and full of temper to his end. Though he had inherited the lands that were most affected by the devastation of the war, he kept fighting feuds with all and sundry. Though the biggest disagreement he had with his wife, the daughter of the Habsburg King Albrecht II. Despite her august heritage, he treated her appallingly. At some point when she tried to rekindle their failing marriage, he threw a shoe at her, a form of insult he may have picked up during a journey to the Holy Land. In the end he had her incarcerated where she died barely 30 years old. William married his mistress of many years, but this relationship did not yield offspring and less surprisingly, neither had his first marriage. So as per the family law, Thuringia returned to the brothers.

Under the joint government of Albrecht and Ernst the house of Wettin had reached its largest geographical extent and arguably the height of its power. Which must mean it is downhill from here….

And the best way for a princely family to fall off the wagon is to divide up their lands, which Ernst and Albrecht did in 1485.

Some argue a rift had been building up between the brothers during Ernst’ pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Instead of passing the ducal authority to his brother for the time of his absence, Ernst had forced him to share decision making with his councillors. A snub that indicated a lack of trust.

A short time later, Albrecht moved out of their joint residence in the castle of Dresden. He took himself and his now quite large family to the castle of Torgau.

And there are again councillors who are blamed for the estrangement between the brothers, claims that are confirmed by the accusations Albrecht would later make.

In 1482 the two brothers began discussions over a division of the lands. It is hard to believe that these relatively minor disagreements could overshadow 20 years of successful joint rule, a communal childhood trauma and the explicit wish of their father.

Two arguments have been brought forward. One is that both Ernst and Albrecht had large families. And as they were reaching late middle age, their thoughts may have turned to the fate of their sons. Albrecht had full 5 sons and Ernst 4. The maths no longer worked. The chance that more than a half dozen dukes could manage the principality in full agreement, as Albrecht and Ernst had done, was highly improbable. If Albrecht and Ernst would each designate just one of their sons to be joint duke and elector, what about the younger ones? And then there was the long-established Wettin tradition of divisions, how can that be overcome?

The other argument is that before they had inherited Thuringia, division of their lands would have pushed them back down the league table of the imperial princes. But now, with Thuringia included in the basket, a division was possible. Albrecht still insisted that the division would seriously impact the standing of the family, but it seems Ernst was less concerned.

Ernst could also not refuse a division since his father had not established full primogeniture but had only given Ernst the right to rule for life on behalf of both brothers.

So, over a period of 3 years the brothers swapped proposals, until on June 17, 1485, they agreed the Leipzig Division. Ernst, being the eldest inherited the Electorate as per the Golden Bull and chose Thuringia as his territory. Albrecht received the Meissen lands. Some rights and territories, in particular the silver mines remained under joint management.

Surprisingly, this arrangement held, at least for over fifty years. Sure, there were frictions between the two branches, but either side found ways to keep themselves busy. Albrecht himself became a well-rewarded paladin of the emperors Friedrich III and Maximilian, establishing a tradition. From here forward, the Albertine line, based in Dresden would be found siding with the emperor, even across boundaries of religion. And Albrecht made the step his father had failed to take, he established full primogeniture for his lands.

His brother Ernst did not do it or did not get around to doing it. He died in 1487, just two years after the Leipzig division. His heirs, Frederick and John will probably get their own episode. The elder, Frederick became known as Frederick the Wise and he is the elector of Saxony who founded the university of Wittenberg, hid its most famous lecturer, Martin Luther in the Wartburg, where he translated the bible, whilst his brother and successor was a key figure in spreading the Reformation. But that is something we will do when we get to the Reformation.

The two lines, known as the Ernestine and the Albertine line of the house of Wettin would never be reunited. Since the Albertiner established primogeniture from the beginning, their land became a large and coherent state, one of Germany’s richest. And it became synonymous with the name Saxony, an irony, since it lies outside the original stem duchy of Saxony.

The Ernestiner went through several further divisions, leaving the resulting statelets far too small to play a significant political role, aside from the momentous decisions of Frederick the Wise and his brother. Thuringia became the posterchild for the Holy Roman Empire of tiny principalities; the Duodez Fürsten, whose lands extended no further than 12 miles in any direction, but boasted a large palace, gardens, a theatre, opera, a princely court with regular balls and entertainments. Places that could barely field more than a 1000 soldiers but could make the writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe its chief minister.

Some have argued that a united Saxony comprising both Thuringia and what is today Saxony would have been powerful enough to keep Prussia from rising to dominance in the 18^th and 19^th century. Maybe, but we will meet the elector Friedrich August II of Saxony, and you can make up your mind whether a few battalions more would have shifted the outcome of the Silesian Wars.

I am not yet sure what we want to do next episode, but since you encouraged me to do deviations, I may put in something I have been thinking about for a while, talking about two products Germany became famous for in this period, map making and armour. Let’s see.

In any event, I will take a week off now, not for any other reason than that I feel a bit drained….

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Episode 199 – How Holland Was Lost to the Holy Roman Empire (Part 2)

by History of the Germans Podcast on 26th June 202517th December 2025

The Economy

So, why did Holland really leave the empire? Was it because the valiant and tragic countess Jacqueline was “hunted down from one land to the other, all of them mine”. Was it a story of misogyny, betrayal, incompetence, and ruthless power politics? Yes, it was. But it was also a story of economic and climate change and one that links into the herring trade of the Hanseatic League, the decline of Teutonic Knights and even into the Hussite Revolt, topics that seem distant, but mattered.

This week we focus on this, the latter part of the story.

History of the Germans

HotGPod is now entering its 9th season. So far we have covered:

Ottonian Emperors (# 1- 21)
– Henry the Fowler (#1)
– Otto I (#2-8)
– Otto II (#9-11)
– Otto II (#11-14)
– Henry II (#15-17)
– Germany in 1000 (#18-21)

Salian Emperors(#22-42)
– Konrad II (#22- 25)
– Henry III (#26-29)
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– Henry V (#40-42)
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Early Hohenstaufen (#43-69)
– Lothar III (#43-46)
– Konrad III (#47-49)
– Frederick Barbarossa (#50-69)

Late Hohenstaufen (#70-94)
– Henry VI (#70-72)
– Philipp of Swabia (#73-74)
– Otto IV (#74-75)
– Frederick II (#75-90)
– Epilogue (#91-94)

Eastern Expansion (#95-108)

The Hanseatic League (#109-127)

The Teutonic Knights (#128-137)

But it was a also a story of economic and climate change and one that links into the herring trade of the Hanseatic League, the decline of Teutonic Knights and even into the Hussite Revolt, topics that seem distant, but mattered.

This week we focus on this, the latter part of the story

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The Reformation before the Reformation

Ep. 199 – How Holland was Lost to the Holy Roman Empire (Part 2 – the Economy)

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 199 – How Holland was Lost (Part 2) – also episode 15 of season 10: The Empire in the 15^th Century.

This week we focus on this, the latter part of the story.

But before we start the usual link to historyofthegermans.com/support where you are given the opportunity to keep this show on the road. Plus, as you may have noticed we did quite a few episodes recently upon suggestions from Patrons, so if there is something you care about, let me know and I will see what can be slotted in.

And our special thanks this week go to Kyle R., Erik L, Noel L., Rauschbegleiter, Stefan, Mark P. and Raimonds S. who have already committed themselves to the honorable task of fending off the mattrasses and room rental advertising.

And with that, back to the show

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Jacqueline’s fight for her inheritance

Last week we ended with the flight of Jacqueline, countess of Holland, Seeland and Hainault to England and her marriage to the dashing duke of Gloucester. For those of you who have not listened or cannot remember last episode, here is a brief recap.

Jacqueline was the only daughter of the count of Holland, Zeeland and Hainault, aka a big chunk of what is today the Netherlands. Her being a mere woman then got everybody in the region giddy with excitement. Her powerful neighbor and cousin, duke Philipp the Good of Burgundy wanted her lands, as did her uncle, John the Pitiless, the former bishop elect of Liege. And in the background the emperor, Sigismund, wanted to make sure that the Low Countries remained inside the Holy Roman Empire.

The person who was supposed to fight for Jacqueline’s rights was her husband, John, the duke of Brabant. Either by coincidence or by perfidious Burgundian planning, John of Brabant turned out to be a gormless, vindictive and easy to manipulate fool.

So, when Jacqueline’s father died, a mad scramble for her lands began. Her husband did manage to take control of Hainault, ostensibly on her behalf. In Holland and Zeeland however, John the Pitiless was the outright winner. He got the support of one of the local factions, the Cods, which brought him control of about half. When Jacqueline and her allies from the other faction, the Hooks, tried to dislodge him, John of Brabant left them hanging. And to make matters worse, in the subsequent peace negotiations John of Brabant handed John the Pitiless the governorship of the parts of Holland and Zeeland he did not already control. Plus, emperor Sigismund gave John the Pitiless his niece Elisabeth of Görlitz to marry, which added the duchy of Luxemburg to the overall pot.

So, after round one, Holland, Zeeland and Luxemburg are held by John the Pitiless, Jacqueline’s uncle. Hainault is in the hands of John of Brabant, Jacqueline’s husband. But smelling most strongly of roses was Philipp the Good, the duke of Burgundy and count of Flanders, who was in pole position to collect the whole lot should the two Johns die without offspring. And that was pretty likely given the age of John the Pitiless’ wife and the state of John of Brabant’s marriage.

The only one who had received nothing at all was poor Jacqueline. She was trapped. She hated her husband John of Brabant from the bottom of her heart. He had betrayed her in battle and had then handed her inheritance over to her uncle. Moreover, he had humiliated her in public. This marriage was over as far as she was concerned, but absent a divorce or annulment, she would have to stand on the sidelines and watch it all go down the swanny, or more precisely, down the Scheldt to Philipp of Burgundy.

But there was a way to get out of this disastrous marriage. Jacqueline and John of Brabant were first cousins, aka her mother was his father’s sister. Such a close family relationship required papal dispensation. That dispensation had first been granted, but once emperor Sigismund heard about it, he got pope Martin V to withdraw it. The case was still pending before the curia, which so far had only partially revalidated the initial dispensation.

This left enough ambiguity that Jacqueline could declare her marriage null and void from the very beginning. Which is why she fled to England where she married Humphrey the duke of Gloucester, uncle and guardian of the two-year-old king Henry VI.

Humphrey was a more proactive, competent and ambitious man than the gormless John of Brabant, which wasn’t exactly a high bar. But still he was more the kind of man Jacqueline needed to regain her inheritance.

Things were coming to a head at the end of 1424. Humphrey and Jacqueline mustered an army and sailed for Calais. From there they proceeded to Hainault, where they took possession of several of the main cities and fortresses. On January 3, 1425, Hunfrey was declared count of Hainault by the estates of the county. How enthusiastic this endorsement was is hard to judge, since the building where they met was surrounded by English soldiers.

And another thing happened around that same time, Jacqueline’s hated uncle, John the Pitiless breathed his last. The common understanding is that he died from poison. Six months earlier, a Dutch nobleman, Jan van Vliet, who had been married to one of Jacqueline’s half-sisters, admitted to an attempt on John the Pitiless’ life. He declared under torture that he had smeared a slow-acting poison on to the pages of the ex-bishop’s prayer book, all at the behest of an English spy. And John the Pitiless had indeed been struck by an inexplicable disease, which is why an investigation had been launched in the first place. Whether these confessions under torture were the truth is however disputed. For one, John the Pitiless’ death was not particularly useful to Gloucester and Jacqueline, since it brought the much more powerful Philipp the Good of Burgundy into the driver seat, but more significantly, the idea that John the Pitiless would read a prayer book is just preposterous.

The other one to recede into the background is Jacqueline’s former or not so former husband John of Brabant who finds all that politicking and fighting a bit too taxing. He decided to focus more on hunting and frolicking and handed management of his duchies, inheritances and pretty much everything else to his good cousin Duke Philipp the Good of Burgundy.

So, the field has thinned out. It is now down to just Philipp the Good on one side and Humphrey and Jacqueline on the other.

And Philipp the Good has a brilliant idea. Instead of wasting vast amounts of money on hiring mercenaries and devastating villages, let’s just sort this like men, mano a mano. We set a date and place where we can get into the ring and fight it out to the death. A true trial by combat to determine whether Jacqueline was still married to John of Brabant or not, and then obviously, who would take over her inheritance.

The days when European leaders of this caliber would slug it out in single combat were long gone by 1425, if they ever existed. But Philipp was definitely serious. He submitted to a strict exercise regime, called the greatest swordsmen of the age to his castle to help him train, and oiled his diamond studded armor. The whole thing felt slightly mad, in particular since at the time Philipp the Good had no legitimate heirs. If he had fallen, all his lands would have gone to the least deserving protagonist in this drama, his closest relative, duke John the Gormless of Brabant.

Though the young duke spent most of his days parrying training blows in the courtyard of his castle, he did not rely entirely on this madcap idea. He initiated a more conservative plan B in parallel. He sent out an army to reconquer Hainault, all on behalf of his beloved cousin of Brabant, of course.

This campaign did quite well, in part because of a misunderstanding. The English defenders of a city called s’Gravenbrakel suddenly surrendered their well defended position. They said that they had seen their patron saint, St. George, amongst the besieging Burgundians and decided that God was not on their side. It turned out that the man they had seen had been a Brabant knight whose coat of arms and armor resembled English depictions of St. George.

But that set the tone for events that followed. The English gradually retreated and the date for the trial by combat moved closer.

This whole trial by combat thing was not only insane, it also caused a massive headache for the duke of Bedford, the English regent in France, who was also Humphrey’s brother. Note that we are in the Hundred Years’ War, at a time when half of France was occupied by the English and Joan of Arc was still in her home village trying to get rid of the voices in her head. The reason the English could hold a large part of France and were able to claim the French crown for the boy king Henry VI, was their alliance with Burgundy. And that alliance had only come about because Philipp the Good wanted revenge for the death of his father. Now imagine what would happen if Humphrey ran Philipp the Good through with a sword? John the Gormless of Brabant would become duke of Burgundy. And what use was he? The alliance would collapse, and the English would be thrown out. And even if the opposite happened, i.e., Humphrey would bite the dust of the arena, that would still require Bedford to react, potentially declare war against the Burgundians. And for what? Some waterlogged counties on the North Sea shore.

As far as the English were concerned, Humphrey and Philipp must never meet again. So, Humphrey was made lord protector of England with the task of reigning in an overbearing bishop of Winchester. Humphrey turned to his wife and said something along the lines of, sorry dear, will have to nip over to London, little business I need to take care of, will be back in a jiffy, Tallyho. And off he went, sending a letter to Philipp asking for a postponement of the fight. Ah, and he also took along one of Jacqueline’s ladies in waiting, Eleanor of Cobham, who was now waiting on her lord’s hand, feet and other parts of the anatomy.

Jacqueline would forever defend her husband Gloucester and refute all the stories she was told about his behavior back in London. But..

With Gloucester and most of his army gone, the Burgundians advanced even more quickly. Jacqueline and the remaining English had not endeared themselves to the inhabitants of Hainault and support for their most noble lady was at best lukewarm.

When Philipp and his army appeared before Mons, the capital of Hainault, Jacqueline urged the burghers to fight. They refused. She got angry and pulled the whole, I am your countess and you do what I want, and pointing to the man standing next to her, she said, if you do not, here is my English knight in shining armor who will make you. To which the burghers said, you mean this guy? Yes. Ok. They grabbed the unfortunate soldier and beheaded him right in front of the countess. She was a tough lady, so it took two more heads to hit the straw before she relented. The city of Mons and with it all that remained of Jacqueline’s support in Hainault surrendered to Philipp the Good.

Jacqueline, beloved cousin that she was, was brought to Ghent to live out her days as an honored prisoner. Her county of Hainault was now firmly in the hands of Philipp the Good.

As for Holland and Zeeland, the death of John the Pitiless meant that formally the county had reverted back to Jacqueline, or more precisely, Jacqueline’s husband, whoever you believed that to be. And given there were two, the towns and cities of Holland and Seeland had to make a choice. Many chose to open their gates to John of Brabant, but not all. Correction, John of Brabant obviously could not be bothered with all of that and had appointed his cousin Philipp the Good to take up this task as well, so most of the cities opened their gates to Philipp the Good, but not all.

Which gets us to the final act of the drama, Jacqueline, the most wickedly betrayed woman in the world, as she complained to Gloucester, made one last move. On the night of August 31^st, 1425, she told her servants that she wished to take a bath and not to be disturbed. Whilst her guards decided this was a perfect time to take a break, she changed into men’s clothes and strolled out of her prison and into the bustling streets of Ghent. At the city gates two of her men were waiting with horses. She got into the saddle and rode, without stopping, all the way to Holland.

There she found support in the cities that had refused to submit to Philipp the Good. She made her headquarters in Gouda. A four year long war ensued. Against all the odds, Jacqueline won 2 battles, Philipp only one. Her husband Gloucester sent two armies, one was brutally massacred when they got lost in the shallow waters of the Dutch coast, and the other turned tail before landing. But in the end, she did not stand a chance against the might of all of Burgundy, Flanders, Brabant, Limburg, Hainault and the Cod faction in Holland.

On the 3^rd of July 1428, Jacqueline surrendered. She exchanged the kiss of Delft with Philipp, which apparently wasn’t really a kiss. The cousins, now reconciled, paraded through the city. The population, exhausted by the long war, cheered. Jacqueline recognized Philipp of Burgundy as her heir and retired to one of her castles in Hainault. She married one last, a fourth time, for love, not for politics, and died, aged just 35. By then John of Brabant was long dead and so was his brother Philipp of St. Pol who I left out to keep the story simple. Neither of them had legitimate heirs.

Their heir was Philipp of Burgundy who had won the jackpot. He had gained Holland, Zeeland and Hainault as well as Brabant and Limburg. In 1441 he bought the county of Luxemburg from Elisabeth of Görlitz. That together with a number of further acquisitions including the county of Namur brought the Low Countries together into what became the Burgundian and later the Spanish Netherlands.

The foreign policy reasons she did not stand much of a chance.

Ok, that is the story of the kings, dukes and counts, their marriages and wars. But is that really the full story? Me thinks not. There are a couple of reasons things turned out in favor of Burgundy that have little to do with the gormlessness of John of Brabant or the fact that Jacqueline was a woman in a profoundly misogynist world.

The first point is the obvious one. Burgundy and England were in an alliance against the dauphin of France, Charles VII. This alliance was absolutely crucial for the English position. Over the course of the Hundred Years War the English have won all the battles but had never been able to hold on to any territorial gains. And the reason was simple – demographics. England’s population had dropped to 2 to 3 million following the Black Death. France on the other hand held still 10 to 12 million people. In other words, France had 4 to 5 times the population of England. And as a consequence, all the territory, except for Calais, that England gained after Crecy and Poitiers, had been reconquered by France in the years that had followed. And the English were fully aware of this. Having Burgundy and its vast military and economic resources on their side gave them at least a chance of defeating the dauphin.

Therefore this whole business in Holland was a massive distraction for the English crown, in particular for the Regency council. As much as his brothers may have been sympathetic to the hugely popular Humphrey to acquire his own principality, there was no way they would jeopardize the alliance with Burgundy. Hence English support for him and Jacqueline was constantly delayed and even withheld.

On top of this strategic disadvantage, the fact that England’s monarch was a child, who would turn into an adult with serious problems, was weighing on Humphrey’s ability to support Jacqueline. He had to make a choice between protecting his family’s hold on England versus a remote chance of acquiring Holland. And a chance that would shrink to near zero if he gave up his position on the regency council. So, even though Humphrey was clearly not an ideal husband, there are some solid reasons for his absence from the battlefield.

With England opening the doors for Burgundy, we get to the question that we had started with, why didn’t the empire push back against Philipp the Good?

It certainly wasn’t the case that the emperor Sigismund was not interested. The western border of the empire was the homeland of his family. Fending off French encroachment on what used to be Lotharingia, was the reason his ancestor, Henry VII, had taken the imperial crown in the first place. (episode 144). His niece, Elizabeth of Görlitz was duchess of Luxemburg, and he had used her to exercise influence in the region. In 1409 he married her to Anthony of Brabant, the father of John the Gormless. That was his way of counteracting the shift of Brabant towards Burgundy that had gotten under way in the previous generation. Then, in 1417, just when Jacqueline’s father died, he married her to John the Pitiless.

Sigismund insisted that he, as emperor elect, was the overlord of all these counties and duchies, Holland, Seeland, Hainault, Brabant, Limburg and Luxemburg. And as such it was his job to decide who would inherit them once the male line had ended. And his choice was John the Pitiless, the husband of his niece.

And at the same time, he was working hard to undermine the marriage of John of Brabant and Jacqueline, which he rightly perceived as a way the Burgundians were trying to get hold of the lot. And he had a lot of influence here. The current pope, Martin V had only just been elected at the Council of Constance, the event Sigismund had brought about and that he largely controlled. It was Sigismund who got pope Martin V to revoke the dispensation for Jacqueline’s Brabant wedding, which was also the legal means by which Jacqueline could marry Gloucester.

But where was Sigismund in 1425? His champion, John the Pitiless, was dead. And we do not see Sigismund replacing him, say by putting one of the Bavarian or Palatinate Wittelsbachs forward. Some of them, like the Bavaria Munichs, were his close allies and friends. Or he could at least endorse Gloucester who had the advantage of not being Philipp of Burgundy. It is hard to say what such a move could have achieved, but in the precarious balance that prevailed in the Low Countries, it could have provided at least political cover for whoever he endorsed.

So, why didn’t he? The answer is simple – The Hussites. The Hussite war had kicked off with the First Prague Defenestration in 1419 and in 1421 Sigismund suffered his worst defeat at Kutna Hora and Nemecki Brod (Episode 180). That was followed by further humiliations in 1424, 1426 and 1427 when the imperial crusaders ran away in panic when they heard the Hussite’s gruesome drum approaching. These defeats also weakened the king’s position in Hungary where Venice and others made inroads. The resumption of the conflict between the Teutonic Knights and the kingdom of Poland was another issue closer to home that required his massively overstretched attention…and so he had to let it slip.

The domestic reasons she struggled.

And then there were the most fundamental, the economic and climatic reasons, why the low countries turned their back on the empire.

As of today, 26% of the Netherlands lie below sea level, protected by an elaborate system of dikes, storm surge barriers, pumps and canals. This infrastructure goes back a long way and had a huge impact on the politics and culture of the region.

There are three large rivers that empty into the North Sea in Holland and Seeland, the Rhine, the Maas and the Scheldt. Each of them formed massive deltas that in the Middle Ages kept the whole region under constant threat of flooding. Early flood defenses comprised simple dikes about a meter high, protecting individual towns and villages.

Throughout the Middle Ages these flood defenses expanded to protect not just isolated settlements, but larger areas that could then be drained and turned into pasture or exploited for peat. This land reclamation had come to its completion in the 14^th century when current technology could not push it any further.

In the late 14^th and early 15^th century a number of interlocking strains of events caused a string of catastrophes. One strain was the excessive harvesting of peat, largely used for heating at the time. The volume of peat removed was of such a magnitude that more and more areas dropped below sea level.

Then you had a weakening of the dike administration. As dikes became larger and more complex, they were no longer the responsibility of just one village or one local lord. From as early as the 12^th century, the Dutch formed water councils responsible for the construction and maintenance of the flood defenses across wider areas. Overseeing these water councils was the High Water Council established by the counts of Holland in 1255. These structures were and are unique. Because a dike is only as strong as its weakest part, everybody who benefitted from it, which was pretty much everybody, had an interest in where and how the dike was built and maintained. Which in turn meant that people cooperated a lot more across larger areas than in most other regions of Europe at the time. Finding consensus on dike building and maintenance was a vital necessity, to the extent it seeped deep into the culture. When I worked in the Netherlands my colleagues would trace Dutch corporate culture all the way back to the water boards and their focus on consensus and meritocracy.

And that is also where its weakness lay. Once the dike infrastructure had expanded across the whole region, consensus and co-ordination at the top level of the High Water Council was ever more crucial. But consensus was not the prevailing political mode since 1345. The takeover of Holland by the Wittelsbachs had triggered a persistent civil war that became known as the war between the Cods and the Hooks. It is usually said that the cods were more progressive and linked to the merchants in the cities, whilst the Hooks tended to be more on the side of the landowning nobility. Though this may be very broadly correct, we find that there were constant shifts between the parties and some of the counts of Holland like Albert and his predecessor William V supported the cods, whilst William VI and Jacqueline relied on the Hooks. They are a bit like the Guelfs and the Ghibellines, factions that have been at each other’s throats for so long, nobody can remember why they were fighting in the first place.

A country divided, where neighboring towns, villages and lords are constantly at low level war, forming the consensus over the maintenance of dikes was hard to come by. Which meant that the dikes had fallen into disrepair.

At which point the last of the calamities struck, the climate. As I might have mentioned, the climate changed from the late 13^th century onwards. The medieval warm period had come to an end and the little ice age was building up. It would take 400 years to reach its peak, but already by the early 15^th century it got a lot colder.

And with that temperature drop came more and more regular storms. In 1287 the St. Lucia’s flood had broken open the Zuiderzee causing massive devastation, killing maybe 50 to 80,000 people, but it also opened Amsterdam an access to the sea. The St. Marcellus flood in 1362 took about 25,000 lives. In 1394 a storm forced the citizens of Oostende to give up their homes and move a few miles inland. The image of whole villages packing up all their belongings including their church decorations and bells and moving to higher ground became common place.

And then came the three St. Elisabeth’s floods. The first one on November 19, 1404, feast day of friend of the podcast St. Elisabeth of Thuringia, caused again vast flooding across Flanders, Zeeland and Holland. Following this disaster Margaret of Flanders, the mother of John the Fearless, ordered that all the dikes between Dunkirk and Terneuzen, i.e., the entire length of the Flanders coast shall be connected. This structure, as we would expect, was named not after her but after her son, the Graaf Jansdijk. It prove to be an enduring and extremely beneficial investment. Until today it is noticeable that the Belgian coast is almost a dead straight line until Knocke-Heist where the Graaf Jansdijk turned inland. Beyond that, the coast becomes messy, full of islands, some drying, some visible and meandering rivers and inlets.

In the tense political atmosphere of Holland of 1404, such an infrastructure project was not feasible. Which is why the second St. Elisabeth Flood of 1421, again on November 19^th, was so devastating. Whole areas, like that between Dordrecht and Breda drowned in the flood along with all its people and animals.

One baby was saved in the most extraordinary manner. It had ridden out the storm in its crib and the family cat had steered their precarious raft through the waves by balancing on the edges. The child was named Beatrix and later married a wealthy merchant in Dordrecht.

And in 1424 it happened again, this time the outcome was milder as most of the lower lying lands had already been vacated.

After this experience and seeing the much more efficient handling of the situation in Flanders, it is not surprising that the population demanded a more effective government. They did not care who it was, just someone competent, able to organize the flood defense. And despite his propensity for bling and mad trials by combat, that was miles away from the sober attitude of the Hollanders, Philipp the Good was a very effective administrator. Jacqueline on the other hand – nobody knew. She was never given a real chance to run a territory.

In the century that followed Holland’s storm defenses became more and more sophisticated. They not only gained in height, but they were backed up by drainage canals and the most Dutch thing one can imagine, the windmills. These windmills aren’t all there to crush grains or saw wood, but to drain the water into canals and rivers. The first of them was built in 1408 near Leiden and at its peak there were ~10,000 of them patiently keeping the Dutch men and women’s feet dry.

Whilst all this was going on, the economy in the Low countries and particularly in Holland and Zeeland underwent a fundamental change. Cereal production was gradually replaced by pasture. That may be down to the salination of the lands in the floods, but more likely down to a combination of a colder climate tipping much of the marginal land to unproductive, and the influx of cheap grain from the Baltic, brought over by Hanse merchants.

The Frisian cows appeared everywhere, and with them the cheese the entrepreneurial Hollanders produced and sold all across Europe. It also forced a lot of people off the land and into the cities. Once there, they were looking for work.

And they found that in fishing, namely fishing for herring. If you remember episode 111 when we made the point that herring fishing in the narrows Öresund between what is today Denmark and Sweden was the true reason for the Hanse’s rise. In a world with 140 fast days when one was only allowed to eat animal protein in the form of fish, alligator, lizard, puffin or, weirdly, beaver, something like salted herring was a hugely important commodity.

In the peace of Stralsund in 1370 the Hanse established a monopoly on Baltic trade that included a monopoly over the herring market of Skanor, the place where almost all of the Baltic herring was traded. That monopoly became a rope around the Hanse’s neck, as former trading partners became competitors who instead of buying from and through them, sought ways to circumvent and then break the Hanse monopoly.

And that is where the Dutch came in. North Sea herring may not be quite as tasty as the Baltic variety, but it was available in abundance, cheap and outside the Hanse monopoly. This competition in the herring market led the Dutch cities slowly but surely away from the Hanseatic League, they had previously been allied with. Some had been members of the Hanse and other, like Dordrecht and Amsterdam had at least preferred trading partner status.

This rivalry grew as the Dutch moved from building fishing boats to merchant vessels, in particular when these caught up and then surpassed the Hansekogge in terms of speed and load capacity.

And then there was the beer market where both the Hollander and the Flemings picked up on the use of hops instead of Kraut, thereby becoming heavy competition for the brewers of Einbeck, Hamburg and Bremen, a rivalry that goes on until today.

In 1438-1441 these tensions between Holland and the Hanse cities turned into an outright war. They took advantage of complex Danish and Hanseatic politics to gain access to the Baltic Sea, a privilege they maintained, whilst the Hanseatic league went into its slow decline.

So, if we want to sum up why Holland left the Holy Roman Empire, there is some blame to lay at the feet of Sigismund’s predecessors and then his decision to have Jan Hus burned at the stake. But the main reason was that for Holland to preserve its land, it needed a political infrastructure that could maintain the complex system of flood defences, and that competent political infrastructure was Burgundy, not the Empire. And as the economy of Holland and Zeeland came into collision with the Hanse, which was after all the association of the merchants from the Holy Roman Empire, their exit was sealed.

It would take a little longer before the exit was formalised. But already in 1428, Philipp the Good established the Hof van Holland, the highest court in the counties. On paper this court should have allowed appeals to the imperial courts but never did and in 1549 was moved outside imperial jurisdiction. And in 1648 the formal separation took place, the culmination of a war that lasted 80 years and that we will not discuss here.

And that is all we have time for today. I have not yet decided what we will do next week, but rest assured, there are still a few stories to come.

And one last thing. I sometimes wonder whether all these deviations from the straight storyline that we have made these last two years, the seasons on the Hanseatic League, the Teutonic Knights, on the Hussites were really necessary. If we had not done them, we would now be in the midst of the 30 Years War. And that would certainly have been helpful in terms of the reach of the show.

Honest question: Did I take the right decision. Was it worth it going through the Eastward Expansion, the Hanseatic League, the Teutonic Knights, the Hussite revolt and now the empire in the 15^th century? Or should I have pressed on? And going forward, would you prefer a more straightforward run through the history?

By the way, if you have not listened to any of these seasons or want to listen again, they are available both here on the History of the Germans Feed and as separate podcasts. The links to those are in the show notes.

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Episode 198 – How Holland Was Lost to the Holy Roman Empire (Part 1)

by History of the Germans Podcast on 19th June 202517th December 2025

John the fearless and William of Holland

Today begins a two-part series about how the Low countries modern day Belgium, Netherlands and Luxemburg shifted out of the Holy Empire. These lands, with the exception of Flanders, had been part of the empire for hundreds of years, ever since Henry the Fowler acquired Lothringia for east Francia in 925 – not by conquest but through diplomacy – as was his way.

There are two ways to tell the story of the split away from the empire, one is about the dynastic machinations, the marriages, poisonings and inability to produce male heirs, the other one is about economics and the rising power of the cities.

This, the first episode will look at the dynastic story, the pot luck and cunning plans that laid the groundworks for the entity that became known as the Low Countries to emerge, whilst the next one will look at the economic realities that thwarted the ambitions of one of the most remarkable women in late medieval history, Jacqueline of Bavaria, countess of Holland, Seeland and Hainault, and why that was ultimately a good thing, not for her and not for the empire, but for the people who lived in these lands.

History of the Germans

HotGPod is now entering its 9th season. So far we have covered:

Ottonian Emperors (# 1- 21)
– Henry the Fowler (#1)
– Otto I (#2-8)
– Otto II (#9-11)
– Otto II (#11-14)
– Henry II (#15-17)
– Germany in 1000 (#18-21)

Salian Emperors(#22-42)
– Konrad II (#22- 25)
– Henry III (#26-29)
– Henry IV/Canossa (#30-39)
– Henry V (#40-42)
– Concordat of Worms (#42)

Early Hohenstaufen (#43-69)
– Lothar III (#43-46)
– Konrad III (#47-49)
– Frederick Barbarossa (#50-69)

Late Hohenstaufen (#70-94)
– Henry VI (#70-72)
– Philipp of Swabia (#73-74)
– Otto IV (#74-75)
– Frederick II (#75-90)
– Epilogue (#91-94)

Eastern Expansion (#95-108)

The Hanseatic League (#109-127)

The Teutonic Knights (#128-137)

Today begins a two part series about how the Low countries modern day Belgium, Netherlands and Luxemburg shifted out of the Holy Empire. These lands, with the exception of Flanders, had been part of the empire for hundreds of years, ever since Henry the Fowler acquired Lothringia for east Francia in 925 – not by conquest but through diplomacy – as was his way.

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So far I have:

The Ottonians

Salian Emperors and Investiture Controversy

Fredrick Barbarossa and Early Hohenstaufen

Frederick II Stupor Mundi

Saxony and Eastward Expansion

The Hanseatic League

The Teutonic Knights

The Holy Roman Empire 1250-1356

The Reformation before the Reformation

Ep. 198 – How Holland was Lost to the Holy Roman Empire (Part 1 – the Politics)

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 198 – How Holland Was Lost (Part 1), which is also Episode 14 of Season 10: The Empire in the 15^th Century.

But before we start the usual reminder that this show is advertising free. No frantic pressing of the forward button to evade some cringeworthy endorsement of products one could at least be skeptical about. Eschewing the corporate mammon may not be the most efficient way to organize things, but then I am absolutely overwhelmed by the generosity of so many of you, generosity not just directed at me, but mostly at you fellow listeners. This week’s special thanks go to Bradley M., Ute-of-Swabia, Stian R., Rob V., Kati B., Radiatore and Christian who have gone to historyofthegermans.com/support and have made their contribution.

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And with that, back to the show.

One of my habits when travelling in the lands that had once been part of the Holy Roman Empire is to look out for imperial eagles, the signs of the authority of the emperors. I know, it is geeky, but what is a man to do?

Going to Belgium, you will see quite a few, on the grand Place in Brussels, the Town hall of Antwerp and in the basilica of the Holy Blood in Bruges. But in the Netherlands, these are much rarer. The Stadhuis in Nijmegen proudly features Frederick Barbarossa and Karl IV and Deventer shows an imperial eagle on its flag and coat of arms. But otherwise, very little.

Which is very much at odds with the medieval political borders. Much of Belgium was in the county of Flanders, which belonged to the kingdom of France, whilst almost the entirety of the modern-day Netherlands had been firmly in the Holy Roman Empire, until the peace of Westphalia in 1648 that is.

Several Dutch cities played important roles in the medieval empire, hosting kings and emperors. Nijmegen saw the death of empress Theophanu and the birth of emperor Henry VI, Utrecht was where Henry IV’s campaign to have pope Gregory VII deposed fell apart and it is also where Henry V died and declared Frederick of Hohenstaufen his heir.

In other words, this was imperial heartland well into the time of the Hohenstaufen, it was one of the great stem duchies, the duchy of Lower Lothringia.

In this episode we will talk about how – in the late 14^th and early 15^th the counties and duchies that made up the Low Countries slowly slipped out of the grasp of the emperors. Because saying they were part of the HRE until 1648 is the same as claiming Robbie Williams was still in Take That in 2010 because he played the occasional gig with them.

Let’s go through the most important of these counties, duchies, and principalities.

The richest and most powerful of these was the county of Flanders that contained the economic heart of Northern Europe of the period, Bruges, Ghent and the other cloth cities. Flanders, as I said, was part of the kingdom of France, though a few bits and bobs stretched across the Scheldt into imperial territory.

Then there was the duchy of Brabant, which was the formal successor to the duchy of Lower Lothringia. Its most prominent centres were Brussels and Antwerp and since 1288 it also comprised the duchy of Limburg. The duchy of Luxemburg, home of the ruling imperial family, lay to the south of Brabant. Then there were several prince bishoprics, namely Liege/Lüttich, Utrecht and Cambrai. And there were the three counties, Holland, Seeland and Hainault, united under one umbrella that held the coast from the mouth of the Scheldt all the way to the Frisian islands.

Low countries (check out the History of the Netherlands Podcast)

Holland and the Netherlands is often used simultaneously, though Holland is only a province, or more accurately two provinces of the Netherlands. That being said, the three largest Dutch cities, Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague are all in Holland.

The county of Holland goes back to the 9^th century and had been ruled by the same family until 1299, a family that had the incredibly good taste of calling their eldest sons Dirk, counting up all the way to Dirk VIII. Once they shifted their naming preference to Floris and William, the inevitable happened, their wives, appalled by the cowardly shift to such common names refused to produce male offspring and the counts died out.

The county, which in the meantime had added the county of Zeeland and some vague claim on Friesland was inherited by the counts of Hennegau or Hainault as it is called in French. These three counties would become one entity that passed through the generations.

Now in 1345 this line of counts of Holland died out too. The last count had no children at all. All the family now consisted off were his two aunts, the younger one, Philippa who was married to Edward III, king of England, whilst the elder one, Margaret, had been married to Ludwig the Bavarian, Holy Roman Emperor, heavily featured in episodes 149-156.

So, who will win? Given the gap in wealth and resources and the trifling matters of geography and economy, the three counties should have gone to the king of England. But that did not happen. Instead, Holland, Seeland and Hainault went to one of the younger sons of Ludwig the Bavarian and Margaret.

The reasons for that were in part political. When the previous count died in 1345, Edward III had already kicked off the Hundred Years’ war against France, which focused his efforts and resources. Crecy was just one year later. There was simply not enough bandwidth to send a force to Holland to take control of the counties. Ludwig the Bavarian on the other hand did have the bandwidth and the ambition to get hold of these lands for his copious gaggle of sons. When the nobles of Holland asked for Margaret to come up and take possession, he sent her, together with several of his younger sons. They quickly took the levers of control and when Edward III tried his luck again a few years later he did not get through.

But what would be touted as decisive was not just the swiftness of the military and political action, but the legal argument. The counties, namely Holland and Seeland were subject to the rules of the Holy Roman Empire and based on these, the counties had become vacant fiefs when the last male ruler had died without issue. Which meant it was the emperor’s job to appoint a new count, and the most suitable candidates were, surprise, surprise, his sons, specifically two of the younger ones, William and Albert.

This legal structure will matter a lot in a moment, but as for 1345, Ludwig the Bavarian did win the fight over Holland. Though, as it happened, he had to pay a huge price for it. If you remember episode 156, it was this award of the counties of Hainault, Holland and Seeland to his own sons, that pushed the princes of the empire into opposition and brought about the candidacy of Karl IV. This struggle ended with the victory for Karl IV and the loss of the imperial crown for the house of Wittelsbach. A very high price indeed.

Fast forward 40 years, the Wittelsbachs are broadly recognised as the lords of the three counties. The current title holder is Albert, who had taken over when his brother William succumbed to severe mental illness and spent his remaining 30 years incarcerated and bound on hand and feet.

It is then, in the year 1385 that one of the most consequential events for the Low Countries is taking place. Around a table in city of Cambrai sat the representatives of the three most significant principalities in the Northwestern corner of the empire. Representing Holland, Seeland and Hainault were Albert and his Wife, Margaret of Brieg. Facing him was one of the great winners of the 14^th century, Philipp, younger son of King John the Good of France, member of the French regency council on behalf of the child-king Charles VI, duke of Burgundy and his wife, Margaret Countess of Flanders. As the impressive list of titles suggests, Philipp was a big deal. He not only de facto controlled France at this point, he was also busy building up his own semi-independent principality based on his duchy of Burgundy the incredibly wealthy county of Flanders, the inheritance of his wife.

Philipp was not only incredibly ambitious for himself and the dynasty he was to found, but also someone able to play a very, very long game. And his long, long game aimed to bring all the lands of Flanders and ultimately all of Lothringia under his control in an attempt to resurrect the ancient kingdom of Lothar, the Middle kingdom between France and Germany that had been created in the treaty of Verdun of 843.

Holland, Seeland and Hainault were key to achieving this objective, they were the “string of pearls” around his county of Flanders.

And of the two ways to acquire lands, war or marriage, Philipp was not shy of the former but very much preferred the latter. Which meant he was happy to invest one of his daughters, his eldest no less, in an option to gain Holland, Seeland and Hainault. So, he offered her as a bride to marry Albert’s eldest son and heir, William. That looked like a sensible investment. Marguerite was one of three daughters he had at the time, plus he had two surviving sons, so Marguerite was a valuable pawn, but not an irreplaceable one.

Marrying his son to a prince of the blood was certainly a great honour for count Albert, but not an unwarranted one. The hundred years war was still going on which meant France and England were both trying to lure Holland into their camp. That meant, if Albert rejected Philipp, he could have easily made a similar deal with the English.

Which is why Albert’s wife, Margaret of Brieg felt emboldened to throw a curved ball. Sure, the count and countess would be most honoured to receive the most noble Marguerite into her family as the future countess, but what would be even more beneficial, for both sides, would be an even closer alliance, underpinned by one more marriage, that of Philipp’s heir, John the fearless to their daughter, who for the purposes of maximum confusion was also called Margaret.

Basically, a double wedding, the heir of Holland marries the eldest daughter of the duke of Burgundy and the heir to Burgundy marries the eldest available daughter of the count of Holland.

The historian Bart van Loo wrote that “Philipp, experienced diplomat that he was, did not say a word and made a movement with his head that lay somewhere between nodding yes and shaking his head no.”

In 1385 the position of the wife of the heir to Burgundy was one of the major political assets in europe. Philipp had intended to use that as a tool to forge even deeper relations with the French court, for instance a marriage to a French princess. Spending all that firepower on a still quite remote chance of acquiring Holland, Zeeland and Hainault at a point of time far out in the future, aka a bet on the Wittelsbach’s dying out, that was not straightforward.

On the other hand, rejecting this offer could mean that Albert turned to the English, giving them another beachhead and open up a new frontier in the Hundred-Years war.

Into these calculations dropped an offer from the third party that sat around this table in Cambrai, Joanna of Brabant. As I mentioned, Brabant was the third powerful player in the low countries, their dukes were the legal successors of the old dukes of Lower Lothringia.

As it happened, the ducal family had come to the end of the line. Joanna had inherited the duchy from her father, but her marriages had failed to produce an heir. By 1385 she had turned 60 and her last husband, the duke Wenceslaus of Luxemburg had just died. A major succession crisis was looming. Moreover, Brabant was allied to France, whilst their next-door neighbour, the duke of Gelders, was friends with the English. If Albert walked away from the Burgundian alliance and shacked up with the perfidious Albion, then Brabant would be surrounded by enemies and might be overrun.

So, Joanna threw another pawn into the negotiation. She offered the duchy of Brabant to Philipp’s second son, should he agree on the double wedding with the count of Holland.

That was a prize Philip of Burgundy believed was worth having, Brabant guaranteed and an option on Holland, plus an alliance that kept the English out. Done.

So on April 12^th, 1385, these consequential weddings were celebrated over eight days with 20,000 guests, including king Charles VI of France. We mentioned the follow-on wedding of that self-same French King Charles VI to Isabeau of Bavaria, a cousin of Albert, which was also at least partially motivated by this alliance between Burgundy and Holland.

All this could have been not much more than a splendid feast that would not have had any material consequences for the counties of Holland, Zeeland and Hennegau. After all, the groom, count William was 20 years old, fit and healthy, a mighty warrior and all that. Little Margaret was only 11 years old at her wedding, but in a few years, she would certainly start to have children. And William had a brother, John, who was heading for an episcopal career, for which he was utterly unsuited. John got himself elected prince bishop of Liege, but avoided taking holy orders, meaning he could return to civil life any time if needed.

As I said, Philipp of Burgundy, known as the Bold, played a long game, a very long game indeed. When he passed in 1404, Joanna of Brabant was still alive and kicking. But 2 years later, as planned, Brabant went to Philipp’s younger son and from that point onward was firmly in the Burgundy orbit.

Where is the empire in all this? Brabant is after all an imperial fief. So how come the duchess can just willy nilly pass her lands on to whoever she thinks is most suitable?

The previous transition, when Joanna inherited the duchy from her father had happened with the consent of the emperor, Karl IV, since her husband was the emperor’s half-brother, Wenceslaus, duke of Luxembourg. In 1385, when Joanna made her offer, her husband was already dead. There was no emperor at the time, only a king of the Romans, and that king of the romans was Wenceslaus the Lazy, who had little capacity to deal with even issues right on his doorstep.

And at the time the actual transaction occurred, in 1406, the ruler of the empire was Ruprecht of the Palatinate, he of the empty pocket. Ruprecht must count as one of the empire’s least effectual rulers, and hence in no way able to stand up to the wealthy Burgundian duke.

So, the Burgundians got away with this and the duchy of Brabant came under Burgundian control. However, not under the direct control of Philipp’s eldest son and successor, but under that of his younger son Anthony.

Philipp’s successor as duke of Burgundy and count of Flanders was, John the Fearless, he of the disastrous attack at the battle of Nikopol (episode 168). Whilst his father was a bold but calculating risk taker, John was outright reckless.

Family Tree of Jacqueline d’Hainaut by BenjiSkyler on DeviantArt

When his father died, the regency of France and hence the access to the French treasury fell into the hands of the mad king’s brother Louis of Orleans. That so irritated John the Fearless that he in 1407 had Louis of Orleans murdered in the open, on the streets of Paris.

The net result of that was a civil war between the family and supporters of the dead duke of Orleans, led by the psychopathically cruel count Bernard of Armagnac. This civil war was only briefly interrupted to give the English a chance to comprehensively rout the French at Agincourt in 1415.

But even such a comprehensive defeat did not stop the Armagnacs and Burgundians to go at each other with the utmost brutality.

In May 1418, the Burgundians under John the fearless entered Paris and staged a massacre during which the count of Armagnac was skinned alive. Which then led to the second murder John the Fearless is famous for, his own. The dauphin, i.e., the son and heir of the mad king Charles VI lured John on to the bridge of Montereau and watched as his henchmen planted an axe into the head of the duke of Burgundy.

This murder pushed the son of John the Fearless. Philipp the Good, over the edge. Though he was still a prince of France, he decided to sell the kingdom out to the English. He brought the queen, Isabeau, over to his side, which was no mean feat given she had been closely attached to Louis of Orleans, the man Philipp’s father had murdered. Together they signed the treaty of Troyes with king Henry V of England. In this treaty, the mad king agreed to marry his daughter Catherine to king Henry V of England and to make him his heir and successor. To get rid of any potential claims of his own children, the queen Isabeau declared that her only surviving son, the dauphin Charles VII, was a bastard, and not the son of a king.

Wedding of Henry V and Catherine of France

When a hundred years later the King Francois I of France visited the grave of John the Fearless, he was shown the shattered skull of the great duke. The monk who had led him there explained that this “was the opening through which the English came into France”.

But it was not only the route for the English into France, it was also the event that shifted the interest of the dukes of Burgundy firmly away from French domestic politics towards the creation of their own kingdom.

John the Fearless may have spent most of his blood and treasure on the French civil war, but he still kept a wary eye on goings-on in the Low Countries.

One key event was the battle of Othee in 1408. This was a battle between the citizens of Liege and their bishop. This bishop was none other than John of Bavaria, the brother of count William VI of Holland, Seeland and Hainault. John, as I mentioned had managed to get himself elected prince bishop of Liege at the rather early age of 17. He had never taken any holy orders, nor did he show even the slightest sign of spiritual aptitude. He had taken the job for the simple reason that the prince bishop of Liege controlled a large territory adjacent to his brother’s counties. And rather than having it administered by strawmen as had been the habit so far, the family had decided to place one of their own on the episcopal throne.

John had an incredible talent to rub up the locals in the wrong way. He kept pushing the citizens of Liege to give up their liberties, which they did not like. So, they threw him out. He was admitted back upon promising to stop being such a nuisance, a promise he then ignored, etc., etc., This had happened for the first time in 1390 and repeated several times over the next 15 years.

By 1408 the citizens of Liege had enough. They threw him out for good and elected a new bishop. John asked his brother William of Holland and his friend, the duke John the Fearless of Burgundy for help.

And John responded. He brought his battle-hardened Burgundian soldiers and lined them up against the city’s militia. This time John acted more thoughtful than at the fateful battle of Nikopol almost exactly 12 years earlier. He held his cavalry forces together and made good use of the infantry and the Scottish archers he had hired. Despite their heroic resistance the butchers, bakers and candlestick makers of liege did not stand a chance. The defeat turned into a rout and then into a massacre. The two Johns and William of Holland had decided that they would not take any prisoners, since this was an uprising against the God-given universal order, not a battle between gentlemen. John of bishop elect of Liege returned triumphant into his capital and had all the rebels who had not died in the field, hanged or thrown into the river, including the widow of the ringleader. This event gained John the moniker, John the Pitiless, which makes it a lot easier to keep him apart from all the other Johns.

What it also did was put John the Pitiless deep into debt with the dukes of Burgundy. From now on, John the Pitiless loyalty was split between his family and the Burgundians, though that was only a small commitment, since most of his loyalty was to himself.

Having secured a hold over Liege, his next move was to become a major stepping stone towards the big prize, control of Brabant, Limburg, Holland, Seeland and Hainault.

Because the options that his father had acquired with the double wedding of Cambrai were gradually moving into the money.

First up, the marriage between William of Holland and Margaret of Burgundy had not been particularly fruitful. I could not find any mention that the couple hated each other, but they preferred other people’s company to each other’s. William, who had a soft spot for Dutch girls, preferred to live in Holland. And in order to avoid conflict with Margaret, he installed her as governor of his county of Hainault. This arrangement suited both of them, and even more their cousins of Burgundy. Because distance made procreation hard. They did produce only one surviving child, after 16 years of marriage, a daughter, by the name of Jacqueline of Jacoba.

Jacqueline became a super famous figure in Dutch history due to her great struggle, her four marriages and for being much more than the usual pawn in the game of aristocratic marriages.

Jacqueline’s father, count William of Holland had resigned himself to never having a legitimate male heir, despite an impressive number of illegitimate offspring he had produced so far. At which point the question was whether he would name either his brother, the bishop elect John the Pitiless, or any of his Bavarian cousins to become his heir. Or, alternatively, he could try to keep his lands in the hands of his daughter. This latter route was definitely a lot harder to push through and required her to be married to a powerful and well-connected husband – or at least that is what everyone said.

William decided to go for option 2, passing it all to his beloved Jacqueline, even against all the odds. When he touched on the subject with the emperor Sigismund, he was asked, whether he does not have a suitable brother or cousin…

So, William went to the other side and in 1406 he betrothed little Jacqueline to one of the younger sons of King Charles VI, the Mad of France. This boy, John, duke of Touraine, was then 8 years old. As the future count of Holland and Hainault and to protect him from the chaos in Paris, he grew up at the court of his mother-in-law together with his future bride. The two only married in 1415 after the pope had given his dispensation for the marriage of these two closely related kids.

1415 was an eventful year. It was not only the year the battle of Agincourt happened, but also the year Louis, the dauphin of France died, making the 17-year-old husband of Jacqueline, the dauphin and future king of France.

And as such he had to go to Paris where the civil war was still raging, and the English were coming up the road. The young prince may have learned many things in the relative safety of his in-law’s castles, but not enough to survive the rough and tumble of French politics of the time. He barely lasted 2 years before he died, presumably from poisoning.

That was a blow for Jacqueline and for her father. One moment she was the future queen of France, her lands protected by the might of the largest kingdom in europe, and the next she was a vulnerable widow.

Her father and mother had at least to an extent planned for this eventuality. Jacqueline had received a very thorough education. The historian Bart van Loo described her as follows quote: “she was given a solid education: from botany through biblical history, mathematics and languages to the rules of etiquette. As a young girl she was just as good at analysing medicinal herbs as she was at knowing the correct way to wear a train. She was bright, inquisitive, and not especially pretty at first glance.” End quote. She loved riding, hunting and was no stranger to wearing armour.

But still, she was “just a mere woman” and as such she needed a husband, and soon. Into this predicament stepped William’s most helpful brother-in law and friend, John the Fearless of Burgundy. John had a suggestion that was just so appealing, it was hard to resist.

John’s nephew, the duke of Brabant, who was called again, John, was in need of a bride. This John’s father, Anthony had died at the battle of Agincourt, which had made John the Fearless the guardian of little John of Brabant.

This was – at least from a dynastic perspective – a perfect match. Bringing together Brabant and Limburg on the one hand and Holland, Seeland and Hainault on the other would create a huge contiguous territory stretching from the North See coast to Maastricht. That would definitely be a nice chunk for William’s beloved daughter and potential grandchildren. Moreover, Little John was 14 and no match for Jacqueline, now 17, well-educated and forged in the fire of French politics.

We will get to John the Fearless’ considerations in a minute.

Before that we should spare a thought for another key player in this – who inherits what – game, the emperor. It is now 1418 and the emperor is Sigismund, a much more energetic man than his two predecessors, as we have seen in the last season. And in 1418 he is at the top of his game. He had just closed the council of Constance that had brought an end to the schism, and he was travelling across europe as if he were indeed the head of all Christendom, mediating conflicts, even attempting to end the hundred-years war.

And when he saw the chips on the table in the western border of the empire, the homeland of his dynasty, he bought a seat in the game. He married his niece, Elizabeth of Görlitz to Anthony, the duke of Brabant and father of young John. And Elisabeth brought with her another big piece of the jigsaw, the duchy of Luxemburg.

What is now in the pot of this mother of all poker games are three duchies, Brabant, Limburg and Luxemburg and three counties, Holland, Seeland and Hainault, and given the episcopal power was waning here as it did in the rest of the empire, a few prince bishoprics as well. Geographically that is the Netherlands, Luxemburg and chunks of Belgium.

And all that was to go to little John of Brabant and his bride, the formidable Jacqueline of Holland and Hainault.

Which leaves just one question, why did John the Fearless think this was a good idea. Sure, little John is his nephew and one of his next of kin, but if he ruled such a huge landmass, it was only a question of time before he would challenge his uncle.

John the Fearless did not leave notes, so all this is speculation. He did know both Jacqueline and John and if he knew them, he must have known that these two would not get on. Jacqueline was smart and headstrong, John was truly gormless, so gormless, he wouldn’t recognise a gorm if it jumped at him. This marriage was never going to work out, meaning the couple would not have children. If that was the case, all of John’s property, which by law now included Jacqueline’s would go to his closest living male relative, who happened to be, yes, John the Fearless, duke of Burgundy. Slowly, slowly the option shifts further in to the money.

The duke of Burgundy was right. His nephew Brabant was what my son calls an NPC, a non-player character in a video game. Someone who is just there and can be moved to wherever the dominant player wants him to stand. He may have all the glittering titles and hundreds of noble lords in his retinue, but he had no urge to use them to his advantage. He failed in the one key criterion that Jacqueline’s father should have focused on – ability to protect her inheritance.

Maybe William thought he still had a few more years and maybe more children in him. He was 52 years old, not exactly young, but also not ready for the scrapheap just yet. But that is where he ended up, in May 1417, from the most ignominious of reasons, a bite from one of his dogs. The wound got infected and, since Jacqueline’s knowledge of medicinal herbs did no yet comprise Penicillin, this minor injury became fatal.

Once William had moved up to sing with the angels, Jacqueline and John of Brabant had to act swiftly. They had to progress through all of Jacqueline’s lands, collect oaths of allegiance and take hold of the leavers of power.

Things worked out fine in Hainault, where the couple started out. But when they got into Holland, things were a lot dicier. Holland had been riven between two factions, the Cods and the Hooks for decades. We will talk more about them next episode, but in a very broad sense, the Cods represented the more progressive, business-oriented city dwellers whilst the Hooks represented the feudal, land-based aristocracy. Jacquleine and her father had been aligned with the Hooks, making it hard for them to get into the towns held by the Cods.

And remember, there were several other players on that poker table eying this mother of all pots.

One of them was Jacqueline’s uncle, John the Pitiless, the bishop elect of Liege. John immediately shed his belief that the universal order had placed the cities beneath his feet and he lined up with the Cods.

And there is the emperor Sigismund. Sigismund was not at all happy with all that backroom dealing. He was after all the emperor and as such was the one to decide what happened to Holland, Seeland and Hainault.

Sigismund concluded that the best way forward was to urge John the Pitiless to ditch the episcopal pallium, marry his recently widowed niece Elisabeth of Gorlitz and get enfeoffed with the three counties. That at least looked as if he was in charge here.

The next thing he did was to lean on pope Martin V, the man he had more or less lifted to the papal throne, to block the marriage of Jacqueline and John.

Things came to a head when Jacqueline and her Hooks pursued John the Pitiless behind the walls of Dordrecht. They put Dordrecht under siege, which, as we now know in the early 15^th century was an arduous task. Jacqueline’s husband, little John of Brabant came to support her, and they could surround the city. Now it was a question of waiting until hunger forced Dordrecht to hand over John the Pitiless to be be locked up somewhere safe, and Jacqueline be recognised as countess across all her lands.

View on Dordrecht from the mouth of the Noord *oil on canvas *181 x 669.2 cm *signed b.c.: A.Willarts fe 1629

But it never got there. After 6 weeks John and his Brabanters returned home. The city could no longer be fully enveloped, so Jacqueline’s allies gave up too.

The countess had to sit down to negotiate with her uncle. Mediating the whole process was the invisible hand in the background. Not John the Fearless who was riding hard and fast towards the bridge of Montereau to get his head kicked in. Instead, he sent his son and heir, Philipp, soon to the Philipp the Good, duke of Burgundy. Philipp was much more like his grandfather, calculating, patient and cunning playing the long, long game.

He looked at the state of affairs and realised that Jacqueline’s position was hopeless. He convinced her that she had to allow John the Pitiless to keep what he had already conquered and make him governor of the rest of the counties of Holland and Seeland for five years. He was also made her heir in case she died without offspring. In return, John the Pitiless gave up claims on Hainault. And finally, they bought off the enfeoffment by the emperor Sigismund for 100,000 florins. When that sum wasn’t paid, John the Pitiless swapped the claim for an extension of his governorship to 12 years.

Jacqueline was already seething that her gormless husband had left her before Dordrecht. The pitiful outcome of the negotiations with John the Pitiless did not help either. And the extension, which was kept concealed from her added even more fire to the flames.

The animosity between husband and wife mounted and mounted as time went by. John’s Burgundian advisors kept dripping poison into his ears, setting him against his wife. Jacqueline reacted rather impetuously and one of these advisors choked on something unhealthy. He was quickly replaced by another who strengthened his hold over gormless John with the aid of his beautiful and open-minded wife.

Jacqueline found herself more and more ostracised at court. John the Gormless took revenge for the death of his advisor by cutting off Jacqueline’s ladies in waiting, even going so far as not the serve them any food during the easter celebrations.

Jacqueline was so humiliated watching her ladies going hungry in full view of everyone, she ran out of the hall, across town and sought refuge with her mother at an inn. With that the marriage was effectively over.

Jacqueline fled from Brussels and went to her county of Hainault. She declared to the estates of Hainault that she believed her marriage to the gormless John of Brabant was null and void. They were cousins and as such too closely related to get married. Though the pope had revoked his initial ban of the marriage, he had as of now not provided a formal dispensation. A case, initiated by the emperor Sigismund was pending in Rome and as long as that was the case, she was not married. Her cousin of Brabant had no authority here in Hainault or in her other counties of Holland and Seeland.

The nobles and churchmen of Hainault listened and performed that same movement we have seen Philipp the Bold do, sort of nodding and sort of shaking their heads. Whatever this was, this was not good news for Hainault. The most likely outcome of her staying here was war, and war was painful. So, they let her know that if she stayed and Brabant and Burgundy invaded, they would find little resistance.

Jacqueline needed a new supporter. But who. France was broken. Its mad king was in the hands of Burgundy, and the dauphin was fighting a war for survival against the English. Emperor Sigismund was opposed to her inheriting anything. So, England was the only option, even though King Henry V was an ally of Philipp the Good of Burgundy.

When she arrived in 1421 at Dover she was welcomed by the king’s younger brother, the dashing Humphrey of Gloucester. Humphrey was exactly the kind of man she liked, she needed. Handsome, warlike but also interested in art and well educated.

He kept a huge library by the standards of the time which he left to the university of Oxford. Fans of Harry Potter will immediately recognise the Duke Humfrey library as Hermione’s favourite haunt.

Much has been made of the passion Jacqueline had allegedly felt for Humphrey, but there is no denying that he was also the perfect candidate for the Job. A younger brother of the king, which should give him access to military resources and cash, and a desire to own lands in his own right, not just on behalf of the crown.

So, in September 1422, Jacqueline, countess of Holland, Seeland and Hainault married Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, his first and her third marriage. With the added frisson that in the mind of much of Europe Jacqueline was still married to John of Brabant. A scandal of epic proportions, but taking place in a period of dramatic upheaval, the Hundred year’s war in its final throws and the War of the Roses looming. Chances aren’t great that Jacqueline can get away with it, but definitely not zero.

Whether she does or does not is what we are going to discuss next week. I hope you will tune in again.

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