A journey upriver from Worms to Heidelberg

This week it is back to the political landscape of the empire. We will travel upriver from Mainz via Worms and the not yet existent cities of Mannheim and Ludwigshafen to Heidelberg, my old  hometown. And there we will meet the man who held one of the empire’s most confusing titles, the count Palatine of the Rhine, Elector and High Steward of the Empire. His name is Friedrich, Friedrich der Siegreiche, Frederick the Victorious, and being victorious is barely half of what is interesting about him.

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 189 – The Count Palatine on the Rhine, which is also episode 5 of Season 11: The Empire in the 15^th Century.

This week it is back to the political landscape of the empire. We will travel upriver from Mainz via Worms and the not yet existent cities of Mannheim and Ludwigshafen to Heidelberg, my old hometown. And there we will meet the man who held one of the empire’s most confusing titles, the count Palatine of the Rhine, Elector and High Steward of the Empire. His name is Friedrich, Friedrich der Siegreiche, Frederick the Victorious, and being victorious is barely half of what is interesting about him.

I would normally at this point place another appeal to support the podcast, but quite frankly, looking at my Bloomberg screen we are all best served holding on tight and see where things are going. Which is why we should be even more grateful to Arnar Thor Petursson, Bruce Gudmundsson, Arthur S., Christian M., aryeh Y., Sam from Rhode Island and CJ who have not only signed up on historyofthegermans.com/support but have stayed the course all the way to now.

And with that, back to the show

Last week we discussed how printing had changed the world, and if you have missed it, listen. Even if I say so myself, I think that was a pretty good one. But this week we will leave Mr. Gutenberg in his workshop, busy printing bibles and set off again on our tour of the empire.

Our journey takes us south, which in the 15^th century meant we travel by boat, on the Rhine, upriver. Right – but how do you get a boat upriver without steam or diesel power? All you had was rowing or sailing. That works ok on the parts of the river where it is wide enough and where there is enough wind. Where we are, halfway between the Netherlands and Basel, the river is no longer wide enough nor is there enough wind to sail. Therefore, all this way, the boats have to be pulled along with ropes, either by men or by animals. That required tow paths along the shores of the river. The towpath on the left bank was the ancient Roman road from Augusta Raurica, near modern day Basel to Lugdunum Batavorum, modern day Katwijk in Holland. And by the 15^th century there was another towpath on the right bank, also going all the way.

We are in 1454, long before the Rhine had been regulated by Johann Gottfried Tulla in the 19^th century. That means for most of the journey the Rhine is a 2 or 3km wide mix of river arms, loops, small islands and floodplains, making the distance considerably longer than it is today. The settlements we pass were all built on the high banks created when the river had dug its bed during the ice age.

Then and now, the river is busy. Today, almost 50% of the total volume of goods transported on inland waterways in europe, travel on the Rhine between Basel and the Netherlands. And that was likely the same in the 15^th century, only that a much larger proportion of goods were carried on rivers rather than over land.

This trade is what had turned Mainz into “the golden city”. Mainz, like Cologne had the right of the Stapel, meaning every transport of goods going up or down the Rhine had to stop in Mainz, unload and offer their wares at a “reasonable” price for sale to the local merchants. The Staple was a real pain. In particular for traders who had rare merchandise that had a ready market either up or downriver. Say you had a few barrels of the finest Alsace Riesling, say some Clos St.Hune from Hunawihr and what you, or more precisely your principal wants, is to get that exact barrel over to London. But if you have to offer it at the Mainz Staple, you run the risk that someone else buys it and ships it to London. And what will you tell the earl of Burlington about what happened to the wine he had ordered. So, Messrs. Justerine and Brooks ordered their shipper to offload the precious Riesling upriver from Mainz, load it on carts and transport it overland.

There are various routes, some shorter, passing just below where Frankfurt airport is today, some longer giving rise to new trading cities in Darmstadt and Wiesbaden.

The bypassing of the staple was not the only issue the city of Mainz had been struggling with. By 1454 the city could look back on almost 200 years of financial mismanagement. Its ruling elite, the patricians had gradually stepped away from trade and had become rentiers, living of the income of their estates, and most importantly their annuities. Annuities were financial instruments issued by cities or princes which offered an income more or less to eternity. Mainz sold lots of these and since there was no end date to the interest payments, their debt kept growing and growing. The Patricians, who had bought these annuities controlled many of the levers of power, forcing the city to pay these annuities. And where did that money come from? The rich oligarchy, the Patricians were exempt from paying tax, so the city put the burden on local artisans and foreign traders. When that was not enough, they borrowed even more from the patricians, issuing even more annuities. On several occasion the city either tried to tax the patricians or haircut the annuity payments, resulting in often bloody clashes between the guilds of artisans and the patricians. Meanwhile more and more trade tried to avoid the egregious charges levied by Mainz.

So to avoid any more taxation and levies, we need to get back to our boat. As the set of strong horses move on, and the ropes tighten, we watch Mainz, its famous cathedral and church towers and just beyond it the city of Wiesbaden fading away in the distance.

As we go upriver, we get into the heartland of the high medieval emperors. This is the ancient stem duchy of Franconia, the lands where emperor Konrad II came from and where he built his massive cathedral of Speyer. It is the land that Friedrich of Hohenstaufen took over from Henry V and where he bult his powerbase that brought his family to the imperial throne.

Our first stop is Worms, 60km upriver. Whilst Mainz had gradually been falling behind and had seen its population drop to a mere 6,000 by 1454, Worms was doing exceedingly well. Its population of over 10,000 had rapidly recovered from the plague, its trade was humming, and its finances were in a somewhat better shape than Mainz.

Worms, like Mainz had been the seat of a bishop, but Worms had been much more effective at throwing off the burden of ecclesiastical rule. In 1074 the emperor Henry IV granted the citizens relief from royal customs on the Rhine. This as the very first imperial charter ever granted directly to citizens, giving Worms a claim to be the oldest free city in the empire.

Subsequently the influence of the bishops inside the city diminished rapidly and by around 1400 they moved out to the small city of Ladenburg. From then on, their territories kept shrinking until by 1792 only 18 villages were left to sustain the episcopal coffers. Another case of the decline of the prince bishops during the late Middle Ages.

But who cares about some bishop. The city itself was doing great. Its ancient cathedral, finished as far back as 1181 had hosted the marriage of emperor Frederick II to Isabella of England in 1235 and in 1521 a Saxon Augustine monk will say the famous words “Here I stand, and I can do no other”, a scene I still hope we will cover before the year is out.

For us, Worms is only a brief stop. Soon we are back on board and the sturdy horses drag our little ship further upriver closer to our final destination for this episode.

Where Rhine and Neckar come together, the river widens, and the floodplain stretches well beyond the 2-3 km it normally extends to. At the confluence, on one of the few hills stood the Burg  Eichelsheim, a customs post of the Count Palatinate on the Rhine which had once been the prison for pope John XXII after he had been deposed at the Council of Constance – episode 173 if you want to refresh your memory.

If you go there today, nothing is left of Burg Eichelsheim. Instead, you find yourself in the center of one of Germany’s most significant conurbations, Mannheim-Ludwigshafen. Mannheim is the creation of Counts Palatinate Karl Philipp and Karl Thedore. The city is centered on one of the largest baroque palaces in Europe. The structure stretches 450 meters in length and covers 6 hectares. And it has exactly one more window than the palace of Versailles. The only problem is that it is a bit boxy and bland. And since nobody needs 6 hectares of rooms, it now houses Mannheim university, one of Germany’s leading schools of business and economics.

The city surrounding the Palace was built from scratch and laid out in a chessboard pattern. This is standard procedure in the US, but in europe you will struggle to find entire cities built on a grid pattern. There are a few in Italy like Sabbioneta and Palmanova and Edinburgh’s New Town extension is also on a grid plan, but Mannheim is arguably the largest grid-based city in Europe.

But in 1454 when we leave the Rhine and turn left to make our way up the Neckar, there was nothing but marchland where Mannheim now stands. Nor was there even the remotest sign of the other major agglomeration on the opposite bank, Ludwigshafen. If Mannheim was swampy, the site of Ludwigshafen was deep under water, so deep that when the city was constructed in the 19^th century, they put the houses up on stilts to protect against floods.

It is probably time to let you know where we are heading, we are traveling to the seat of the most august of imperial princes and electors, to Germany’s oldest continuously operating university, and to the most visited castle ruin in the world, I talk of course of Heidelberg

Set in the Neckar valley where it is narrowing down on both sides, the town, built on the left bank of the river is long and narrow, barely three blocks wide squeezed between the river and the mountain.

As you enter the old town, look on the left and you can see the KFG, the Kurfürst Friedrich Gymnasium, founded in 1546. I know this has nothing to do with the empire in the 15^th century, but it happens to be the school where I passed my Abitur, and this is my podcast, and I boast when I want to.

Moving down the Hauptstrasse, the nearly 2km long straight main road that has been the central artery of the city since 1392, we pass the university square, a place we will talk about lots more next week. Moving on we get to the Heiliggeistkirche which housed the Bibliotheca Palatina, one of the worlds most admired libraries, until it was carried off to the Vatican during the 30-years war, where it still remains.

But finally, we find ourselves face to face with the enormity of the Heidelberger Schloss. This is not an architecture podcast, nor is this medium suitable to convey the impression of this structure, even in its ruined state leaves.

Such a mighty castle was clearly the home of an important territorial ruler, a duke of somewhere, margrave of X, maybe even a king.

But no, it was the home of a count and a count of somewhere that is not really a place, or at least wasn’t a place until the place was named after the count’s title. Heidelberg was the seat of the Counts Palatinate on the Rhine which is one of the most peculiar in the long list of rather peculiar German titles.

The first to use the title was Konrad of Hohenstaufen, the half-brother of Frederick Barbarossa, though it goes back much further. The original title was that of the count Palatinate of Lothringia, held in the11th century by a certain Ezzo (episode 17 if you are interested). Count Palatinate means Count of the palace or Administrator of the royal palace. Each of the stem duchies had one of these counts palatinate whose role was exactly that, keeping an eye on the houses, castles and manors on behalf of the king. They liked what they saw and over time kept the houses, castles and manors of the king for themselves.

When Ezzo’s family died out title and lands were then passed through a number of different noble families, until in 1156 the aforementioned Konrad von Hohenstaufen, half-brother of Frederick Barbarossa takes over. By now the title and the holdings of their bearers had detached from its original geography. Much of the property in the duchy of Lower Lothringia had been lost and Konrad made his seat on Burg Stahleck, above Bacharach on the edge of Upper Lothringia. Being a Hohenstaufen, he had also inherited some of his family holdings on the upper Rhine, the area we had just traveled through on our little boat.

You may remember vaguely that Barbarossa changed tack after his defeat in Northern Italy in the 1170s. Instead of acting as the honest broker between the imperial princes, he decided to build out the royal territories in the German speaking lands as a way to exert power. In the process he amassed a sort of inverted L-shaped territory that stretched from base in the south along the Rhine to North of Frankfurt ad from there east, all the way to Bohemia.

Not only were these rich lands on important trade routes, but they also locked in the Southern princes. These princes found themselves surrounded by the Hohenstaufen on their Northern and Western side and by the Alps in the south and Bohemia in the east. Anyone stuck inside this cauldron better did what the emperor asked.

Barbarossa’s half-brother Konrad, the Count Palatinate, played a significant role in that plan. His job was to gain control of the area we have just crossed.

In 1184 an opportunity emerged to acquire the advocacy over the monastery of Lorsch, the richest and most august abbey on the upper Rhine, on the opposite bank from Worms. Lorsch had important possessions between the Neckar in the south and Frankfurt in the North.

Being the advocate was supposed to mean to look after the monk’s lands and make sure nobody came and took it away. Well, he was successful in as much as nobody came to take it away, he did that all by himself. Though it remained nominally property of the monks, he took all their vast territory for himself leaving the holy men in unheated halls and bare clothes. Lorsch is today a modest establishment, even though its Carolingian gatehouse is one of the most venerable remains from the days of Charlemagne.

The next churchmen he robbed was the bishop of Worms. In the 11^th century the bishopric had still been rich and powerful, but once Konrad had fulfilled the obligations of his “advocacy”, the venerable institutions was down to a handful of villages. Konrad meanwhile had acquired the Neckar valley and the site of what would become the mighty castle of Heidelberg.

Konrad died in 1195, but for as long as the Hohenstaufen ruled, the Counts Palatinate supported the emperor, even though they weren’t members of the imperial family.

In 1214 emperor Frederick II gave the Palatinate to Ludwig von Wittelsbach, duke of Bavaria. Ludwig was the son of Otto von Wittelsbach, Barbarossa’s loyal paladin who had already been rewarded with the duchy of Bavaria. Though Ludwig was by no means as steadfast a supporter as his father had been, by and large the Palatinate continued its function as a link in the imperial chain of control.

This period of being a faithful vassal ended with the end of the Hohenstaufen. The kings of the interregnum had no control of the royal lands, and a mad feeding frenzy set in. The entirety of that inverted L that stretched from Basel to the Main River and then from there all the way to the Bohemian border came up for grabs. We have already heard how the Habsburgs snatched vast tracts of the Swiss and Alsatian positions (episode 140).

The Counts Palatinate on the Rhine were another one of these princes who profited from the demise of imperial power. Arguably they walked away with the biggest price. The next time a king of the Romans worth the name was elected, in 1273, only 7 princes were seen worthy to perform the sacred act of election. Who chose them and on what grounds is a mystery we explored in episode 139. But what had never been in doubt was that the count Palatinate on the Rhine was one of the 7 electors. The Palatinate wasn’t the largest and certainly not the richest of the principalities of the empire, but centuries of being close to imperial power, regularly acting as regent or guardians of the younger sons of emperors had elevated them to the count palatinate not just of a stem duchy, but the Count Palatinate of the whole empire, Reichstruchsess or High Stewart of the empire. As such the Counts Palatinate were part not just of the election process, but as the Golden Bull set out, part of the collective government of the empire.

By 1329 they had amassed a nicely contiguous territory around Heidelberg and Mannheim as well as various lands and territories to the west of Mainz. By some weird internal Wittelsbach machinations they also held the Oberpfalz, the Upper Palatinate, a sizeable territory between Nurnberg and the Bohemian border a solid 300km east of Heidelberg. And then they held a number of customs posts along the Middle Rhine. These latter positions were the most valuable bit. There are no statistics about the trade volume that went up and down the Rhine in the pre-modern period, but if we start off with 50% of current inland waterway trade going over the Rhine and then take into account that the majority of transportation in the Middle ages was on water, then it would not be excessive to assume 10%, maybe 20% of all European land-based trade passed the various customs houses of the Counts Palatinate. I think you would be hard pressed to find another way to explain the splendor of Heidelberg Castle and the scale of Mannheim Palace. Whilst this activity added to trade frictions and the economy of the German lands gradually falling behind France and England, at least they had the decency to build one of the most photographed castles in Germany, the Pfalzgrafenstein near Kaub, that castle that sits on a river island with its curtain walls shaped like a ship’s prow.

The next big expansion push came when Ruprecht displaced Wenceslaus the Lazy as king of the Romans in 1400. Ruprecht holds the record for King of the Romans with the shortest appearance in the History of the Germans Podcast. I gave the guy less than 3 minutes at the end of episode 165.

So whilst his impact on imperial politics, despite a solid 10 years on the throne was negligible, his impact on the Palatinate and Heidelberg in particular was considerable. He was also one of, if not the first territorial ruler to set up a bureaucracy that was worthy of the name. He established a registry of rights, lands and privileges of his state, introduced a system of taxation and recruited civil servants tasked with collecting these rights. This produced the revenues that allowed him to establish the university of Heidelberg in 1386 and might have given him the confidence to reach out for the imperial title in 1400. That latter move turned out to be a double-edged sword. For one, he used his role as king of the Romans to bring in various royal territories or positions, like the landgraviate of Alsace which expanded the Palatinate’s zone of influence all the way to the gates of Strasburg. On the other hand, the expenditure associated with the royal title bankrupted him.

His son learned from his father’s mistake and made no attempt at succeeding to the royal or imperial title. Instead, he held on to his father’s gains, improved the bureaucracy and hey presto –  the Count Palatinate on the Rhine swiftly became one of the richest territorial princes again.

This gentleman, Ludwig, the third of the Counts Palatinate of this name had four sons. The Wittelsbachs had always been fecund, which is great when it comes to continuing the dynasty but causes all sorts of mayhem when it comes to inheritance.

Ludwig III died in 1436. By then his eldest son was already dead, leaving three younger ones, aged 12, 11 and 9. The youngest, Ruprecht was designated for an ecclesiastical career, whilst the eldest was going to inherit lands and title. Which leaves the cursed middle child, Friedrich.

As the younger son of a father reluctant to divide his territory, his outlook was to either be an idle squire, become a bishop or pursue a military career. When he turned 18, he accepted his fate and formally gave up his right to a share of the Palatinate in exchange for a regular income. And that could have been the end of the story. Friedrich might have ended up as a competent general fighting wars for his brother, the emperor or as a mercenary in the service of Charles the Bold of Burgundy.

But things changed suddenly, when his elder brother Ludwig IV unexpectedly died in 1449. Ludwig IV left behind a young boy, Philipp from his marriage to the daughter of the antipope Felix V. I thought I just drop that pope thing in because it is so weird – check it out if you are interested, Felix V previously duke Amadeus VIII of Savoy.

More significant than the boy’s parentage was the fact that he was merely a year old. He needed a guardian, who would be a better candidate for that than his good old uncle Fritz. Friedrich had proven his allegiance to the territory by forsaking his inheritance, he was a well-educated young man as well as a good soldier.

The estates and the people of the Palatinate liked and supported him, expecting a long and fruitful regency. And in any other period of history, that is likely what would have happened. But these weren’t normal times. The empire was effectively rudderless. Sigismund had just died, his successors, Albrecht II and Friedrich III were largely absent focusing on Hungary and their own territories, the dukes of Burgundy were breathing down the necks of the principalities in the west and the Hussites were still around.  

For a territory like the Palatinate that stretched all along the Rhine, from Colmar to Koblenz but was utterly fragmented with huge gaps between the different exclaves, it was vital to be able to project stability and strength. And even a solid guardianship was not enough to achieve that.

That meant the politically expedient solution would be to let little Philipp experience some tragic mishap. Child mortality was high in the 15^th century, and nobody would bat an eyelid. But that was not Friedrich’s style.  Instead, he sat down with his cabinet of highly trained lawyers and drilled deep into roman law, until they came across a legal instrument not used since the days of the ancient roman emperors, the concept of arrogation or adrogation.

Here is how that worked. In a first step, Friedrich adopted his nephew Philip as his own son. But that did not yet get us very far. If it had been a normal adoption, then Philipp would still take over the rule of the Palatinate once he reached majority, all the adoption would achieve is that Philipp would now inherit Friedrich’s personal fortune.

In an Adrogation the adoptee submits his or her own rights and fortune to the adoptimg parent. In other words, once Adrogation had happened, Philip would not become elector Palatinate until Friedrich had died. It made Friedrich Elector for life, just without the right to pass on his title and territory to anyone other than Philipp. To make this agreement watertight, Friedrich promised not get married and never to have legitimate children.

As I said, nobody had done this since the roman empire. But in the Roman Empire, it had worked extremely well. The succession from Hadrian to Antoninus Pius and then to Marcus Aurelius was executed via Adrogation, i.e., Marcus Aurelius as the legitimate heir was adrogated to Antoninus Pius.

The five good emperors were not a bad precedent, Friedrich was competent, and Philipp was allowed to see his 16^th birthday. Hence the nobles and cities of the palatinate supported this move. Even Philipp’s mother signed up for the deal. Friedrich then went to the pope and the other Electors, and they all agreed. Only one person refused, and that was the most important one, the emperor Friedrich III. He objected to the concept of adrogation on the back of the specific rules about guardianship in the Golden Bull. For the next 25 years Friedrich I will call himself Elector Palatinate but will never be formally recognized by the imperial court. Towards the end of his reign, he will be placed in the imperial ban as a usurper, in part for the adrogation. But given the state of imperial power and the strength of the state he built and the reputation he had acquired, nobody came out to enforce that verdict.   

Friedrich is known as Frederick the Victorious, and he is called the victorious because, well because he was victorious. There is not enough time left in this episode to discuss the wars he fought and battles he won, but what we can do is look at the reasons why he was victorious.

As we have seen these last 50-odd episodes, the world of the late Middle Ages saw two ways of being successful in war. Either you had a hugely motivated and ingenious military force, like the Hussites and the Swiss, or you had money.

Friedrich I had money. Not just because he had inherited one of the richer principalities in the empire, but because he transitioned it from a bundle of rights into a more coherent and more productive entity.

He could build on his grandfather’s institutional changes and expanded from there.

He reorganized the university in 1454, expanding the teaching of roman law. Graduates of this course were snapped up and deployed in the elector’s bureaucracy. Given the territories were heavily fragmented, the elector established a number of Aemter, effectively regional offices charged with administrating these lands. It is in these offices that his law graduates are put to work.

When we talk about administration, much of it simply meant collecting dues and taxes. But it could also involve managing road infrastructure, building city walls and strongholds, organizing flood defenses and so forth. During time of famine, a good lord would procure foodstuff from abroad and distribute it through the Aemter.

Alongside the modern bureaucracy stood the old feudal organization. One of the weaknesses of the feudal organization was the lack of documentation. Throughout the High Middle Ages lords and nobles would show up with ancient charters claiming this or that exemption or privilege, and nobody could refute them. Friedrich I created a Lehnsbuch, a book of feudal rights that documented all the rights and privileges that applied in the relationship with his vassals, of which there are dozens from the dukes of Julich in the North to the towns and abbeys of Alsace. By writing them all down in a compendium, they are fixed and can be enforced and false claims refuted.

Finally, he tried to consolidate his lands into a contiguous territory, filling in the gaps. In part that was achieved by simple conquest, occasionally by purchase or by acquiring a mortgage.

But in the main it was done through agreements of mutual support signed with the small counts, knights and abbots whose territories interspersed within the palatinate lands. These agreements may sound all chivalric and honorable but appear to me a bit more like protection money. I guess if someone called Frederick the Victorious, unbeaten general in dozens of battles, shows up in front of my modest castle with 300 of his closest friends offering me protection against some unexpected raid by person or persons unknown, I am well advised to take such generous offer. This kind of treatment extended not just to counts and abbots but was also applied to the prince bishops of Worms and Speyer, themselves imperial princes, but in many ways bound to the Count Palatinate.

And finally, he operated through flattery and bribery. He would appoint counts and knights to his council, which came with the privilege of a life at the splendid court of Heidelberg as well as a regular salary.

In this manner Friedrich helped the Palatinate to achieve its largest territorial extent. At its height it comprised the lands around Heidelberg and Mannheim, the Upper Palatinate around Amberg, but also a near contiguous territory covering the modern state of Rheinland Pfalz.

But the most significant job a prince had, be it a territorial prince, a king or an emperor, was to maintain peace and justice, which was more or less the same thing. In 1462 he established the Pfaelzer Hofgericht, the Palatinate High Court. This court, again staffed with graduates from Heidelberg university, gained a reputation for its just and equitable judgements. Which meant that in the same way modern contracts often specify the London courts as the place to settle disputes, parties from all over southwest Germany brought their squabbles to the court in Heidelberg.

And Friedrich was able to enforce these judgements. On the one hand he had this elaborate system of regional offices, feudal oaths, agreements of mutual support and courtiers who were bound to follow his orders. But he also had a small but very loyal and efficient military force. It was a lot larger than a bodyguard, but not quite a standing army. The important thing was, that they were his own subjects or vassals, were generously paid, well trained and available in war as well as peacetime. Again, you would not want to mess with them.

And, surprise, if there is stability and the rule of law, trade flourishes. Subjects who find value in the way their territory are managed, find payment of taxes, levies, court fees and so forth just that little easier to bear.

What also helped was Friedrich’s comparative frugality. He ploughed most of the income back into the expansion of the principality. His court was and had to be splendid in order to attract the local nobles, but not excessively so. His main interest beyond work lay in the emerging Renaissance ideas. He himself had a thorough education and was fluent in Latin. He brought scholars to his court like Peter Luder, an early humanist who tried to introduce ancient Roman and Greek ideas to the university, Matthias Kemnat a historian, Michel Behaim a poet and many more.

Which gets us to the next thing we will discuss on the podcast, the emergence of the German universities. Every nation revers their universities, be it Oxford and Cambridge for the English, Harvard and Yale for the US, Bolognia, Parma and Pavia for the Italians, or Coimbra for the Portuguese. But for the Germans, the universities, be they Wittenberg or Göttingen, Heidelberg or Marburg, Tübingen and Leipzig matter in a very specific way. How, that is what we will explore next week. I hope you will join us again.