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The rise from minor principality to Grand Duchy

What is it like to be a prince? Well, not quite what it is set out to be, in particular when you are a smaller prince, not in stature, but in land.

The margraves of Baden are such princes. In the 15th century their main territory, a slither of South-West Germany, just 60km long was too small to play on the European, even on the German stage, but too big to escape the need of massive palaces and warfare.

What makes Baden so fascinating is that despite its handicap, it managed to become a medium sized state, one half of Baden-Württemberg. The way there was a long one, involving friendship and loyalty to the death, piratical princesses, alchemy, someone called the Türkenlouis, a sun-shaped city and some skilled diplomacy.

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to  the History of the Germans: Episode 191 – The Margraviate of Baden, also episode 7 of season 10 – The Empire in the 15th Century

What is it like to be a prince? Well, not quite what it is set out to be, in particular when you are a smaller prince, not in stature, but in land.

The margraves of Baden are such princes. In the 15th century their main territory, a slither of South-West Germany, just 60km long was too small to play on the European, even on the German stage, but too big to escape the need of massive palaces and warfare.

What makes Baden so fascinating is that despite its handicap, it managed to become a medium sized state, one half of Baden-Württemberg. The way there was a long one, involving friendship and loyalty to the death, piratical princesses, alchemy, someone called the Türkenlouis, a sun-shaped city and some skilled diplomacy.

But before we start the usual plea for support. Making this show has gone from being a hobby and side hustle to being my obsession and even main occupation. If I want to keep it up and avoid having to set up an additional income stream from piracy, I need your support. There are various options on historyofthegermans.com/support to protect shipping in the English Channel. Special thanks from the Coastguard go to John S., Brian – Gutenberg’s apprentice, Sasha Sirota,  Elliot W. J., Michael Dane from Australia, Conor G., Charlie J. and Zachary Levine. By the way, if you are a supporter and you want your full name read out or me saying something silly, send me a note.

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And with that, back to the show

After last week’s detour into the history of the German universities, we now alternate back to our journey through the Holy Roman Empire in the 15th century. We are travelling back down to where Mannheim does not yet exist and resume our journey up the Rhine River towards Basle.

As we do this, we are entering one of the most fragmented parts of this ancient political structure that had once been the stem duchy of Swabia, one of only 5 duchies that existed in Henry the Fowler’s kingdom of East Francia.

In the 500 years since Henry’s reign, the duchy of Swabia had been divided into smaller and smaller principalities.

The first time in the 12th century when it broke up into three entities, the Hohenstaufen duchy of Swabia, the duchy of Zähringen in the Southwest and the lands of the Welf in the East.

Frederick Barbarossa and his successors consolidated the Welfish and the Hohenstaufen lands and penetrated the territory with castles and cities. In 1218 the Zähringen dukes died out and their vast territory was distributed amongst the mighty cities like Zurich, Berne and Basle, the Habsburgs and various offshoots of their own family as well as their vassals.

The next atomization happened when in 1268 the House of Hohenstaufen fell under the executioner’s axe.

And as in the case of the Zähringer, it was the cities, the Habsburgs and a brace of more or less powerful counts who seized what had once been the power base of the emperors of the High Middle Ages. In 1521 the imperial constitution recognized 101 different princes, cities and immediate lords in Swabia, more than in any other of the imperial circles.

These 101 territories varied dramatically in size and economic power. The dukes of Württemberg were by far the biggest, accounting for about a quarter of the population, followed by the Margraves of Baden with 8% and the bishopric of Augsburg with 4%, and everybody else was even smaller than that, with the abbey of Heggbach with 600 inhabitants bringing up the back.

Which gets us to the question, how did this work? What room to act did you have as one of these entities? What were sensible policies to follow? How do you come out on top?

There are several ways to approach this issue. One would be to follow chronologically every move of every one of these players, shuffling villages and abbeys back and forth to trace the growth or contraction of each of these territories. This is what I did in my first draft of this episode. But then I read the following sentence out loud: “it is highly likely that even before Rudolf I’s marriage to Kunigunde von Eberstein, property belonging to this family, which had risen from a noble rank and was mainly based on fiefs from Speyer and the inheritance of the Counts of Lauffen, came to Baden. Rudolf also acquired Liebenzell and Alteberstein, today’s Ebersteinburg.”. And that is when I realised that there are various ways of getting rid of listeners, even such loyal listeners as yourselves. 35 minutes of that kind of stuff, and I will be all alone shouting into the podcast ether.

So, I came up with another idea.

We did know who came out tops, the dukes of Württemberg and the Margraves of Baden, because the state is now called Baden-Württemberg. And whilst the dukes of Württemberg are a fascinating subject, the rise of the margraves of Baden was a lot steeper, meaning we may be able to learn more from them.

And we will not go through all the acquisitions and divestments that got them there. That would sound like reading the land registry out loud. If that is of interest, there is a great map available on a website called LEO-BW that shows the territorial expansion of the margraviate of Baden up until 1796. I have put a copy of it in the Maps section of the historyofthegermans.com website, the episode artwork and in the transcript to this episode for you to look at. That should cover this, leaving us with a lot of room to discuss potential strategies for success.

Economic development

The first thing a prince could do is also the most sensible thing to do, he could develop the economy of his territory.

And the margraves of Baden could look to a very successful set of precedents in their own family. They were one of the cadet branches of the dukes of Zähringen. The Zähringer ruled a territory in what is today Switzerland as well as the furthest South West corner of Germany. There they founded important cities, namely Berne, Freiburg in Germany and Fribourg in Switzerland and promoted the growth of Zurich, Murten, Burgdorf, Offenburg, Villingen Schaffhausen and many others.

However, their descendants in Baden were not that interested in the foundation of cities. That may be down to the fact that these cities had a habit of asserting their independence once their economy got going. Mainz, Worms Speyer and the mighty Strasburg all had thrown out their bishops, whilst Freiburg, ungrateful as it was, had kicked out their local count and put themselves under the protection of the Habsburgs.

There was an established opinion that the margraves of Baden had founded Stuttgart in 1219. They did own the stud farm that gave the city its name for a while, but that does not mean they founded a city there. No evidence of a foundation has been found and the originator of that thesis has become subject of some controversy. It would have been so deliciously ironic if that had been true, but probably isn’t.

As a consequence, the margraviate featured just one urban settlement, Pforzheim, which in the 15th century was one of the main residences of the margraves. Pforzheim is today best known as a centre for jewellery and watchmaking. But that only came about when in 1767 the margrave established  a jewellery and watch manufacture in an orphanage. Most of the period between the 15th century and 1767, the city was left to fend for itself.

Then there is the Weinordnung of 1495, that prohibited the dilution of wine with all kinds of cheap ciders and fruit alcohol and established fines for the use of sugar, sulphur and poisonous substances. A Reinheitsgebot before the more famous beer purity law of 1516. The margraves claim it was the first of its kind, but there was already an imperial order in 1487 and the more meaningful imperial regulation that came in 1498.

Loyalty

If the House of Baden was not hugely successful in promoting economic activity, there was one thing they were excelling at – loyalty, specifically loyalty to the House of Hohenstaufen. The idea being that loyal vassals were rewarded with more fiefs and could expect favourable imperial court decisions in the regular disputes with neighbours and cousins.

They were there right from the word go! Margrave Hermann III fought with Konrad of Hohenstaufen in his civil war against emperor Lothar III and followed him on the ill-fated second crusade. His son, Margrave Hermann IV accompanied Barbarossa to Italy, fought with him before Milan and at the catastrophic battle of Legnano. He too came along on an ill-fated crusade, the third one, where he also died. The next margrave, Hermann V fought for Philipp of Swabia in these civil wars and joined the Frederick II when he showed up at Constance in 1212.

But the title of most loyal and most romantic of paladins must go to margrave Friedrich I. Barely 18 he followed his best friend and liege lord, Konradin, duke of Swabia and grandson of Frederick II to Southern Italy. Beaten at the battle of Tagliacozzo in 1268 they were imprisoned together in the Castello de Ovo in Naples. Legend has it that the two friends were playing chess when they were told that the king of Sicily had condemned them both to death. They heard the message, looked at each, and resumed their game. This whole story, including this scene became a bit of a cornerstone of German national mythology which also developed some rather unexpected homoerotic undertones. Tischbein painted the scene in 1784. Look at the picture, and you will get what I mean. 

[Bildindex der Kunst und Architektur]

So, was it worth it? Well, the last bit that ended with young Friedrich decapitated on the market square of Naples certainly did not. But on the other hand, it could have been the by far most rewarding bet in medieval history. Because Friedrich was not only the heir to the margraviate of Baden, he was also the grandson of the last Babenberger duke of Austria, aka, the golden boy in Tischbein’s picture was in play to become duke of Austria. He did not have the cards though; king Ottokar of Bohemia had already occupied the duchy. But if Konradin had succeeded in Sicily and then returned to the empire like his grandfather had done, thrown out Richard of Cornwall and been crowned King of the Romans, well then the new king would have supported his best mate’s claim on Austria. And if that had happened, then it would have been bye-bye Habsburg and all hail the Badenian emperors.

Ok, that did not work out and instead of world domination, we have a tragic tale of friendship and chivalry. But that does not mean  that a century of loyalty had gone unrewarded.  The core of the Baden lands, that stretch on the eastern shore of the Rhine from Bruchsal to Baden-Baden was at least in large part given in compensation for services rendered. They also were able to expand their traditional homeland way upriver between Freiburg and Basle, the area still called the Markgräflerland, and they acquired the county of Sponheim, quite a way further north, along the Nahe River.

When the Hohenstaufen fell, the margraves of Baden took over much of what they had held on behalf of the imperial family as their own and added a few bits and pieces, though they were nowhere near as successful in this grab and run as the Habsburgs or Württembergers had been.

Military prowess

So loyalty, sort of tick, but not a huge one. They did all right, but not massively so. Hence, if you cannot get it by charm, can you get it by force of arms?

Well, they tried, once, in 1462 in a conflict that involved almost everyone we have met so far. What I am talking about is – of course – the Mainzer Stiftsfehde.

I have mentioned it several times before, but there was no point in trying to describe it unless we have all the protagonists around the table. That we do now, so here it goes.

On May 6th, 1459 the archbishop of Mainz, Dietrich Schenk von Erbach passed away. He had led the archdiocese for 25 years, 25 years during which they lost again lands and rights to the landgraves of Hesse who had now pushed through Mainz territory almost all the way to the gates of Frankfurt. 

When the cathedral chapter proceeded to elect a new archbishop, two candidates were put up, Diether von Isenburg and Adolf von Nassau. Diether von Isenburg gained the upper hand, 4 against 3 votes. He then asked the pope, who was – drumroll – Pius II, formerly Aeneas Silvio Piccolomini, author of fruity prose, friend of the podcast, but also now a conservative hardliner. Piccolomini demanded that Isenburg submits to him, not only as it concerned his activity as shepherd of his sizeable flock, but also in his role as Prince Elector. Isenburg remained non-committal, but Pius II thought he had won and gave him the pallium together with a bill for 10,000 gulden, twice the usual papal tax on newly appointed bishops.

Diether von isenburg

That payment became the crunch point. After his predecessors had lost so much of Mainz territory and income,  the new archbishop did not have the money for the standard fee, let alone a double fee.

It also did not help that another papal condition was that he should wage war against the count Palatine. That Isenburg did, not realising that his opponent was none other than Friedrich der Siegreiche, Frederick the Victorious, who was, well, victorious.

That lost battle further reduced the resources of the archbishopric. Which is why Isenburg now outright refused to pay the papal fee. At which point Pius II deposed him and promoted his erstwhile rival, Adolf von Nassau to the archepiscopal throne.

Adolf II von Nassau

Great result. We now have again two contenders for the most senior prince electorship in the empire, a principality that was already in trouble. So the sharks start circling.

Isenburg secured the support from the city of Mainz, and in an interesting 180 degree shift, the help of his erstwhile enemy, Friedrich der Siegreiche of the Palatinate. Friedrich’s change of allegiance had not come out of a deep conviction on points of canon law, as you can imagine but was brought about by the promise of valuable archepiscopal territory, namely Lorsch and Heppenheim.

Meanwhile Adolf von Nassau too is busy offering generous rewards to nobles willing to support his cause. He was particularly successful amongst the neighbours of Friedrich who feared the continued strengthening of the Palatinate. Duke Ulrich V of Wurttemberg signed up, the bishop of Speyer, Nix von Hoheneck signed up, and then there was the question of whether the Margrave of Baden would sign up too. This Margarve, Karl I, was a sensible, calculating man. He knew the Palatinate was militarily and economically much stronger than his territory. But the margravial family had just hit a temporary pinnacle of power. One of his brothers was the archbishop of Trier, and another the bishop of Metz.

And then news came that Friedrich of the Palatinate was also involved in another, equally sizeable feud in Bavaria, and had left his lands with an army to go to Landshut.

That was it, now or never. Karl von Baden had an alliance of Württemberg, Trier, Speyer, Metz and half of Mainz to go after their overbearing neighbour in the north, who was also out of the country. So, let’s do it.

They gathered their army of allegedly 8,000 and invaded the Palatinate. As per standard procedure, they got busy burning down towns and villages, believing the Count Palatine was away. You can imagine their surprise when they came to the village of Seckenheim, now a part of Mannheim and encountered 300 palatinate riders and 2,000 infantry and the man himself.

It was time to fight. The Badenians called up their 700-800 knights, whilst Friedrich received reinforcements of 300 armoured riders from Mainz. The battle was fierce and lasted all day. As was becoming more common, the deciding factor was the infantry, specifically the militia of Heidelberg who targeted the horses and fought the knights on foot. But there was still good old chivalry going on. The commander of the invading force, duke Ulrich of Württemberg refused to accept the defeat and kept on fighting ferociously. He was then called up for single combat by a knight called Hans von Gemmingen. Ulrich was defeated and taken prisoner, as were margrave Karl von Baden and his brother, the bishop of Metz.

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They all had to pay huge ransom and Karl von Baden had to hand over parts of his county of Sponheim and take his city of Pforzheim as a Palatine fief. There was a rematch in 1504 at which Baden was more successful, but that was the end of their ambition to conquer lands.

The true loser in all that was the city of Mainz. A few months later Adolf von Nassau managed to convince some citizens to open the gates to his army. His soldiers pored in, killed a lot of people, including the brother of Johann Fuss, the printer. The next morning Adolf called up 800 citizens, including Johannes Gutenberg and tells them to leave. The city was stripped of its autonomy and rights and was from then on no longer a free imperial city.

But this is not the end of the martial history of the margraves of Baden. They never had the resources to fight a major war, but once they divided their already small lands even further, into Baden-Baden and Baden Durlach that was completely out of reach.

Though they could not fight on their own behalf, they could do so on behalf of others. One who went down this route was Ludwig Wilhelm, Margrave von Baden-Baden. Though he was a reigning prince, he spent his entire life in the service of the Austrian Habsburgs. He fought at the siege of Vienna in 1683 and rose through the ranks during the Ottoman wars, becoming Imperial Field Marshall and supreme commander in the Great Turkish war in 1689. In 1691 he won the battle of Slankamen that secured Hungary for the Habsburgs. All this happened against the simultaneously occurring war of the Palatinate Succession where French troops deliberately devastated South West Germany, and amongst others destroyed Ludwig’s home in Baden-Baden. To save his lands he transferred to the Palatinate front and handed over command in Hungary to his cousin, Prince Eugene of Savoy, who promptly won the battle of Zenta that ended the great Turkish War making Eugene, not Ludwig into a great Austrian hero. Ludwig, affectionately called the Turkenlouis remained in imperial service and was given huge amounts of money, the booty from his wars and a rich heiress. All that was enough for him to build the vast palace of Rastatt, the first of the great baroque German palaces modelled on Versailles.

Splendour

If there is one trait that defines these principalities in the empire, than it’s one-upmanship. Sure, if you are a successful general, by all means go and build yourself an enormous castle, you literally earned it. And yes, if your cousin, successor and rival builds himself an even larger and even more splendid palace in Vienna, aka the Belvedere, then it is a blessing to be dead before it is finished.

But not all imperial princes can be great war heroes. In fact very few were. That did not stop them spending vigorously. The house of Baden has its fair share of tales of profligacy, two of which are quite extraordinary.

The first involves margrave Eduard Fortunat of Baden-Rodemachern (1565 to 1600). Despite his name Fortunatus, he was not a very fortunate man.

Let’s start with his father, Christoph, margrave of Baden-Rodemachern had been the second son of the margrave of Baden-Baden. To avoid another division of this already minuscule territory, Christoph agreed to get an annual pension and a few villages around Rodemachern. If you won’t find it on the atlas, it is because it is now called Rodemack, and is one of the Plus Beaux Villages en France, but not exactly a metropolis. In 1564 he married Cecilia of Sweden, daughter of king Eric XIV. How come a man with a glorious title but not more income than an English squire married a Swedish princess? The only case I can think of went the opposite way, the king of Sweden marrying a German Olympic hostess.

Well, as it happens, Cecilia was a bit of a wild child, having trysts with her brother in law and racking up astounding debts. A margrave with no cash and no questions was a suitable marriage candidate for a promiscuous princess, in fact he was the only marriage candidate.

Unsurprisingly, Cecilia preferred the royal courts of europe to Rodemachern, which explains why Eduard Fortunat was born in London and why Elisabeth I was his godmother. To fund her lifestyle at court his mother employed pirates challenging Hanseatic trade. But this side hustle  wasn’t enough to pay for it all and so she piled up debt on a staggering scale. It went so far that her husband had to flee to avoid getting put into debtor’s prison. Well, he still ended up there when he tried to sneak back into the country. He was only released when Elisabeth I covered his debts to avoid a diplomatic clash with Sweden. Cecilia, her husband and son had to leave and moved to Stockholm. There she expanded her pirate fleet and converted to Catholicism. It is all very chaotic, which is why her husband and son left and returned to tiny Rodemachern. When little Eduard is 10, his father died. His mother showed up 4 years later with the Spanish ambassador in tow, giving birth to a girl shortly afterwards.

Everyone in the little castle of Rodemachern is broke. Ceclia’s income from Sweden has been cut because she tried to have her brother, King John killed, which is just not the done thing. The scandal about the little girl also does not help. The Ambassador buggered off. Still, Eduard Fortunat adds a nice palace on his village hill.

Things suddenly brighten up when young Eduard inherits the much bigger margraviate of Baden-Baden. Ok, Baden-Baden is also deep in debt and profoundly mismanaged, but at least bigger than Rodemachern. So it is party, party, party all the way, until Eduard Fortunat’s habits collide with financial realities. His debts are such that most of the income of the margraviate goes straight out to the big bankers, the Fuggers and Welsers. At that point he asks the Fuggers whether they want to buy the margraviate, but they turn him down. So he goes to Brussels to live with mum who seeming had found someone willing to lend her some more cash.

In Brussels our not very fortunate Eduard Fortunat meets Maria von Eicken, a lady of some wealth and beauty, but not of equivalent status to a margrave. He initially tried to fool her into a fake marriage to get hold of her money but not grant her the status of margravine. But she figures it out and pressures him into an official marriage on Schloss Hohenbaden. Where he appears reluctantly and wearing slippers.

And he had a point. This mesalliance – and his profound mismanagement- was taken as the reason for Eduard’s cousins, the Margraves of Baden-Durlach to occupy his territory.

At which point he comes up with a great new plan. He had met two Italian alchemists who had promised him to turn base metal into gold. He takes his last funds and puts them up in one of his few remaining castles, at Yburg near Baden-Baden. Turns out making gold is hard, but they were able to make poison. So they hatch another plan – to poison the Baden-Durlach cousins and take over their margraviate in return. That, I am afraid, that did not work out either. The whole sorry tale comes to an end in 1600 when Eduard the unfortunate, has an unfortunate fall.

A sad story, which now needs to be followed by a more positive, if equally profligate one.

In 1709 the margraviate of Baden was still divided between two the lines, the House of Baden-Baden living in the massively oversized palace in Rastatt, and the Baden-Durlachs who resided in a in the small township of Durlach. Today it takes about 10 minutes to cross either of these states on the motorway.

They were tiny and after the 30-years war, followed by the War of the Palatinate Succession and then the War of the Spanish Succession, all of which involved troops marauding across the Badenian lands, their economies were all pretty much wiped out.

In the case of the margraves of Baden-Durlach, all their homes and castles had been burned down by the French.  That is why the new margrave, Karl III Wilhelm decided that he needed a new palace. And he called it Karl’s rest, Karlsruhe in German. I guess the name rings a bell, but if you have never been there, let me explain it to you.

Karlsruhe is the most absolutist city design you can imagine. It was built entirely from scratch. At its centre stands the Schlossturm, the castle tower. From the tower, 32 roads emerge in a straight line, like rays from a sun, reflecting the 32 sections on a mariner’s compass. Three quarters of the alleys go out into the vast hunting forest, whilst in the southern quarter, 8 avenues adorned with buildings stretch out like a fan. Wherever one is in the designed city, one can see the castle tower, the seat of the ruler, a true sun king, only that this king was a mere margrave.

The original design did not designate space for a town hall, nor did the concept recognise any form of representation of the estates. Baden Durlach was so tiny, its cities had shrunk to mere towns and its nobility had been subjected, so that absolutist rule found little resistance.

But again, there is that disconnect between baroque ideal and economic reality. Karl III really wanted to be an absolutist ruler, a benevolent one who moves his little statelet forward, but an absolutist ruler all the same. But when it came to filling up his grand design with actual people, he realised, he needed to give them incentives. Money he did not have, nor was there any industry or  university yet. All he could offer was, freedom. So he gave them religious freedom, freedom of opinion, press freedom, within limits of curse, but still, freedom.

So, despite its uberauthoritarian design, it is not an oppressive structure. The palace surrounding the Schlossturm is of course vast, it had to be. The cousins down in Rastatt had just added the Fasanerie to their already immense Schloss and the bishop of Speyer had hired the greatest of German baroque architects, Balthasar Neumann to build his residence at Bruchsal, a mere 25km north, whilst the gigantic block that is the Mannheimer Schloss loomed another 30km further on.

 The right man at the right time

Ok now you say, thanks, this is all very amusing, but how did these little margrave with their tinpot statelets and oversized palaces acquire a territory that stretched 260km from Mannheim to the gates of Basel, including most of the Black Forest and the cities of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Karlsruhe, Offenburg, Freiburg and Constance.

There are two ways to tell this story, one is about diplomatic genius, and the other is about being in the right place at the right time.

Let’s do the hero story first.

When Karl III of Baden-Durlach, the founder of Karlsruhe died in 1738, the title went to his grandson, Karl Friedrich who was just 10 years old. He did take over officially in 1746, but most what he did was having a great time, fathering children and losing money playing cards. In 1751 he got married and it seems his wife straightened him out.

From now on he took an interest in the wellbeing of his lands that held roughly 90,000 people. And she got him interested in the latest development in philosophy, sciences and economics. She herself corresponded with Voltaire, received Herder, Goethe, Klopstock Gluck and Wieland at her court.  He in turn struck up friendships with the Physiocrats and went to Paris to meet Mirabeau. Pierre Du Pont de Nemours briefly acted as chief minister for Baden.

Karlsruhe became another of the centres of enlightened absolutism in the German lands. He banned torture in 1767 and serfdom in 1783, 30 years after Frederick the Great, but at least he did it. After all some of his colleague were selling troops to the Brits to suppress the American Colonies at the same time.

And then Karl Friedrich inherits. In 1771 the last of the margraves of Baden-Baden shuffles off his mortal coil, and according to a century old arrangement, his lands are reunited with those of his cousin. That now more than doubles the size of his little state to roughly 200,000 peoples.

20 years later the French Revolution and with it the revolutionary wars begin. And Baden, on the Rhine, just across from Alsace was straight in the firing line.

At which point we have to introduce another hero, Sigismund von Reitzenstein. He was a lawyer who had studied at the university of Göttingen and joined the Baden administration in 1788 where he quickly rose up the food chain. Just as an aside, he would later reform the university of Heidelberg along the lines of Göttingen and Berlin as we discussed last week.

In 1796 things came to a head. This is the War of the First Coalition and things are moving back and forth. The French have made gains, but they have also experienced reversals of fortune. Napoleon is an unknown general being given command of the ragtag army of Italy. Jourdain and Moreau are attacking along the Rhine. Baden has to make a choice, stand with the Austrians or submit to the French.

Baden signs a ceasefire with France. Reitzenstein negotiates a separate peace with the French. Not a great one, Baden was to give up its territories on the left bank of the Rhine, about 10% of their total and pay 2 million in compensation. His prince refused to sign it. But a few month later, after the Austrians had caved under Napoleon’s onslaught, he signs on the dotted line.

Meanwhile Reitzenstein had moved to Paris as the envoy of the margraviate of Baden. And whilst there he made many friends, convinced them of Karl Friedrich’s enlightened convictions and general amenity towards the French. At home Reitzenstein kept pushing for ever closer alignment with the French, preventing Baden from joining the war of the Second Coalition, as for instance Württemberg had done.

And in 1803 in the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss the rewards poured in. Baden received territory of the dissolved prince-bishoprics of Speyer and Strasburg as well as several abbeys, and – drumroll – the whole of the Palatinate on the right bank of the Rhine, including Mannheim and Heidelberg. And to top it off, Karl Friedrich received the Electorate of the Palatinate as well.

Stephanie de Beauharnais
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But that wasn’t all. Reitzenstein, who had been ill for a while returned to Paris in 1806 and negotiated the real coup,  a marriage between the heir of Baden and Stephanie de Beauharnais, Napoleon’s adopted stepdaughter. That marriage only came about in 1807, but in advance of it, Baden received the Breisgau, former Austrian lands in the southwest, including the city of Freiburg. Then the counties of Leiningen and the principality of Fürstenberg. And all the prince bishops and abbeys, places like Constance, St. Blasien and St. Peter that lay in between, they were all incorporated into Baden. When Karl Friedrich died in 1811, his state had over 900,000 inhabitants, up from 90,000 when he set out 73 years earlier.

Reitzenstein did one more thing to protect the state he helped create. In 1813, after the battle of Leipzig, he convinced the new margrave to withdraw his troops and join the anti-French coalition. That was late, but not too late. And definitely not too late for a prince who was also Napoleon’s son-in-law.

Within this story, there is an epilogue. The allied forces demanded that the new margrave divorced his wife, Stepahanie Beauharnais. He refused, not out of love, but out of common decency, which could have resulted in the restitution of land to the deposed counts and princes. Baden was saved by his sister, wife of Zsar Alexander of Russia who intervened on his behalf and the general reluctance to return to the tiny states pre-Napoleon.

Stephanie de Beauharnais had no surviving son. One boy was born but was declared dead soon after. Then, in 1828, a young man appeared in Nurnberg who said he had been raised in total isolation in a darkened cell. Some claimed that this man, who was given the name Kaspar Hauser, was in fact the son of Stephanie de Beauharnais who had not in fact died and was hence the true heir to the Grand Duchy – something for a whole episode I think.

All these stories about diplomatic genius and daring marriages are however only half the story. The underlying reason Napoleon reorganised the states of the Holy Roman Empire was to create entities that were large enough to provide him with viable auxiliary forces, but too small and too divided to stand up against him. And for the South-West, Baden was not just the natural, but the only option to create such a state.

Let’s go through the other principalities in the area. First up, the bishops and abbots are a no go for obvious reasons. Then there is the Palatinate. But the Electors Palatinate had inherited Bavaria in 1777. Bavaria had already gained significantly, so that adding the South West would have made Bavaria far too big.

A major expansion of Württemberg would in principle have been possible. However, the current duke, Friedrich had joined the Second coalition, was the son in law of king George III of England and Napoleon did not like him. Friedrich was an extraordinarily tall and even more extraordinarily obese man, prompting Napoleon to say that he was put on earth to test how far human skin can stretch. Friedrich in return wondered how so much poison could be contained in so small a head as Napoleon’s. No, that was not an option.

The next contender would be the house of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. Apart from being a tiny state, this was the Hohenzollern family, linked to the king of Prussia, which also did not work.

And finally, the largest landowner in the south of what is now Baden were the Habsburgs. The area was called Further Austria after all. Giving them more land was explicitly not the plan.

So, by a process of elimination, the Margrave of Baden was the only viable option if Napoleon wanted a medium-sized state in the South-West ruled by a client king, or more precisely a client Grand Duke. Sure Reitzenstein’s diplomacy, Karl Friedrich’s affinity to the French enlightenment,  his granddaughters being the wife of Zsar Alexander and the marriage of Stephanie de Beauharnais were helpful, but I am wondering how crucial.

So, here we are. How do you rise from having a tiny statelet squeezed between powerful neighbours and the need to keep up with the palace-building Joneses: be in the right place at the right time, and then do not muck it up.

Next week we will take a look at another one of Baden’s powerful neighbours, Württemberg and follow up on a theory I recently read about how this region, the ancient stem duchy of Swabia became one of Europe’s centres of innovation. Prepare to be amazed.

And in the meantime, why not catching up on some of the topics we touched upon today, namely:

How the Hohenstaufen rose to become dukes of Swabia in episode 43 – All Change, All Change and then how Barbarossa settles the conflict between his family and the Zähringer in episode 50 “Barbarossa Begins”. .

I often guide listeners to episode 91 – the Hohenstaufen Epilogue to relive the end of Konradin and the House of Hohenstaufen, but there is another story that involved the margraves of Baden, the sad story of Frederick II’s eldest son, Henry, the King in Brackets, episode 81.

Then there is the fall of the Zaeringer, the struggle over Austria and the rise of the Habsburgs we discussed in episode 140: Rudolf von Habsburg and the Golden King.

I hope you enjoy those, and if it makes you want to support the show on historyofthegermans.com/support, you know where to find it.

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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 15th 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.

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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 15th 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 15th 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 19th 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 15th 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.

Schloss Mannheim, Ehrenhof

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 19th 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 15th 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.

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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.

fot. Radoslaw Drozdzewski /Wikipedia

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 11th 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.

Palatiate in 1329

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 15th 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 16th 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.

Giovanni Bellini, Portrait of a Humanist

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.

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