Thuringia

by on

These last few episodes you may have wondered how all this hangs together. This week we will try to resolve this question. What we will talk about is how the great stem duchy of Saxony fell apart. And there are two stories about that. One is the story of Henry the Lion and his fall in 1180. That story has been repeated over and over again and put into a context of rivalry between the Welf and the Hohenstaufen, between Guelfs and Ghibellines. It makes for a great story of betrayal and revenge. But it is also partly wrong and more importantly, not the whole story. The whole story is one about princely opposition against centralising tendencies, about an antagonism between the south and the north and about a broad trend of fragmentation of power that engulfed not just the empire but also Italy, Poland, Denmark and others.

It is the resulting environment of warring mid-sized principalities that allowed alternative structures like the Hanseatic League and the Teutonic Knights to emerge. So let’s get straight into it.

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 108 – From Saxony to Saxonies

These last few episodes you may have wondered how all this hangs together. This week we will try to resolve this question. What we will talk about is how the great stem duchy of Saxony fell apart. And there are two stories about that. One is the story of Henry the Lion and his fall in 1180. That story has been repeated over and over again and put into a context of rivalry between the Welf and the Hohenstaufen, between Guelfs and Ghibellines. It makes for a great story of betrayal and revenge. But it is also partly wrong and more importantly, not the whole story. The whole story is one about princely opposition against centralising tendencies, about an antagonism between the south and the north and about a broad trend of fragmentation of power that engulfed not just the empire but also Italy, Poland, Denmark and others.

It is the resulting environment of warring mid-sized principalities that allowed alternative structures like the Hanseatic League and the Teutonic Knights to emerge. So let’s get straight into it.

But before we start let me tell you that the History of the Germans Podcast is advertising free thanks to the generous support from patrons. And you can become a patron too and enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and other privileges from the price of a latte per month. All you have to do is sign up at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on my website historyofthegermans.com. You find all the links in the show notes. And thanks a lot to Tej. Egefjord, Alex P., Bernhard B. and Jerry C.Z. who have already signed up.

For today’s narrative we have to – for one last time – go back to the reign of Lothar of Supplinburg. It is with him that the process of territorialisation of the principalities begins. He may not have invented the concept – that honour must go to emperor Henry IV – but he was the one who decided who amongst the magnates of the North would become the great territorial princes. He gave some minor Westphalian noblemen the county of Holstein, he gave Albrecht the Bear the Mark that became the Mark Brandenburg, and he installed the house of Wettin in Meissen and Lusatia.

But the biggest territorial decision was the great election bribe to Henry the Black, duke of Bavaria. If you remember way back in episode 43 there were two men contesting the election as king of the Romans. One was Frederick of Hohenstaufen, duke of Swabia, nephew and heir of the last Salian emperor Henry V. The other had been Lothar of Supplinburg. The electors were split right down the middle, and all depended on the Bavarians. Their duke, Henry the Black was married to Frederick’s sister and the Hohenstaufen party was confident the vote would go in their favour. But ii did not. Henry the Black switched over to Lothar, making him king and later emperor Lothar III.

The price he had to pay for that was that Lothar gave his only child, Gertrud, in marriage to Henry’s son, Henry the Proud. Since Lothar died without heirs, all of the enormous wealth he had acquired during his long and successful life came to the House of Welf. Henry the Proud became duke of Saxony on top of his title as duke of Bavaria.

What Henry the Proud did not become was king and emperor. The German princes could no longer tolerate an emperor with such an enormous personal powerbase. Hence the elected Frederick’s brother, Konrad III. Konrad turned out to be exactly as advertised, a weak king caught in a constant struggle with his largest vassal.

What saved Konrad III’s reign was the sudden death of Henry the Proud, who left behind a small boy, also imaginatively called Henry, Henry the Lion.

Henry’s grandmother, the dowager empress Richeza managed to preserve the enormous property of the House of Welf for young Henry. The only bit he had lost was the duchy of Bavaria that Konrad had given to his half-brother, the Babenberger count of Austria.

In 1152 Frederick Barbarossa becomes king and in 1155 emperor. His proposition to the princes, including to Henry the Lion who is by now 23 years old, is that he will rule as a first amongst equals. He promises to involve them in his decision making and share whatever gains they would make from rebuilding imperial power in Italy.

The capstone of his policy is the reconciliation between the Hohenstaufen and the Welf. Part of that reconciliation is the return of the title of duke of Bavaria, title the family lost under Konrad III. That is achieved by splitting the duchy into two parts, one going to Henry the Lion, the other going to the Babenbergers who are elevated to dukes of Austria. But Bavaria was only a status symbol. Henry the Lion never really cares about Bavaria and barely visits. The main plank of the deal is that Barbarossa supports any policy Henry the Lion wants to implement in Saxony.

And that policy is to turn the duchy of Saxony into a territorial principality. Henry the Lion tries to to do the same thing Konrad of Wettin did in the margraviate of Meissen and what Albrecht the Baer did in Brandenburg.

That means he builds castles across his lands in Saxony and staffs them with his Ministeriales who are to keep the peace and dispense justice. And he extends his allodial, i.e., private lands. He is already the heir to some of the richest and most powerful families in the duchy, the Brunones of Brunswick, the Northeims and the Billungs. But that is not enough.

His first target is the county of Stade. You may remember from the episode about Albrecht the Baer that the counts of Stade were an ancient dynasty that controlled the lands between Hamburg and Bremen and were margraves of the Northern March. You may also remember that the last margrave of the Northern March was killed by Dithmarscher peasants and his sole heir was disposed of by Albrecht the Baer.

That left two. One was Hartwich who had joined the church and was a member of the cathedral chapter of the archdiocese of Hamburg-Bremen. Hartwich was the heir to the family lands since the only other surviving family member was his sister. Hartwich did a deal with the archbishop of Bremen. He would make the archbishopric the heir to most his vast fortune, if the collegiate would make him archbishop once the current incumbent is dead. The archbishop was delighted by this plan.

As we know from the episode about Gottschalk and Adalbert, the archbishopric of Hamburg-Bremen had been squeezed by both the Billung dukes of Saxony and the Danish kings. Though they still harboured the ambition to become the religious centre for all of Scandinavia, their lack of resources and the creation of an archbishopric in the then Danish city of Lund meant this had been a pipe dream. Having Stade would finally provide the resources to become the head of the Christian faith on the Baltic.no wonder he was excited.

Who was not excited about the idea was Henry the Lion. He immediately declares a claim on the lands of the counts of Stade. He claims ownership of the county primarily because he is the duke and Hartwig – being a churchman – cannot perform the duties of a count, namely fighting in battle and performing executions. He also claims that his family are the closest relatives of the counts of Stade, based on some 10th century ancestor. Both arguments are extraordinary flimsy. Henry will show a similarly flexible approach to legality throughout his career.

In 1145 the Saxon nobles get together to adjudicate the dispute between Henry the Lion and the Archbishop. As henry sees that things are not going his way, he unsheathes his sword, has his men holding back the judges and apprehends the archbishop and Hartwich of Stade. Legally, schmeagely.

The next inheritance is that of Hermann II of Winzenburg. He is another of the Saxon noblemen who amassed a fortune after the duchy had moved outside of imperial control. He created an almost completely coherent territory from Hannover to Northern Hesse.

He was a brutal man, even by the standards of the time. He had angered and enraged many, but the ones who really hated him were the bishops of Hildesheim and his Ministeriales. Two of them decided to put an end to all of this and broke into the count’s bedchamber, murdered him and his wife. This wife was – yes you may remember – Liutgard, the sister of Hartwich.

And again, who would claim the inheritance? Henry the Lion of course. His great-grandmother was the sister of Herman’s great grandfather. So a much closer relation that count Herman’s two daughters. Or Albrecht the Baer, who also lodged a claim. But by now the decider is Frederick Barbarossa and Frederick and Henry have a deal. The possessions of the count of Winzenburg are added to the already massive fortune of Henry the Lion.

So far so normal. This is the bit where Henry the Lion emulates Konrad of Wettin and his descendants, adding territory bit by bit and deepening his hold on them.

Where he is the equivalent of Albrecht the Bear is in the March of the Billungs, the land of the Abodrites. You may remember that we talked about Henry the Lion’s campaigns in the episode about the Foundation of Lübeck. He first tries in 1147 during the Wendish crusade and then again in 1160, in the latter case with a lot more success. During the 1160 campaign he establishes his own centrally controlled march centred around Schwerin. He invites settlers to come and wrestles Lübeck out of the hands of Adolph II of Schauenburg.

The final cornerstone of his power structure and where he goes well beyond the other two is in his handling of the church. Henry the Lion intended to bring the major bishops in his duchy under his direct control. As for the archbishoprics, this had to be done by force. Hartwig of Stade, the man Henry had expropriated had become archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen and was unsurprisingly an implacable enemy. Henry used military force to keep the archbishop down and even used his mate Frederick Barbarossa who expropriated further bits of the Bremen church in 1155. As for Magdeburg, the other archbishopric in Saxony, that was held by bishop Wichmann. Wichmann was a close confidant of Barbarossa and his former chancellor. That gave him a stronger position and duke and archbishop were constantly facing off against each other at the castle of Haldensleben.

Whilst the archbishops were under pressure, the bishops were properly subjected. The bishop of Halberstadt, Ulrich was stripped of his fiefs by Barbarossa in 1155 for failure to take part in the Italian campaign and then expelled in 1159 when he sided with pope Alexander III during the schism. Henry the Lion then placed a docile man of his choosing on the episcopal throne who handed over fiefs of the Halberstadt church to the duke. In Hildesheim the bishop fund himself entirely surrounded by Henry the Lion’s lands. The bishop’s Ministeriales and vassals shifted allegiance to the duke putting an end to ambitions to grow episcopal territory. The same happened in Verden and Minden.

Where Henry the Lion had even more influence was on the bishoprics in his march. In 1154 Barbarossa granted Henry the Lion the royal rights of investiture over Ratzeburg, Oldenburg and Mecklenburg. That is an unprecedented grant that elevates Henry the Lion’s position to a vice-regal if not quasi-regal position.

These regal ambitions of Henry the Lion manifested themselves in his enormous palace of Dankwarderode, today part of Brunswick. This construction easily rivalled any of the imperial palaces like Hagenau and Gelnhausen.

Another elevation of his status came when he married Matilda, the daughter of Henry II of England and sister of Richard the Lionheart. This marriage was again the result of the close relationship between Henry the Lion and Barbarossa. Barbarossa had intended to forge a closer link with Henry II as both rulers were in conflict with pope Alexander III. The agreement was to be sealed by a marriage alliance. One of the English princesses was to marry the eldest son of Barbarossa and the other should marry Henry the Lion. The marriage to Barbarossa’s son did not take place in the end, but in 1168 the wedding took place in the cathedral of Minden.

By that time Henry the Lion was at the zenith of his power. He had expanded the already vast territory he had inherited and his plans to turn all this into a territorial principality were proceeding at pace.

But what about the Saxon nobles? All these freedom-loving, hard-edged warriors, who had raised their arms at the slightest indication of imperial overreach. Where are they?

Well, many of their families, like the Northeims, the Stades and the Winzenburgs have simply died out and their land has gone to, well to Henry the Lion himself. The counts of Holstein who had risen to prominence owed their elevation to Lothar III and were hence loyal vassals of Henry the Lion.

But there are powerful men who saw the rise of Henry the Lion as a major threat to their position. One was Albrecht the Baer who had tried to take over the duchy of Saxony in the days of Konrad III and had ever since hankered at replacing Henry the Lion. Then there are the counts palatinate of Saxony who had been tricked out of various inheritances by Henry the Lion. And then there are the churchmen, Wichmann of Magdeburg and Hartwig of Bremen I already mentioned but other bishops, like the deposed Ulrich of Halberstadt and the encircled bishops of Hildesheim and Verden were equally opposed to Henry the Lion. In 1163 these men got in touch with other imperial princes, including the landgraves of Thuringia, the duke of Austria and the king of Bohemia to go after Henry the Lion.

It is again Barbarossa who comes to the Lion’s rescue and convinces the major princes to abandon their plan. In 1164 Albrecht the Aber and the count palatinate of Saxony try again but get defeated. It seems that as long as Barbarossa was on the Lion’s side, he was untouchable.

But in 1166 Barbarossa sets off on his fourth and largest Italian campaign. The oppressive imperial rule in Italy had exhausted the patience of even Barbarossa’s closest allies like Cremona, Pavia and Lodi. He went down to Italy with one of the largest forces ever mustered by a medieval emperor.

With the emperor out of the country, the conspirators decided to strike. Their ranks had been swelled by the sons of Konrad of Wettin who had intermarried with Albrecht the Baer’s family. They attacked the castle of Haldensleben, one of Henry the Lion’s key fortresses. Their side got an enormous boost when the archbishop of Cologne joined their side.

By 1167 Henry the Lion is so distressed he reconciles with Pribislav, the prince of the Abodrites who he had fought for five years in an attempt to gain control of the March of the Billungs. In this agreement Henry concedes him Mecklenburg and opens up the way for a Slavic ruler to become duke of Mecklenburg and an imperial prince.

Throughout 1167 and 1168 the situation became more and more difficult for Henry the Lion. His enemies were ravaging his lands and he was losing supporters. But in 1168 the greatest of Henry’s supporters was back. The emperor Frederick Barbarossa stepped in. He demanded an end to the war that he blamed on the defeat in his Italian campaign. Had only the soldiers engaged in this civil war come to the aid of the emperor, the war against the Lombard League and the pope could have been won. Whether Barbarossa believed that is doubtful given his huge army was defeated, not by a human enemy, but by infection.

Still, Henry the Lion prevailed, and he could even leave his duchies in 1172 to go on a crusade to the Holy Land. If you want to hear more about that journey, there is a bonus episode in the Patreon feed about it.

I guess you have now clocked the pattern. Whenever Henry’s expansionist ambitions run into obstacles, the emperor Barbarossa appears like a genie in a bottle and sorts everything out. Which begs the question, why would he do that?

On obvious reason is that Henry supported Barbarossa with men and weapons during his Italian campaigns. He played an important role in the first and second siege of Milan where he brought in as many as a 1000 armoured knights with equipment etc.

The other reason was that Barbarossa had seen his uncle Konrad III fight an endless war against the Welf that rendered his predecessor unable to pursue any kind of long-term strategy. His main value proposition to the empire had been that he would be the capstone that reconciled the two families.

We, having followed Saxon history since 800 in this series, we know this is not just a family conflict. Saxony had moved into a semi-autonomous relationship with the empire ever since the latter years of Henry IV’s reign. All an emperor could hope for was to have some nominal overlordship over Saxony mediated by whoever the Saxons chose to be their interlocutor. The concept was that Saxony remained part of the empire but would organise its internal affairs without imperial interference. The emperor would interact with the Saxons via an intermediary. These intermediaries were initially Hartwig of Magdeburg and Henry the Fat for emperor Henry IV. Henry V hoped Lothar of Supplinburg would be that link but found that relationship hard to manage. When Lothar ascended the throne Saxony was temporarily folded back into the imperial power structure. That may have been the reason that Konrad III thought he could operate more forcefully in the North, an attempt that ultimately failed.

Barbarossa’s policy versus Henry the Lion was hence a return to the approach taken by Henry IV and Henry V. Henry the Lion’s job was to keep Saxony on an even keel, appear at court and act as a faithful vassal, even though both sides knew he was largely independent and, if possible, support the imperial policy with military resources.

A third reason why Barbarossa was less concerned about the expansionary policies of his most powerful vassal was that he himself had not tried to build his own power-base, his Hausmacht before 1167. Barbarossa’s policy North of the Alps had been to stay above the squabbles for land and local power his magnates engaged in so forcefully. His strategy was to re-establish the imperial regalia in Northern Italy which would give him the resources to pursue his policies on the European stage. Given how much richer Northern Italy was compared to Germany, this would have made him infinitely more powerful than even Henry the Lion.

All these reasons fell away in the decade after 1167.

After the catastrophic loss of his army before Rome in 1167, Barbarossa’s Italian strategy was broken. The dream to build a pan-European empire funded with the riches of Northern Italy had become unrealistic. Barbarossa needed another source of funds. Hence he did what his magnates were doing. He picked up the inheritances of the men who had died in his service during the 1167 campaign, built castles manned with Ministeriales to expand control vertically and even engaged in some light colonisation in the Pleissenland and the Egerland.

That not only brought him into conflict with many of his magnates, including his Saxon magnates, it also eroded his political standing as an emperor who floats above the grubby spats over land.

As for Henry the Lion’s ability to keep Saxony on an even keel, the war of 1167/68 had shown quite clearly that Henry did not command the respect of his Saxon peers. In fact he was the source of the unrest.

And finally there is the famous meeting in Chiavenna. In 1177 Barbarossa had made one last attempt at bringing Northern Italy under his control. That failed already before Alessandria, the city of Straw we talked about in episode 59. But he kept ploughing on and demanded for more troops to be brought down from Germany. Some magnates, including the archbishop of Cologne, complied. Chroniclers who wrote about events decades later report that Barbarossa had asked Henry the Lion to meet in Chiavenna, on the Italian side of the Splugen and Septimer passes. There Barbarossa first demanded and then begged Henry to supply him with additional troops. Barbarossa may or may not have knelt before Henry the Lion as a last resort to sway his mind. Kneeling or even prostrating themselves is something emperors and other powerful men used in the Middle Ages as a last resort sway someone’s opinion. Henry II did it and even Konrad II, the mightiest of German warrior rulers had done it. Henry the Lion still refused, making it an unforgivable affront.

That was compounded by the fact that Barbarossa suffered his final defeat at Legnano where his relatively small contingent of soldiers was defeated by a Milanese army. This defeat brought an end to Barbarossa’s campaigns in Italy and forced him to reconcile with pope Alexander III and the Lombard League.

German historians have been debating whether the footfall of Chiavenna had really happened or not for centuries. Many, in particular in the 19th century built an entire narrative around this snub and its devastating consequences. This was the reason, so they argue, that the alliance between Barbarossa and Henry the Lion broke letting the fight between Welf and Hohenstaufen, between Guelfs and Ghibellines re-emerge.

Modern historians are less certain it happened, though the most recent biography of Henry the Lion by Joachim Ehlers argues quite forcefully for a prostration.

In the end we do not need the whole drama of an imperial footfall to explain why Barbarossa dropped the support for Henry the Lion.

The Lion had stopped being useful. He no longer kept peace in Saxony, he did not act as the emperor’s intermediary, and he could no longer provide military support given his precarious situation. And he wasn’t even a threat anymore. During the previous conflict between Welf and Hohenstaufen, the Welf could count on the support of many of their fellow Saxon nobles. By 1178, that was no longer the case. They almost all hated Henry the Lion.

That is why the conflict between Henry the Lion and the Saxon nobles resumed in 1178. There were various campaigns that I will not bore you with. The main protagonists were the archbishops Philipp of Cologne and Wichmann of Magdeburg as well as the children of Albrecht the Baer and Konrad of Meissen. Henry’s position deteriorated rapidly, many of his castles capitulated without a fight and when Barbarossa joined the campaign in person in 1180 it was over quite quickly.

Henry was stripped of both his ducal titles, the one of Saxony and the one of Bavaria. He lost vast tracts of his lands as his enemies took advantage of his defeat. The archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen even got Stade after all. Henry the Lion had to go into exile to his father-in-law, king Henry II of England.

The great stem duchy of Saxony was split up. The western part became the duchy of Westpahalia and was given the archbishop of Cologne. The eastern part went to Bernhard of Anhalt, the youngest son of Albrecht the Bear. But mostly what happened is that the ducal institutions disappeared. Westphalia became a territorial principality owned by Cologne and the now shrunk duchy of Saxony became an empty title. The counts of Holstein, the Margraves of Brandenburg, the margraves of Meissen, the dukes of Mecklenburg and the Landgraves of Thuringia became medium sized powers. Not large enough to challenge the emperor but string enough to resist any attempts by the central authority to take them over as we have seen last episode.

Henry the Lion returned in 1185 and rebuild some of his personal possessions. It was still a major agglomeration of power and his son, Otto IV, will rise to become king and even be crowned emperor. If you want to hear this story, go to episode 73 to 75. But that involved a civil war against Barbarossa’s son Philip of Swabia, a war that cemented the power of the territorial princes. When Frederick II becomes king and emperor, there is not much he can do to re-establish central power. The empire has become a mixed monarchy where the emperor just coordinates the other princes rather than rules them.

And that is even more true in the North than elsewhere. Imperial power had already been weak since the 11th century but is now virtually non-existent. Nor is there a ducal co-ordination mechanism for the vast territory north of the Main and east of the Rhine. Power is fragmented.

And that situation is mirrored in the two other centres of power in the Baltic, Denmark and Poland. Denmark’s constant wars over the succession are endemic. Though there is a period between 1154 and 1241 under Waldemar I and II when Denmark is united and expansionist, it fell into civil war and what the Danes call “the Decay” right afterwards.

Poland as well had suffered many a civil war as different pretenders for the crown fought each other. Boleslaw III, called wrymouth, managed to unite the country again in 1106 but upon his death in 1138 Poland was divided into 5 separate duchies, Silesia, Masovia, Greater Poland, Sandomierz plus the duchy of Pomerania. Theoretically one of the dukes was the princeps or head of the clan, but de facto, each pursued their own policies.  

Which gets us to the last question, which is why we end up with so many Saxonies in Germany. There is Niedersachsen, Sachsen and Sachsen Anhalt today, but there were lots and lots of duchies of Sachsen-suchandsuch in German history.

Let’s start with Niedersachsen or Lower Saxony in English. This Bundesland came into existence in 1945. That being said, the name goes back to the 14th century and the empire had put together several principalities, mainly that of the Welf duchy of Brunswick and Lueneburg as the Kreis of Lower Saxony. Though Niedersachsen comprised a large part of the old stem duchy of Saxony the territorial princes that formed its Kreis did not have any ducal Saxon title.

The title of duke of Saxony went a you may remember to Bernhard of Anhalt. He then passed it on to his descendants until in 1252 the possessions of Bernhard were divided into three lines. One retained the title of duke of Saxony, the other called themselves princes of Anhalt. Each of them then divided into even more lines, each multiplying the title by adding another placename to it, like Sachsen-Lauenburg and Sachsen-Wittenberg. The one that mattered most here was Sachsen-Wittenberg because with it came the rank of elector. So when the dukes of Sachsen-Wittenberg died out in 1422 the title was reassigned and came to Frederick, margrave of Meissen. His family from then onwards used the title duke or elector of Saxony. The Wettiner then split into two lines in 1485, one who held on to the margraviate of Meissen and the other to the landgraviate of Thuringia. The ones in Thuringia. Both sides used the title duke of Saxony plus location, except of the one who held the electoral position. That moved initially to Thuringia and then to Meissen.

And that explains it all, right? Maybe not. Maybe the simplest way to explain it is that there was no real power or territory associated with the title duke of Saxony, so emperors and other princes tolerated it that the title was granted to all surviving sons of a family, leading to this proliferation of dukes of Saxony. Hence Saxony could gradually wonder off towards the east. And even more bewildering, when Sachsen-Anhalt was created in 1945, the constituent states were the Prussian province of Saxony and the lands of the princes of Anhalt, but no dukedom with Saxony in it. On the other hand, the Bundesland of Thuringen contained no less than four duchies of Saxony, Sachsen-Weimar, Sachsen-Meiningen, Sachsen-Altenburg and Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha. The lands of the Wettiner electors then became simple Saxony. It is a mess. Maybe it is easier to forget about all these tiny Saxonies. All that matters is that the old stem duchy of Saxony was once a hugely powerful political entity in the empire and was now fragmented into a thousand pieces, some more powerful than others, but none truly powerful.

It is this world of fragmented power that allows for the rise of the Hanseatic League and the Teutonic Knights in Prussia. We will get into their story in two weeks’ time as I need to prepare a bit more for this next season. I hope you will join us again.

There are two items of housekeeping that I want to address.

The first is from listener and most generous patron Sherrylyn. She asked for a bibliography at the end of each episode so that she can read up in more detail. I will add book titles at the bottom of the transcripts that you find on my website “historyofthegermans.com. For this episode I relied heavily on Joachim Ehler’s biography of Henry the Lion, on John B. Freed’s biography of Barbarossa and Adam Zamoyski’s Poland.

And further as our story is moving east and north, we are likely to run into geographically contested territory. The way I want to handle this and hopefully get it broadly right is as follows:

When I am talking about the political entities at the time, say the margraviate of Brandenburg or the free city of Gdansk, I will use the English name. where such a name does not exist and the place lies outside modern day Germany I will use either the currently used name or both German and the currently used name. So for instance, I would use the Duke of Silesia, The mayor of Visby and the city of Koenigsberg/Kaliningrad.

When I am talking about geographic locations rather than political entities, I want to use current borders. So, when I speak about Russia in the context of Hanseatic trade routes, I mean the current country of Russia. When I want to talk about the political entities it may be the principality of Nowgrord or of Moskva.

I know that I will make mistakes in that respect, so please correct me if you feel I am getting this wrong.

And now, before I finally go, let me thank all of you who are supporting the show, in particular the Patrons who have kindly signed up on patreon.com/historyofthegermans. It is thanks to you this show does not have to do advertising for products you do not want to hear about. If Patreon isn’t for you, another way to help the show is sharing the podcast directly or boosting its recognition on social media. If you share, comment or retweet a post from the History of the Germans it is more likely to be seen by others, hence bringing in more listeners. My most active places are Twitter @germanshistory and my Facebook page History of the Germans Podcast. As always, all the links are in the show notes.    

Bibliography

by on

If you ever come to Dresden, and if you like art, architecture and history, you very much should, you may want to turn into Augustusstrasse right by the Residenzschloss. What you fnd there is the largest porcelain artwork in the world, 102 metres long and made from 23,000 Meissen porcelain tiles. This is the “Fürstenzug”, the procession of princes. It was made to celebrate 800 years of the House of Wettin who ruled over what we now know as the land of Saxony. It portrays 35 margraves, electors, dukes and kings from 1127 to 1904. Being essentially a 19th century artwork, it depicts all these Saxon rulers as powerful military leaders surrounded by their fighting men and important nobles, all in contemporary costume. There are 94 depictions and only one female figure in the whole procession. So, was the lasting rule of the House of Wettin built upon their martial prowess? Well they did fight a lot, but the true source of their power is depicted in one of the very last figures of the procession coming after the princes, the army, the intellectuals and the artists and largely obscured by the images of the carpenter and the builder involved in the project. What that figure represents and what lay at the heart of the Wettiner success, we will find out…

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 107: The House of Wettin

If you ever come to Dresden, and if you like art, architecture and history, you very much should, you may want to turn into Augustusstrasse right by the Residenzschloss. What you fnd there is the largest porcelain artwork in the world, 102 metres long and made from 23,000 Meissen porcelain tiles. This is the “Fürstenzug”, the procession of princes. It was made to celebrate 800 years of the House of Wettin who ruled over what we now know as the land of Saxony. It portrays 35 margraves, electors, dukes and kings from 1127 to 1904. Being essentially a 19th century artwork, it depicts all these Saxon rulers as powerful military leaders surrounded by their fighting men and important nobles, all in contemporary costume. There are 94 depictions and only one female figure in the whole procession. So, was the lasting rule of the House of Wettin built upon their martial prowess? Well they did fight a lot, but the true source of their power is depicted in one of the very last figures of the procession coming after the princes, the army, the intellectuals and the artists and largely obscured by the images of the carpenter and the builder involved in the project. What that figure represents and what lay at the heart of the Wettiner success, we will find out…

But before we start let me tell you that the History of the Germans Podcast is advertising free thanks to the generous support from patrons. And you can become a patron too and enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and other privileges from the price of a latte per month. All you have to do is sign up at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on my website historyofthegermans.com. You find all the links in the show notes. And thanks a lot to Troy, WB, Jim D. and Melinda H. who have already signed up.

Last week we talked about Albrecht the Baer and the creation of the Mark of Brandenburg. You may remember that he got his first break in 1123 when the future emperor Lothar III enfeoffed him with the Mark of Lusatia.

At that same time and in the same context Lothar also enfeoffed Konrad, count of Wettin with the Mark of Meissen. Konrad leads the Fürstenzug I mentioned and is generally seen as the founder of the dynasty. If you have listened attentively and have been able to navigate the sea of names, you may remember that Konrad was not the first margrave of Meissen from the Wettiner family. That was Henry of Eilenburg, Konrad’s cousin. In fact the Wettiner had been dukes and margraves for generations before. So, other than Albrecht the Bear, the elevation of Konrad was more in the spirit of continuity and inheritance.

And it shows. Apart from a brief conflict with Wiprecht of Groitzsch in the first two years after his appointment, Konrad did not have to do much fighting. Nor did he have to sign shady deals with local potentates to expand his territory. In fact he benefitted from the shady actions of his neighbour Albrecht the Bear. You may remember from last episode that Albrecht lost the margraviate of Lusatia after his men had murdered Udo of Frecksleben. The margraviate of Lusatia went to Konrad without him having to do anything special. And that sets a pattern. Konrad acquired more and more lands and positions in his margraviates either by purchase or grant. He bought the county of Bautzen east of Dresden, he was granted the county of Rochlitz as well as most of the lands once owned by Wiprecht of Groitzsch. At the end of his 35 years he had amassed a large and coherent territory in what we now know as the Land Sachsen.

Konrad is called “the Great” in the Fürstenzug, which is a moniker not normally given to guys with modest military exploits and a habit of getting gifts from Kings and bishops.

What makes Konrad and his immediate successors stand out is their use of both the colonisation trend and the bundle of rights that come with the title of margrave to create one of the earliest territorial principalities in the empire.

Let’s start with colonisation. That had begun a lot earlier in the margraviate of Meissen than in many other parts. Wiprecht of Groitzsch had invited settlers from Frankonia as early as 1104 to live on previously uninhabited lands south of Leipzig. Konrad dramatically accelerated this process. One of the ways he did that was by not doing everything himself. Instead he would grant vast tracts of sparsely inhabited land to his Ministeriales and even more often to monasteries. These would then organise the colonisation themselves, bringing in people from a wide range of places.

Furthermore the big difference between Meissen and Lausitz compared to Brandenburg was that these territories had been under much more intense Saxon control. The Slavic uprising did not result in Slavic principalities. Though the population was almost entirely Wendish before 1100, the elite was either Saxon or assimilated into the Saxon nobility. Wiprecht of Groitzsch who came from Slavic stock and rose to become the most prominent political figure in the region is a great example. So a lot of the land, including the large forests and marshland were already in the possession of local nobles, bishops and monasteries. Plus there were important centres of power like Meissen itself. The town of Meissen was transformed from a Slavic settlement into a German Town by King Henry the Fowler and had remained the seat of a Bishop since. Meissen has played a role in our podcast before, as had Bautzen, even further east.

Given the majority of the peasants who had come to the lands of Konrad had been free labourers or had been released by their landlords back home, the new settlers were in their vast majority free men and women. There were very few serfs, most of them likely descendants of the original Slavic population.

Which leaves the question, how will Konrad and his descendants benefit from all this development activity when the colonisation is largely managed by other people?

That comes down to the way Konrad managed to exploit the rights that came with being a margrave. As you may remember, a margrave was originally a count in charge of frontier county. His role was not just to administer justice and maintain the king’s peace, he was also responsible for the defence of the border.

In light of this additional burden, the margraves were given full access to the royal regalia in their territory. In other words, all the special rights the kings have in the rest of the kingdom were given to the margrave to fund the defence of the border.

Amongst these rights was the right to build castle, to establish markets, to demand tolls, to mint coins and to exploit mineral resources. Konrad and his descendants had the great advantage that their margraviate no longer bordered any hostile enemies. To their south was the duchy and soon kingdom of Bohemia, an integral part of the Holy Roman Empire. When the Bohemian rulers came into Meissen it was for some reason of internal imperial politics, not as a foreign foe. 

As for the eastern border with Poland, the threat had much diminished. Ever since Boleslav the Brave, the kingdom of Poland was riven by internal conflict. Boleslav III Wrymouth had managed to unify the kingdom in 1107. But in 1138 he was forced by internal politics to split his kingdom amongst his five sons. This division lasted until 1320, leaving the individual states unable to mount any expansionist policies westwards. We will look at this in more detail in a future episode. For now what matters is that Poland was no longer a threat to the exterior border.

The absence of any need to fortify the borders did however not mean that the margraves of Meissen and Lusatia were prepared to hand back all the great regalia they had received. Instead they used them to leverage themselves into territorial rulers. They erected castles across their ands and put men in charge of them who reported directly to the margrave. The castles were there to guarantee the peace and often the seats of justice. For these services they collected tolls from passing merchants, court fees and general levies on the peasants.

When they gave land from the royal demesne to a monastery, they made themselves the Vogt or worldly administrator of this land, collecting a share of the income.

The most valuable part of these rights was also the most unexpected. In 1162 Konrad’s eldest son Otto gave a large tract of land in a forest that Thietmar of Merseburg had called Mircwidu between What is today Dresden and Chemnitz to the monastery of Altzelle. This was to become the house monastery for the house of Wettin and the Cistercians there were to pray for the passage into the afterlife of the family members. So far so normal. The Cistercian began developing the land, cutting down the trees, invitingcolonists and establishing new villages.

In one of these new villages called Christiansdorf, after a locator called Christian, a settler finds a curiously looking rock. It turns out this rock contains not just lead but also silver. And this one rock was no fluke. More and more appear and it is clear that there is a huge deposit of silver under this hill. An enormous deposit.

Margrave Otto does two things. First, he takes the land back from the monks of Altzelle – leaving dad in purgatory for a bit longer. And then he invites over the only people in the empire who have expertise in mining silver, the miners of Goslar. You may remember that the silver mines of Goslar were a crucial part in the economics that kept the emperors in funds. In particular the Ottonians relied heavily on the silver mines to fund their wars in Italy. During the Salian reign Goslar was a massively important location and Henry III built his great palace there.

As counterintuitive as it sounds, silver is so important because it is much less valuable than gold. Gold coins are pretty much useless as day-to-day money. One single gram of gold costs currently £50 and a typical coin would be 4.5 grams i.e., worth £225 in today’s money. There is very little that costs £225 in a medieval shop. Silver is much better for this. One gram of silver costs £0.60 today. That makes silver coins a much better means of exchange than gold. In fact very few gold coins were minted in the Middle Ages. Frederick II minted his Augustales more as a demonstration of his power than as a way to pay anyone. It will take until the High Middle Ages before Gold coins become common.

All this means is that silver is in very high demand. And Otto, margrave of Meissen just got himself one. No wonder he is called Otto the Rich.

The settlers flood into the little village of Christiansdorf. This is a proper gold rush. By 1170 there are already two large churches,  a third is begun in 1180. The common view is that the place is given city status in 1168, a mere six years after the first tree was cut down and presumably only 2 or 3 years after the first rock was found. The name is changed to Freiberg and it quickly overtakes Leipzig as the mercantile centre of the region.

Now one silver mine is great, but what about several? Here again the Wettiner approach of letting other people do the work kicks in. Otto declares the right to mine a “free right”. That means that anyone is free to dig wherever they want – and have the permission of the landowner. Whatever they find, they have to give one tenth to the margrave. This precipitates a mining boom, first around Freiberg, but in the 13th century at Dippoldiswalde and Scharfenberg, in the 14th Neustaedel and Neustadt. In the 15th and 16th century this goes into overdrive with Altenberg, Annaberg, Baerenstein, Buchholz, Ehrenfriedersdorf, Marienberg, Scheibenberg, Schneeberg and Zinnwald feeding the coffers of the margraves and later electors. Riches funded the stay of Martin Luther on the Wartburg as guest of the Elector Frederick the Wise where he translated the bible.

The mountain range that held all this wealth stretched along the border between Saxony and Bohemia. It contained so much metal ore, mainly silver and tin, that they are now known as the Erzgebirge, the Ore Mountains.  On the Bohemian side one place became famous for the silver coins minted there, the town of Joachimstal or Jachymov in Czech. Tal is valley in German. This coin was called the Joachimsthaler and was so common, people abbreviated the name to s’thaler and finally just Thaler. Thaler became the word for many large silver coins, like the Reichsthaler or the Maria Theresia Thaler. From there the word moved to Spain where it was another term for the famous “Pieces of Eight” or Peso’s for short. The Spaniards pronounced it dollar.

During the American war of independence the British restrained the colonies’ access to hard currency. So the Spanish silver coins, the dolars began circulating in the United States. On April 2, 1792 Alexander Hamilton, a famous musical entertainer and in his spare time treasury secretary, declared the money of account for the new country should be expressed in dollars or fragments thereof. There you go, from medieval margrave to modern monetary instruments in under fur minutes.

The wealth of the House of Wettin came from mining, which makes it simply rude that the Furstenzug gives room only to one miner tucked away in the back.

And how important the mines were is getting apparent when you remember what happened to the descendants of Albrecht the Baer. Both he and Konrad of Meissen end up splitting their possessions between their many sons. The Ascanier divisions are permanent and every time one of the lines dies out, none of the others have the clout or the money to bring the inheritance back together.

Not so the House of Wettin. Otto the Rich had been the eldest of the five sons of Konrad. When Konrad retired to a monastery in Halle, his possessions were divided amongst them. But the difference is that the Wettiner possession almost always come back together again. That to me comes down to the mines and the wealth they produce. If at least one side of the family controls the mines, they can push through their claims, even against the harshest opposition, as we will see.

It begins with Otto the Rich’s two sons, Albrecht called the Proud and Dietrich called the Pressured. Albrecht was the elder but Dietrich was his mother’s favourite. Hedwig somehow convinced her husband to promise the succession in the margraviate and hence possession of the mines to the younger son Dietrich. In 1188 Albrecht the Proud did the one thing one could do at this point, he gathered support amongst his uncles and apprehended his father and threw him in jail. That was a severe disturbance of the peace, so the emperor Frederick Barbarossa intervened. Albrecht had to release his father. After an uneasy 2 years Otto the Rich died and Albrecht the Proud immediately took over as margrave. That was unfortunate timing, because – as we know – 1190 is also the year Barbarossa dies and Henry VI takes over. Henry VI invites Albrecht to come along to fight for his crown of Sicily, an offer he could not refuse.

Once Albrecht is out of town, the younger brother Dietrich stages a coup, together with his father-in-law, the landgrave Hermann of Thuringia. The coup did fail partially because Albrecht returns and the two sides fight for 4 years, at the end of which Dietrich gained just Weissenfels.

All that becomes irrelevant when Albrecht dies in 1195 without male heir. At which point Dietrich should now finally become margrave -but no. There is a reason he is known to history as dietrich der Bedraengte, Dietrich the Pressured.

The emperor Henry VI cancels the enfeoffment and takes the mark of Meissen for himself. Why he did that may have to do with the deal he was trying to strike with the imperial princes right around this time. The suggested deal was that the princes would gain the right to dispose of their fiefs, their duchies, margraviates and palatinates as they wished, even pass it down the female line. In exchange they would have to accept that the imperial title would also become inheritable, rather than an elective title. In other words the emperor could no longer recall a fief upon the death of the incumbent if the princes place the Hohenstaufens on the throne forever. Recalling the Mark of Meissen may just have been a way to putting a bit more power behind his proposal. Or it was just a part of his father’s policy of expanding the imperial territory.

Dietrich seemed to have caved to imperial pressure and signed up for Henry VI’s crusade, presumably as a way to regain the imperial grace or -failing that – benefitting from the proposed deal.

Dietrich is one of the few participants in this crusade who make it to the Holy Land where he hears that Henry VI had died. He swiftly returns home and – again with his father-in-law’s help regains physical possession of his margraviate. In 1198 he sides with Philip of Swabia in the civil war between the Welfs and the Hohenstaufen and is confirmed in his fief. That was a close shave that could have ended the family right there.

Instead Dietrich the Pressured becomes one of the most successful early Wettiner. He takes advantage of the constant back-and-forth in the war between Philip and Otto IV and towards the end, when Philip seems to be winning, boldly shifts to Otto IV, a move that pays out handsomely when Philip is murdered in 1208 leaving Otto IV in charge. Another 180 degree turn was needed when emperor Frederick II comes up to Germany in 1213 to challenge Otto IV. and again he can keep his territory.

And he does a great job with it. The first wave of colonisation is coming to an end and his next effort is to build out the existing cities like Leipzig and Chemnitz and create new ones, the most important of which was Dresden.  During his 24 year reign the administration of the margraviate tightened further ensuring peace and justice to a much higher degree than other parts of the empire. And just like today, if the state provides a reliable framework in which to operate, enterprising minds find it easier to build and grow businesses.

The flipside of tight control is the loss of freedom. And that is particularly the case with the citizens of Leipzig. The city had grown fast and its citizens were looking to places like Lübeck and Cologne and demanded to become a free imperial city. But that was not something Dietrich with all his love for growth and merchants could tolerate. He used his vast wealth to oppose their demands. The citizens had some initial military successes, but in 1217 Dietrich prevailed. So Leipzig, one of the largest German cities and one driven by trade and its famous fair never became a free city.

And it may have been the reason for Dietrich’s early death. It is likely that he was poisoned by his doctor who in turn may have been bribed to do so by the citizens of Leipzig.

Dietrich’s son, Henry nicknamed the Venerable ruled at least nominally for 67 years. He was just 6 years old when his father died in 1221. Despite his minority and the ambitions of his neighbours the margraviate held together. Not only that Henry continued the policy to build out the territorial power of the margrave in his lands. We are now in the period when power shifts from the medieval system of interlocking rights and privileges to territorial principalities. The concept was first tried by Henry IV in Saxony during the 1070s. The idea is that instead of holding a long list of individual rights as a personal possession the magnate would be a prince who exercises all power over a specific territory. So in the 10th century a senior nobleman would look at his possessions and say, I own this castle, this set of fields, the toll on that bridge and a market over in the next town. Everything he does not explicitly own is either someone else’s, or the king’s. A territorial prince looks at things and says that in this specific territory everything is his, except for the things others have a legitimate claim to.

The transition from one state to the other is naturally gradual and vestiges of the older system still prevailed into the 19th century. But it can be argued that the Wettiner in Meissen were ahead of their peers in forming a territorial principality largely on the back of the fact that the land was comparatively new, that they had the king-like position of the Margraves and the wealth to buy out competitors.

And the last great benefit for them was the privilege in favour of the princes that emperor Frederick II signed in 1231/32. With that he grants pretty much all the regalia to the imperial princes, i.e., those who have received at least one fief from the emperor directly. In his charters Henry is referred to as princeps terre, territorial prince.

The last great benefit the Hohenstaufen grant Henry is also the largest. Henry’s mother was a daughter of the Landgrave of Thuringia. The Landgraves rivalled the Wettiner for wealth and for the efficiency of their administration. They were the most astute players in the game of back and forth between Philip of Swabia, Otto IV and Frederick II, becoming immensely rich and powerful in the process. Their castle of Wartburg became the centre of Minnesang culture and the splendour of their court was legendary. In their short existence they also counted a most venerable saint in their midst, Saint Elisabeth of Thuringia. The luck of the landgraves ran out with Heinrich Raspe. Raspe had thought he could play the game in the big league when he became the head of the papal party that opposed Frederick II. They made him anti-king and he began a war against Frederick II’s supporters, one of which was Henry the venerable. Heinrich Raspe was wounded in one of these battles in 1247 and died. With that the male line of the landgraves had died out. There were a number of sisters married to various princes with eminent offspring. But Frederick II gave the whole of the landgraviate to his faithful servant, Henry the Venerable, Margrave of Meissen.

That did not go down well with other claimants and a war of succession broke out. One conflict ended in 1249 with the treaty of Weissenfels whereby the landgraviate was split, the part west of the Werra river came to the counts of Hesse and the remainder came to the house of Wettin. The other leg ended in 1264. To celebrate the achievement Henry the Venerable organised an eight-day long tournament. The first price was a tree made from solid silver with solid gold fruit hanging off it. The court of Dresden was quickly taking over from the Wartburg as the centre of high medieval culture in the German lands.

By 1268, as the empire fell into the interregnum, Henry the Venerable was the most powerful secular lord north of the alps. Or he should have been, had he not undermined his own position by splitting his lands with his sons. These two, again called Albrecht and Dietrich each got a piece whilst Henry held on to the margraviate of Meissen. The two brothers instantly began fighting each other and in 1268 it became open war. In 1270, Albrecht, the elder, who became known as “der Entartete” or the Degenerate turned on his venerable father.

This was not the only thing that horrified his peers. Albrecht had been married to Margaret, the legitimate daughter of emperor Frederick II and his wife Isabella of England. But the relationship broke down. Albrecht fell for lady Kunigunde von Eisenberg. His wife Margaret felt deeply insulted that this margrave would so humiliate the daughter of an emperor and granddaughter of a king. She did leave Albrecht and went to Frankfurt where she died shortly afterwards. What a scandal!

Albrecht the Degenerate had three sons with Margaret, one where it said laconically that he “disappeared in Silesia”. The two younger ones were Frederick and Diezmann. There is the story that Margaret when saying goodbye to her sons bit Frederick in the cheek so that he should forever remember what his father had done. Hence Frederick is known as Friedrich der Gebissene or Frederick the Bitten.

To compound the scandal, the two younger sons also run off, joining their uncle Dietrich, who is still at war with their father. At that point a sort of total war starts between Albrecht and all other members of his family.

In the midst of all this sits Henry the Venerable who sees his life’s work crumble into dust. In 1288 he is released from his mortal toil, no doubt cursing his sons.

The death of the patriarch did however calm things somewhat. The different legs of the family divide up the inheritance of Henry the Venerable and sign an agreement promising each other to respect the newly drawn borders to eternity.

Family feuds run on their own timelines. Eternity turns out to be just 12 months. By 1290 they are back at it hammer and tongs.

At which point a new party enters the fray, king Rudolf of Habsburg. Rudolf had an amazing career which we will no doubt investigate in detail in a later episode. But let’s just summarise it as follows. A modest count from what is essentially Switzerland is elected king in 1273 because he is obscure nobility, limited power and horribly poor. But clearly, he had some other qualities because by 1275 he had taken Austria from king Ottokar of Bohemia and made himself a duke. Following this success recalled all imperial territories that had been lost since the death of Frederick II. What was and was not imperial became a bit fluid as time went by. First, he demanded the Pleissenland, a territory between Meissen and Thuringia that had been acquired for the crown Frederick Barbarossa but had come to the House of Wettin via the ill-fated marriage of Albrecht and Margaret.

That was reverted to the crown after a payment of 10,000 mark of silver to Albrecht who found himself in an ever-tighter spot financially. All that fighting had disrupted the silver production in Freiberg.

In 1290 Rudolf von Habsburg dies and his successor, another impecunious count with grand ambitions, Adolf of Nassau has a go at the possessions of the ever-quarrelling Wettiner. When first Albrecht’s brother and then his son died, his lands get split between Frederick the Bitten and Diezmann. This split is then objected to by king Adolf of Nassau who awards this to the Ascanier in nearby Brandenburg, bringing another party to the table.

Friedrich the Bitten and his brother manage to push the Brandenburger back. Flush with this success they turn against their father who flees to the court of king Adolf of Nassau. Albrecht is now completely broke and sells the Margraviate of Meissen, the Landgraviate of Thuringia and the Pleissenland for a mere 12,000 mark of Silver to king Adolf of Nassau. The richest territory with the seemingly inexhaustible silver mines of Freiberg is going for a song.

Fredrich and Diezman refuse to hand over any of these lands. In 1294 royal troops enter the margraviate and burn what is left of the once flourishing land to the ground. They returned home before reaching Leipzig, but returned in 1295 now pushing on to Freiberg and Meissen. The two brothers flee. Frederick the Bitten resumes the fight in 1297 and by April 1298 he is again lord, but lord of a shell of a land.

But the pain is not over. King Adolf’s reign ends ignomiously at the battle of Goellheim when the anti-king, Albrecht of Habsburg beats his troops and takes over. Naturally Frederick and Diezman are fans of the new king Albrecht of Habsburg. But hey, we are before the good old times of “felix Austria nube”.

King Albrecht does like the policies of his father and one of those was to get hold of Meissen and the great silver mines of Freiberg. He reinstalls Albrecht the Degenerate in Meissen with the proviso that upon his death all his lands go to him. Same deal as Adolf, just this time no payout.

He then calls Frederick and Diezmann to come to a royal assembly to finalise the feudal arrangements for Thuringia and all the other possessions, presumably so that they can go to their father and then to king Albrecht. The two brothers one twice the other one trice bitten once shy, give this opportunity a miss.

Everything is now in total chaos. The cities think this their opportunity to become free imperial cities and fight whoever is currently claiming overlordship. For Eisenach that was at the time Albrecht the Degenerate. They besiege him in the Wartburg, where none other that his son Frederick relieves him.

The family, or what is left of it are now holding hands and promise eternal mutual support. They muster an army to fight King Albrecht who had now dropped all pretence. On May 31st 1307 the two sides join battle at Lucka near Aldenburg. The royal army was commanded by Count Frederick of Nürnberg from the House of Hohenzollern and consisted mainly of southern Germans and some city contingents whilst the army of Frederick and Diezmann comprised armed peasants, contingents of some other cities and knights from Brunswick.

The result was a comprehensive defeat of the royalists. Count Frederick of Nürnberg was captured. King Albrecht of Habsburg was murdered by his nephew over some other outlandish demand for land and privileges.

For the sake of family unity Diezmann did the best possible thing and died without offspring. Albrecht the degenerate now had enough and retired to Erfurt where he died in relative obscurity. The new king and emperor, Henry VII recognised Frederick as the sole ruler and heir to the lands of the house of Wettin.

That left Frederick the Bitten in control of the extensive territories of the House of Wettin. Everything is broken and devastated. The recovery takes decades, but in the end the descendants of Konrad of Wettin become one of the richest, if not economically the richest territorial princes in the German lands. Rich enough to buy the crown of Poland, to turn Dresden into a jewel of Art and architecture but not rich enough to ever gain the imperial crown and despite all the pictures of soldiers on the Fürstenzug, not rich enough to hold against the rising power of neighbouring Prussia.

We are gradually coming to the end of these summary histories of the territories that had once been the stem duchy of Saxony. One big one is still missing though, and that is the story of the house of Welf and its greatest proponent, Henry the Lion. That will be the subject of next weeks episode. And then, I promise we will get into the world of the Hanseatic League. I hope you will come along.

Ah, and there was the quiz. Do you remember them all?

Her they go:

Konrad the Great

Otto the Rich

Albrecht the Proud

Dietrich the Pressured

Henry the Venerable

Albrecht the Degenerate

And

Friedrich the Bitten.

Before I go, let me thank all of you who are supporting the show, in particular the Patrons who have kindly signed up on patreon.com/historyofthegermans. It is thanks to you this show does not have to do advertising for products you do not want to hear about. If Patreon isn’t for you, another way to help the show is sharing the podcast directly or boosting its recognition on social media. If you share, comment or retweet a post from the History of the Germans it is more likely to be seen by others, hence bringing in more listeners. My most active places are Twitter @germanshistory and my Facebook page History of the Germans Podcast. As always, all the links are in the show notes.