Federal Republic of Germany

C

1

The Saxon Kings

When the last Carolingian died without an heir, the Franks and Saxons elected Conrad, Duke of Franconia, as their King; he proved incompetent. After his death in 918 they chose the Saxon Duke Henry I, the Fowler, a sober, practical soldier, who made peace with a rival king chosen by the Bavarians, defeated Magyars and Slavs, and regained Lorraine.

At Henry’s death in 936, the princes elected his son Otto I, who combined extraordinary forcefulness, dignity, and military prowess with great diplomatic skill and strong religious faith. Determined to create an effective centralized monarchy, Otto gave the duchies to his relatives and then broke them up into non-hereditary fiefs granted to bishops and abbots. By appointing these Churchmen and subjecting them to the royal court, he ensured their loyalty. This Ottonian system of government through alliance with the German state Church was carried much further by his successors.

Otto also had to defend his realm from outside pressures. In the west he strengthened his hold on Lorraine and gained influence over Burgundy (Arles). In the north and east he defeated the Danes and Slavs, and he permanently broke the power of the Magyars (Hungarians) at the Battle of the Lechfeld in 955. Otto established the archbishopric of Magdeburg (968) and other sees as centres of civilization in the conquered lands. Germans settled these regions.

Wanting to emulate Charlemagne as the divinely sanctioned emperor of Christendom, Otto began the disastrous policy of German entanglement in Italy. The temptation was the greater because Italy was a rich land, and a scene of feudal disorder and Saracen invasions. When Adelaide, widowed queen of the Lombards, asked Otto for help against her captor, Berengar, King of Italy, Otto invaded Italy in 951, married her, and took her dead husband’s title.

The papacy at this time was struggling to hold its land against encroaching nobles from the north and Byzantine Greeks and Saracens from the south. When Pope John XII appealed to Otto for aid against Berengar, Otto invaded Italy a second time, defeated Berengar, and was crowned Emperor by the pope in 962. By a treaty called the Ottonian Privilege, Otto guaranteed the pope’s claim to papal lands, and all future papal candidates had to swear fealty to the Emperor.

Otto’s successors in the 10th and 11th centuries continued his German and Italian policies as best they could. Otto II established the Eastern March (Austria) under the Babenbergs as a military outpost but was defeated by the Saracens in his efforts to secure southern Italy. The pious Otto III supported the Benedictine reform movement originating in Cluny, Burgundy, which encouraged a more austere, disciplined life. The childless Henry II, gentle and devout, also encouraged the Cluniac movement and sent out missionaries from his court in the new bishopric of Bamberg.

C

2

Salian Kings

For 100 years (1024-1125) German kings were chosen from the Salian line, which was related to the Saxons. The Salians brought the empire to its height.

Conrad II, a clever and ruthless ruler, reasserted royal authority over princely opposition by making the fiefs of lesser nobles hereditary and by appointing ministerials, lower-class men responsible directly to him, as officials and soldiers. He seized Burgundy, strengthened his hold on northern Italy, and became overlord of Poland.

Conrad’s son Henry III, the Black, was the first undisputed King of Germany. A pious visionary, he introduced to a Germany torn by civil strife the Cluny-inspired Truce of God, a respite from war lasting from Wednesday night to Monday morning, and tried in vain to extend it to a permanent peace. He ended the payment by new bishops of tribute to the Crown—a practice called simony—although he still invested Churchmen, who remained his vassals. During his reign he deposed three rival popes and created four new ones, notably the reform-minded Leo IX.

While still a child, Henry IV succeeded his father, Henry III, in 1056. During his mother’s regency, long-restive princes annexed much royal land; cities, popes, and Normans controlled Italy; and the Lateran synod of 1059 declared that only cardinals could canonically elect the pope. Henry IV was wily, opportunistic, and headstrong in an era of violence and treachery, and as ruler he sought to recover lost imperial power. His efforts to retrieve Crown lands aroused the Saxons, who resented the Salian kings. He crushed a Saxon rebellion in 1075 and proceeded to confiscate land, thus intensifying their enmity towards him.

Henry’s control of the clergy embroiled him with the militant reform pope Gregory VII, who wanted to free the Church from secular bondage. When Gregory forbade lay investiture of Churchmen, Henry had him deposed by the Synod of Worms in 1076. The pope promptly excommunicated Henry and released his subjects from their oath of loyalty to him. To keep his crown, Henry cleverly sought the pope at Canossa in the Apennines in January 1077, where, after three days of humble penitence, he was forgiven. The princes, however, elected a rival king, Rudolf of Swabia.

The result was nearly 20 years of civil war. In 1080 Gregory excommunicated Henry again and recognized Rudolf. Deposing Gregory, Henry marched on Rome, installed the Antipope Clement III, and was crowned Emperor in 1084. Henry returned to Germany to continue the civil war against a new rival King (Rudolf had died in 1080). Finally, betrayed and imprisoned by his son Henry, the Emperor was forced to abdicate.

The treacherous, brutal, and greedy Henry V vainly continued his father’s struggle for supremacy. Suffering military defeats, he lost control of Poland, Hungary, and Bohemia. Despite the support of Churchmen, ministers, and the towns, he could not suppress the princes, who forced the weary Emperor and Pope Callistus II to compromise on investiture. They accepted the Concordat of Worms (1122), which stipulated that clerical elections in Germany were to take place in the imperial presence without simony and that the emperor was to invest the candidate with the symbols of his temporal office before a bishop invested him with the spiritual ones. The pope, however, had the better of the bargain, and the rivalry between empire and papacy took on new dimensions.

C

3

Early Medieval Society

German kings had no fixed capital, but travelled unceasingly about their realm. They had no income beyond that from their family lands and gifts from Churchmen. Feudalism was the rule. The great lords, theoretically vassals of the king, in fact usurped royal rights to build castles and administer justice. The vast majority of common people lived on country manors belonging to nobles or Churchmen. The few cities, such as Trier and Cologne, were chiefly Roman foundations or imperial fortifications. There, merchants, artisans, and uprooted peasants settled as free citizens under the authority of a prince. The cities also sheltered Jews, who were not allowed to hold land.

The clergy, which included many nobles, spread the faith, provided education, and carried on the functions of government. Monasteries such as Reichenau, Regensburg, Fulda, Echternach, and St Gall became centres of scholarship. Monks wrote Latin works (such as the Walthariuslied, based on a German legend) and translated biblical and other Christian texts into Old High German. Their illuminated manuscripts with flat, dignified images imitated the art of Classical antiquity and Byzantium. Churches, notably St Michael at Hildesheim and the cathedrals of Mainz, Speyer, and Worms, were massive, stone-vaulted basilicas with towers and small, round-arched windows. Their walls were adorned with painted murals and expressive sculpture in wood and bronze.

D

High Middle Ages

In the 12th and 13th centuries Germany and Italy were rent by rivalry between two princely families. The Hohenstaufen, or Waiblingen, of Swabia, known as Ghibellines in Italy, held the German and imperial crowns. The Welfs of Bavaria and Saxony, known as Guelphs in Italy, were allied with the papacy.

Henry V died childless in 1125. The princes, avoiding the principle of heredity, passed over his nephews, Frederick and Conrad Hohenstaufen, to choose Lothair, Duke of Saxony. As Emperor, Lothair II revived German efforts to convert and dominate the east. To assert his authority in Italy, he made two expeditions supporting the pope, who crowned him in 1133. In Germany he fought a civil war with the Hohenstaufen princes, who refused to accept him as Emperor.

D

1

The Hohenstaufen Kings

At Lothair’s death the princes avoided his powerful Welf son-in-law and heir, Henry the Proud, Lord of Bavaria and Saxony. Instead, they chose Conrad Hohenstaufen. Civil war erupted again, this time between the weak but charming Conrad III and the Welf dukes, Henry the Proud and his son Henry the Lion. It continued while Conrad led the ill-fated Second Crusade and was paralleled by the Guelph-Ghibelline conflict in Italy. The struggle in Germany was temporarily resolved at Conrad’s death by the election of his nephew Frederick, a Hohenstaufen born of a Welf mother.

Handsome and intelligent, warlike, just, and charming, Frederick I, Barbarossa was the ideal of the medieval Christian king. Regarding himself as the successor of Augustus, Charlemagne, and Otto the Great, he took the title Holy Roman Emperor and spent most of his reign shuttling between Germany and Italy trying to restore imperial glory in both.

In the north he joined Germany and Burgundy by marrying Beatrice, heiress to Burgundy. He declared an imperial peace; to ensure it, he placated the Welfs by recognizing Henry the Lion as Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, and for balance he made Austria a duchy. But when Henry refused to contribute troops to a critical Italian campaign, Frederick and jealous princes exiled him as a traitor. Henry’s duchies were split up, Bavaria going to the Wittelsbach family.

In the south, Frederick made six expeditions to Italy to assert full imperial authority over the Lombard city-states and the popes. In 1155, on his first trip, he was crowned Emperor. On his second, he had the Diet of Roncaglia (1158) declare his rights, and he installed podestas (imperial representatives) in the cities. Some cities had Ghibelline sympathies, but most objected to being ruled and taxed by uncouth, greedy foreigners. The popes needed imperial support against a Roman rising, but they believed that their spiritual office gave them sovereignty over the emperors. Also, they wanted to maintain independent control of the Papal States. Consequently, some cities revolted against imperial authority and formed the Lombard League in alliance with Pope Alexander III. Frederick reacted by creating an antipope. On his next two trips, Ghibelline cities joined with Guelph in a revived league and threw out the podestas. Alexander, who had excommunicated Frederick, fled to his Norman allies in Sicily, and Frederick captured Rome in 1166.

During his fifth invasion of Italy, lacking the support of Henry the Lion, Frederick was defeated by the league at the Battle of Legnano (1176). As a result, the Peace of Constance (1183) recognized the autonomy of the cities, which remained only nominally subject to the Emperor. Stubbornly, Frederick made a last trip in which he gained new support among the quarrelsome cities. He died leading the Third Crusade.

More ambitious even than his father, Henry VI wanted to dominate the known world. To secure peace in Germany, he put down a rebellion by the returned exile Henry the Lion and then restored him to power. He forced the northern Italian cities to submit to him and seized Sicily from a usurping Norman king. Intending to create an empire in the Mediterranean, he exacted tribute from North Africa and the weak Byzantine emperor. Henry died suddenly in 1197 while planning a crusade to the Holy Land.

The empire immediately fell apart. Henry’s infant son, Frederick II, inherited Sicily, but northern Italy reasserted its independence. The Germans refused to accept a child or make the Crown hereditary in the Hohenstaufen line. Once more civil war raged as two elected kings—the Hohenstaufen Philip of Swabia and the Welf Otto of Brunswick, son of Henry the Lion—struggled for the Crown. When Otto invaded Italy, Pope Innocent III secured the election of Frederick II on the promise that Frederick would give up Sicily so as not to surround the pope.

Outstandingly accomplished in many fields, the new king was called Stupor Mundi (“wonder of the world”). He was gracious and amiable but also crafty and ruthless. Determined to keep Sicily as his base of operations, he revised his coronation promise, giving Germany rather than Sicily to his young son Henry. In Sicily he suppressed the barons, reformed the laws, founded the University of Naples, and kept a brilliant court, where he shone as scientist, artist, and poet. He was also an excellent soldier, diplomat, and administrator.

To gain German support for his campaigns in northern Italy, Frederick allowed the princes to usurp royal powers. The confirmation of their rights by the Privilege of Worms (1231) made them virtually kings in their own territories. Henry, when he came of age, objected to this policy and revolted but was quickly deposed and imprisoned by his father.

An aggressive Emperor such as Frederick was regarded as dangerous by the popes. Angered by his claims to Lombardy, Pope Gregory IX excommunicated him for his delay in leading a promised crusade. Frederick finally went to Jerusalem in 1228, was crowned King, and gained the chief Christian sites in the Holy Land. His success did not mollify Gregory, however, who in his absence invaded Sicily. Frederick rushed home and made peace. But by 1237 he was battling in northern Italy against the second Lombard League of cities. The league was allied with the pope, who excommunicated him again. Frederick then seized the Papal States. The new pope, Innocent IV, fled to Lyon and declared him deposed. Undaunted, Frederick was making headway against the league when he suddenly died.

Frederick’s young son Conrad IV inherited Sicily and the imperial title, but Italy and Germany were never united again. The popes, allied with the French, ousted the Hohenstaufens from Sicily. Germany suffered the turmoil of the Great Interregnum (1254-1273), during which foreigners claimed the Crown and the princes won a six-century ascendancy.