The Historical Geography of Europe, Vol. I, Text

by Edward A. Freeman

The whole frontier of the kingdom towards its northern and eastern neighbours was defended by a series of marks or border territories whose rulers were clothed with special powers for the defence and extension of the frontier.[13] They had to guard the realm against the Dane in the north, and against the Slave during the whole remaining length of the eastern frontier, except where, in the last years of the ninth century, the Magyar thrust himself in between the northern and southern Slaves. ♦Hungarian frontier.
Mark of Austria.♦ Here the frontier, as against Hungary and Croatia, was defended by the marks of Krain or Carniola, Kärnthen or Carinthia, Austrian mark to the north of them. ♦Little change on this frontier.♦ This frontier has changed least of all. It may, without any great breach of accuracy, be said to have remained the same from the days of the Saxon Emperors till now. The part where it was at all fluctuating was along the Austrian mark, rather than along the two marks to the south of it. ♦Occasional homage of Hungary to the Emperors.♦ The Emperors claimed, and sometimes enforced, a feudal superiority over the Hungarian kings. But this kind of precarious submission does not affect geography. Hungary always remained a separate kingdom; the Imperial supremacy was something purely external, and it was always thrown off on the first opportunity.

♦Frontier towards Denmark.♦

The same may be said of Denmark. For a short time a German mark was formed north of the Eider. ♦The Danish Mark, 934-1027.
Boundary of the Eider, 1027-1806.♦ But, when the Danish kingdom had grown into the Northern Empire of Cnut, the German frontier fell back here also, and the Eider remained the boundary of the Empire till its fall. ♦Occasional homage of the Danish Kings.♦ As with Hungary, so with Denmark; more than one Danish king became the man of Cæsar; but here again the precarious acknowledgement of Imperial supremacy had no effect on geography.

♦Slavonic frontier.♦

It is in the intermediate lands, along the vast frontier where the Empire marched on the northern Slavonic lands, that the real historical geography of Germany lies for some ages. ♦Fluctuation of territory.♦ Here the boundary was ever fluctuating. ♦Extent of the Slaves.♦ At the time of the division of 887, the Slaves held all east of the Elbe and a good deal to the west. How far they had during the Wandering of the Nations stepped into the place of earlier Teutonic inhabitants is a question which belongs to another field of inquiry. We must here start from the geographical fact that, at the time when the modern states of Europe began to form themselves, the Slaves were actually in possession of the great North-Eastern region of modern Germany. Their special mention will come in their special place; we must here mark that modern Germany has largely formed itself by the gradual conquest and colonization of lands which at the end of the ninth century were Slavonic. The German kingdom spread itself far to the North-East, and German settlements and German influences spread themselves far beyond the formal bounds of the German kingdom. Three special instruments worked together in bringing about this end. The Saxon Dukes came first. In after times came the great league of German cities, the famous Hansa which, like some other bodies originally commercial, became a political power, and which spread German influences over the whole of the shores of the Baltic. Along with them, from the thirteenth century onwards, worked the great military order of the Teutonic knights. Out of their conquests came the first beginnings of the Prussian state, and the extension of German rule and the German speech over much which in modern geography has become Russian. In a history of the German nation all these causes would have to be dealt with together as joint instruments towards the same end. In a purely geographical view the case is different. Some of these influences concern the formation of the actual German kingdom; others have geographically more to do with the group of powers more to the north-east, the Slavonic states of Poland and Russia, and their Lithuanian and Finnish neighbours. The growth and fall of the military orders will therefore most naturally come in another section. We have here to trace out those changes only which helped to give the German kingdom the definite geographical extent which it held for some centuries before its final fall.

♦The Saxon Mark.♦

Beginning at the north, in the lands where German, Slave, and Dane came into close contact, in Saxony beyond the Elbe, the modern Holstein, the Slaves held the western coast, and the narrow Saxon mark fenced off the German land. ♦Mark of the Billungs, 960-1106.♦ The Saxon dukes of the house of Billung formed a German mark, which took in the lands reaching from the Elbe to the strait which divides the isle of Rügen from the mainland. But this possession was altogether precarious. ♦Its fluctuations.♦ It again became a Slavonic kingdom; then it was a possession of Denmark; it cannot be looked on as definitely becoming part of the German realm till the thirteenth century. ♦Slavonic princes continue in Mecklenburg.♦ The chief state in these lands which has lasted till later times is the duchy of Mecklenburg, the rulers of which, in its two modern divisions, are the only modern princes who directly represent an old Slavonic royal house. Meanwhile a way was opened for a vast extension of German influence through the whole North, by the growth of the city of Lübeck. ♦Foundation of Lübeck, 1140-1158.♦ Twice founded, the second time by Henry the Lion Duke of Saxony, it gradually became the leading member of the great merchant League. ♦The Hanse Towns.♦ To the south of these lands come those Slavonic lands which have grown into the modern kingdom of Saxony and the central parts of the modern kingdom of Prussia. ♦Marchlands.♦ These were specially marchlands, a name which some of them have kept down to our own day. ♦Brandenburg.
Lausitz.
Meissen.♦ The mark of Brandenburg in its various divisions, the mark of Lausitz or Lusatia, where a Slavonic remnant still lingers, and the mark of Meissen, long preserved the memory of the times when these lands, which afterwards came to play so great a part in the internal history of Germany, were still outlying and precarious possessions of the German realm.

To the south-east lay the Bohemian lands, whose history has been somewhat different. ♦Bohemia a fief, 928.♦ The duchy, afterwards kingdom, of Bohemia, became, early in the tenth century, a fief of the German kingdom. ♦Becomes a kingdom, 1198.
1003.♦ From that time ever afterwards, save during one moment of passing Polish annexation, it remained one of its principal members, ruled, as long as the Empire lasted, by princes holding electoral rank. The boundaries of the kingdom itself have hardly varied at all. ♦Moravia.
1019.♦ The dependent marchland of Moravia to the east, the remnant of the great Moravian kingdom whose history will come more fittingly in another chapter, fluctuated for a long while between Hungarian, Polish, and Bohemian supremacy. But from the early part of the eleventh century it remained under Bohemian rule, and therefore under Imperial superiority. ♦More distant Slavonic states.♦ To the east of this nearer zone of Slavonic dependencies, lay another range of Slavonic states, some of which were gradually incorporated with the German kingdom, while others remained distinct down to modern times. ♦Pomerania.♦ Pomerania on the Baltic coast is a name which has often changed both its geographical extent and its political allegiance. The eastern part of the land now so called lay open, as will be hereafter seen, to the occupation of the Pole, and its western part to that of the Dane. ♦Native princes go on.♦ But in the end it took its place on the map in the form of two duchies, ruled, like Mecklenburg, by native princes under Imperial supremacy. ♦Polish frontier.♦ South of Pomerania, the German march bordered on the growing power of Poland, and between Poland and Hungary lay the northern Croatia or Chrobatia. The German supremacy seems sometimes to have been extended as far as the Wartha, and, in the Chrobatian land, even beyond the Vistula. ♦Occasional homage of the Polish kings.♦ But this occupation was quite momentary; Poland grew up, like Hungary, as a kingdom, some of whose dukes and kings admitted the Imperial supremacy, but which gradually became wholly independent. ♦Silesia Polish, 999.♦ The border province of Silesia, after some fluctuations between Bohemia and Poland, became definitely Polish at the end of the tenth century. ♦Bohemian, 1289-1327.♦ Afterwards it was divided into several principalities, whose dukes passed under Bohemian vassalage, and so became members of the Empire. Thus in the course of some ages, a boundary was drawn between Germany and Poland which lasted down to modern times.

♦Extension of the Empire to the east.♦

The result of this survey is to show how great, and at the same time how gradual, was the extension of the German power eastward. A Roman Empire with a long Baltic coast was something that had never been dreamed of in earlier days. If the extension of the German name was but the recovery of long lost Teutonic lands, the extension to them of the Imperial name which had become identified with Germany was at least wholly new. ♦The Slavonic lands Germanized.♦ In all the lands now annexed, save in a few exceptional districts, German annexation meant German colonization, and the assimilation of the surviving inhabitants to the speech and manners of Germany. Colonists were brought, specially from the Frisian lands, by whose means the Low-Dutch tongue was spread along the whole southern coast of the Baltic. German cities were founded. The marchlands grew into powerful German states. At last one of these marchlands, united with a German conquest still further cut off from the heart of the old German realm, has grown into a state which in our own days has become the Imperial power of Germany.