The Historical Geography of Europe, Vol. I, Text

by Edward A. Freeman

♦Internal geography of Germany.♦

The internal geography of the German kingdom is the greatest difficulty of such a work as the present. To trace the boundaries of the kingdom as against other kingdoms is comparatively easy; but to trace out the endless shiftings, the unions and the divisions, of the countless small principalities and commonwealths which arose within the kingdom, would be a hopeless attempt. ♦Growth of the principalities.♦ Still the growth of the dukes, counts, and other princes of Germany into independent sovereigns is the great feature of German history, as the consequent wiping out of old divisions, and shifting to and fro of old names, is the special feature of German historical geography. ♦Changes in nomenclature.♦ The dying out of the old names has a historical interest, and the growth of the new powers which have supplanted them has both an historical and a political interest. ♦Origin of Prussia and Austria.♦ It is specially important to mark how the two powers which have stood at the head of Germany in modern times in no way represent any of the old divisions of the German name. They have grown out of the outlying marks planted against the Slave and the Magyar. The mark of Brandenburg, the mark against the Slave, has grown into the kingdom of Prussia, the Imperial state of Germany in its latest form. The Eastern mark, the mark against the Magyar, has grown into the archduchy which gave Germany so many kings, into the so-called Austrian ‘empire,’ into the Austro-Hungarian monarchy of our own day. ♦Analogies between Brandenburg and other marchlands.♦ The growth of Brandenburg or Prussia again affords an instructive comparison with the growth of Wessex in England, of France in Gaul, and of Castile in Spain. In all these cases alike, it has been a marchland which has come to the front and has become the head of the united nation.

♦The great Duchies under the Saxon and Frankish Kings, 919-1125.♦

Starting from the division of 887, we shall find several important landmarks in the history of the German kingdom which may help us in this most difficult part of our work. Under the Saxon and Frankish kings we see the great duchies still forming the main divisions, while the kingdom is enlarged by Slavonic conquests to the east and by the definite adhesion of Lotharingia to the west. ♦Decline of the Duchies under the Swabian Kings, 1137-1254.♦ Under the Swabian kings we see the break-up of the great duchies. In the partition of Saxony the process which was everywhere silently and gradually at work was formally carried out in the greatest case of all by Imperial, and national authority. ♦End of the Gauverfassung.
Growth of territorial Principalities.♦ The Gauverfassung, the immemorial system of Teutonic communities, now finally changes into a system of territorial principalities, broken only by the many free cities and the few free districts which owned no lord but the King. ♦Growth of the march powers. 1254-1512.♦ During this period too we see the beginnings of some of the powers which became chief at a later day, the powers of the eastern marchland, Brandenburg, Austria, Saxony in the later sense. The time from the so-called Interregnum to the legislation under Maximilian is marked by the further growth of these powers. ♦Growth of the House of Austria.♦ It is further marked by the beginning of that connexion of the Austrian duchy, and of the Imperial crown itself, with lands beyond the bounds of the Kingdom and the Empire which led in the end to the special and anomalous position of the House of Austria as an European power. ♦Separation of Switzerland, 1495-1648.
Of the Netherlands, 1430-1648.♦ During the same period comes the practical separation of Switzerland and the Netherlands from the German kingdom. In short it was during this age that Germany in its later aspect was formed. ♦Legislation under Maximilian, 1495-1512.♦ The legislation of Maximilian’s reign, the attempts then made to bring the kingdom to a greater degree of unity, have left their mark on geography in the division of Germany into circles. ♦Division into circles, 1500-1512.♦ This division, though it was not perfectly complete, though it did not extend to every corner of the kingdom, was strictly an administrative division of the kingdom itself as such; but the mapping out of the circles, the difference of which in point of size is remarkable, was itself affected by the geographical extent of the dominions of the princes who held lands within them. ♦Thirty Years’ War, 1618-1648.♦ The seventeenth century is marked by the results of the Thirty Years’ War and of other changes. ♦Powers holding lands within and without Germany.♦ Its most important geographical result was to carry on the process which had begun with the Austrian House, the formation of powers holding lands both within and without the Empire. ♦Austria.
Sweden.
Union of Brandenburg and Prussia.♦ Thus, beside the union of the Hungarian kingdom with the Austrian archduchy, the King of Sweden now held lands as a prince of the Empire, and the same result was brought about in another way by the union of the Electorate of Brandenburg with the Duchy of Prussia. ♦Rivalry of Prussia and Austria.♦ This, and other accessions of territory, now made Brandenburg as distinctly the first power of northern Germany as Austria was of southern Germany, and in the eighteenth century the rivalry of these two powers becomes the chief centre, not only of German but of European politics. ♦Hannover and Great Britain, 1715.♦ The union of the Electorate of Hannover under the same sovereign with the kingdom of Great Britain further increased the number of princes ruling both within Germany and without it. ♦Dissolution of the Kingdom, 1806.♦ Lastly, the wars of the latter years of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century led to the dissolution alike of the German kingdom and of the Roman Empire. ♦The German Confederation, 1815-1866.♦ Then, after a time of confusion and foreign occupation, comes the formation of a Confederation with boundaries nearly the same as the later boundaries of the kingdom. But the Confederation now appears as something quite subordinate to its two leading members. ♦Austria and Prussia greater than the Confederation.♦ Germany, as such, no longer counts as a great European power, but Prussia and Austria, the two chief holders at once of German and of non-German lands, stand forth among the chief bearers of European rank. ♦The new Confederation and Empire, 1866-1870.♦ Lastly, the changes of our own day have given us an Imperial Germany with geographical boundaries altogether new, a Germany from which the south-eastern German lands are cut off, while the Polish and other non-German possessions of Prussia to the north-east have become an integral part of the new Empire. The task of the geographer is thereby greatly simplified. Down to the last changes, one of his greatest difficulties is to make his map show with any clearness what was the extent of the German Kingdom or Confederation, and at the same time what was the extent of the dominions of those princes who held lands both in Germany and out of it. By the last arrangements this difficulty at least is altogether taken away.

♦Germany under the Saxon and Frankish Empire.♦

If we look at the map of Germany under the Saxon and Frankish Kings, we see that the old names, marking the great divisions of the German people, still keep their predominance. ♦The great Duchies.♦ The kingdom is still made up of the four great duchies, the Eastern Francia, Saxony, Alemannia, and Bavaria, together with the great border-land of Lotharingia. These are still the great duchies, to which all smaller divisions are subordinate. ♦Eastern Francia cut off from extension.♦ Among these, the kernel of the kingdom, the Eastern Francia, is the only one whose boundaries had little or no chance of being extended or lessened at the cost of foreign powers. It had the smallest possible frontier towards the Slave. ♦Frontier position of Saxony, Bavaria, and Alemannia.♦ On the other hand, Saxony has an ever fluctuating boundary against the Slave and the Dane; Bavaria marches upon the Slave, the Magyar, and the Kingdom of Italy, while Alemannia has a shifting frontier towards both Burgundy and Italy. ♦Exposed position of Lotharingia and Burgundy.♦ Lotharingia, and Burgundy after its annexation, are the lands which lie exposed to aggression from the West. ♦Vanishing of Francia.♦ It is perhaps for this very reason that, of the four duchies which preserve the names of the four great divisions of the German nation, the Eastern Francia is the one which has most utterly vanished from the modern map and from modern memory. Another cause may have strengthened its tendency to vanish. The policy of the kings forbade that the Frankish duchy should become the abiding heritage of any princely family. ♦Its ecclesiastical Dukes.♦ The ducal title of the Eastern Francia was at two periods of its history borne by ecclesiastical princes in the persons of the Bishops of Würzburg; but it never gave its name, like Saxony and Bavaria, to any ruling house. ♦Analogy with Wessex.♦ The English student will notice the analogy by which, among all the ancient English kingdoms, Wessex, the cradle of the English monarchy, is the one whose name has most utterly vanished from modern memory.

The only way to grasp the endless shiftings and divisions of the German principalities, so as to give anything like a clear general view, will be to take the great duchies, and to point out in a general way the steps by which they split asunder, and the chief states of any historical importance which rose out of their divisions. ♦Growth of new powers in the twelfth century.♦ Most of these new powers begin to be of importance in the twelfth century, a time which is specially marked as the æra when those two states which have had most to do with the making or unmaking of modern Germany begin to find their place in history. ♦Brandenburg and Austria.♦ It is then that the two great marchlands of Brandenburg and Austria begin to take their place among the leading powers of the German kingdom. ♦The Circles.♦ And, in making this survey, it will be well to bear in mind the much later division into circles. The circles, an attempt to create administrative divisions of the kingdom as such, were, in a faint way, a return to the ancient duchies, the names of which were to some extent retained. Thus we have the two Saxon circles, Upper and Lower, and the three of Franconia, Swabia, and Bavaria. All of these keep up the names of ancient duchies, and most of them keep up a stronger or fainter geographical connexion with the ancient lands whose names they bore. The other circles, the two Rhenish circles, Upper and Lower, and those of Westfalia, Austria, and Burgundy—the last name being used in a sense altogether new—arose out of changes which took place between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, some of which we shall have to notice.

♦Saxony; its three divisions, Westfalia, Angria, Eastfalia.♦

First then, the great duchy of Saxony consisted of three main divisions, Westfalia, Engern or Angria, and Eastfalia. Thuringia to the south-east, and the Frisian lands to the north-west, may be looked on as in some sort appendages to the Saxon duchy. ♦Growth of Saxony at the expense of the Slaves.♦ The duchy was also capable of any amount of extension towards the east, and the lands gradually won from the Wends on this side were all looked on as additions made to the Saxon territory. ♦Break-up of the Duchy, 1182-1191.♦ But the great Saxon duchy was broken up at the fall of Henry the Lion. ♦Duchy of Westfalia.♦ The archiepiscopal Electors of Köln received the title of Dukes of Westfalia and Engern. But in the greater part of those districts the grant remained merely nominal, though the ducal title, with a small actual Westfalian duchy, remained to the electorate till the end. From these lands the Saxon name may be looked on as having altogether passed away. ♦New use of the name Saxony.♦ The name of Saxony, as a geographical expression, clave to the Eastfalian remnant of the old duchy, and to Thuringia and the Slavonic conquests to the east. ♦The Saxon Circles.♦ In the later division of Germany these lands formed the two circles of Upper and Lower Saxony; and it was within their limits that the various states arose which have kept on the Saxon name to our own time.

From the descendants of Henry the Lion himself, and from the allodial lands which they kept, the Saxon name passed away, except so far as they became part of the Lower-Saxon circle. ♦Duchy of Brunswick.♦ They held their place as princes of the Empire, no longer as Dukes of Saxony, but as Dukes of Brunswick, a house which gave Rome one Emperor and England a dynasty of kings. ♦Its division, 1203.
Lüneburg and Wolfenbüttel.♦ After some of the usual divisions, two Brunswick principalities finally took their place on the map, those of Lüneburg and Wolfenbüttel, the latter having the town of Brunswick for its capital. The Lüneburg duchy grew. ♦Lüneburg acquires the bishoprics of Bremen and Verden, 1715-1719.♦ Late in the seventeenth century it was raised to the electoral rank, and early in the next century it was finally enlarged by the acquisition of the bishoprics of Bremen and Verden. ♦Electorate of Hannover or Brunswick Lüneburg, 1692.♦ Thus was formed the Electorate, and afterwards Kingdom, of Hannover, while the simple ducal title remained with the Brunswick princes of the other line.