Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Bradford, William" to "Brequigny, Louis" / Volume 4, Slice 4

by Various

In order to pay for these wars, and to meet the expenses of a splendid court, the later margraves had sold various rights to the towns and provinces of Brandenburg, and so aided the development of local government. John III. of Saltzwedel had shared his possessions with his brothers, but in 1303 they were reunited by his nephew Hermann, who purchased lower Lusatia in the same year. Hermann’s daughter Agnes married the elector Valdemar, and on the death of her only brother, John VI., in 1317, the possessions of the Saltzwedel branch of the family passed to Valdemar, together with Landsberg and the Saxon Palatinate, which had been purchased from Albert the Degenerate, landgrave of Thuringia. Valdemar thus gathered the whole of the mark under his rule, together with upper and lower Lusatia, and various outlying districts. He died childless in 1319, and was succeeded by his nephew Henry II., who died in 1320, when the Ascanian family, as the descendants of Albert the Bear were called, from the Latinized form of the name of their ancestral castle of Aschersleben, became extinct.

Brandenburg now fell into a deplorable condition, portions were seized by neighbouring princes, and the mark itself was disputed for by various claimants. In 1323 King Louis IV. took advantage of this condition to bestow Wittelsbach dynasty. the mark upon his young son, Louis, and thus Brandenburg was added to the possessions of the Wittelsbach family, although Louis did not receive the extensive lands of the Ascanian margraves. Upper and lower Lusatia, Landsberg, and the Saxon Palatinate had been inherited by female members of the family, and passed into the hands of other princes, the old mark was retained by Agnes, the widow of Valdemar, who was married again to Otto II., duke of Brunswick, and the king was forced to acknowledge these claims, and to cede districts to Mecklenburg and Bohemia. During the early years of the reign of Louis, who was called the margrave Louis IV. or V., Brandenburg was administered by Bertold, count of Henneberg, who established the authority of the Wittelsbachs in the middle mark, which, centring round Berlin, was the most important part of the margraviate. The quarrel between King Louis and Pope John XXII. was inimical to the interests of Brandenburg, which was ravaged by the Poles, torn by the strife of contending clerical factions, and alternately neglected and oppressed by the margrave. Trade and commerce were at a standstill, agriculture was neglected, the privileges and estates of the margrave passed into private hands, the nobles were virtually independent, and the towns sought to defend themselves by means of alliances. During the struggle between the families of Wittelsbach and Luxemburg, which began in 1342, there appeared in Brandenburg an old man who claimed to be the margrave Valdemar. He was gladly received by the king of Poland, and other neighbouring princes, welcomed by a large number of the people, and in 1348 invested with the margraviate by King Charles IV., who eagerly seized this opportunity to deal a blow at his enemy. This step compelled Louis to make peace with Charles, who abandoned the false Valdemar, invested Louis and his step-brothers with Brandenburg, and in return was recognized as king. Louis recovered the old mark in 1348, drove his opponent from the land, and in 1350 made a treaty with his step-brothers, Louis the younger and Otto, at Frankfort-on-Oder, by which Brandenburg was handed over to Louis the younger and Otto. Louis, who then undertook the government, made peace with his neighbours, finally defeated the false Valdemar, and was recognized by the Golden Bull of 1356 as one of the seven electors. The emperor Charles IV. took advantage of a family quarrel over the possessions of Louis the elder, who died in 1361, to obtain a promise from Louis the younger and Otto, that the margraviate should come to his own son, Wenceslaus, in case the electors died childless. Louis the younger died in 1365, and when his brother Otto, who had married a daughter of Charles IV., wished to leave Brandenburg to his own family Charles began hostilities; but in 1373 an arrangement was made, and Otto, by the treaty of Fürstenwalde, abandoned the margraviate for a sum of 500,000 gold gulden.

Under the Wittelsbach rule, the estates of the various provinces of Brandenburg had obtained the right to coin money, to build fortresses, to execute justice, and to form alliances with foreign states. Charles invested Wenceslaus Imperial control. with the margraviate in 1373, but undertook its administration himself, and passed much of his time at a castle which he built at Tangermünde. He diminished the burden of taxation, suppressed the violence of the nobles, improved navigation on the Elbe and Oder, and encouraged commerce by alliances with the Hanse towns, and in other ways. He caused a Landbook to be drawn up in 1375, in which are recorded all the castles, towns and villages of the land with their estates and incomes. When Charles died in 1378, and Wenceslaus became German and Bohemian king, Brandenburg passed to the new king’s half-brother Sigismund, then a minor, and a period of disorder ensued. Soon after Sigismund came of age, he pledged a part of Brandenburg to his cousin Jobst, margrave of Moravia, to whom in 1388 he handed over the remainder of the electorate in return for a large sum of money, and as the money was not repaid, Jobst obtained the investiture in 1397 from King Wenceslaus. Sigismund had also obtained the new mark on the death of his brother John in 1396, but sold this in 1402 to the Teutonic order. Jobst paid very little attention to Brandenburg, and the period was used by many of the noble families to enrich themselves at the expense of the poorer and weaker towns, to plunder traders, and to carry on feuds with neighbouring princes. When in 1410 Sigismund and Jobst were rivals for the German throne, Sigismund, anxious to obtain another vote in the electoral college, declared the bargain with Jobst void, and empowered Frederick VI. of Hohenzollern, burgrave of Nuremberg, to exercise the Brandenburg vote at the election. (See [Frederick I.], [Elector of Brandenburg].) In 1411 Jobst died and Brandenburg reverted to Sigismund, who appointed Frederick as his representative to govern the margraviate, and a further step was taken when, on the 30th of April 1415, the king invested Frederick of Hohenzollern and his heirs with Brandenburg, together with the electoral privilege and the office of chamberlain, in return for a payment of 400,000 gold gulden, but the formal ceremony of investiture was delayed until the 18th of April 1417, when it took place at Constance.

During the century which preceded the advent of the Hohenzollerns in Brandenburg its internal condition had become gradually worse and worse, and had been accompanied by a considerable loss of territory. The central power Condition before the Hohenzollern rule. had become weakened and the central organization relaxed, while the electorate had lost most of the advantages which formerly distinguished it from other German fiefs. Under the rule of the earliest margraves, it was the official side of their position that was prominent, and it was not forgotten that they were technically only the representatives of the emperor. But in the 13th century this feeling began to disappear, and Brandenburg enjoyed an independence and carried out an independent policy in a way that was not paralleled by any other German state. The emperor was still suzerain indeed, but his relations with the mark were so insignificant that they exercised practically no influence on its development; and so the power of the Ascanian margraves was virtually unlimited. This independence was enhanced by the fact that few great nobles had followed Albert the Bear in his work of conquest, and that consequently there were few large lordships with their crowd of dependents. The towns, the village communities and the knights held their lands and derived their rights directly from the margraves. The towns and villages had generally been laid out by contractors or locatores, men not necessarily of noble birth, who were installed as hereditary chief magistrates of the communities, and received numerous encouragements to reclaim waste lands. This mode of colonization was especially favourable to the peasantry, who seem in Brandenburg to have retained the disposal of their persons and property at a time when villenage or serfdom was the ordinary status of their class elsewhere. The dues paid by these contractors in return for the concessions formed the main source of the revenue of the margraves. Gradually, however, the expenses of warfare, liberal donations to the clergy, and the maintenance of numerous and expensive households, compelled them to pledge these dues for sums of ready money. This proceeding gave the barons and knights an opportunity to buy out the village magistrates and to replace them with nominees of their own. Thus the condition of the peasants grew worse, and their freedom was practically destroyed when the emperor Louis IV. recognized the jurisdiction of the nobles over their estates. Henceforth the power of the nobles steadily increased at the expense of the peasants, who soon sank into servitude. Instead of communicating directly with the margrave through his burgraves and bailiffs, or vogts, the village communities came to be represented by the nobles who had obtained possession of their lands. Many of the towns were forced into the same position. Others were able to maintain their independence, and to make use of the pecuniary needs of the margraves to become practically municipal republics. Their strength, however, was perhaps more usefully shown in their ability to resist the nobles, a proceeding which saved industry and commerce from extinction at a time of unbridled lawlessness. In the pecuniary embarrassments of the margraves also originated the power of the Stände, or estates, consisting of the nobles, the clergy and the towns. The first recorded instance of the Stände co-operating with the rulers occurred in 1170; but it was not till 1280 that the margrave solemnly bound himself not to raise a bede or special voluntary contribution without the consent of the estates. In 1355 the Stände secured the appointment of a permanent councillor, without whose concurrence the decrees of the margraves were invalid. In the century which followed the extinction of the Ascanian house, liberty degenerated into licence, and the country was given over to anarchy. Only the most powerful towns were able to maintain their independence; others, together with the clergy, regularly paid blackmail to the neighbouring nobles. Under these conditions it is no wonder that the electorate not only completely lost its political importance, but also suffered a considerable diminution of territory. Upper and lower Lusatia, the new mark of Brandenburg, and other outlying districts had been shorn away, and the electorate now consisted of the old mark, the middle mark with Priegnitz, Uckermark and Sternberg, a total area of not more than 10,000 sq.m.

Such was the condition and extent of Brandenburg in 1411 when Frederick of Hohenzollern became the representative of King Sigismund therein. Entering the electorate with a strong force in June 1412, his authority was quickly Frederick of Hohenzollern, 1412. recognized in the middle mark, but the nobles of the old mark and of Priegnitz refused to follow this example. The two succeeding years were skilfully used by Frederick to make peace with the neighbouring princes, and having thus isolated his domestic enemies, he turned his arms against them early in 1414. Their strongholds were stormed, and in a few weeks their leaders were either prisoners or fugitives. A general peace was then declared at Tangermünde which enabled Frederick to leave the mark to the rule of his wife, Elizabeth, and to turn his attention elsewhere. Returning to Brandenburg as elector in 1416, the last flickers of the insurrection were extinguished; and when Frederick was invested at Constance in April 1417 his authority over the mark was undisputed. His next difficulty was with Pomerania, which had been nominally under the suzerainty of Brandenburg since 1181. The revival of this claim by the elector provoked an invasion of the mark by an army of Pomeranians with their allies in 1420, when Frederick inflicted a severe defeat upon them at Angermünde; but in 1424 a temporary coolness between the elector and the emperor Sigismund led to a renewal of the attack which Frederick was unable to repulse. This reverse, together with the pressure of other business, induced him to leave Brandenburg in January 1426, after handing over its government to his eldest son, John. John, called the “Alchemist,” who was born in 1403, had been disappointed in his hope of obtaining the vacant electoral duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg in 1423. Lacking the diplomatic and military qualities of his father, his difficulties were augmented by the poverty of the country, and the evils which Frederick had suppressed quickly returned. The feeling of security vanished, the towns banded themselves together for defensive purposes, the rights of the margrave were again pledged to provide money, and in 1432 the land was ravaged by the Hussites. John never attained to the electoral dignity; for, in 1437, his father in arranging a division of his territories decided that Brandenburg should pass to his second and fourth sons, both of whom were named Frederick. The elder of the two took up the government at once, whereupon John left the mark for South Germany, where he remained until his death in 1464.

Frederick II., who became elector on his father’s death in September 1440, was born on the 19th of November 1413, and earned the surname of “Iron” through his sternness to his country’s enemies. He had little difficulty Frederick II. in repressing the turbulence of the nobles which had been quickened into life during the regency of his brother, but found it less easy to deal with the towns. Three strong leagues had been formed among them about 1431, and the spirit of municipal independence was most prominently represented by the neighbouring and allied towns of Berlin and Cöln. In his conflict with the towns over his refusal to ratify all their privileges the elector’s task was lightened by a quarrel between the magistrates and the burghers of Berlin, which he was called in to decide in 1442. He deposed the governing oligarchy, changed the constitution of the town, forbade all alliances and laid the foundations of a castle. The inhabitants soon chafed under these restrictions. A revolt broke out in 1447, but the power of the elector overawed the people, who submitted their case to the estates, with the result that the arrangement of 1442 was re-established. In 1447 Frederick was compelled to cede the old mark and Priegnitz to his younger brother, Frederick, under whose feeble rule they quickly fell into disorder. In 1463, however, when the younger Frederick died childless, the elector united them again with his own possessions and took measures to suppress the prevailing anarchy. In his dealings with neighbouring rulers Frederick pursued a peaceful and conciliatory policy. In 1442 he obtained some small additions to his territory, and the right of succession to the duchy of Mecklenburg in case the ducal family should die out. In 1445 an old feud with the archbishop of Magdeburg was settled, and in 1457 a treaty of mutual succession was made with the houses of Saxony and Hesse. Cottbus and Peitz in Lusatia were acquired, and retained after a quarrel with George Podiebrad, king of Bohemia, and the new mark of Brandenburg was purchased from the Teutonic order in 1454. An attempt, however, to secure the duchy of Pomerania-Stettin failed, and the concluding years of this reign were troubled by warfare with the Pomeranians.

The general success of Frederick’s rule was secured by the sedulous care with which he confined himself to the work of government. He is said to have refused the thrones of Poland and Bohemia; and although he made pilgrimages to the Holy Land and to Rome, his interest in ecclesiastical questions was mainly directed towards quickening the religious life of his people. He obtained important concessions from Pope Nicholas V. with regard to the appointment of bishops and other ecclesiastical matters in 1447, and in general maintained cordial relations with the papacy. About 1467 his only son, John, died, and increasing infirmity led him to contemplate abdication. An arrangement was made with his brother, Albert Achilles, to whom early in 1470 the mark was handed over, and Frederick retired to Plassenburg where he died on the 10th of February 1471.

Albert appeared in Brandenburg early in the same year, and after receiving the homage of his people took up the struggle with the Pomeranians, which he soon brought to a satisfactory conclusion; for in May 1472 he not only Albert Achilles. obtained the cession of several districts, but was recognized as the suzerain of Pomerania and as its future ruler. The expenses of this war led to a quarrel with the estates. A subsidy was granted which the elector did not regard as adequate, and by a dexterous use of his power he established his right to take an excise on beer. Albert’s most important contribution to the history of Brandenburg was the issue on the 24th of February 1473 of the Dispositio Achillea. By this instrument the elector decreed that the electoral mark should pass in its entirety to his eldest son, an establishment of primogeniture which had considerable influence on the future development of the country. He then entrusted the government to his eldest son, John, and left Brandenburg. Handicapped by poverty, John had to face attacks from two quarters. The Pomeranians, inspired by the declaration of the emperor Frederick III. that their land was a direct fief of the Empire, and aided by Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, took up arms; and a quarrel broke out with John, duke of Sagan, over the possessions of John’s brother-in-law, Henry XI., duke of Glogau. To deal with these difficulties Albert returned to Brandenburg in 1478, and during his stay drove back the Pomeranians, and added Crossen and other parts of duke Henry’s possessions to the electorate. Again left in charge of the country, John beat back a fresh attack made by John of Sagan in 1482; and he became elector on his father’s death in March 1486. He added the county of Zossen to his possessions in 1490, and in 1493 made a fresh treaty with the duke of Pomerania. Although he brought a certain degree of order into the finances, his poverty and the constant inroads of external enemies prevented him from seriously improving the condition of the country. John, who was called “Cicero,” either on account of his eloquence, or of his knowledge of Latin, was interested in learning, welcomed Italian scholars to the electorate, and strove to improve the education of his people. He died at Arneburg on the 9th of January 1499, and was succeeded by his son Joachim I.

When Joachim undertook the government of Brandenburg he had to deal with an amount of disorder almost as great as that which had taxed the energies of Frederick I. a century before. Highway robbery was general, the Joachim. lives and property of traders were in continual jeopardy, and the machinery for the enforcement of the laws was almost at a standstill. About 1504 an attack of unusual ferocity on some Frankfort traders aroused the elector’s wrath, and during the next few years the execution of many lawbreakers and other stern measures restored some degree of order. In this and in other ways Joachim proved himself a sincere friend to the towns and a protector of industry. Following the economic tendencies of the time he issued sumptuary laws and encouraged manufactures; while to suppress the rivalry among the towns he established an order of precedence for them. Equally important was his work in improving the administration of justice, and in this direction he was aided by scholars from the university which he had founded at Frankfort-on-Oder in 1506. He gave a new organization to the highest court of justice, the Kammergericht, secured for himself an important voice in the choice of its members, and ordered that the local law should be supplemented by the law of Rome. He did not largely increase the area of Brandenburg, but in 1524 he acquired the county of Ruppin, and in 1529 he made a treaty at Grimnitz with George and Barnim XI., dukes of Pomerania, by which he surrendered the vexatious claim to suzerainty in return for a fresh promise of the succession in case the ducal family should become extinct. Joachim’s attitude towards the teaching of Martin Luther which had already won many adherents in the electorate, was one of unrelenting hostility. The Jews also felt the weight of his displeasure, and were banished in 1510.

Ignoring the Dispositio Achillea, the elector bequeathed Brandenburg to his two sons. When he died in July 1535 the elder, Joachim II., became elector, and obtained the old and middle marks, while the younger, John, received Joachim II. the new mark. John went definitely over to the side of the Lutherans in 1538, while Joachim allowed the reformed doctrines free entrance into his dominions in 1539. The elector, however, unlike his brother, did not break with the forms of the Church of Rome, but established an ecclesiastical organization independent of the pope, and took up a position similar to that of King Henry VIII. in England. Many of the monasteries were suppressed, a consistory was set up to take over the functions of the bishops and to act as the highest ecclesiastical court of the country. In 1541 the new ecclesiastical system was confirmed by the emperor Charles V. With regard to this policy the elector was probably influenced by considerations of greed. The bishoprics of Brandenburg, Havelberg and Lebus were secularized; their administration was entrusted to members of the elector’s family; and their revenues formed a welcome addition to his impoverished exchequer. Nor did Joachim neglect other opportunities for adding to his wealth and possessions. In 1537 he had concluded a treaty with Frederick III., duke of Liegnitz, which guaranteed to the Hohenzollerns the succession to the Silesian duchies of Liegnitz, Brieg and Wohlau in the event of the ducal family becoming extinct; this arrangement is important as the basis of the claim made by Frederick the Great on Silesia in 1740. The treaty was declared invalid by the German king, Ferdinand I.; but the elector insisted on its legality, and in 1545 strengthened his position by arranging a double marriage between members of his own family and that of Duke Frederick. Of more immediate consequence was an arrangement made in 1569 with the representatives of Joachim’s kinsman, Albert Frederick, duke of Prussia, after which the elector obtained the joint investiture of the duchy of Prussia from Sigismund II., king of Poland, and was assured of the succession if the duke’s family became extinct. Joachim’s luxurious habits, his partiality for adventurers, and his delight in building, led him to incur such a heavy expenditure that after pledging many of his lands and rights he was compelled in 1540 to appeal for help to the estates. Taking advantage of his difficulties, the estates voted him a sum of money as the price of valuable concessions, the most important of which was that the elector should make no alliance without their consent. Fresh liabilities were soon incurred, and in spite of frequent contributions from the estates Joachim left at his death in January 1571 a heavy burden of debt to his son and successor, John George.