The Origins of the German Principalities, 1100-1350

Essays by German Historians

Graham A. Loud, Jochen Schenk, Graham A. Loud, Jochen Schenk

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780367879501
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317021995
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

The history of medieval Germany is still rarely studied in the English-speaking world. This collection of essays by distinguished German historians examines one of most important themes of German medieval history, the development of the local principalities. These became the dominant governmental institutions of the late medieval Reich, whose nominal monarchs needed to work with the princes if they were to possess any effective authority. Previous scholarship in English has tended to look at medieval Germany primarily in terms of the struggles and eventual decline of monarchical authority during the Salian and Staufen eras – in other words, at the "failure" of a centralised monarchy. Today, the federalised nature of late medieval and early modern Germany seems a more natural and understandable phenomenon than it did during previous eras when state-building appeared to be the natural and inevitable process of historical development, and any deviation from the path towards a centralised state seemed to be an aberration. In addition, by looking at the origins and consolidation of the principalities, the book also brings an English audience into contact with the modern German tradition of regional history (Landesgeschichte). These path-breaking essays open a vista into the richness and complexity of German medieval history.

Section B
Forms and structures of power

3
Princely lordship in the reign of Frederick Barbarossa

A historiographical analysis

Werner Hechberger

‘Germany’s Middle Ages – Germany’s Destiny’ – so runs the title of a 1933 lecture by Hermann Heimpel.¹ In this way Heimpel, who after the Second World War was to become first director of the renamed Max-Planck Institute for History, succinctly summarised an idea that shaped generations of German historians: that German history differs fundamentally from that of other European nations, and the reasons for such a difference are to be found in the Middle Ages. In contrast to other countries like France or England, monarchical central authority in Germany failed in the Middle Ages. Therefore, the modern nation state could be realised only in the late nineteenth century. This historical view and the master narrative linked to it were naturally a variant of the thesis of the ‘delayed nation’ and of a German ‘special path’ (Sonderweg). As Timothy Reuter aptly remarked, many medievalists have continued to stress this theme: ‘as medievalists we all know, or think we know, that Germany Was Different’.²

In the nineteenth century German historians were not afraid of value judgements and did not fail to provide normative assessments of this central question. A drama was designed, the history of the failure of German imperial rule. Kingship in the medieval East Frankish-German Empire became, according to this view, the victim over time of a struggle against unfavourable popes and unruly princes. The beginnings of this debate lay in a famous altercation between Heinrich von Sybel and Julius Ficker over the question of whether the German rulers’ Italian and imperial policies were responsible for the breakdown of the monarchy’s central power.³ The value judgement presented was then accepted in German medieval studies for a long time. The majority of German historians in the nineteenth century, who were Prussian- and Protestant-oriented, sided with the kings. The princes appeared to them as outright villains. The foundation and development of their lordship in the high and late Middle Ages was regarded as a usurpation of what were originally royal rights. In the final analysis, they argued, the princes contributed to the dissolution of a strong Reich.

After the First World War, however, the perspective shifted. ‘Territorial history’ as a new sub-discipline was a German invention that can be explained against a backdrop of the defeat in 1918: it sought not least to uncover which regions were included in ‘early Germany’. The development of lordship over specific lands, which led to the territorial states of the early modern era onwards, was developed as a central theme of historical research. These territorial states were understood as the continuation of medieval noble and princely lordship. Walter Schlesinger and Theodor Mayer in particular proposed a model according to which a supposedly age-old Germanic noble lordship was the starting point of German history.⁴ It was only over time, they argued, that this was reshaped in the kingdom of the Franks by the superimposition of a strong monarchical central power. It is then supposed to have broken through again as princely lordship in the high Middle Ages, and then developed into territorial lordship.

This so-called ‘noble lordship theory’ is based on the idea that a wide variety of pre-existing noble rights of lordship were collected together. In this view there can be no standard model of princely lordship, since the precise position of each prince rested on a foundation of vastly different rights. Princely lordship understood in this way could therefore never reach a ‘final state’. So Walter Schlesinger reached the conclusion that the princely lordship could not be explained. All that historians could do would be to describe the numerous individual cases.⁵

A phenomenon can be detected in both claims that can be characterised as ‘contemporaneity’ (Zeitgebundenheit) in German historical studies – in other words, historians’ values and wishes influence the questions and results of historical research. In the light of the fractured history of Germany in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it is no wonder that the history of research on princely lordships did not follow an unbroken course either. The starting point for all older interpretations was a premise that historians have until very recently rarely doubted – that it should be possible to reconstruct the plans of a medieval ruler and to describe the intentions behind his deeds.⁶ And naturally it must have been the king’s wish to strengthen central power. The nation state that was so greatly longed for in nineteenth-century Germany was the backdrop of this historiography. In this view, princes and kings appeared as natural opponents. A clear-cut ‘dualism of nobility and kingship’ was accepted as the fundamental and decisive element of the medieval constitution.⁷

In all variants of this master narrative the Staufen period, especially in the twelfth century, was recognised as playing a key role. After Heinrich von Sybel’s work, Frederick Barbarossa’s Italian and imperial policies were judged very critically. In general, though, German historians let themselves get carried away with enthusiasm for the image of an emperor who had already had a good press among his contemporaries. Wilhelm von Giesebrecht, for example, author of a history of the imperial age that was widely popular in the nineteenth century, saw Barbarossa’s era as a high point of German history. He grounded this view characteristically in the result of the conflict with the most important prince of the Reich. The fall of Henry the Lion, the great and mighty duke of Saxony and Bavaria, showed, for Giesebrecht, how brilliant the position of this ruler must have been.⁸

In the twentieth century historians such as Theodor Mayer and Karl Bosl developed this model. Now the twelfth century appeared as an age that had been shaped by the processes of territorialisation. Nobles built castles, founded monasteries, took over ecclesiastical advocacies and increasingly understood the area of their lordship in spatial terms. This is supposed to have heightened the fundamental conflict between king and princes, and Barbarossa – so historians argued – attempted to push back the princes. This interpretation was developed the furthest in the thesis of a Staufen ‘imperial reform’. This concept can be summarised with two fundamental ideas. The first is that Barbarossa systematically attempted to cut back the rights of lordship of the secular nobility, among other ways through the development of the royal possessions. It is supposed to have been his long-term goal to displace a great part of the nobility in favour of servitors who were subject to instruction – the ministeriales. Second, the plan is supposed to have been to bind the top nobles more closely to the king through an intensification of so-called ‘feudal’ relationships. This was supposed to create a smaller circle of pre-eminent princes. The king would decide who would belong to this group, and in this way these princes could be better controlled. The large duchies of the early Middle Ages were made smaller. Theodor Mayer formulated the fundamental idea in drastic terms: the princes would come up against the destruction of the duchies. The dynastic nobility would be shattered by the ministeriales.⁹ Karl Bosl expressed the thought in his standard work on the Staufen ministeriales that it had become the goal to drive out the high nobility.¹⁰

The phenomenon of contemporaneity was especially clear in research on the most important change in princely lordship in Barbarossa’s time. At first the term princeps was used, as in previous centuries, for the emperor and in unspecific terms for the nobility in general. At the end of the twelfth century the circle of people to whom the term was applied shrank significantly. For the year 1184 or 1188 it is reported that Count Baldwin of Hainault was named margrave of Namur and elevated to be princeps imperii.¹¹ What therefore had changed in the position of the principes in the Reich north of the Alps?

Julius Ficker differentiated in his classic work between older and newer imperial princes. He argued that in the Frankish period the incumbents of offices, whether dukes or counts, were members of a class who as nobles of office ‘had pre-eminence over the birth rank of the free lords’.¹² After the kingdom of the Franks ended, vassalage is supposed to have displaced office-holding. The class that was founded by holding office then developed into a vassalage-based ‘young’ princely class.

This idea was criticised as the noble lordship theory was established, with its emphasis on ‘autogenic’ rights of lordship. The causal relationship was reversed: it was not that office ennobled, but rather that the nobles held the offices. Therefore, it made no sense to speak of a class created from officials. The principes of the older period, this new argument ran, were appointed to high offices because they came from the nobility.¹³ In this perspective the rank of imperial prince was a creation of the twelfth century, not a redesign of an older rank.¹⁴

A new phase of research began with the prosopographical studies of Gerd Tellenbach. These underpinned the idea that there had been a noble layer since the Carolingian period from which officials were drawn. This ‘Reich aristocracy’ produced the dukes (duces) of the high Middle Ages.¹⁵ Before 1180 the title princeps was used unspecifically and very broadly. A more exclusive character can first be detected in the context of the process against Henry the Lion, in the witness list of the Gelnhäuser charter of April 1180 depriving him of the duchy of Saxony.¹⁶ Historians today no longer speak of an ‘older’ princely class.

By contrast, at first there was general agreement that in the period after 1180 a class of imperial princes (principes imperii) existed that was defined in terms of its rights. However, the question of what precisely these criteria were caused some problems, at least with regard to the lay princes. What the foundations were for the position of ecclesiastical princes did not cause similar difficulties. The bishops entered the class of imperial princes when the king invested them; there were only a few exceptions to this rule. For the same reason abbesses and abbots of the imperial monasteries, as well as provosts of imperial canonries, were also imperial princes.¹⁷ Hence there were, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, no less than 92 ecclesiastical imperial princes.

Only 22 secular imperial princes are known for the year 1190.¹⁸ The ‘feudal’ component of their position is unproblematic. An imperial prince paid homage only to the king or the Church. In point of fact, though, the king also had other vassals, whose number significantly increased in the late Middle Ages.¹⁹ Therefore, there must have been another criterion as well. Some historians have thought they could find it in the Sachsenspiegel, the famous legal text from the first half of the thirteenth century.²⁰ The work distinguishes between territorial law and feudal law. In consequence, scholars now looked for a criterion in territorial law. A classic treatise by Edmund E. Stengel has shaped the scholarship. Ducal and duke-similar lords to whom other lords (and also counts) were subject, he argues, formed the new princely class.²¹ Karl Heinemeyer, too, saw the conditions for membership of this group in an extensive region of lordship and wide judicial supremacy.²²

Since historians regarded these legal criteria as authoritative, they looked for a precise time and binding act for the creation of the class. In the case of the ecclesiastical princes, they fixed the definition of the class with the Concordat of Worms in 1122.²³ They also argued that 1180 marked a dividing line for the secular princes.²⁴ That Baldwin of Hainault was elevated to the rank of princeps in 1184/88 through a formal public act was taken as an indicat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of genealogical charts
• List of maps
• List of figures
• Preface
• List of contributors
• List of abbreviations
• Genealogical charts
• Maps
• SECTION A Introductory essays
• SECTION B Forms and structures of power
• SECTION C Strategies of power
• SECTION D The geography of power
• SECTION E The consolidation, expansion and disruption of power
• Appendix: selected primary sources
• Glossary
• Bibliographies
• Index