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HISTORY OF GERMANY

Germany as a region

Although less clearly defined by geography than the other natural territories of western Europe (such as Italy, the Spanish peninsula, France or Britain), the area broadly identified as Germany has clear boundaries on three sides - the Baltic to the north, the Rhine to the west, the Alps or the Danube to the south. Only to the east is there no natural border (a fact which has caused much strife and confusion in European history).

The region becomes associated with the name Germany in the 1st century BC, when the conquest of Gaul makes the Romans aware for the first time that there is an ethnic and linguistic distinction between the Celts (or Gauls) and their aggressive neighbours, the Germans.

Celts, Germans and Romans: 2nd - 1st century BC

The Celts themselves, in earlier centuries, have moved westwards from Germany, crossing the Rhine into France and pushing ahead of them the previous neolithic inhabitants of these regions. More recently the Celts have been subjected to the same westward pressure from various Germanic tribes. The intruders are identified as a group by their closely related languages, defined as the Germanic or Teutonic subdivision of Indo-European language.

From the 2nd century BC the Germans exert increasing pressure on the Roman empire. The reign of Augustus Caesar sees a trial of strength between the empire and the tribes, leading to an uneasy balance of power.

The region in which Augustus makes the most effort to extend the empire is beyond the Alps into Germany. By 14 BC the German tribes are subdued up to the Danube. In the next five years Roman legions push forward to the Elbe. But this further border proves impossible to hold. In AD 9 Arminius, a German chieftain of great military skill, destroys three Roman legions in the Teutoburg Forest.

The Romans pull back (though they return briefly to avenge what seems a shameful defeat). The conclusion, bequeathed by Augustus to his successors, is that the Roman empire has some natural boundaries; to the north these are the Rhine and the Danube.

German and Roman Europe: from the 5th century AD

The Germanic tribes continue to raid, often deep into the empire. But their base remains north of the Rhine and Danube until the 5th century - when the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Burgundians and Franks move in vast migrations through Italy, France and Spain.

Their presence becomes part of the history of these regions. France and Spain - prosperous and stable parts of the Roman empire - have becomes almost as Romanized as Italy itself. Culturally they are strong enough to absorb their new Germanic masters, as is revealed by the boundary line of Europe's languages. French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian are known as the Romance languages because they share a Roman, or Latin, origin.

Northern Europe, by contrast, speaks Germanic languages. Scandinavia does so because it is the region from which the German tribes migrate southwards. Britain does so because tribes invading from the 5th century (Angles and Saxons) are able to dominate a culture less fully Romanized than Gaul. And Germany, with the Netherlands, does so because here the tribes are relatively unaffected by Roman influence - secure in a region which Tacitus describes as 'covered either by bristling forests or by foul swamps'.

By the same token the tribes in the German heartland are backward. For the first few centuries of the post-Roman era they are no match for the more sophisticated Franks, who have established themselves in Gaul.

Charles the Great: AD 768-814

The only empire which has ever united France and Germany (apart from a few years under Napoleon) is the one established in the 8th century by Charlemagne, the grandson of Charles Martel and son of Pepin III.

Charles - whose name Charlemagne is a version of the Latin Carolus Magnus (Charles the Great) - inherits the western part of the Frankish empire, a coastal strip from southwest France up through the Netherlands into northern Germany, on the death of his father in 768. Three years later his brother Carloman dies. Charlemagne annexes Carloman's inheritance - central France and southwest Germany. By the time of his own death, in 814, he rules much of the rest of Germany together with northern Italy.

Conversion of the Saxons: AD 772-804

North of the Alps Charlemagne extends his territory eastwards to include Bavaria, but his main efforts within Germany are directed against the Saxons.

The Saxons, restless Germanic tribesmen, have long plagued the settled Frankish territories by raiding from their forest sanctuaries. Charlemagne the emperor is harmed by their depredations; Charlemagne the Christian is outraged by their pagan practices. From 772 he wages ferocious war against them, beginning with the destruction of one of their great shrines and its sacred central feature - the Irminsul or 'pillar of the world', a massive wooden column believed to support the universe.

It takes Charlemagne thirty years to subdue the Saxons; not until 804 are they finally transformed into settled Christians within his empire. It has been a brutal process. Charlemagne's method is military conquest followed by forced conversion and the planting of missionary outposts, usually in the form of bishoprics. In his book of rules, the official punishment for refusing to be baptized is death.

The chronicles record that on one day some 4500 reluctant Saxons are executed for not worshipping the right god.

Holy Roman Emperor: AD 800

In 799, for the third time in half a century, a pope is in need of help from the Frankish king. After being physically attacked by his enemies in the streets of Rome (their stated intention is to blind him and cut out his tongue, to make him incapable of office), Leo III makes his way through the Alps to visit Charlemagne at Paderborn.

It is not known what is agreed, but Charlemagne travels to Rome in 800 to support the pope. In a ceremony in St Peter's, on Christmas Day, Leo is due to anoint Charlemagne's son as his heir. But unexpectedly (it is maintained), as Charlemagne rises from prayer, the pope places a crown on his head and acclaims him emperor.

Charlemagne expresses displeasure but accepts the honour. The displeasure is probably diplomatic, for the legal emperor is undoubtedly the one in Constantinople. Nevertheless this public alliance between the pope and the ruler of a confederation of Germanic tribes now reflects the reality of political power in the west. And it launches the concept of the new Holy Roman Empire which will play an important role throughout the Middle Ages.

The Holy Roman Empire only becomes formally established in the next century. But it is implicit in the title adopted by Charlemagne in 800: 'Charles, most serene Augustus, crowned by God, great and pacific emperor, governing the Roman empire.'

Aachen or Aix-la-Chapelle: AD 805

Five years after the coronation in Rome, Leo III is again with Charlemagne at a religious ceremony. But this time it is in Germany. He is consecrating Charlemagne's spectacular new church in Aachen, begun just nine years previously in 796.

The French name of Aachen, Aix-la-Chapelle, specifically features this famous building - a small but richly decorated octagonal chapel which Charlemagne has consciously modelled on another famous imperial church, Justinian's San Vitale in Ravenna.

Much is significant about the choice of Aachen as Charlemagne's seat of power. It is in the north of his empire, at the opposite extreme from Rome. The pope's journey north in 805 makes it plain that Rome cannot assume precedence in this new Christian partnership; and when Charlemagne decides to crown his only surviving son, Louis, as co-emperor in 813, the ceremony takes place in the imperial chapel at Aachen without the pope.

The site of Aachen is also ideal in terms of Charlemagne's united Frankish empire. It lies exactly between the west and east Frankish kingdoms, a fact reflected in its modern position at the intersection between the borders of Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.

A centre of Christian learning: AD 780-814

While extending his territories, Charlemagne needs to improve the administration of the empire. Christian clerics (the only literate group in the barbarian north) are enlisted as his civil servants at Aachen, where the emperor also establishes a programme of education and cultural revival.

Alcuin, a distinguished teacher from York, is invited in 780 to found a school in the palace at Aachen (Charlemagne and his family sometimes join the lessons); and the copying of manuscripts is carried out in a beautiful script which later becomes the basis of Roman type. Though still primitive by the standards of classical culture, the renewal of intellectual and artistic life under Charlemagne has justly been described as the Carolingian Renaissance.

The Carolingian inheritance: AD 814

Charlemagne intends, in the tradition of the Franks, to divide his territory equally between his sons. But the two eldest die, in 810 and 811, leaving only Louis - who succeeds as sole emperor in 814. His subsequent name, Louis the Pious, reveals a character different from his father's; he is more interested in asserting authority through the medium of church and monastery than on the battlefield.

Charlemagne's great empire remains precariously intact for this one reign after his death. Its fragmentation begins when Louis dies, in 840. But the name of Charlemagne in legend and literature remains vigorously alive .

The region united by Charlemagne includes, in modern terms, northeast Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, much of Germany, Switzerland, Austria and north Italy. In 840, on the death of Charlemagne's son Louis the Pious, war breaks out between his three sons over their shares of this inheritance.

A division between the brothers is finally agreed, in 843, in a treaty signed at Verdun. The dividing lines drawn on this occasion prove of lasting and dark significance in the history of Europe.

Three slices of Francia: AD 843

Two facts of European geography (the Atlantic coast and the Rhine) dictate a vertical division of the Frankish empire, known in Latin as Francia. The three available sections are the west, the middle and the east - Francia Occidentalis, Francia Media and Francia Orientalis.

It is clear that Francia Occidentalis will include much of modern France, and that Francia Orientalis will approximate to the German-speaking areas east of the Rhine. Francia Media, an ambiguous region between them, is the richest strip of territory. Allotted to Charlemagne's eldest son, Lothair I, it stretches from the Netherlands and Belgium down both sides of the Rhine to Switzerland and Italy.

This central Frankish kingdom is in subsequent centuries, including our own, one of the great fault lines of Europe. The northern section becomes known as Lotharingia (the territory of Lothair) and thus, in French, Lorraine; between it and Switzerland is Alsace. As power grows or decreases to the west or the east, in the great regions emerging slowly as France and Germany, these Rhineland provinces frequently change hands or allegiance.

So, for many centuries, do the Low Countries, Burgundy and northern Italy.

Feudal upstarts: 9th - 10th century AD

The external threat from marauding Vikings in the west and from Magyars in the east aggravates an already grave internal problem for the feudal dynasties of Charlemagne's descendants. Feudalism, with its decentralization of military and territorial power, has at the best of times a tendency to foster regional independence. In periods of crisis, when the regions need to be well armed if they are to repel invaders, it is almost inevitable that the feudal holders of large tracts of frontier territory grow in strength until they are capable of challenging their own king.

Baronial contenders upset the succession to the throne in the west Frankish kingdom from the late 9th century and in the eastern kingdom a few years later.

In 911 the east Frankish king dies without a male heir. The only legitimate claimant within the Carolingian dynasty is Charles III, ruler of the west Frankish kingdom. Rather than do homage to him, and reunite the empire of Charlemagne, the eastern Franks and the Saxons elect one of their own number to the vacant throne. Conrad, the duke of Franconia, becomes the German king.

Although not of the Carolingian line, Conrad is nevertheless a Frank. But on his death the Franks and the Saxons together elect a Saxon king. In 919 Henry I becomes the founder of the Saxon, or Ottonian, dynasty.

Ottonian dynasty: AD 919-962

The east Frankish kingdom over which Henry I becomes king in 919 consists of four great duchies - territories settled by tribes (such as the Baivarii and the Suebi) which have been conquered by the Franks and converted to Christianity. Their leaders, becoming dukes in the Frankish feudal system, accept the rule of any strong Frankish king but tend to independence in other reigns. The four are Bavaria, Swabia, Saxony and the Franks' own region, Franconia. Lorraine, a fifth duchy, is a frequently disputed territory between the east and west Frankish kingdoms.

Henry succeeds in asserting at least nominal control over these five duchies (often called the stem duchies). He is succeeded by his son Otto in 936.

The rule of Otto I, or Otto the Great, amounts to a revival and extension of the eastern half of Charlemagne's great empire. Where Charlemagne used a combination of force and Christianity to subdue the Saxons on his border, Otto applies the same tactics in the north against the Danes and in the east against the Slavs. He protects the eastern border of what now becomes known as the Reich (the German 'empire') by a decisive victory against the Magyars of Hungary on a plain near the river Lech in 955.

Like Charlemagne, Otto marches into northern Italy and proclaims himself king of the Lombards. Like Charlemagne he is crowned by the pope in Rome.

Emperors and popes: AD 962-1250

The imperial role accorded by the pope to Charlemagne in 800 is handed on in increasingly desultory fashion during the 9th century. From 924 it falls into abeyance. But in 962 a pope once again needs help against his Italian enemies. Again he appeals to a strong German ruler.

The coronation of Otto I by pope John XII in 962 marks a revival of the concept of a Christian emperor in the west. It is also the beginning of an unbroken line of Holy Roman emperors lasting for more than eight centuries. Otto I does not call himself Roman emperor, but his son Otto II uses the title - as a clear statement of western and papal independence from the other Christian emperor in Constantinople.

Otto and his son and grandson (Otto II and Otto III) regard the imperial crown as a mandate to control the papacy. They dismiss popes at their will and instal replacements more to their liking (sometimes even changing their mind and repeating the process).

This power, together with territories covering much of central Europe, gives the German empire and the imperial title great prestige from the late 10th century. This high status is unaffected by a minor change of dynasty in the early 11th century.

In 1024 the male line of descent from Otto I dies out. The princes elect the duke of Franconia, descended from Otto in the female line, as the German king Conrad II. His dynasty is known either as Franconian (from the province of the Franks) or Salian (from the Salii, one of the main tribal groups of the Franks).

Conrad's son, Henry III, is crowned emperor in Rome in 1046. Before his coronation he deposes three rival claimants to the papacy and selects a candidate of his own - the German bishop of Bamberg - who carries out the coronation in St Peter's. This renewed intervention in Rome's affairs launches two centuries of conflict between German emperors and the papacy.

Guelphs and Ghibellines: from AD 1152

The struggle between emperors and popes is at its most extreme during the reign of Henry III's son, Henry IV. But it continues unabated after the next change of dynasty.

Henry IV's son, Henry V, dies without an heir in 1125. By this time two of the most powerful German families, each closely linked to the imperial house, are the Welfs and the Hohenstaufen. They are bitter rivals, but the German electors show signs of resolving that issue when they select Frederick I as German king in 1152. On his father's side he is a Hohenstaufen, on his mother's a Welf.

The hostility of the popes to the German emperors remains a factor in European and Italian politics during the Hohenstaufen period. Indeed the ancient Welf hatred of the Hohenstaufen becomes linked to papal hostility. Supporters of the papacy in Italy become known as Guelphs (a version of Welf), while the imperial party are called Ghibellines (from Waiblingen, the name of a Hohenstaufen stronghold in Swabia).

The particular bugbear of the papacy is the emperor Frederick II. He alarms them because the dynastic marriage of his parents has brought him control of southern Italy and Sicily as well Germany. Yet this unwieldy extension of the German empire is also a source of weakness within Germany itself.

German kings and emperors: 10th - 13th century

When the Holy Roman empire was re-established in the 10th century, with the coronation of Otto I, the German kingdom was by far the most powerful territory in Europe. But the political structure in Germany contributes, in the long run, to a decline in the power of the German kings.

It is the tradition in Germany, an alliance of powerful duchies, for the king of the Germans to be elected from among the local rulers (though the practice of power ensures that the choice usually remains within a dynasty). And the reign of Otto I introduces an extra tradition - that the German king is also automatically the emperor, once the pope has crowned him in Rome.

During the 12th and 13th centuries, when the regions of western Europe (France, England, Spain) are developing strong centralized monarchies, Germany moves in the opposite direction. Large numbers of small territories grow in wealth and independence, while offering nominal allegiance to the emperor. Some are aristocratic in origin, domains of noble families; others are ecclesiastical, with a rich abbot or bishop wielding temporal power; a few are towns, flexing new economic muscle. All are ferociously competitive.

This tendency to anarchy results from the paradox of an elected feudal overlord. His position, not based on conquest, must depend on a network of negotiated alliances - meaning, in brutal reality, concessions.

The lack of authority of the German kings within Germany is compounded by the demands on their attentions elsewhere. Being Roman emperors, they have interests to defend in Italy.

The problem is at its extreme in the 13th century when marriage brings the rich kingdom of Sicily to the Hohenstaufen dynasty of German kings. For much of his reign Frederick II succeeds in controlling Germany, Italy and his favourite domain of Sicily, as well as going on crusade and becoming king of Jerusalem. But after his death, in 1250, the empire loses any real political meaning. The title becomes valued only as the most resounding dignity possessed by the German kings.

Pressure eastwards: 11th - 13th century AD

Dynastic politics may have the effect of making the German empire less cohesive, but the energies of the German people achieve at the same time a marked expansion of the realm. This is achieved commercially through the trading network of the Hanseatic towns. And it is reflected in territorial terms in the steady push eastwards (or in German Drang nach Osten) into the less developed and heavily forested lands occupied by Slavs and Prussians.

This process at first brings considerable benefits to the colonized regions, though it also inevitably leads to violent reactions against the colonists.

The German advance is gradual, achieved by peasant settlement (laboriously clearing the forests), by the granting of feudal rights in newly conquered territories, by the establishment of monasteries and bishoprics, and by the extension of Baltic trade along the coast.

By these means the ancient German duchies are expanded. Swabia absorbs much of what is now Switzerland. Bavaria extends spasmodically into Austria, with occasional disastrous reverses at the hands of the Magyars in Hungary. To the north the Prussians resist German attempts to conquer and convert them in the 10th century, remaining pagan in their remote forests until the arrival of the Teutonic knights in the 13th century.

Hanseatic League: 12th - 17th century AD

In 1159 Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria, builds a new German town on a site which he has captured the previous year. It is L?beck, perfectly placed to benefit from developing trade in the Baltic. Goods from the Netherlands and the Rhineland have their easiest access to the Baltic through L?beck. For trade in the opposite direction, a short land journey from L?beck across the base of the Danish peninsula brings goods easily to Hamburg and the North Sea.

Over the next two centuries L?beck and Hamburg, in alliance, become the twin centres of a network of trading alliances known later as the Hanseatic League.

A Hanse is a guild of merchants. Associations of German merchants develop in the great cities on or near the Baltic (Gdansk, Riga, Novgorod, Stockholm), on the coasts of the North Sea (Bergen, Bremen) and in western cities where the Baltic trade can be profitably brokered - in particular Cologne, Bruges and London.

It suits these German merchants, and the towns which benefit from their efforts, to form mutual alliances to further the flow of trade. Safe passage for everyone's goods is essential. The control of pirates becomes a prime reason for cooperation, together with other measures (such as lighthouses and trained pilots) to improve the safety of shipping.

The rapid growth of Hanseatic trade during the 13th century is part of a general pattern of increasing European prosperity. During this period the towns with active German hanse gradually organize themselves in a more formal league, with membership fees and regular 'diets' to agree policies of mutual benefit. By the 14th century there about 100 such towns, some of them as far afield as Iceland and Spain. Their German communities effectively control the trade of the Baltic and North Sea.

But economic decline during the 14th century takes its toll on the success of the Hanseatic towns. So do political developments around the Baltic.

In 1386 Poland and Lithuania merge, soon winning the region around Gdansk from the Teutonic knights. On the opposite shore of the sea, the three Scandinavian kingdoms are united in 1389; the new monarchy encompasses Stockholm, previously an independent Hanseatic town. A century later, when Ivan III annexes Novgorod, he expels the German merchants.

Such factors contribute to the gradual decline of the Hanseatic League. What began as a positive union to promote trade becomes a restrictive league, attempting to protect German interests against foreign competitors. But great enterprises fade slowly. The final Hanseatic diet is held as late as 1669.

Prussia and the Teutonic knights: AD 1225-1525

The Teutonic knights, short of work in the Holy Land, adopt a new form of crusade in about 1225. A prince of Poland, Conrad of Mazovia, asks them to control his unruly neighbours, the pagan Prussians - tribes who have lived for many centuries in the lands northeast of Germany, bordering the Baltic sea. The knights prepare their campaign carefully, establishing in advance their rights over any land they may conquer. In 1230 Conrad formally cedes to the order his territories on the west bank of the Vistula.

During the next thirty years the knights fight their way east along the coast as far as the Neman river, building castles to hold down the Prussians and sharing out the land as feudal fiefs for German families.

In 1261 an uprising by the Prussians almost succeeds in evicting the Teutonic knights. It takes the knights some twenty years to regain full control. They achieve their purpose by giving feudal rights to many more families and by importing large numbers of German peasants to till the land (their iron ploughs are more effective than the wooden implements of the Prussians in this heavily wooded region).

The knights improve their security when they seize Gdansk in 1308 and annexe the coast west to the Oder (the region known as Pomerania). This links Prussia with the German empire. But it has a very adverse effect on its southern neighbours, cutting Poland off from the sea.

The knights retain this territory for a century, until Poland and Lithuania win a crushing victory over the order at Grunwald in 1410. The disposal of Prussian territory between Poland and the knights is eventually agreed in a treaty at Torun in 1466. The western part of Prussia, around the Vistula, is incorporated in the Polish kingdom. Further west along the coast, Pomerania (annexed by the knights in 1308-9) is now restored to Poland.

But the eastern part of Prussia, more densely settled by Germans, is granted to the order as a feudal duchy owing allegiance to Poland.

This arrangement lasts until the Reformation. In 1525, under Lutheran influence, the high master dissolves the Teutonic Order in Prussia. However he retains his own position at the head of the duchy, owing allegiance just as before to the Polish crown. But he is now the secular duke of Prussia, a position capable of becoming hereditary.

The name of this last high master in the region is Albert. He is a member of the Hohenzollern family. Prussia becomes one of his family's most significant possessions.

After the Hohenstaufen: AD 1254-1438

The Hohenstaufen period has seen some notably forceful popes (Innocent III, Gregory IX, Innocent IV) and powerful emperors (Frederick I, Frederick II). It is followed, after the death of the last Hohenstaufen ruler in 1254, by a prolonged time of uncertainty in both papacy and empire.

The popes abandon Rome in 1309 and spend most of the 14th century in self-imposed exile in Avignon. From 1378 there are two rival popes (a number subsequently rising to three) in the split known as the Great Schism.

Meanwhile, for almost twenty years after the death of Conrad IV in 1254, the German princes fail to elect any effective king or emperor. This period is usually known (with a grandiloquence to match the Great Schism in the papacy) as the Great Interregnum.

The interregnum ends with the election of Rudolf I as German king in 1273. The choice subsequently seems of great significance, because he is the first Habsburg on the German throne. But the Habsburg grip on the succession remains far in the future. During the next century the electors choose kings from several families. Not till the coronation of Charles IV in 1346 is there the start of another dynasty - that of the house of Luxembourg.

Charles IV is crowned emperor in Rome in 1355. He makes his capital in Prague (he has inherited Bohemia as well as Luxembourg), bringing the city its first period of glory. The imperial dignity remains in Charles's family until 1438, when it is transferred to the Habsburgs.

At the beginning and end of those eighty years Charles and his son Sigismund take a strong line with the papacy. Within a year of his coronation, Charles issues the Golden Bull of 1356 which excludes the pope from any influence in the choice of emperor. And in 1414 Sigismund is instrumental in bringing together the Council of Constance which finally ends the Great Schism and restores a single pope to Rome.

The Golden Bull and the electors: AD 1356-1806

The Golden Bull, issued by Charles IV in 1356, clarifies the new identity which the Holy Roman empire has been gradually adopting. It ends papal involvement in the election of a German king, by the simple means of denying Rome's right to approve or reject the electors' choice. In return, by a separate agreement with the pope, Charles abandons imperial claims in Italy - apart from a title to the kingdom of Lombardy, inherited from Charlemagne.

The emphasis is clear. This is now to be essentially a German empire, as reflected in a new form of the title adopted in 1452 - sacrum Romanum imperium nationis Germanicae (Holy Roman empire of the German nation).

The Golden Bull also clarifies and formalizes the process of election of a German king. The choice has traditionally been in the hands of seven electors, but their identity has varied.

The group of seven is now established as three archbishops (of Mainz, Cologne and Trier) and four hereditary lay rulers (the count palatine of the Rhine, the duke of Saxony, the margrave of Brandenburg and the king of Bohemia).

Imperial cities: 12th - 15th century AD

The fragmented political structure of Germany has certain advantages for the larger German towns. An elected emperor often finds it difficult to control virtually independent territories, held by hereditary nobles or by dignitaries of the church. In such circumstances there may be a natural alliance between the emperor and the citizens of a prosperous borough - who frequently have their own grudge against their local feudal overlord.

The rich burghers can help the emperor with funds or troops for his armies. He can help them with privileges to protect their trade.

Gradually, over the centuries, a premier league of German cities begins to emerge. It consists of those which hold their rights directly from the emperor. These are the Reichstâdte, or imperial cities. Since the emperor is often relatively powerless, this direct allegiance becomes tantamount to independence.

Such cities run their own affairs and make alliances among themselves for mutual benefit, even putting armies into the field to enforce their interests. Each of them is run by a Rat, or council, membership of which is often limited to the leading local families.

In many ways the imperial cities are similar to contemporary communes in Italy or Flanders. But they are more numerous and are more inclined to group together in large trading alliances - of which the Hanseatic League is the best known example.

A document of 1422 lists seventy-five free German cities. They include many of the most distinguished places in early German history - Aachen, Cologne, L?beck, Hamburg, Bremen, Dortmund, Frankfurt am Main, Regensburg, Augsburg, Nuremberg, Ulm. From 1489 all the free cities are formally represented in the imperial diet or Reichstag.

Reichstag: 12th - 19th century AD

The Reichstag is in origin the royal council of the medieval German emperors, similar in kind to the curia regis of kings in western Europe at the same period. The term is usually translated into English as imperial diet - Reich meaning empire, and Tag (day) being reflected in diet (from dies, 'day' in Latin).

At first only the princes and bishops of the empire are summoned to a diet, but the representation gradually extends to lessser feudal nobles and then to the imperial cities. The larger cities become informally involved during the 13th century. From 1489 all the free cities are given a guaranteed role in the diet.

The reform of 1489 organizes the imperial diet in three separate colleges. The first consists of the seven electors who are responsible for choosing a new emperor when the throne is vacant (a group established by the Golden Bull of 1356). The second is the college of princes, of whom sixty-one are from the hereditary nobility and thirty-three are bishops.

The third is the college of the cities, identified as two groups. They consist of fourteen towns loosely identified with the Rhineland and thirty-seven with Swabia.

The three colleges of the diet meet separately and pass their own resolutions. These resolutions are combined in an agreed statement which is then presented to the emperor - who has the legal right to act upon it in whole, in part or not at all (the degree of compliance depends largely on his need at the time for the diet's financial support).

In the 16th century the Holy Roman empire begins a long decline into irrelevance. The emperors are Habsburgs, with their roots in Austria. The German princes are increasingly independent. The imperial diet lapses into disuse, meeting from 1663 in Regensburg but deciding little. Two centuries later, with the creation of a new German empire in 1871, the Reichstag is revived as Germany's parliament.

Germany and the Reformation: AD 1517-1648

The decline of the Holy Roman empire is closely connected with the great 16th-century upheaveal in central Europe - that of the Reformation. The German princes, in the many semi-independent territories of the empire, see the religious options suddenly on offer as political opportunities.

The pope is resented by many as a devious and distant intriguer, who drains away money from local church lands and regularly demands more. The emperor, lord of vast new Habsburg territories, is now also a distant figure with interests far beyond the traditional empire.

Once the turmoil of the Reformation begins, in the years after 1517, each German prince assesses his own best chance of securing or expanding his territory and his treasury. The resulting conflicts within German-speaking regions are frequent until the peace of Augsburg in 1555. They then erupt again in the Thirty Years' War of 1618-48.

The great dispute soon becomes a European event. But the original flare-up in 1517 is very much a German phenomenon.

Albert of Mainz: AD 1517

Germany provides a context in which materialism within the Roman Catholic church is offensively evident. Some of the principalities, which together make up the Holy Roman empire, are ruled by unscrupulous prelates living in the style of Renaissance princes. Foremost among them is Albert, archbishop of Mainz and one of the seven imperial electors.

By the age of twenty-four Albert holds a bishopric and a second archbishopric in addition to Mainz. Such plurality is against canon law. But the pope, Leo X, agrees to overlook the irregularity in return for a large donation to the building costs of the new St Peter's.

Both pope and archbishop are men of the world (the pope is a Medici). Leo makes it possible for Albert to recover his costs by granting him the concession for the sale of indulgences towards the building of St Peter's. Half the money for each indulgence is go to Rome; the other half will help to pay off Albert's debts (he has borrowed the money for the original donation from the Fuggers of Augsburg).

This secret arrangement might distress the faithful if they knew of it. But more immediately shocking to some is the behaviour of the friar Johann Tetzel, whom Albert employs to sell the indulgences.

Tetzel is a showman. When preaching to gullible crowds in German towns he goes far beyond the official doctrine of indulgences. He promises the immediate release of loved ones from the pain of Purgatory as soon as a purchase is made. He even has a catchy jingle to make the point: 'As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, The soul from Purgatory springs.'

In October 1517 some parishioners return to Wittenberg with indulgences which they have bought from Tetzel - indulgences so powerful, some have been led to believe, that they could pardon a man who had raped the Virgin Mary. News of this travesty reaches the ears of a professor at the university of Wittenberg.

Luther's ninety-five theses: AD 1517

Martin Luther, a man both solemn and passionate, is an Augustinian friar teaching theology at the university recently founded in Wittenberg by Frederick the Wise, the elector of Saxony. Obsessed by his own unworthiness, he comes to the conclusion that no amount of virtue or good behaviour can be the basis of salvation (as proposed in the doctrine known as justification by works). If the Christian life is not to be meaningless, he argues, a sinner's faith must be the only merit for which God's grace might be granted.

Luther therefore becomes a passionate believer in an alternative doctrine, justification by faith, for which he finds evidence in the writings of St Paul.

Nothing could be further from the concept of justification by faith than Tetzel's impudent selling of God's grace. Luther has often argued against the sale of indulgences in his sermons. Now he takes a more public stand. He writes out ninety-five propositions about the nature of faith and contemporary church practice.

The tone of these 'theses', as they come to be known, is academic. But the underlying gist, apart from overt criticism of indulgences, is that truth is to be sought in scripture rather than in the teaching of the church. By nailing his theses to the door of All Saints' in Wittenberg, as Luther does on 31 October 1517, he is merely proposing them as subjects for debate.

Instead of launching a debate in Wittenberg, the ninety-five theses spark off a European conflagration of unparalleled violence. The Reformation ravages western Christendom for more than a century, bringing violent intolerance and hatred which lasts in some Christian communities down to the present day. No sectarian dispute in any other religion has matched the destructive force, the brutality and the bitterness which begins in Wittenberg in 1517.

Luther is as surprised as anyone else by the eruption which now engulfs him - slowly at first but with accelerating pace after a year or two. Its violence derives from several unusual elements.

The papacy is determined to suppress this impertinence. Luther's writings are burnt in Rome in 1520; his excommunication follows in 1521. This is the predictable part. The unexpected elements are the groundswell of support in Germany, nourished by a deep resentment of papal interference; and the effect of the relatively new craft of printing.

Before Gutenberg, news of Luther's heresy would have circulated only slowly. But now copies of the ninety-five theses are all over Europe within weeks. A fierce debate develops, with pamphlets pouring from the presses - many of them from Luther's pen. Within six years, by 1523, Europe's printers produce 1300 different editions of his tracts.

In these circumstances it is impossible for the issue to be swept under the carpet. Any action taken against Luther in person is certain to provoke a crisis - though in the early years his safety depends heavily on the protection of Frederick the Wise, proud of his university and reluctant to hand over to Rome its famous theologian, however controversial.

Support for the excommunicated monk is so strong among German knights that the young emperor, Charles V, is prevailed upon to hear his case at a diet held in 1521 in Worms. Luther is given a safe conduct for his journey to and from the diet. He is no doubt aware of the value of an imperial safe conduct to John Huss a century earlier, but he accepts the challenge.

The Diet of Worms: AD 1521

Where Huss had slipped into Constance in 1414 almost alone, Luther arrives at the diet at Worms supported by a large number of enthusiastic German knights. Nevertheless the purpose of the confrontation, from the emperor's point of view, is a demand that he should recant.

In a lengthy speech Luther explains that he will recant any of his views if they can be proved wrong by scripture or reason. Otherwise he must remain true to his conscience and to his understanding of God's word. The presses soon reduce this to the pithy statement which has been remembered ever since: Hier stehe ich. Ich kann nicht anders., 'Here I stand. I can not do otherwise.'

The emperor and the diet declare Luther an outlaw in the Edict of Worms (using the violently intemperate language of the time). Luther leaves Worms with his safe conduct guaranteed for a few days. Once it has expired, it becomes the duty of any of the emperor's loyal subjects to seize the heretic.

Precisely that disaster seems to happen. Luther is bumping along in his wagon when armed men gallop up and drag him off. He is not seen in public for almost a year, causing many to assume that he is dead. But the armed men belong to Frederick the Wise. They take Luther to safety in one of Frederick's castles, the Wartburg, where he is given new clothes and a new identity - as Junker Georg, or plain Squire George.

Speyer: AD 1526-1529

In the years following the Edict of Worms, and Luther's return to Wittenberg in 1522, the princes of German states and the councils of imperial cities engage in furious argument whether to accept the Edict's rejection of Luther's reforms. There is growing hostility to external interference in German affairs - from Rome and from the pope's committed ally, a Holy Roman emperor whose interests now seem as much Spanish as German. A large minority within the empire is in rebellious mood.

In 1526 the emperor, Charles V, attempts to calm the situation by appeasement.


An imperial diet held in Speyer in 1526 modifies the outright ban on Luther's teachings, imposed five years previously in the Edict of Worms. Now each German prince is to take his own decision on the matter, with the responsibility to answer for it 'to God and the emperor'.

Three years later, once again at Speyer, another diet take the opposite line. The concession of 1526 is withdrawn, and the Edict of Worms reinstated. A dissenting minority, consisting of five princes and fourteen imperial cities, publishes a 'Protestation' against the decision. As a result they become known as the Protestants.

Augsburg: AD 1530-1555

The need to settle religious unrest in Germany is made more urgent by the shock of the Turks besieging Vienna in September 1529. They withdraw unsuccessfully a month later. But the affront vividly suggests the possibility of greater dangers.

The emperor Charles V makes a new attempt to resolve the issue at a diet in Augsburg in June 1530. Luther, officially an outlaw under the terms of the Edict of Worms, is unable to attend. His place is taken by Melanchthon, who presents what is now known as the Augsburg Confession. Drawing various previous documents into one coherent whole, this becomes the standard statement of the Lutheran faith.

Melanchthon's purpose is to emphasize that the Lutheran reforms 'dissent in no article of faith from the Catholic church'. They merely strip away abuses which have been introduced in recent centuries. The diet refuses to accept this, decreeing instead that by April 1531 all Protestant princes and cities must recant from the Lutheran position and (an important element) restore all church and monastic property which has been seized.

The threat of military intervention by the emperor is implicit. In response, the Protestant princes and some of the imperial cities form a defensive pact for mutual defence, established in 1531 as the League of Schmalkalden.

Over the next two decades the League is often in action against its Catholic neighbours in Germany. In 1547 it suffers a severe reverse in the battle of M?hlberg, a victory for Charles V which results in the League's two main leaders - the elector of Saxony and Philip of Hesse - spending five years as the emperor's prisoners.

But no military victory can resolve these deep religious divisions within the empire. When another imperial diet meets at Augsburg in 1555, presided over by Charles V's brother Ferdinand, all sides are weary and desperate for a solution.

The compromise eventually accepted, and known as the Peace of Augsburg, acknowledges the reality which has emerged in the years since Luther's ninety-five theses sparked off the conflict. Each prince and city is to be allowed to choose between Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism (but all other sects, such as the Swiss reformed church and the Anabaptists, remain proscribed). The formula is later succinctly described in the Latin phrase cuius regio, eius religio (whoever has the kingdom chooses the religion).

The principle of the ruler choosing the religion has effectively held sway for some time within the empire. And it has been far more starkly the case in the independent kingdoms of northwest Europe.

After Augsburg: AD 1555-1619

The Augsburg formula preserves for half a century an uneasy peace in the German lands, while princes use their religious freedom as a form of diplomacy.

Catholic rulers can be sure of strong support from a newly invigorated Rome after the Council of Trent; an energetic role is now played in their territories by the new order of Jesuits. Lutheran princes gain strength not only from each other but from Protestant kingdoms to the northwest, Denmark and Sweden. And the minority of Calvinist territories can expect friendship from France during the reign of Henry IV.

Early in the 17th century the two sides form up in opposing blocs, each headed by a branch of the Wittelsbach family. The Wittelsbachs of the Rhine Palatinate, in southwest Germany, are Calvinist; they lead the Protestant Union, formed in 1608. The Wittelsbachs of Bavaria, just to the east, form the Catholic League in the following year.

This confrontation does not immediately lead to armed conflict - until the Protestants of distant Bohemia elect as their king, in 1619, the Calvinist Wittelsbach, Frederick V. The response by the Catholic League, in alliance with pope and emperor, becomes one of the opening encounters of the Thirty Years' War.

The Winter King: AD 1619-1620

In accepting the Bohemian throne, and being crowned in Prague in November 1619, Frederick V is perpetrating an extremely inflammatory act within the edgy community of the German states. Ferdinand II, Habsburg successor to the kingdom of Bohemia, has been elected Holy Roman emperor in August of that year.

Frederick owes Ferdinand allegiance, as one of the German princes and as an imperial elector (the elector palatine of the Rhine). Instead, by popular demand in Bohemia, he is usurping his lord's place.

Ferdinand is able to organize a powerful army against the Protestant upstart. The bulk of it comes from the duchy of Bavaria, a Catholic line of the Wittelsbach dynasty and deeply hostile to the Protestant branch headed by Frederick in the Palatinate. In return for his support the Bavarian duke, Maximilian I, is promised Frederick's hereditary lands and his status as an imperial elector.

Frederick, by contrast, receives messages of goodwill but little practical help from the Protestant states.

The issue is decided in a single brief encounter. The Bavarian army, under its distinguished general Johann Tserclaes von Tilly, marches on Prague. A battle at the White Mountain, to the west of the city, lasts only an hour before the Protestant army gives way. On the evening of that same day, 8 November 1620, almost exactly a year after his coronation, Frederick flees from Prague with his family.

His wife is Elizabeth, daughter of James I of England. Their brief reign causes Frederick and Elizabeth to become known as the Winter King and Queen. (But unwittingly they found a dynasty. A century later their grandson becomes king of Great Britain as George I).

After the White Mountain: AD 1620-1625

Both the emperor Ferdinand II and the duke of Bavaria, Maximilian I, benefit greatly from the victory at the White Mountain.

Ferdinand gains full control over Bohemia. Meanwhile Maximilian has occupied part of Austria, which he intends to hold until all Ferdinand's debts to him are paid. He also now takes much of Frederick's territory in the Palatinate (part has been quietly occupied by the Spanish, moving down from the Netherlands while the locals are busy in Bohemia).

Maximilian is passionately opposed to any increase in Habsburg power. As a great Catholic prince now ruling the whole of southern Germany, he seems well placed to keep Ferdinand in check.

But Ferdinand's ruthless suppression and exploitation of conquered Bohemia introduces a new element to upset the balance. It provides him with great wealth. It also brings to prominence a general and entrepreneur of extraordinary ambition and talent - Albrecht von Wallenstein.

Wallenstein is a minor Czech nobleman who becomes rich through marriage to an elderly widow. From 1617 he uses her money to raise a small private army with which he assists Ferdinand. His reward, after the suppression of Bohemia, includes a licence to issue coins debased to half their previous value. With the profit he buys at a knock-down price sixty large estates, which together make him lord of the whole of northeastern Bohemia.

Wallenstein now proposes to Ferdinand a bold extension of his earlier private army. He offers to provide, at no expense to the emperor, an independent imperial army of 24,000 men. The expense, raised by a financial agent, will be recovered from conquered territories.

The idea appeals to Ferdinand because it frees him from reliance on the powerful duke of Bavaria, whose army made possible the victory at the White Mountain. Wallenstein's plan is approved and he is appointed chief of all the imperial forces. Seeing another rich opportunity, he mobilizes his estates in Bohemia to provide arms and equipment for the army.

Wallenstein acquires a welcome opportunity to put his army into the field when Christian IV, the king of Denmark, decides to take a hand in the troubled affairs of Germany.

Lutherans from Scandinavia: AD 1625-1631

As a Lutheran monarch, the Danish king Christian IV has good cause to support Protestant states in north Germany under threat from Catholic neighbours. He is also eager to keep Catholics away from the Baltic. He has been promised a subsidy by England if he intervenes in Germany's wars. And he is interested in extending his own territory southwards to the estuaries of the Elbe and the Weser.

In May 1625 he marches into Germany.

Christian IV is an unskilled commander, and he has the misfortune to have ranged against him the two most experienced generals of the age. Tilly commands the Bavarian army on behalf of the Catholic League. Wallenstein is at the head of the separate imperial army which he has raised for Ferdinand II.

Christian's first defeat is at the hands of Tilly, at Lutter in August 1626. Between them, Tilly and Wallenstein then drive the Danes north, clearing them from the Baltic coast, pursing them into the peninsula of Denmark and eventually confining Christian IV and his army to the Danish islands.

By 1628 Wallenstein has been granted the duchy of Mecklenburg, and an army of his is besieging the town of Stralsund. If it falls to him, he will be master of the German Baltic coast. This dramatic increase in Catholic power, and in Wallenstein's personal standing, has several results of great significance for the next stage of the war.

A new surge of confidence causes Ferdinand II, in March 1629, to issue the Edict of Restitution. It demands that all Protestant land not specifically ceded in 1555 in the peace of Augsburg be now returned to the Catholic church. This unilateral attempt to put the clock back eighty years is guaranteed to inflame the present religious conflict.

The new Catholic presence on the shores of the previously Lutheran southern Baltic persuades the king of Sweden, Gustavus II, that he should enter the war. Resolving his long dispute with Poland (in the treaty of Altmark in September 1629), he brings an army across the sea and marches into Germany in July 1630.

Meanwhile the greatly increased stature of Wallenstein prompts the duke of Bavaria and the Catholic League to issue an ultimatum. Unless Ferdinand dismisses his general, he can expect no further cooperation. With reluctance, in August 1630, the emperor deprives an outraged Wallenstein of his high command.

After Wallenstein's dismissal, Tilly becomes commander of the combined armies of the Catholic League and of the emperor against the intruding Swedes.

For a year the two opposing sides, Protestant and Catholic, fail to meet in direct battle. Each attempts to secure firm alliances among the many German principalities (Protestant princes are at this stage reluctant to commit themselves to the Swedish king). But eventually, at Breitenfeld near Leipzig in September 1631, there is a confrontation. It is Tilly's misfortune that this is the first public display of new tactics devised by Gustavus II. They prove devastating.

Swedish tactics: AD 1631

During the early years of his reign Gustavus II has effected a quiet revolution in the Swedish army. Where other monarchs rely on foreign mercenaries, he conscripts and trains his Swedish subjects - thus achieving an organized version of a citizen army. He instils in his soldiers sufficient discipline for them to be able to respond to flexible tactics on the battlefield.

For the same purpose he makes his infantrymen's pikes less unwieldy, shortening them from 16 to 11 feet. He lightens the weight of armour, wearing himself only a leather jacket in battle. And he reduces the number of men in each company in battle formation.

Together with these measures of increased human mobility go similar improvements in artillery. Gustavus's ordnance factories produce a cast-iron cannon less than half the weight of any other in the field, but still capable of firing a four-pound shot. Moreover a form of cartridge holding a prepared charge of powder means that the cannon can be reloaded faster even than the muskets of the day.

This field artillery is mounted on carriages which can be pulled by two horses or even, when required, by a platoon of men.

When Gustavus's army is first seen in action in Germany, at Breitenfeld in 1631, the opposing Catholic army under Tilly is deployed in the cumbersome Spanish squares which have been the military convention for a century and more.

The Swedes begin the encounter with an artillery barrage from about 100 cannon which they have been able to bring to the field of battle. Thereafter the rout of the Catholics is completed in a series of unwelcome surprises - musketeers appear among lines of infantrymen instead of on the flanks, cavalry charges suddenly materialize from unexpected quarters. The battle sets a new order of military priority. Fire power and mobility are now the trump cards on the battlefield.

Breitenfeld and L?tzen: AD 1631-1632

The Swedish victory at Breitenfeld causes many of the German Protestant princes to declare their support for Gustavus, who presses his campaign further south into Catholic Germany. In May 1632 he takes Munich. In the same month his ally the Protestant elector of Saxony enters Prague.

Confronted by these threats, the emperor Ferdinand II has already reappointed Wallenstein to his post as commander of the imperial army. Wallenstein's subtle strategies manoeuvre Gustavus out of his newly won territories in the south without risking a pitched battle. When this comes, it is again in the north near Leipzig - at L?tzen in November 1632.

Swedish tactics again win the day at L?tzen, though Gustavus himself dies leading a cavalry charge. Swedish armies continue to campaign in Germany. But the death of the king ends the heady period when there has been a serious possibility of Protestant Sweden playing a major role in German affairs.

Meanwhile the irrepressible Wallenstein is once again building himself an empire, with the help of an army which owes allegiance more to him than to the real emperor. By 1634 Ferdinand II is so exasperated that he authorizes the assassination (by an English captain, Walter Devereux) of his brilliant but over-ambitious commander.

Peace of Prague: AD 1635

Exhaustion among the German princes now at last makes a compromise possible. The conflict which flared up in Prague in 1618 is resolved, at least in local terms, by a peace agreed in Prague in 1635.

It is the emperor who makes the major concession. Instead of the ownership of church lands being restored to the situation that prevailed in 1555, as demanded by Ferdinand's Edict of Restitution, the date of the agreed status quo is now to be the very recent one of 1627 - reflecting the period immediately before the issue of the edict in 1629. (In 1648, in the peace of Westphalia, there is a final minor change - the relevant year becomes 1624).

If the war had only involved the German states, the agreement at Prague might well have ended it. But it has had from the start a broader theme, with the Spanish Habsburgs giving active support to the emperor, their Austrian cousin. From 1621 Spain has also renewed her war against the United Provinces of the Netherlands. And the Swedes, at war with the emperor and the Catholic League, are not party to the peace of Prague.

Most significant of all, the improvement in Habsburg fortunes alarms the dynasty's greatest enemy, France. During the months before the peace of Prague, Cardinal Richelieu forms alliances with the United Provinces and Sweden. And he declares war on Spain and the Austrian empire.

Final years and the peace of Westphalia: AD 1635-1648

The active intervention of France, as the ally of Sweden and the United Provinces against imperial Austria and Spain, ensures that warfare rumbles on for several more years after the peace of Prague in 1635. But it does so in a somewhat haphazard manner, with numerous local encounters across Europe from the Netherlands to Bohemia and with no clear outcome.

There are certain significant turning points. In 1640 Portugal seizes the opportunity to reassert its independence, thus diverting Spain from her efforts to recover the United Provinces. A new northern war adds urgency from 1643, when the Swedes attack Denmark.

By 1643 all sides are eager for a settlement. In July of that year delegates to a peace congress gather in the Westphalian towns of M?nster and Osnabr?ck.

Eventually there are 150 such delegates(all but forty of them German), representing the various interested parties. Their deliberations, spread over five years, are complicated by the fact that warfare is continuing - so the situation over which they are bargaining is in a state of constant flux. Apart from that unusual element, this is the first example of a modern peace conference.

By 1648 major decisions have been agreed, involving both redistribution of territory and the acknowledgement of newly independent states. In territorial terms the main winners are Sweden (gaining valuable Baltic territory, much of it from Denmark) and France (receiving from the Habsburg empire various rights in Lorraine and Alsace). The Rhine Palatinate is restored to the heir of Frederick V.

Outside Germany the independence of the United Provinces is at last accepted by Spain, and that of the Swiss Confederation is now formally acknowledged (having been recognized in effect since the peace of Basel in 1499).

The most significant concessions are those over which the series of wars has primarily been fought. The Holy Roman emperor (by now Ferdinand III) no longer claims to be the ruler of the German principalities. They are recognized as independent states with the right to engage in their own international diplomacy.

Their future struggles will be not against the anachronistic Holy Roman emperor but among themselves, to discover which of the great German princely dynasties eventually has the strength to assert a new form of leadership within Germany.


On the religious issue, rulers may still (as agreed in the Peace of Augsburg) choose the religion of their own territory, but freedom of conscience is also assured - citizens professing another form of Christianity now have the right to worship in private or to emigrate. An exception to this is one of the few points gained by the emperor; he alone may impose Roman Catholicism on his subjects (though he too makes exceptions, as in the case of Protestant Silesia).

In international terms the effect of all this is a weakened empire, a strengthened France (which does not finally make peace with Spain until 1659), and a fully independent Dutch republic now free to concentrate on its enormously successful commercial and imperial enterprises.

Aftermath in Germany: AD 1648-1700

For thirty years armies have marched to and fro across Germany, living off the land and plundering where they please. Any such conflict is devastating, but the Thirty Years' War has gone down in European folk memory as a time of particular horror. For the rest of the century the first instinct of any German is to avoid further war on German soil.

The states of the German empire, now granted their independence, are a numerous and very mixed bunch. About 200 are ruled by princes or counts and another fifty by archbishops, bishops or abbots. Then there are the imperial cities, many of them not much more than market towns.

Among the princes of the empire there are five great dynastic families whose rule covers huge areas. By far the most powerful are the Habsburgs, with their hereditary lands occupying the southeast of the empire. To the north of them are the Wettin, a family headed by the elector of Saxony.

Beyond Saxony, in the northeast, is the territory of the Hohenzollern. Their original province is Brandenburg, where their title is margrave, but they have acquired in the Reformation the valuable duchy of Prussia and more recently (under the terms of the peace of Westphalia) another large stretch of the Baltic coast, in Pomerania.

In northwest Germany the ancient house of Welf has many provinces, of which Brunswick and Hanover are the most important. And the whole of southern Germany is in the hands of the Wittelsbachs, who rule in Bavaria and in the Rhine Palatinate.

The Hohenzollern are the most recent of these families to achieve such high status, with Brandenburg coming into their possession as recently as 1411. But during the late 17th century they begin to establish a position second only to the Habsburgs. The significant factor is Prussia.

Brandenburg and Prussia: AD 1657-1701

Since 1525 part of Prussia, on the Baltic, has been a hereditary duchy belonging to the Hohenzollern family, but they have held it only as a fief of the Polish crown. In 1618 the Hohenzollern line in Prussia dies out and the duchy passes to a Hohenzollern cousin, the elector of Brandenburg.

On the coast between Brandenburg and the elector's new possession of ducal Prussia there lies the other part of Prussia. Known as royal Prussia, it includes the valuable harbour of Gdansk. Royal Prussia is fully integrated into the Polish kingdom.

Ducal Prussia, by contrast, is largely German - as a result of German settlers being brought there in the 13th century to till the soil and to control the pagan Prussians. This ethnic division, with a Polish region between two German ones, is one of the more disastrous accidents of history.

The isolation of the Germans in ducal Prussia is irrelevant while Europe still has the patchwork allegiances of feudalism. But by the 17th century there is a trend towards self-contained independent states. Inevitably a political pressure builds up to bridge the territorial gap between Brandenburg and ducal Prussia - particularly after Brandenburg acquires another long stretch of Baltic coast (that of eastern Pomerania) in 1648.

In 1657 ducal Prussia acquires a new status, tying it more closely to Brandenburg. The elector Frederick William of Brandenburg succeeds in that year (through a well-judged blend of warfare and diplomacy) in severing the feudal link between his duchy and the Polish kingdom.

Poland is forced to concede its loss of ducal Prussia in the treaty of Wehlau (1657). With the peace of Oliva (1660), the international community recognizes Prussia as an independent duchy belonging to Brandenburg.

This achievement enables Frederick William's son, Frederick III of Brandenburg, to achieve the crucial next step. In 1700 the Austrian emperor, Leopold I, needs Frederick's assistance in the War of the Spanish Succession. The sweetener is a significant new title.

There are no German kings within the Holy Roman empire, apart from the Habsburg emperors' own kingdom of Bohemia. Now, using the legal nicety that Prussia is outside the empire, Leopold allows Frederick to call himself the "king in Prussia" (another legal refinement - the more convincing "king of Prussia" is only allowed from 1740). The new king crowns himself, as Frederick I of the Prussian dynasty, in Kànigsberg in 1701.

Augustus the Strong of Saxony: AD 1694-1733

The powerful neighbour of Brandenburg in northeast Germany is another Protestant ruler, the elector of Saxony. In the early 18th century, while Brandenburg's elector is acquiring a new dignity as the king in Prussia, Saxony is also developing royal pretensions.

Frederick Augus