Gau (territory)
Gau (German: [ɡaʊ] ⓘ; Dutch: gouw [ɣʌu] ⓘ; West Frisian: gea [ɡɪə] or goa [ɡoə]) is a Germanic term for a region within a country, often a former or current province. It was used in the Middle Ages, when it can be seen as roughly corresponding to an English shire. The administrative use of the term was revived as a subdivision during the period of Nazi Germany in 1933–1945. It still appears today in regional names, such as the Rheingau or Allgäu.
Middle Ages
Etymology
The Germanic word is reflected in
Old English, by contrast, has only traces of the word, which was replaced by scire (modern English shire) from an early time, in names such as Noxga gā, Ohtga gā and perhaps in gōman, ġēman "yeoman", which would then correspond to the Old High German gaumann.[3] However, the Oxford English Dictionary connects the etymology of yeoman to young instead.
Conceptual history
In the Carolingian Empire, a Gau was a subdivision of the realm, further divided into Hundreds.[citation needed] The Frankish gowe thus appear to correspond roughly to the civitas in other barbarian kingdoms (Visigoths, Burgundians, or the Italian Kingdom of the Lombards).[citation needed] After the end of the Migration Period, the Hundred (centena or hunaria, Old High German huntari) had become a term for an administrative unit or jurisdiction, independent of the figure hundred. The Frankish usage contrasts with Tacitus' Germania, where a pagus was a subdivision of a tribal territory or civitas, corresponding to the Hundred, i.e. areas liable to provide a hundred men under arms, or containing roughly a hundred homesteads each, further divided into vici (villages or farmsteads).[4] Charlemagne, by his capitulary legislation, adopted the comitatus subdivision and appointed local rulers as deputies of the central Imperial authority.
In the German-speaking lands of
Nazi period
The term Gau was revived in German historical research in the 18th and 19th centuries, and was considered an ancient administration structure of Germanic peoples. It was adopted in the 1920s as the name given to the regional associations of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). Each Gau denoted an administrative region, created by a party statute dated 22 May 1926. Each Gau was headed by a Gauleiter. The original 33 Gaue were generally coterminous with the Reichstag election districts of the Weimar Republic, based on the constituent states (Länder) and the provinces of Prussia. Following the suppression of the political institutions of the Länder in the course of the Nazi Gleichschaltung process and the appointment of Reichsstatthalter (Reich Governors) in 1933, the Gaue became the de facto administrative regions of the government and each individual Gauleiter had considerable power within his territory.
Reichsgaue
With the beginning of the annexation of neighbouring territories by Nazi Germany in the late 1930s, a new unit of civil administration, the Reichsgau, was established. German-speaking territories annexed to Germany from 1938 were generally organised into Reichsgaue. Unlike the pre-existing Gaue, the new Reichsgaue formally combined the spheres of both party and state administration.
Following the annexation of
Northern and eastern territory annexed from the dismembered Czechoslovakia were mainly organised as the Reichsgau of Sudetenland, with territory to the south annexed to the Reichsgaue of Lower and Upper Danube.
Following the Axis invasion of
).After the successful invasion of France in 1940, Germany re-annexed
Legacy in topography
The medieval term Gau (sometimes Gäu; gouw in Dutch) has survived as (second, more generic) component of the names of certain regions – some named after a river – in Germany, Austria, Alsace, Switzerland, Belgium, South Tyrol, and the Netherlands.
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References
Notes
- ^ numerous variant spellings; gauwa, gowa, gouwa, geiwa, gauia, gawia, gowia, govia, gaugia
- ^ Deutsches Wörterbuch
- ^ Deutsches Wörterbuch
- ^ Meyers Konversations-Lexikon, Fourth Edition, 1885–1892.
Bibliography
- Der große Atlas der Weltgeschichte. Munich: Orbis Verlag, 1990. ISBN 3-572-04755-2(book of historical maps)
External links
- WorldStatesmen – see various present countries once under Nazi rule (here Belgium)
- Shoa.de – List of Gaue and Gauleiter (in German)
- Liste mittelalterlicher Gaue, a listing of medieval gau. (in German)