Margrave

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Marquess, Marchioness Margrave, Margravine Marcher lord Count palatine Voivode
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Viscount, Viscountess Castellan Burgrave, Burgravine Landgrave Advocatus Vidame Starosta
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Margrave was originally the

History

Etymologically, the word "margrave" (Latin: marchio, c. 1551) is the English and French form of the German noble title Markgraf (Mark, meaning "

The greater exposure of a border province to military invasion mandated that the margrave be provided with military forces and autonomy of action (political as well as military) greater than those accorded other lords of the realm. As a military governor, the margrave's authority often extended over a territory larger than the province proper, because of border expansion after royal wars.

The margrave thus usually came to exercise commensurately greater politico-military power than other noblemen. The margrave maintained the greater armed forces and fortifications required for repelling invasion, which increased his political strength and independence relative to the monarch. Moreover, a margrave might expand his sovereign's realm by conquering additional territory, sometimes more than he might retain as a personal domain, thus allowing him to endow his vassals with lands and resources in return for their loyalty to him; the consequent wealth and power might allow the establishment of a de facto near-independent principality of his own.

Most marches and their margraves arose along the eastern borders of the

As territorial borders stabilised in the late Middle Ages, marches began to lose their primary military importance; but the entrenched families who held the office of margrave gradually converted their marches into hereditary fiefs, comparable in all but name to duchies. In an evolution similar to the rises of dukes, landgraves, counts palatine, and Fürsten (ruling princes), these margraves became substantially independent rulers of states under the nominal overlordship of the Holy Roman Emperor.

The children of Charles Frederick, Grand Duke of Baden by his second, morganatic wife, Luise Karoline Geyer von Geyersberg, only legally shared their mother's title of Imperial Count von Hochberg from 1796, and were not officially elevated to the title of margrave until 1817 when they were publicly de-morganitised.^[3] But their father had allowed its use for his morganatic children at his own court in Karlsruhe from his assumption of the grand ducal crown in 1806, simultaneously according to the princely title to the dynastic sons of his first marriage.^[3] However, from 1817 his male-line descendants of both marriages were internationally recognised as entitled to the princely prefix, which all used henceforth.

The title of Margrave of Baden has been borne as a

In 1914, the Imperial German Navy commissioned a dreadnought battleship SMS Markgraf named after this title. She fought in WWI and was interned and scuttled at Scapa Flow after the war.

Translations

The etymological heir of the margrave in Europe's nobilities is the

• Several states have had analogous institutions, sometimes also rendered in English as margrave. For example, on England's
  King of England, expected to help him defend and expand his realm. Such a lord's demesne was called a march (compare the English county palatine). The Marcher Lords were a conspicuous exception to the general structure of English feudalism as set up by William the Conqueror,^[2] who made a considerable effort to avoid having too-powerful vassals with a big contiguous territory and a strong local power base; the needs of fighting the Welsh and Scots made it necessary to have exactly this kind of vassal in the Marches, who did develop their territorial ambitions (for example those of Chester
  ).
• The
  Novgorod/Russia, did, in practice, function as margraves. They had feudal privileges and kept all of the crown's income from the fief to use for the defence of the realm's eastern border. Its fiefholders were (almost always) descended from, or married to, the noble family of Bååt from Småland in Sweden.^{[citation needed}
  ]
• Marggrabowa is an example of a town whose name comes from a margrave. Located in the
  Albert, Duke of Prussia, Margrave of Brandenburg.^{[citation needed]} It has since been renamed to the Polish Olecko
  .
• The German word Mark also has other meanings than the margrave's territorial border area, often with a territorial component, which occurs more numerously than margraviates; so its occurrence in composite place names does not necessarily imply that it was part of a margraviate as such. Uses of Mark in German names are commonly more local, as in the context of a Markgenossenschaft, which means a partially self-governing association of agricultural users of an area; the German name-component Mark can also be a truncated form of Markt 'market', as in the small town of Marksuhl in the Eisenach area of Thuringia, meaning 'market town on the river Suhl'. The non-margravial origin even applies to the County of Mark and the country of Denmark (meaning 'march of the Danes', in the sense of border area, yet never under a Margrave but the Danish national kingdom, outside the Holy Roman Empire).
• The
  Sassanid Persian position of marzban (marz means border, and ban means lord) or Kanarang
  was a position given to officials or generals who were trusted by the king and that had land, villages, and towns in far reaches of the empire. In return for their position and privilege to collect taxes, they were responsible for defending the empire from foreign intrusion.
• The
  Eastern Roman Empire
  era, was the military commander and imperial governor of a region at the brink of the controlled territories, not an aristocratic lord in his own (hereditary) right.
• The Turkish title and position of uç beyi ("frontier lord"), used in early Turkish Anatolia and during the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans, is also often rendered as "margrave".
• The wife of a Margrave is called a Margravine.

See also

• Burgrave
• List of marches
• Markgräflerland

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Marquesses by country.