Stem duchy
A stem duchy (German: Stammesherzogtum, from Stamm, meaning "tribe", in reference to the Franks, Saxons, Bavarians and Swabians) was a constituent duchy of the Kingdom of Germany at the time of the extinction of the Carolingian dynasty (death of Louis the Child in 911) and through the transitional period leading to the formation of the Ottonian Empire. The Carolingians had dissolved the original tribal duchies of the Empire in the 8th century. As the Carolingian Empire declined, the old tribal areas assumed new identities. The five stem duchies (sometimes also called "younger stem duchies" in contrast to the pre-Carolingian tribal duchies) were
The term Stammesherzogtum as used in German historiography dates to the mid-19th century, and from the beginning was closely related to the question of national unification. The term's applicability, and the nature of the stem duchies in medieval Germany, consequently have a long history of controversy. The overly literal or etymologizing English translation "stem duchy" was coined in the early 20th century.[2] While later authors tend to clarify the term by using the alternative translation "tribal", use of the term "stem duchies" has become conventional.[3]
German tribes (Stämme)
The derivation of the
Traditional German historiography counts six Altstämme or "ancient stems", viz.
The list of "recent stems" or Neustämme, is much less definite and subject to considerable variation; groups that have been listed under this heading include the
, roughly reflecting German settlement activity during the 12th to 15th centuries.The use of Stämme, "tribes", rather than Völker "nations, peoples", emerged in the early 19th century in the context of the project of German unification. Karl Friedrich Eichhorn in 1808 still used Deutsche Völker "German nations". Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann in 1815 asked for unity of the German nation (Volk) in its tribes (in seinen Stämmen). This terminology became standard and is reflected in the preamble of the Weimar constitution of 1919, reading Das deutsche Volk, einig in seinen Stämmen [...] "The German nation (people), united in its tribes (stems) ...".
The composition of the German population of these stems or tribes as a historical reality is mostly recognized in contemporary historiography, while the caveat is frequently made that each of them should be treated as an individual case with a different history of ethnogenesis,[6] although some historians have revived the terminology of "peoples" (Völker) rather than "tribes" (Stämme).[7]
The division remains in current use in the former classification of
East Francia
Within
I am attempting to refute the whole hallowed doctrine of the difference between the beginnings of the West-Frankish, "French", principautés territoriales, and the East-Frankish, "German", stem-duchies. . . Certainly, their names had already appeared during the Migrations. Yet, their political institutional, and biological structures had more often than not thoroughly changed. I have, moreover, refuted the basic difference between the so-called älteres Stammesfürstentum [older tribal principalities] and jüngeres Stammesfürstentum [newer tribal principalities], since I consider the duchies before and after Charlemagne to have been basically the same Frankish institution. . .[10]
After the division of the Kingdom in the Treaty of Verdun (843), Treaty of Meerssen (870), and Treaty of Ribemont (880), the Eastern Frankish Kingdom or East Francia was formed out of Bavaria, Alemannia, and Saxony together with eastern parts of the Frankish territory. The kingdom was divided in 864–865 among the sons of Louis the German, largely along the lines of the tribes. Royal power quickly disintegrated after 899 under the rule of Louis the Child, which allowed local magnates to revive the duchies as autonomous entities and rule their tribes under the supreme authority of the King.
Holy Roman Empire
Saxony in yellow, Franconia in blue, Bavaria in green, Swabia in light orange, and Lotharingia
After the death of the last Carolingian, Louis the Child, in 911, the stem duchies acknowledged the unity of the kingdom. The dukes gathered and elected Conrad I to be their king. According to Tellenbach's thesis, the dukes created the duchies during Conrad's reign.[11] No duke attempted to set up an independent kingdom. Even after the death of Conrad in 918, when the election of Henry the Fowler was disputed, his rival, Arnulf, Duke of Bavaria, did not establish a separate kingdom but claimed the whole,[12] before being forced by Henry to submit to royal authority.[8] Henry may even have promulgated a law stipulating that the kingdom would thereafter be united.[8] Arnulf continued to rule it like a king even after his submission, but after his death in 937 it was quickly brought under royal control by Henry's son Otto the Great.[9] The
The five stem duchies were:[1]
- Franconia (until 939)
- The Central Franconian and Low Franconianbranches and their sub-dialects.
- Lotharingia (until 959)
- As a central component of the Frankish kingdom and with an essentially Dukes of Brabant.
- Swabia (until 1268)
- Württemberg, and Habsburg families, the latter soon after facing the secession of the Old Swiss Confederacy. The core territory of Swabia continued its existence as the County of Württemberg, raised to the status of Duchy in 1495, which in turn became the Kingdom of Württembergwithin 19th-century Germany.
- Saxony (until 1296)
- The Saxe-Wittenberg in 1296, the latter raised to the status of Electorate in 1356, which became independent as the Kingdom of Saxonyafter the disintegration of the Holy Roman Empire.
- Bavaria
- The Luitpolding family, responsible for the defense of the March of Carinthia, rose to the position of Dukes. They were succeeded by a branch of the Liudolfing dynasty and eventually the Welfs, whose struggle with the Hohenstaufen Kings resulted in Bavaria being stripped of Austria (1156), Styria and Tyrol (1180). The reduced territorial duchy was given to the Wittelsbach family. Bavaria remained under the control of the Wittelsbach family until the First World War, although it was repeatedly divided into sub-duchies among branches of the family during the 13th to 15th centuries, re-united under Albert IV, Duke of Bavaria in 1503. In 1623, it was raised to the status of Electorate, and following the disintegration of the Holy Roman Empire it became independent as a Kingdom.
Legacy
The complicated political history of the Holy Roman Empire during Middle Ages led to the division or disestablishment of most early medieval duchies.
References
- ^ a b See Donald C. Jackman, The Konradiner: A Study in Genealogical Methodology, 1990, p. 87, citing Hans-Werner Guetz, "Dux" und "Ducatus." Begriffs- und verfassungsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur Enstehung des sogenannten "jüngeren Stammesherzogtums" an der Wende vom neunten zum zehnten Jahrhundert, 1977.
- ^ Ephraim Emerton, Mediaeval Europe (814–1300), 1903; "Revival of the Roman Empire on a German Basis, 888–950" pp. 89–114; Emerton uses English stem in its archaic sense of "stock, race, ancestry" (Webster's (1828): "a race or generation of progenitors"; Oxford Dictionaries: "(archaic or literary) The main line of descent of a family or nation"). "We may fairly think of the German kingdom under Henry I as a federation of five distinct stems, each far more conscious of its stem-unity than of its share in the unity of the nation" (p. 105); "All five stems were represented [at the election of Conrad II in 1024] by their leading men, not yet, so far as we know, by any well-defined process of representation, but only in pursuance of the ancient Germanic principle that every man who carried a sword had a right to speak on matters of the public weal." (p. 175)
- ^ "Germany consisted in 911 of the five tribal, or, as the Germans call them, 'stem' (Stamm), duchies of Saxony, Franconia, Bavaria, Swabia, and Lorraine. [...] The people of the various 'stem' duchies showed characteristic traits also in culture and language. And though the tribal duchies had lost their political role in German history by the thirteenth century and had been replaced by other and usually smaller regional units, their tribal dialects and folklore have survived to the present day and even now act as strong forces toward cultural diversity. In this respect, 'Teutonic' Germany has had a thousand years of historical unity." Hajo Holborn, A History of Modern Germany: The Reformation, 1982, p. 4.
- ^ The High German consonant shift at this time was in its final phase, and would generate the so-called Rhenish fan of Franconian dialectal division and the division into Upper German, Central German and Low German in conventional use for modern German dialects. A Thuringian dialect is not indicated as there is no documentary evidence for a separate Thuringian variant of Old High German (Thuringia is subsumed under Old Frankish in the map). The division of Old High German into Alemannic and Bavarian is also conventional, as clear dialectal features dividing the two branches emerge only in the Middle High German period.
- ^ Hans-Werner Goetz: Die „Deutschen Stämme“ als Forschungsproblem. In: Heinrich Beck, Dieter Geuenich, Heiko Steuer, Dietrich Hakelberg (ed.): Zur Geschichte der Gleichung „germanisch-deutsch“. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2004, pp. 229–253 (p. 247).
- ^ Carl Erdmann: "Der Name Deutsch" In: Karl der Große oder Charlemagne? Acht Antworten deutscher Geschichtsforscher. Berlin 1935, S. 94–105. Hans Kurt Schulze: Grundstrukturen der Verfassung im Mittelalter. Band 1: Stamm, Gefolgschaft, Lehenswesen, Grundherrschaft. Urban-Taschenbuch, Stuttgart 1985, p. 37. Hans-Werner Goetz: "Die „Deutschen Stämme“ als Forschungsproblem". In: Heinrich Beck, Dieter Geuenich, Heiko Steuer, Dietrich Hakelberg (ed.): Zur Geschichte der Gleichung „germanisch-deutsch“. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2004, 229–253 (p. 238).
- ^ so Carlrichard Brühl, Deutschland – Frankreich: die Geburt zweier Völker. 2nd ed. 1995, pp. 243ff
- ^ a b c Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities, pp. 290–91.
- ^ a b Patrick J. Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 44.
- ^ Herwig Wolfram, "The Shaping of the Early Medieval Principality as a Type of Non-royal Rulership", Viator, 2 (1971), p. 41.
- ^ This thesis was popularised for English scholars by Geoffrey Barraclough, The Origins of Modern Germany, 2nd ed. (New York: 1947).
- ^ That he claimed the whole, and not just Bavaria, has been doubted by Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance, p. 44.
- ^ James Westfall Thompson, "German Feudalism", The American Historical Review, 28, 3 (1923), p. 454.