Upper Saxony
Upper Saxony (German: Obersachsen) was the name given to the majority of the German lands held by the House of Wettin, in what is now called Central Germany (Mitteldeutschland).
Conceptual history
The name derives from the period when, after the fall of Duke
It was particularly to distinguish the lands from 'Lower Saxony', a concept which arose later in popular usage (though never enforced) as a term for the original Saxon lands in north and west Germany (where
According to the Golden Bull of 1356, the Saxe–Wittenberg lands up the Elbe formed an Electorate, which in 1423 merged with Meissen under the Wettin dynasty and headed the Upper Saxon Circle. The Wettins acquired the Lusatia region by the 1635 Peace of Prague and finally were elevated to Kings of Saxony in 1806. Thus the citizens of the present-day German state of Saxony today are simply known as Saxons. This is true of the media, though the East Central German dialects of Upper Saxon (Meißenisch and Osterländisch) are placed in the Thuringian-Upper Saxon continuum.