German History: every emperor, chancellor and turning point, from Arminius to today

Cimbri and Teutones march on Rome (113 to 101 BC)

Around 120 to 115 BC the Cimbri left their lands by the North Sea, later joined by the Teutones, and moved south. In 113 BC they routed the army of the consul Gnaeus Papirius Carbo at Noreia in Noricum, and in 105 BC they destroyed two Roman armies at Arausio (Orange), Rome's worst defeat since Cannae. Gaius Marius, consul five years running from 104 BC, retrained an army and crushed the Teutones at Aquae Sextiae in 102 BC and the Cimbri at Vercellae in northern Italy in 101 BC. Whether these peoples were Germanic or Celtic was already uncertain to ancient writers.

• Plutarch, writing about two centuries later, says some thought the Cimbri were Germans because of their height and light-blue eyes, while others called them a mix of Gauls and Scythians; he admits their origin was guesswork.
• Plutarch says about 300,000 armed men were on the move, followed by even more women and children. The World History Encyclopedia calls this exaggerated and suggests a peak of about 150,000 people, women and children included.
• At Vercellae, Plutarch reports, Cimbrian women in black stood at the wagons, killed men who fled and then killed their children and themselves rather than be captured.

Sources: Plutarch, Life of Marius 11-27 (Loeb 1920), LacusCurtius; World History Encyclopedia: Cimbri; Wikipedia: Cimbrian War

Ariovistus (fl. c. 61 to 58 BC; dead by 54 BC)

Ariovistus, king of the Suebi, Suebi · Upper Rhine and Gaul

Ariovistus led the Suebi and allied Germanic peoples in the 60s and 50s BC and is known almost entirely from Julius Caesar's own account. Hired by the Arverni and Sequani against their rivals the Aedui, he beat the Aedui, took hostages, seized land and settled his followers west of the Rhine. In 59 BC, during Caesar's consulship, the Roman Senate even named him king and friend of the Roman people. A year later Caesar, now governor of Gaul, marched against him and defeated him in Alsace in 58 BC, pushing the Germans out of Gaul.

How they came to power: He crossed the Rhine with about 15,000 men at the invitation of Gallic tribes, Caesar says, and more followed until about 120,000 Germans were living in Gaul. His victory over the Aedui, around 61 or 60 BC, made him the strongest power in eastern Gaul.

How it ended: Defeated by Caesar in 58 BC, he escaped across the Rhine in a small boat while most of his men were cut down by Roman cavalry. He then vanishes from the record; by 54 BC Caesar mentions that his death had angered the Germans.

• Caesar says prisoners told him that the Germans' matrons, by drawing lots and divination, had declared they could not win if they fought before the new moon, which is why Ariovistus held back from a pitched battle.
• Ariovistus had two wives, one a Suebian and the other a sister of King Voccio of Noricum; both died in the rout of 58 BC, and of his two daughters one was killed and one captured.
• The battlefield has never been found. Jona Lendering suggests it lay just north of Colmar; other proposed sites include Ribeauvillé, Cernay and the plain between Mulhouse and Basel. Even Caesar's distance from the field to the Rhine varies: Lendering reads 15 miles, while the Loeb text of 1917 prints about five.

Sources: Caesar, Gallic War 1.30-54, tr. H. J. Edwards (Loeb 1917), LacusCurtius; World History Encyclopedia (Jona Lendering): The Battle of Colmar (58 BCE): Caesar against Ariovistus; Wikipedia: Ariovistus

Caesar bridges the Rhine (55 BC (first bridge); 53 BC (second bridge))

In 55 BC Julius Caesar decided to cross the Rhine to show the Germanic tribes that Rome could reach them. Rather than use boats offered by the friendly Ubii, he had a timber bridge built, most likely between Andernach and Neuwied below Koblenz. His army burned the villages of the Sugambri, who had fled into the forests, and cut down their corn, then returned to Gaul and pulled the bridge down. Caesar built a second bridge nearby in 53 BC, again only for a short raid.

• Caesar says the bridge was finished in ten days from the start of gathering timber, and that his army spent 18 days across the Rhine before returning and destroying it.
• He describes paired timber piles, a foot and a half thick, driven into the riverbed at a slant against the current, with extra piles upstream to catch logs floated down to wreck it.
• Modern estimates put the first bridge at 140 to 400 metres long and 7 to 9 metres wide; old pilings found in the Andernach-Neuwied area are thought to be its remains.

Sources: Caesar, Gallic War 4.16-19, tr. H. J. Edwards (Loeb 1917), LacusCurtius; Caesar, Gallic War 6.9-10 (second crossing), LacusCurtius; Wikipedia: Caesar's Rhine bridges

Arminius (c. 18/17 BC to AD 19 or 21 (sources differ))

Arminius, chief of the Cherusci, Cherusci · Germania

Arminius was the son of the Cheruscan chief Segimer and grew up in Roman service, probably first as a hostage, alongside his brother Flavus, who stayed loyal to Rome. He learned Latin, fought in the Pannonian revolt and commanded Germanic auxiliaries, earning Roman citizenship and equestrian rank. In AD 9 he used Varus' trust to lead three legions to their destruction, then held off Germanicus' revenge campaigns of AD 14 to 16. He married Thusnelda against the will of her father Segestes, a pro-Roman chief; she was captured by the Romans in AD 15 while pregnant and bore their son Thumelicus in captivity. His monument, the Hermannsdenkmal by the sculptor Ernst von Bandel, stands on a hill near Detmold in the Teutoburg Forest; it was begun in 1838 and finished after German unification.

How they rose: Velleius Paterculus, who served under Tiberius, calls him a young noble, son of Sigimer of the Cherusci, who had campaigned with the Romans and reached equestrian rank. Around AD 8 he was on the Rhine with a Germanic auxiliary unit, and his victory over Varus in AD 9 made him the leading war chief between Rhine and Elbe.

How they died: After Rome withdrew he fought Maroboduus of the Marcomanni, who was driven out and fled to Roman protection. Tacitus says Arminius, seeking kingship, was then killed by the treachery of his kinsmen, at 37, after 12 years of power. Wikipedia dates his death to AD 21; the World History Encyclopedia gives AD 19.

• Tacitus judged him (Church and Brodribb, 1876): "Assuredly he was the deliverer of Germany."
• Tacitus reports that a chief of the Chatti offered to poison Arminius if Rome sent the poison, and that the Senate answered that Rome took vengeance on enemies openly and by arms.
• In the war with Maroboduus, Tacitus says the Semnones and Langobardi went over to Arminius while his own uncle Inguiomerus deserted to Maroboduus; the battle was close, but Maroboduus withdrew and then lost his following.

Sources: Tacitus, Annals 2.88, tr. Church and Brodribb (1876), Wikisource; Velleius Paterculus, Roman History 2.94-131 (Loeb 1924), LacusCurtius; World History Encyclopedia: Arminius; Landesverband Lippe: Hermannsdenkmal; Wikipedia: Arminius

Drusus (campaigns 12 to 9 BC; died 9 BC)

Nero Claudius Drusus (Drusus the Elder), Roman general, Julio-Claudian · Rhine army

Drusus, younger brother of the future emperor Tiberius, commanded the Rhine army from 13 BC and led four campaigns into Germania between 12 and 9 BC. He fought the Sugambri, made treaties with the Frisians and Chauci, sailed a fleet into the North Sea through canals he had dug, and attacked the Chatti from Mainz. In 9 BC he became probably the first Roman general to reach the Elbe. Bases set up under him, such as Mainz, Bonn, Neuss, Xanten and Nijmegen, grew into some of the oldest towns on the Rhine.

How they rose: As a stepson of Augustus he held high command young; he was made governor of the Rhine frontier in 13 BC and consul in 9 BC, the year he reached the Elbe.

How they died: On the march back from the Elbe in 9 BC he died before reaching the Rhine. Wikipedia and Livius describe a fall from his horse followed by infection; Cassius Dio speaks only of an illness. Tiberius reached him while he was still alive and brought the body to Rome.

• Cassius Dio tells that at the Elbe a woman of more than human size met Drusus and asked, in Earnest Cary's 1917 translation, "Whither, pray, art thou hastening, insatiable Drusus?", warning him he would not see all these lands.
• The Senate gave Drusus and his sons the title Germanicus after his death; it passed to his son Germanicus and then to his younger son, the emperor Claudius.
• His ashes went into the Mausoleum of Augustus in Rome, while his soldiers raised a cenotaph for him at Mainz (Roman Mogontiacum), known today as the Drususstein.

Sources: Cassius Dio, Roman History 55.1-2, tr. Earnest Cary (Loeb 1917), LacusCurtius; Livius.org (Jona Lendering): Drusus; Wikipedia: Nero Claudius Drusus

Maroboduus (ruled c. 9 BC to AD 18 (Wikipedia; others give 19); died AD 37)

Maroboduus (Marbod), king of the Marcomanni, Marcomanni · Bohemia

Maroboduus spent part of his youth in Italy, came home around 9 BC and led his Marcomanni away from the Romans into the land surrounded by forest that Velleius calls Boiohaemum, today's Bohemia. Unlike other Germanic chiefs he took the title of king and built a league of neighbouring peoples. In AD 6 Tiberius gathered armies to destroy his kingdom, but a great revolt in Illyricum and Pannonia forced Rome to make peace and recognise him. He kept out of the war after Varus' defeat, which cost him support among the Germans.

How they came to power: A noble by birth, he returned from Italy around 9 BC and made himself king of the Marcomanni, moving his people into Bohemia out of Rome's reach. Velleius says he wanted real royal power rather than a chief's position that depended on his followers' goodwill.

How it ended: War with Arminius broke out in AD 17 and ended in a drawn battle, after which his followers deserted. The exile Catualda then seized his palace; Maroboduus crossed the Danube and asked Tiberius for refuge, and lived at Ravenna for 18 years until his death in AD 37.

• Velleius Paterculus gives his army as 70,000 foot and 4,000 horse, kept in training by constant wars with his neighbours.
• Velleius says his envoys spoke to the Caesars sometimes as suppliants and sometimes as equals, and that he sheltered rebels against Rome.
• Wikipedia calls him the first documented ruler of Bohemia to have a government.

Sources: Velleius Paterculus, Roman History 2.108-109 (Loeb 1924), LacusCurtius; Tacitus, Annals 2.44-46 and 2.62-63, tr. Church and Brodribb (1876), Wikisource; Wikipedia: Maroboduus

Battle of the Teutoburg Forest (September AD 9 (Wikipedia gives 8 to 11 September))

In AD 9 the governor Publius Quinctilius Varus was leading three legions, the 17th, 18th and 19th, with six auxiliary cohorts and three cavalry squadrons, when Arminius, a Cheruscan officer he trusted, led them into an ambush. Over several days of fighting in wooded country the army was destroyed and Varus killed himself. Modern estimates of the Roman dead run from about 16,000 to 20,000. The likely battlefield is at Kalkriese near Osnabrück, where Roman coins and sling bolts found by the British amateur Tony Clunn from 1987 led to excavations. Rome never again tried to rule the land between Rhine and Elbe, and the Rhine became the frontier.

• Suetonius says Augustus let his hair and beard grow for months, sometimes beat his head against a door crying "Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions!" (Loeb 1913), and kept the anniversary as a day of mourning.
• Six years later Germanicus reached the battlefield. Tacitus describes whitening bones, skulls nailed to trees and altars where officers had been sacrificed, and says Germanicus laid the first turf of a mound over the dead.
• All three eagles came back eventually: the 19th legion's from the Bructeri in AD 15, one from the Marsi (Tacitus puts this in AD 16; Wikipedia gives AD 14) and the last from the Chauci in AD 41. The legion numbers 17, 18 and 19 were never used again.

Sources: Suetonius, Life of Augustus 23 (Loeb 1913), LacusCurtius; Tacitus, Annals 1.55-62, tr. Church and Brodribb (1876), Wikisource; Tacitus, Annals 2.25 (eagle recovered from the Marsi), tr. Church and Brodribb (1876), Wikisource; Velleius Paterculus, Roman History 2.94-131 (Loeb 1924), LacusCurtius; Wikipedia: Battle of the Teutoburg Forest

Germanicus (campaigns AD 14 to 16; died 10 October AD 19)

Germanicus Julius Caesar, Roman general, Julio-Claudian · Rhine army

Germanicus, son of Drusus and adopted son of Tiberius, commanded the Rhine legions when Augustus died in AD 14. From AD 14 to 16 he led great campaigns into Germania against Arminius, raided the Chatti and burned their chief town Mattium, visited the Varus battlefield and buried the bones of the dead. In AD 16 he beat Arminius at Idistaviso on the Weser and again at the Angrivarian Wall, and two of the three lost eagles were recovered under his command. Tiberius then called him home, and Rome kept the Rhine as its frontier.

How they rose: Born in Rome on 24 May 15 BC to Drusus and Antonia Minor, he was adopted by Tiberius on Augustus' orders and married Augustus' granddaughter Agrippina the Elder. He was consul in AD 12 and commanded on the Rhine when the legions there mutinied in AD 14; he settled the mutiny and refused his soldiers' offer to make him emperor.

How they died: After a triumph in Rome on 26 May AD 17 he was sent east with wide powers. He fell ill and died at Antioch on 10 October AD 19, believing the governor of Syria, Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso, had poisoned him; Piso died before the Senate reached its verdict.

• Tacitus says that as battle opened at Idistaviso eight eagles were seen flying into the woods, and Germanicus urged his men to follow them; Arminius was wounded but escaped.
• Returning by sea in AD 16, part of his army was caught in a North Sea storm that sank many ships and drowned men and horses.
• His triumph showed spoils, prisoners and images of German mountains, rivers and battles, and his five children rode with him in the chariot. His son Caligula and his brother Claudius both later became emperor.

Sources: Tacitus, Annals 2.16-18 and 2.41, tr. Church and Brodribb (1876), Wikisource; Tacitus, Annals 1.55-62, Wikisource; World History Encyclopedia: Germanicus; Wikipedia: Germanicus

Cologne becomes a Roman colony (c. AD 50 (Ubii settled there from c. 38 BC))

Around 38 BC Agrippa moved the Ubii, a people friendly to Rome, onto the left bank of the Rhine, where their town and an altar of the imperial cult (the Ara Ubiorum) grew up. Agrippina the Younger, daughter of Germanicus, was born there on 6 November AD 15. After she married her uncle, the emperor Claudius, she had the town made a colony of veterans around AD 50 with the name Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium. It became the seat of the governor of Lower Germany, got an aqueduct from the Eifel around AD 80, and housed about 20,000 people in the 2nd and 3rd centuries.

• Tacitus says Agrippina had the colony founded to show her power even to the allied nations, and that her grandfather Agrippa had taken the Ubii under Rome's protection when they crossed the Rhine.
• During the Batavian revolt the Tencteri demanded that the colonists tear down their walls and kill the Romans among them; the townspeople refused, saying that families who had intermarried with them were now their own parents, brothers and children.
• Constantine built a bridge across the Rhine at Cologne in 310, guarded by a fort at Deutz. Franks took the city in 355, Rome recovered it, and it passed for good to the Ripuarian Franks in 459.

Sources: Tacitus, Annals 12.27, tr. Church and Brodribb (1876), Wikisource; Tacitus, Histories 4.61-65, tr. Church and Brodribb (1876), Wikisource; World History Encyclopedia: Agrippina the Younger; Wikipedia: Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium

Revolt of the Batavi (AD 69 to 70)

The Batavi of the Rhine delta were valued by Rome as soldiers, and their prince Gaius Julius Civilis had served about 25 years as an auxiliary officer. In AD 69, while Roman generals fought over the throne, harsh recruiting and insults to the Batavi drove him to revolt. He besieged the legionary camp of Vetera near Xanten from September 69, and in 70 its starving garrison surrendered and was destroyed after marching out. The Treveri and Lingones of Gaul declared independence, but Vespasian's general Quintus Petillius Cerialis restored control and the Batavi made peace in 70.

• Before the revolt Civilis had been sent to Rome under Nero on a treason charge and acquitted by Galba, then arrested again under Vitellius.
• The besieged garrison of Vetera ate its horses and mules before the legate Munius Lupercus surrendered; Tacitus says he was sent with gifts to the seeress Veleda but was killed on the road.
• Under the peace the Batavi renewed their alliance with Rome and agreed to raise more cavalry units; what became of Civilis is unknown.

Sources: Tacitus, Histories 4, tr. Church and Brodribb (1876), Wikisource; Livius.org (Jona Lendering): Batavian Revolt; Livius.org (Jona Lendering): Veleda; Wikipedia: Revolt of the Batavi

Veleda (active c. AD 69 to 77 or later)

Veleda, seeress of the Bructeri, Bructeri · Lippe valley

Veleda was an unmarried seeress of the Bructeri who lived in a tower near the River Lippe. Many Germanic peoples treated her almost as a goddess, and her prestige soared when she foretold the rebels' victories in the Batavian revolt of AD 69 to 70. The rebels sent her Roman prizes, including a captured trireme rowed up the Lippe. The people of Cologne asked her and Civilis to settle their dispute with the Tencteri, a sign of how far her authority reached.

How they rose: Tacitus says the Germans traditionally believed many women had prophetic gifts, and that some came to be honoured as divine. Veleda's prediction of German success and the destruction of the legions put her at the height of her influence.

How they died: Around AD 77 the Romans either captured her or gave her refuge; the poet Statius names Rutilius Gallicus as her captor. A Greek verse inscription found at Ardea near Rome mocks her prophecies, and she seems to have been dead by the time Tacitus wrote his Germania around AD 98.

• Envoys were never allowed to see her: Tacitus says a chosen relative carried questions and answers between them and her tower, like the messenger of a god.
• The captured legate of Vetera, Munius Lupercus, was sent to her with gifts but was murdered on the way.
• She may have helped Rome install a friendly king among the Bructeri around AD 83 to 84.

Sources: Tacitus, Histories 4.61 and 4.65, tr. Church and Brodribb (1876), Wikisource; Livius.org (Jona Lendering): Veleda; Wikipedia: Veleda

The Upper German-Raetian Limes (c. 83 to c. 260)

From about AD 83, under Domitian, Rome pushed its frontier beyond the Rhine and upper Danube to take in the land between them. Built in stages through the 2nd century, the Upper German-Raetian Limes ran from Rheinbrohl on the Rhine to Eining on the Danube: UNESCO gives 550 km, other measurements 568 km, and the German Limes Commission counts about 900 towers and about 120 larger and smaller military posts. UNESCO stresses that it was not only a military bulwark but also marked economic and cultural limits; one stretch runs in a nearly straight line for more than 70 km. Under pressure from the Alemanni, Rome gave it up in the second half of the 3rd century and pulled back to the Rhine.

• At the Saalburg pass in the Taunus a wooden fort guarded the road at the start of the 2nd century; the border was marked with a wooden palisade around 120, and around 135 the 2nd Raetian cohort, about 600 foot and horse, enlarged the fort.
• Emperor Wilhelm II ordered the Saalburg rebuilt, and it was reconstructed on its Roman foundations from 1897 to 1907 under the archaeologist Louis Jacobi.
• UNESCO listed the Upper German-Raetian Limes in 2005 as part of the Frontiers of the Roman Empire, together with Hadrian's Wall and the Antonine Wall.

Sources: UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Frontiers of the Roman Empire; Römerkastell Saalburg (museum): The Saalburg Roman fort; Wikipedia: Limes Germanicus

Tacitus writes the Germania (c. AD 98)

Around AD 98 the historian Tacitus wrote a short book, On the Origin and Situation of the Germans. Its first part describes their land, laws and customs; the second runs through the individual peoples as far as the Aesti and Fenni on the Baltic. Tacitus probably never went to Germania and seems to have drawn on Pliny the Elder's lost history of the German wars, on Caesar and on traders and soldiers. He often holds up the Germans' simple life as a rebuke to Roman luxury, which later readers took as praise.

• Tacitus says the Germans chose kings for their noble birth and war leaders for their courage, that they believed women had something holy and prophetic about them, naming Veleda and Aurinia, and that they lived in scattered homesteads rather than towns.
• The text survived in a single manuscript from Hersfeld Abbey, reported in 1425. The Codex Aesinas, thought to preserve part of it, was found again in 1901, damaged in the 1966 Florence flood, and given to Rome's National Library in 1992.
• Arnaldo Momigliano counted it among the hundred most dangerous books ever written, and Christopher Krebs (2011) traced how humanists and then the Nazis read their own ideas into it; Heinrich Himmler sought the manuscript itself.

Sources: Tacitus, Germania, tr. Church and Brodribb (1877) with Thomas Gordon, Internet Medieval Sourcebook (Fordham); The Key Reporter (Phi Beta Kappa): review of Christopher Krebs, A Most Dangerous Book; Wikipedia: Germania (book)

The Marcomannic Wars (c. 166 to 180)

In late 166 Langobardi and others crossed into Pannonia, the first of a series of invasions across the middle Danube by the Marcomanni, Quadi and Sarmatian Iazyges. The Marcomanni under Ballomar beat a Roman army near Carnuntum, destroyed Opitergium (Oderzo) and besieged Aquileia in northern Italy, at a time when the Antonine Plague was also ravaging the empire. Marcus Aurelius spent most of the 170s at the front, cleared Roman territory by late 171 and forced the invaders into treaties. He died on campaign on 17 March 180, and his son Commodus made peace that year.

• Marcus wrote at least part of his Meditations on campaign: Book I ends, in George Long's translation, "Among the Quadi at the Granua", a river in Quadi country north of the Danube.
• Cassius Dio says the Iazyges, on making peace, handed back 100,000 Roman captives and supplied 8,000 cavalry, 5,500 of whom were sent to Britain.
• During a campaign against the Quadi around 173 a sudden rainstorm saved a Roman army dying of thirst; Dio credited an Egyptian magician, his Christian epitomator credited the prayers of Christian soldiers, and the scene appears on the Column of Marcus Aurelius in Rome.

Sources: Cassius Dio, Roman History, epitome of Book 72 (Loeb 1927), LacusCurtius; Marcus Aurelius, Meditations Book I, tr. George Long, Wikisource; Wikipedia: Marcomannic Wars

Trier, the Rome of the North (imperial residence c. 293 to 395 (founded c. 16 BC))

Rome founded Augusta Treverorum among the Celtic Treveri around 16 BC, and it grew into a rich trading city that supplied the Rhine garrisons. At the end of the 3rd century it became one of the capitals of the Tetrarchy, and from 293 to 395 it was a residence of the western emperors. Constantine built on a vast scale there, and UNESCO links the city to his march against Maxentius in 312. With perhaps 75,000 to 100,000 people in the 4th century, Trier was one of the largest cities of the empire; the Franks took it in the later 5th century (Wikipedia gives 459, Livius 485 or 486).

• The Porta Nigra, the city's great north gate, is dated by tree rings to about 170; it survived the Middle Ages because a church dedicated to Saint Simeon was built beside and into it.
• The brick basilica (Aula Palatina) of Constantine's time has what UNESCO calls the largest known interior from classical times; Trier's Roman monuments, cathedral and Church of Our Lady became a World Heritage Site in 1986.
• Trier was a centre of early Christianity in the north: Athanasius of Alexandria was exiled there by Constantine in 336, and Ambrose, later bishop of Milan, was born there around 340.

Sources: UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Roman Monuments, Cathedral of St Peter and Church of Our Lady in Trier; Livius.org: Trier, Porta Nigra; Wikipedia: Trier

Constantine's decree on the Jews of Cologne (11 December 321)

On 11 December 321 the emperor Constantine, writing to the councillors of Cologne, ruled that town councils could call Jews to serve in the curia; the law was sent to Cologne but framed as a general rule. Serving on it was a costly burden that wealthy citizens increasingly tried to avoid, so the council wanted more members. The law survives in the Codex Theodosianus, a collection of imperial laws issued in 438, and is usually read as evidence of a Jewish community in Roman Cologne, though the historian Christoph Cluse has questioned how far it proves one. The historian Werner Eck argues that some of its members were rich enough to sit on the council, and that Jews had until then been exempt because the office involved pagan rites. In 2021 Germany marked 1,700 years of Jewish life on the strength of this document.

• The decree let two or three Jewish members keep an exemption from being forced into office, as compensation; a second edict of Constantine, dated 1 December 331 (C.T. 16.8.4), freed synagogue officials from such burdens; the Jewish Virtual Library links it to Cologne too.
• The oldest surviving copy, a 6th-century manuscript of the Codex Theodosianus in the Vatican Library, was lent to the Archdiocese of Cologne and shown at the Kolumba museum from 15 September to 17 October 2021.
• After the Second World War, Otto Doppelfeld excavated the foundations of Cologne's medieval synagogue and its monumental mikveh (ritual bath) from 1953 to 1956, in front of the old town hall.

Sources: Internet Medieval Sourcebook (Fordham): Laws of the Roman Empire on the Jews, 300-800 (C.T. 16.8.3, to the officials at Cologne, 11 Dec. 321); Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2017.11.42 (Arco den Heijer): review of Hasselhoff and Strothmann, 'Religio licita?', including Werner Eck on the Jews of Cologne; #2021JLID: Edikt Kaiser Konstantins aus dem Jahr 321; Jewish Virtual Library: Cologne; Wikipedia: History of the Jews in Cologne

Julian defeats the Alemanni at Strasbourg (357 (probably August))

The Alemanni, a confederation first named by Cassius Dio during Caracalla's campaign of 213, had raided deep into Gaul and Italy in the 3rd century and settled in Alsace. In 357 the young Caesar Julian, cousin of the emperor Constantius II, met seven Alemannic kings near Argentoratum (Strasbourg). The historian Ammianus Marcellinus, who probably drew on Julian's own lost account, gives Julian 13,000 men against 35,000 Alemanni, a figure modern historians think too high. The Romans won, drove the settlers out of Alsace and over the next years rebuilt the Rhine forts and campaigned across the river.

• Ammianus counts Roman losses at 243 soldiers and four senior officers, against about 6,000 Alemannic dead on the field and many more carried off by the Rhine.
• The Alemannic king Chnodomarius, whom Ammianus describes wearing a flame-coloured plume on his helmet, fled, hid on a wooded hill and surrendered; he was sent to the emperor's court and died in Rome.
• The World History Encyclopedia notes that the name Alemanni is usually explained as 'all men' or 'men united', and that the confederacy kept its independence until the Frankish king Clovis conquered it in 496.

Sources: Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman History 16.12 (Loeb 1935), LacusCurtius; World History Encyclopedia: Alemanni; Wikipedia: Battle of Strasbourg

Vandals, Alans and Suebi cross the Rhine (31 December 406 by tradition (Michael Kulikowski argues for 405))

According to the chronicler Prosper of Aquitaine, Vandals and Alans crossed the Rhine on 31 December 406, traditionally near Mainz; Suebi came with them. Before the crossing, according to a fragment of the lost historian Renatus Frigeridus, the Vandals lost heavily, including their king Godigisel, in a war with the Franks, and were saved when the Alans joined in. The Rhine garrisons had been weakened, perhaps because the general Stilicho had drawn troops to Italy, though historians such as Peter Heather dispute this. The invaders ravaged northern Gaul for almost three years, and according to Hydatius entered Spain in September or October 409.

• Writing around 409, Jerome lists Quadi, Vandals, Sarmatians, Alans, Gepids, Heruli, Saxons, Burgundians and Alemanni among the peoples overrunning Gaul, and says Mainz was taken and many thousands were massacred in its church.
• Jerome adds that the people of Worms were wiped out after a long siege, and that Reims, Amiens, Arras, Tournai, Speyer and Strasbourg had 'fallen to Germany'.
• The date is debated: the traditional 406 rests on Prosper's chronicle, while Michael Kulikowski (2000) argued that 31 December 405 gives a more coherent chronology for events in Gaul and Britain; Anthony Birley strongly challenged this.

Sources: Jerome, Letter 123 to Ageruchia, sec. 16, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers II.6 (1893), Wikisource; World History Encyclopedia: Vandals; Wikipedia: Crossing of the Rhine

Severinus of Noricum (active from c. 453; died 8 January 482)

Saint Severinus of Noricum, Monk · Danube frontier (Passau and Noricum)

Severinus appeared on the Danube in Noricum, in today's Austria and Bavaria, soon after Attila's death in 453, and never told anyone where he came from. As Roman troops and money stopped coming, he preached, raised food and clothing for the poor, ransomed captives, warned towns of raids and dealt with the Rugian and Alemannic kings on their behalf. He founded monasteries, including a cell at Batavis, today's Passau, and at Favianis. His disciple Eugippius wrote his life in 511, one of the best pictures of everyday life at the end of Roman rule.

How they rose: His fame grew from towns along the Danube that sought his help in famine, flood and war. Eugippius says even the Alemannic king Gibuldus honoured him, and the Rugian kings Flaccitheus and Feletheus (Feva) listened to him.

How they died: He died at Favianis on 8 January 482. In 488, after Odoacer had beaten the Rugii, Odoacer's brother Onoulfus ordered all the Romans of the province to move to Italy, and the monks carried Severinus' body with them; it was later laid to rest near Naples, and in 1807 moved to Frattamaggiore.

• Eugippius says the young Odoacer, a tall man in shabby furs on his way to Italy, had to stoop inside Severinus' cell, and the saint told him (Robinson, 1914): "Go forth to Italy!" Odoacer deposed the last western emperor, Romulus Augustulus, on 4 September 476.
• Eugippius records that while Rome lasted, soldiers in many towns were paid to guard the frontier; when the pay stopped, the units vanished. The garrison of Batavis held on, but the men it sent to Italy to fetch the last pay were killed on the way.
• He is said to have told flatterers of King Odoacer that the king was 'safe between thirteen and fourteen', meaning the years of his secure rule; Theodoric killed Odoacer at Ravenna on 15 March 493.

Sources: Eugippius, The Life of St. Severinus, tr. George W. Robinson (Harvard, 1914), tertullian.org; World History Encyclopedia: Odoacer; Wikipedia: Severinus of Noricum

Clovis I (481 to 27 November 511)

Clovis I, king of the Franks, Merovingian · Frankish kingdom

Clovis inherited a small kingdom of the Salian Franks around Tournai and turned it into the greatest power in the former Western Empire. He beat Syagrius, the last Roman commander in northern Gaul, at Soissons in 486, defeated the Alemanni (traditionally in 496), and killed the Visigothic king Alaric II at Vouillé in 507. Rival Frankish kings, including his own kinsmen, were eliminated one by one. By choosing Catholic rather than Arian Christianity he won the support of the Gallo-Roman bishops, and his realm, reaching into what is now western Germany, was the root of both France and Germany.

How they came to power: Born around 466, the son of King Childeric I and a Thuringian princess, Basina, he became king of the Salian Franks in 481 at about 15.

How it ended: Gregory of Tours says he died at Paris in the fifth year after Vouillé, after reigning thirty years, aged forty-five; the date is 27 November 511. He was buried in the church of the Holy Apostles he had built with Queen Clotilda, and his kingdom was split among his four sons.

• Gregory tells that, facing defeat by the Alemanni, Clovis vowed to be baptised if Christ gave him victory, and that more than 3,000 of his army were baptised with him. The date is disputed: Gregory's account was long read as 496, but Wikipedia notes that his correspondence with Bishop Avitus of Vienne now points to December 508.
• At the baptism, in Ernest Brehaut's 1916 translation, Bishop Remigius of Reims told him: "worship what you burned; burn what you worshipped."
• After Vouillé the eastern emperor Anastasius sent Clovis the title of consul; Gregory says he put on purple, scattered gold and silver to the crowds, and made Paris his seat.

Sources: Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks II.27-43 (The Conversion of Clovis), tr. Ernest Brehaut (1916), Internet Medieval Sourcebook; World History Encyclopedia: Clovis I; Wikipedia: Clovis I

The Salic Law is written down (c. 507 to 511 (traditional dating; disputed))

The law of the Salian Franks, long passed on orally by elders, was set down in Latin, traditionally under Clovis between 507 and 511. It is mostly a tariff of compensation payments, so that a killing or an injury could be settled with money rather than a blood feud. The text keeps scattered words of the Franks' own language, the so-called Malberg glosses, which scholars have used to reconstruct the earliest stage of Old Dutch (Old Frankish). It was copied and revised for some 300 years, including a reformed version under Charlemagne around 798.

• In the version translated by Ernest Henderson (1910), killing a free Frank cost 200 shillings (solidi) and 600 if the body was hidden; killing a free woman who had begun to bear children also cost 600, three times the price for one past childbearing.
• Insults had prices too: calling someone a fox or a hare cost 3 shillings, and falsely calling a woman a harlot 45.
• A clause excluding women from inheriting Salic land was revived in 14th-century France to bar succession through women; it was not cited in the succession crises of 1316 or 1328, and the monk Richard Lescot invoked it in 1358.

Sources: Law of the Salian Franks, in E. F. Henderson, Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages (1910), Internet Medieval Sourcebook; A. E. Kerkhof, Language, law and loanwords in early medieval Gaul (PhD thesis, Leiden University, 2018); Wikipedia: Salic law

Radegund (c. 520 to 13 August 587)

Radegund of Thuringia, Frankish queen and saint, Thuringian royal house · Frankish queen at Poitiers

Radegund was a daughter of the Thuringian king Bertachar, whose realm in central Germany fell to the Frankish kings Theuderic and Chlothar I in 531. Carried off as a captive child, she was later married to Chlothar, around 540; they had no children. After Chlothar had her last surviving brother killed she left the court, was consecrated a deaconess and founded the Abbey of the Holy Cross at Poitiers around 560. She obtained a relic of the True Cross from the emperor Justin II, for which her friend the poet Venantius Fortunatus wrote the hymn Vexilla Regis.

How they rose: Her father was killed by her uncle Hermanfrid, who took her into his household; when the Franks conquered Thuringia in 531 Chlothar took her back to Gaul as his share of the spoils.

How they died: She died at Poitiers on 13 August 587, famous for her prayer, fasting and care for the sick, and is buried in the church of Sainte-Radegonde there.

• Gregory of Tours describes the Frankish victory over the Thuringians on the river Unstrut, where so many died that the Franks crossed the stream on the bodies, and says Chlothar came home with Radegund as his captive.
• A Latin lament on the fall of Thuringia, De excidio Thoringiae, 172 lines long and addressed to her cousin Amalafrid, an officer of Justinian, survives among Fortunatus' poems; scholars debate whether Radegund herself or Fortunatus wrote it.
• That poem survives in only one manuscript, Paris lat. 13048, copied at the abbey of Corbie between 776 and 800.

Sources: Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks III.7, tr. Ernest Brehaut (1916), Internet Medieval Sourcebook; Jana Engelbrechtová, 'Bríseovna, Héró a Radegunda', Auriga 61/1 (2019), Charles University; Wikipedia: Radegund

Boniface (c. 675 to 5 June 754; missionary from 716)

Saint Boniface (born Winfrid), archbishop and 'Apostle of the Germans', Anglo-Saxon missionary · Hesse, Thuringia, Bavaria and Mainz

Winfrid, a monk from Wessex in England, first went to Frisia in 716. In Rome Pope Gregory II gave him the name Boniface and sent him to preach in Germania, where he worked in Hesse and Thuringia, became an archbishop in 732 and papal legate for Germany in 737 or 738. With the backing of the Frankish rulers he organised the Church east of the Rhine: four Bavarian dioceses (Salzburg, Regensburg, Freising and Passau), a new see at Würzburg in 741, reforming councils from 743 and the abbey of Fulda. From 745 Mainz was his archbishopric.

How they rose: Trained at Nursling near Winchester and a priest by about thirty, he left a teaching career in England for the continental mission. Papal commissions and the protection of Charles Martel and his sons gave him the authority to found and reform churches.

How they died: In old age he went back to Frisia, and on 5 June 754 he and about 52 companions were killed by armed raiders near Dokkum. His body was taken by way of Utrecht and Mainz to Fulda, where he is buried.

• His biographer Willibald tells that at Gaesmere (Geismar, near Fritzlar in Hesse) Boniface felled a great oak sacred to the god the Romans called Jupiter; the tree split into four equal pieces, and he built a chapel to Saint Peter from its timber.
• The diocese of Fulda dates the founding of the abbey to 744, when Boniface's pupil Sturmius built it at a site Boniface already knew; Wikipedia gives 742. In 751 the pope placed Fulda directly under the Holy See.
• The story that he crowned Pepin the Short king at Soissons in 751 is now generally discredited.

Sources: Willibald, The Life of St. Boniface, Internet Medieval Sourcebook (Fordham); Bistum Fulda: Geschichte des Bistums; Wikipedia: Saint Boniface

Charles Martel (de facto ruler 718 to 22 October 741 (born c. 688))

Charles Martel, mayor of the palace and ruler of the Franks, Pippinid (Carolingian) · Austrasia and Francia

Charles was the son of Pepin of Herstal, the mayor of the palace who ran the Frankish kingdom for its Merovingian kings, and his partner Alpaida. After a civil war he became master of the whole Frankish realm in 718. He then fought almost every year: against Frisians and Saxons, in Bavaria from 720 to 723, against the Alemanni, whose duke he killed in 730, and in October 732 against an Umayyad army from Spain near Tours and Poitiers. When the king Theuderic IV died in 737, Charles simply left the throne empty. He protected Boniface from 723 and helped found four Bavarian dioceses, tying the lands east of the Rhine to the Frankish Church.

How they came to power: When his father died in December 714, his stepmother Plectrude had him imprisoned in Cologne. He escaped, was acclaimed mayor of the palace of Austrasia in 715, lost his only battle near Cologne in 716, then won at Amblève (716), Vinchy (21 March 717) and Soissons (718).

How it ended: He divided the realm between his sons Carloman and Pepin, then died at Quierzy on 22 October 741 and was buried at Saint-Denis. 'Martel', Old French for 'the hammer', is a nickname from later chronicles.

• The Chronicle of 754 attributed to Isidore of Beja describes the Franks at Tours standing close together like a bulwark of ice, credits the victory to the Austrasians, and calls the Franks' side 'the men of Europe'.
• In Isidore's account the Arab army slipped away in the night, leaving its tents standing, and the Franks found the camp empty next morning.
• From 737 until his death he ruled with no Merovingian king on the throne, a step towards his son Pepin taking the crown in 751.

Sources: Arabs, Franks, and the Battle of Tours, 732: Three Accounts (from W. S. Davis, Readings in Ancient History, 1912-13), Internet Medieval Sourcebook; World History Encyclopedia: Charles Martel; Wikipedia: Charles Martel

Pepin the Short (mayor of the palace from 741; king 751 to 24 September 768)

Pepin III (the Short), king of the Franks, Carolingian · Frankish kingdom

Pepin, son of Charles Martel, shared power with his brother Carloman as mayor of the palace from 741; in 743 they set up a Merovingian, Childeric III, as a figurehead king. After Carloman retired to a monastery in 747, Pepin asked the pope whether a powerless king should keep the title. With papal backing he was elected king and anointed at Soissons in 751, the first Carolingian king. In 754 Pope Stephen II anointed him again at Saint-Denis with his sons Charles and Carloman, and Pepin in turn campaigned in Italy and handed captured cities to the pope, the Donation of Pepin that grew into the Papal States.

How they came to power: Born around 714, he became mayor of the palace of Neustria on his father's death in 741 and sole mayor after his brother left public life in 747.

How it ended: After nine years of war in Aquitaine he died on 24 September 768, of dropsy according to Einhard. The Franks made both his sons, Charles and Carloman, kings and divided the realm between them.

• The Annals of Lorsch say envoys Burchard of Würzburg and Fulrad asked Pope Zacharias about the Frankish kings, and record his answer (Thatcher and McNeal, 1905): "it would be better that he who actually had the power should be called king."
• The same annals say Childeric III was shorn of his locks and sent to a monastery; they name Boniface as the bishop who anointed Pepin, a claim Wikipedia's article on Boniface calls generally discredited.
• Einhard mocks the last Merovingians as kings in name only, with flowing hair and long beards, who travelled in an ox-cart driven by a ploughman.

Sources: Annals of Lorsch 749-754, in Thatcher and McNeal, A Source Book for Medieval History (1905), Internet Medieval Sourcebook; Einhard, Life of Charlemagne 1-3, tr. S. E. Turner (1880), Internet Medieval Sourcebook; Wikipedia: Pepin the Short; Wikipedia: Saint Boniface

Charlemagne (king 768 (sole ruler 771); emperor 800; died 28 January 814)

Charles the Great (Karl der Große), king of the Franks and emperor, Carolingian · Frankish Empire

Charles inherited half the Frankish kingdom in 768 and the whole of it when his brother Carloman died in 771. In more than forty years of almost constant war he took the Lombard kingdom in Italy (774), conquered and forcibly converted the Saxons (772 to 804), deposed Duke Tassilo and annexed Bavaria (788) and destroyed the Avar realm on the Danube (795 to 796). On Christmas Day 800 Pope Leo III crowned him emperor in Rome. He gathered scholars such as Alcuin at his court, promoted schools in monasteries and cathedrals, and made Aachen his capital.

How they came to power: The elder son of Pepin the Short, he was most likely born on 2 April 748 (older dates of 742 and 747 have been proposed), at an unknown place. He was anointed with his father and brother by Pope Stephen II in 754 and became king with Carloman on Pepin's death in 768.

How it ended: He crowned his son Louis the Pious co-emperor in 813 and died at Aachen on 28 January 814, in the 47th year of his reign. Einhard says he died in his seventy-second year in one chapter but quotes a tomb inscription giving his age as seventy; he was buried in the Palatine Chapel.

• Einhard says he was tall, seven times the length of his own foot, with large lively eyes and a thick neck, and that he spoke Latin as well as his native Frankish and understood Greek better than he could speak it.
• He kept writing tablets under his pillow to practise his letters at leisure hours, but Einhard says he started too late in life to learn to write well.
• He gave the months Frankish names, such as Wintarmanoth for January and Ostarmanoth for April, began a grammar of his native language and had old heroic songs written down. The caliph Harun al-Rashid sent him his only elephant.

Sources: Einhard, Life of Charlemagne, tr. S. E. Turner (1880), Internet Medieval Sourcebook; World History Encyclopedia: Charlemagne; Wikipedia: Charlemagne

The Saxon Wars and the Massacre of Verden (772 to 804; Verden 782)

In 772, after a Saxon raid burned the church at Deventer, Charlemagne invaded Saxony and destroyed the Irminsul, a sacred site of the Saxons, at the Eresburg (in 772 or 773). The Saxons, led by Widukind, rose again and again. After Widukind beat a Frankish army at the Süntel in 782, Charlemagne had about 4,500 Saxons executed at Verden. Widukind was baptised in 785, but revolts continued until 804, when Saxony was finally incorporated into the Frankish realm.

• Charlemagne's Capitulary for Saxony (Munro's 1900 translation) made it a capital crime to hide from baptism, to eat meat in Lent out of contempt for Christianity, or to cremate the dead in the pagan way; a confession to a priest could save the offender. Capital punishment for paganism was dropped in 797.
• Einhard counts 33 years of war and says Charles finally removed 10,000 Saxons living along the Elbe, with their wives and children, and resettled them across Gaul and Germany; Wikipedia records deportations of 7,070 in 795 and 1,600 in 798 as well.
• Some historians have argued that the Verden massacre never happened or was really a battle; Alessandro Barbero finds none of these claims credible, and Johannes Fried thinks the figure of 4,500 may be exaggerated but the event itself is not in doubt.

Sources: Charlemagne: Capitulary for Saxony 775-790, tr. D. C. Munro (1900), Internet Medieval Sourcebook; Einhard, Life of Charlemagne, tr. S. E. Turner (1880), Internet Medieval Sourcebook; World History Encyclopedia: Charlemagne; Wikipedia: Charlemagne; Wikipedia: Saxon Wars

Einhard (c. 770 (NDB) or c. 775 (Wikipedia) to 14 March 840)

Einhard, courtier, builder and biographer of Charlemagne, Carolingian court scholar · Aachen and Seligenstadt

Einhard came from a noble family of the Maingau and was educated at the abbey of Fulda, whose abbot Baugulf sent him to Charlemagne's court. There he became a leading figure of the palace school and overseer of the king's buildings and workshops at Aachen, which earned him the court nickname Bezaleel, after the craftsman of the biblical Tabernacle. Under Louis the Pious he was given abbeys and lands, but grew estranged from the court and withdrew to Seligenstadt on the Main. His Life of Charlemagne, probably written in the early 830s and modelled on Suetonius' lives of the Caesars, is the main portrait of the emperor that survives.

How they rose: Sent from Fulda to court around 791 to 792, he won Charlemagne's trust through his learning and craftsmanship despite, as the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie notes, a very slight and unimpressive figure.

How they died: He died at Seligenstadt on 14 March 840, a layman although abbot of several monasteries. His wife Imma had died in 836 (Wikipedia gives 835); the ADB (Wilhelm Wattenbach, 1877) thinks she was probably a sister of Bishop Bernhar of Worms, not a daughter of Charlemagne as a 12th-century legend claimed.

• Louis the Pious gave him land at Michelstadt in the Odenwald in 815, where he built a basilica between 815 and 827; it still stands at Steinbach and keeps original Carolingian plaster around its windows.
• In 827 he obtained relics of the Roman martyrs Marcellinus and Peter from Rome, then moved them from Steinbach to Mühlheim on the Main, where he founded the abbey that gave Seligenstadt its name; he wrote a lively account of the transfer.
• In his preface Einhard calls Charles his foster-father and says, in Turner's 1880 translation, that "no man can write with more accuracy than I" about these events; the NDB (Heinz Löwe, 1959) says the work shows Einhard at the height of the Carolingian Renaissance.

Sources: Einhard, Life of Charlemagne, tr. S. E. Turner (1880), Internet Medieval Sourcebook; Deutsche Biographie: Einhard (NDB 4, 1959, Heinz Löwe; ADB 5, 1877, Wilhelm Wattenbach); Staatliche Schlösser und Gärten Hessen: Einhard's Basilica, history; Wikipedia: Einhard

The Palatine Chapel at Aachen (built c. 793 to 813 (UNESCO; its short description says begun c. 790 to 800))

Charlemagne turned the royal estate at Aachen, a spa since the 1st century, into his favourite residence and capital. Its two main buildings were a great hall, whose site is now the town hall, and the Palatine Chapel, an octagon under a dome with galleries, built between about 793 and 813. Columns and marble were brought from Rome and Ravenna, and Einhard says the king attended services there morning and evening. Charlemagne was buried in the chapel in 814, and it became the core of Aachen Cathedral.

• Charlemagne's stone throne stands in the gallery facing the altar; UNESCO says it was the coronation seat of the German kings of the Holy Roman Empire until 1531.
• Einhard says Charles loved the warm springs and swimming, and that a hundred or more people, from his sons to his bodyguard, sometimes bathed with him.
• Aachen Cathedral was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1978 as site number 3; its treasury holds the Cross of Lothar, made around 1000.

Sources: UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Aachen Cathedral; Einhard, Life of Charlemagne, tr. S. E. Turner (1880), Internet Medieval Sourcebook; Wikipedia: Charlemagne

Charlemagne crowned emperor (25 December 800)

In April 799 enemies of Pope Leo III attacked him in Rome, and he fled across the Alps to Charlemagne at Paderborn. Charlemagne sent him back with an escort, came to Rome himself in November 800, and on 23 December Leo swore an oath of innocence. Two days later, at Christmas Mass in Old St Peter's, Leo crowned Charlemagne emperor. He was the first emperor in the West since 476, and the title passed to the later medieval emperors of what became the Holy Roman Empire.

• Einhard claims Charlemagne disliked the title so much that he said he would not have entered the church that day, great feast though it was, if he had known what the pope planned; historians disagree whether this was sincere or a show of modesty.
• In Constantinople Empress Irene had taken the throne in 797 by deposing and blinding her own son; the Annals of Lorsch treated a woman on the throne as leaving the imperial title vacant.
• Einhard says the eastern emperors suspected Charlemagne of wanting their empire and quotes a Greek proverb: have the Frank for your friend but not for your neighbour.

Sources: Einhard, Life of Charlemagne, tr. S. E. Turner (1880), Internet Medieval Sourcebook; World History Encyclopedia: Charlemagne; Wikipedia: Charlemagne

Louis the Pious (co-emperor 11 September 813; sole emperor 814 to 20 June 840 (deposed 833 to 834))

Louis I (the Pious), emperor and king of the Franks, Carolingian · Frankish Empire

Louis, by 813 Charlemagne's only surviving son by Queen Hildegard, was crowned co-emperor by his father at Aachen on 11 September 813 and took over the whole empire in 814. He pushed church and monastic reform, and in 817 the Ordinatio imperii made his eldest son Lothair co-emperor and senior heir, with Pepin and Louis (later 'the German') as under-kings in Aquitaine and Bavaria. Trouble began when he gave a share to Charles, his son by his wife Judith of the Welf family. His older sons rebelled in 830 and again in 833, when his own army deserted him near Colmar, and he was deposed until he was restored in 834.

How they came to power: Born in summer 778 at Chasseneuil near Poitiers, he was anointed and crowned king of Aquitaine by Pope Hadrian I at Rome at Easter (15 April) 781 as a small child, and grew up there as an under-king, fighting the Basques and Arabs and taking Barcelona in 801.

How it ended: He died on 20 June 840 on an island in the Rhine near Ingelheim and was buried at Metz. Within three years his sons' war ended in the division of the empire at Verdun.

• In 818 he had his nephew Bernard of Italy, who had rebelled, blinded, and Bernard died soon after. At Attigny in August 822 Louis did public penance for the wrongs he had done, above all to his own family.
• The place near Colmar where his supporters went over to his sons on 24 June 833 was later called the Lügenfeld, the 'Field of Lies'.
• He stood godfather when the Danish claimant Harald was baptised at Mainz in 826, and sent the monk Ansgar to preach in the north.

Sources: Deutsche Biographie: Ludwig der Fromme (NDB 15, 1987, Theodor Schieffer); Einhard, Life of Charlemagne 30 (coronation of Louis), tr. S. E. Turner (1880), Internet Medieval Sourcebook; Wikipedia: Louis the Pious

Hrabanus Maurus (c. 780 to 4 February 856; abbot of Fulda 822 to 842; archbishop of Mainz from 847)

Hrabanus (Rabanus) Maurus, abbot of Fulda and archbishop of Mainz, Scholar · Fulda and Mainz

Hrabanus was given to the abbey of Fulda as a child and, after becoming a deacon in 801, was sent to study the liberal arts with Alcuin at Tours, who gave him the name Maurus after Saint Benedict's favourite disciple. Back at Fulda he ran the school, and as abbot from 822 built up the scriptorium and a library unusually rich in classical literature; the school drew students like no other in the eastern Frankish kingdom. His writings cover almost every field: an encyclopedia, De rerum naturis, handbooks for training clergy, a grammar, a martyrology and commentaries on much of the Bible, read across Latin Europe into the early modern age.

How they rose: Born around 780 in Mainz, he became a priest in 814. After the reforming abbot Eigil replaced the domineering Ratgar in 817, Hrabanus' teaching flourished, and on Eigil's death in 822 the monks elected him abbot.

How they died: Loyal to Lothair, he resigned as abbot after Lothair's defeat in 842 and retired to the Petersberg near Fulda. Louis the German made him archbishop of Mainz in 847; he held synods in 847, 848 and 852, took part in the dispute over the Saxon monk Gottschalk, and died on 4 February 856, at Mainz according to the NDB (Wikipedia says at Winkel on the Rhine).

• His cycle of figure poems In Praise of the Holy Cross, in which pictures and patterns are worked into the grid of letters, stayed popular into the age of the humanists.
• Pupils or followers of his included Walahfrid Strabo, Gottschalk, Lupus of Ferrières and Otfrid of Weissenburg, who named him as his teacher.
• He is often called 'Praeceptor Germaniae', the teacher of Germany; the Neue Deutsche Biographie calls the title a modern exaggeration and judges him a great compiler rather than an original thinker, though no plagiarist. The hymn Veni Creator Spiritus is attributed to him.

Sources: Deutsche Biographie: Hrabanus Maurus (NDB 9, 1972, Franz Brunhölzl); Deutsche Biographie: Otfrid von Weißenburg (NDB 19, 1999); Wikipedia: Rabanus Maurus

The Oaths of Strasbourg (14 February 842)

After Louis the Pious died in 840 his sons fought over the empire. Louis the German and Charles the Bald defeated their elder brother Lothair I at Fontenoy near Auxerre on 25 June 841, a bloody battle that contemporaries saw as a judgement of God. On 14 February 842 near Strasbourg the two allies renewed their pact in public. So that the other's army could understand, Louis swore in an early form of French and Charles in a Germanic tongue, and each army then swore too. The historian Nithard, himself a grandson of Charlemagne, copied the words into his Latin history of the war.

• The Romance oath begins "Pro Deo amur et pro christian poblo" (for the love of God and of the Christian people), and the Germanic version begins "In Godes minna"; the Romance text is the oldest surviving document written in a form of French.
• The oaths survive in one medieval manuscript, Paris BnF Latin 9768 of the late 10th century, on folio 13, plus a 15th-century copy (BnF Latin 14663); until the late 18th century Latin 9768 was bound together with what is now Vatican Reg. lat. 1964.
• Theodor Schieffer warns in the Neue Deutsche Biographie that the oaths are famous as early monuments of French and German but should not be read as evidence of national feeling.

Sources: Lexilogos: Serments de Strasbourg (Romance text); Courtney M. Booker, 'Veluti ansam quandam: The Nithard MS. Troyes 3203', Corpus Eve 4 (2025), OpenEdition; Neue Deutsche Biographie 15 (1987), Theodor Schieffer: Ludwig der Deutsche; Wikipedia: Oaths of Strasbourg

Treaty of Verdun (August 843 (Wikipedia gives 10 August))

Exhausted by civil war, the three surviving sons of Louis the Pious agreed at Verdun in August 843 to divide the empire. Lothair I kept the imperial title and a middle kingdom running from the Low Countries through Aachen, Lorraine, Alsace, Burgundy and Provence to Italy and Rome. Charles the Bald received the west, and Louis the German the lands east of the Rhine and Aar: Bavaria, Swabia, Franconia, Thuringia and Saxony, with a bulge west of the middle Rhine. West Francia grew into France and East Francia into the medieval German kingdom.

• Schieffer stresses that the treaty was meant only to mark out spheres of rule inside one Frankish realm, which in theory still existed under the joint rule of the dynasty; nobody yet saw it as final.
• The middle kingdom soon broke up. In August 870 at Meerssen, Louis and Charles divided Lotharingia roughly along the Meuse, bringing Cologne, Aachen, Metz and Strasbourg into the eastern kingdom.
• Duden's Lernhelfer says the line along the Meuse and Moselle drawn in 870 remained the western border of the later German realm for centuries.

Sources: Neue Deutsche Biographie 15 (1987), Theodor Schieffer: Ludwig der Deutsche; Wikipedia: Treaty of Verdun; Duden Lernhelfer: Ludwig der Deutsche

Louis the German (king in Bavaria from 817; king of East Francia 843 to 28 August 876)

Louis II (the German), king of East Francia, Carolingian · East Francia

A son of Louis the Pious and his first wife Irmingard, Louis was named king of Bavaria under his father in 817 and from 826 governed there. After winning the civil war alongside Charles the Bald he received East Francia at Verdun in 843 and ruled it for 33 years. He held the eastern frontier against Slavic neighbours from the Baltic to the Alps, fighting on the Elbe-Saale line from 844, sent his son Carloman against Great Moravia, and in 870 won the eastern half of Lotharingia at Meerssen. His court was not a great intellectual centre like Charlemagne's, but he had close ties with Hrabanus Maurus, and Otfrid of Weissenburg dedicated his Old High German gospel book to him.

How they came to power: Born around 804 to 806, probably in Aquitaine, he married Hemma, sister of the empress Judith, in 827. He rebelled against his father in the 830s and, after 840, allied with Charles the Bald against Lothair, winning at Fontenoy in 841.

How it ended: He died at Frankfurt on 28 August 876 and was buried at Lorsch Abbey. As he had planned, his three sons Carloman, Louis the Younger and Charles the Fat divided East Francia.

• He was not called 'the German' in his lifetime: the nickname became common only in the 18th century. West Frankish writers called him king of Germania, meaning the lands beyond the Rhine, while his own charters were dated by his years in 'eastern Francia'.
• In 845 a Danish fleet sacked Hamburg, and the missionary archbishopric founded there under Louis the Pious moved to Bremen.
• In 858 he invaded West Francia and Charles the Bald fled, but desertions and the loyalty of the western bishops to Charles made the campaign fail.

Sources: Neue Deutsche Biographie 15 (1987), Theodor Schieffer: Ludwig der Deutsche; Wikipedia: Louis the German; Lexilogos: Serments de Strasbourg (Romance text)

Otfrid of Weissenburg (attested 851; Gospel Book finished between 863 and 871; died after 863 (perhaps 23 January 867))

Otfrid of Weissenburg, monk and poet, Monk · Weissenburg Abbey (Wissembourg, Alsace)

Otfrid was a monk, priest, librarian and teacher at the abbey of Weissenburg in Alsace, and named Hrabanus Maurus as his teacher. In old age he finished his Evangelienbuch (Gospel Book), a retelling of the life and teaching of Christ in five books and more than 7,000 lines in the South Rhenish Franconian dialect of Old High German. It is the largest poem in Old High German and the first work in the language whose author names himself. He dedicated it to King Louis the German, to Archbishop Liutbert of Mainz, to Bishop Salomo of Constance and to two monks of St Gall.

How they rose: Born probably in the 820s (other estimates say around 800), he appears as the scribe of a dated charter in 851. Besides the Gospel Book, Latin Bible commentaries and Latin and German glosses from his hand survive.

How they died: He died some time after 863; the scholar Wolfgang Haubrichs suggests 23 January 867. His poem seems to have stopped being read by the 10th or 11th century and was rediscovered by the humanists; Matthias Flacius printed it in 1571.

• Earlier German poetry used alliteration; Otfrid's couplets are thought to be the first German verse with end rhyme.
• A chapter headed 'Cur scriptor hunc librum theotisce dictaverit' (why the writer composed this book in German) defends writing in the Franks' own tongue: Otfrid sets out to match the 'noble languages' Latin and Greek, since he sees no reason the Franks should count as inferior.
• Four manuscripts of the 9th and 10th centuries survive; the Vienna copy (Cod. 2687) carries corrections thought to be by Otfrid himself, and its drawings of the Entry into Jerusalem, the Last Supper and the Crucifixion are among the oldest surviving German book paintings.

Sources: Deutsche Biographie: Otfrid von Weißenburg (NDB 1999, Christoph März; and ADB); Neue Deutsche Biographie 15 (1987), Theodor Schieffer: Ludwig der Deutsche; Wikipedia: Otfrid of Weissenburg

Arnulf of Carinthia (king 887 to 8 December 899; emperor from February 896)

Arnulf of Carinthia, king of East Francia and emperor, Carolingian · East Francia

Arnulf was the illegitimate son of Carloman, Louis the German's eldest son, who gave him the marches of Carinthia and Pannonia in the south-east. In November 887, backed by the East Frankish nobles, he took the lead in deposing his ailing uncle, the emperor Charles the Fat (the NDB notes that his exact share is disputed). He did not try to rule the western Frankish lands, which broke into separate kingdoms. In 891 he stormed a Viking camp near Leuven on the river Dyle, and the Vikings raided the eastern kingdom no more after 892. He leaned heavily on the bishops, fought Great Moravia, and in 896 marched on Rome, where his troops stormed the Leonine City and Pope Formosus crowned him emperor.

How they came to power: Born probably before 850, he governed Carinthia and Pannonia for his father and became the leading adult male of the eastern Carolingians as his uncles died. When Charles the Fat lost the nobles' support, Arnulf moved against him; Charles' last charter is dated 17 November 887 and Arnulf's first 27 November, by which time the magnates had made him king.

How it ended: On the march from Rome against Spoleto in March 896 he was struck by a head illness and paralysis (Wikipedia calls it a stroke), as his father had been, and returned to Bavaria. He died at Regensburg on 8 December 899 and was buried at St Emmeram there; his only legitimate son, Louis the Child, aged six, succeeded him.

• After the Dyle battle he sent sixteen captured Viking banners to his Bavarian capital, Regensburg, according to the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (1875); many fleeing Vikings drowned in the river.
• His Roman coronation, probably on Sunday 22 February 896, came after his troops took the Leonine City from the forces of Ageltrude, mother of the rival emperor Lambert.
• Magyar warriors served in his army on his campaign of 892 against Great Moravia, the ADB notes; within two decades Magyar raiders were striking deep into East Francia, beating Louis the Child's army on the Lechfeld near Augsburg in 910.

Sources: Deutsche Biographie: Arnulf (NDB 1, 1953, Walter Schlesinger; ADB 1, 1875); Deutsche Biographie: Ludwig das Kind (NDB 15, 1987, Theodor Schieffer); Wikipedia: Arnulf of Carinthia

Conrad I (elected 10 November 911 (Wikipedia); died 23 December 918)

Conrad I, king of East Francia, Conradine · East Francia

The last East Frankish Carolingian, Louis the Child, was proclaimed king at Forchheim in 900 aged six, lost a battle to the Magyars on the Lechfeld near Augsburg in 910, and died unmarried in 911. A few weeks later the Franks, Saxons, Swabians and Bavarians chose Conrad, Duke of Franconia from the Conradine family, at Forchheim; the Lotharingians went over to the West Frankish king instead. Conrad was the first East Frankish king anointed by the Church, a substitute for royal blood. His reign was spent fighting the rising regional dukes: Henry of Saxony, Arnulf of Bavaria and the Swabian lords Erchanger and Berthold, while Magyar raids continued.

How they came to power: Born around 881, he became Duke of Franconia in 906, the year his father Conrad the Elder was killed in a feud with the Babenbergers near Fritzlar. His mother Glismoda was probably related to Louis the Child's mother Ota, and the Conradine family had risen under Arnulf and Louis.

How it ended: He was badly injured fighting Arnulf of Bavaria and died on 23 December 918; Wikipedia says at Weilburg. On his deathbed, according to Widukind of Corvey, he told his brother Eberhard to offer the crown to his former enemy Henry of Saxony, who was elected king in 919. Conrad was buried at Fulda.

• Louis the Child's coronation at Forchheim on 4 February 900 is, according to Theodor Schieffer, the first securely recorded coronation in East Frankish-German history.
• Conrad married Kunigunde, widow of the Bavarian margrave Luitpold and sister of Erchanger and Berthold, in 913; he later had both brothers executed as traitors in 917.
• In 916 a synod at Hohenaltheim, opened by a papal legate, backed Conrad and threatened his opponents with life imprisonment in a monastery.

Sources: Deutsche Biographie: Konrad I. (NDB 12, 1980, Walter Schlesinger; ADB 16, 1882); Deutsche Biographie: Ludwig das Kind (NDB 15, 1987, Theodor Schieffer); Wikipedia: Conrad I of Germany

Henry I the Fowler (born c. 876; king from May 919; died 2 July 936)

Henry I (Heinrich I), duke of Saxony and king of East Francia, Ottonian (Liudolfing) · East Francia

Henry, duke of Saxony, was elected king at Fritzlar in 919 by the Franconian and Saxon nobles only; Swabia and Bavaria did not recognise him at first. He brought Duke Burchard of Swabia to submit in 919 and Arnulf of Bavaria in 921, and in 925 won Lotharingia back for the East Frankish kingdom. After capturing a Magyar chief in 924 he bought a truce with tribute, used the years to build fortified places and train cavalry, and then routed the Magyars at Riade on 15 March 933. He died at Memleben in 936 and was buried at Quedlinburg, which his widow Matilda founded as an abbey in his memory.

How they came to power: Son of the Saxon duke Otto the Illustrious, Henry became duke in 912. The dying King Conrad I, his former enemy, named him as successor, and Conrad's brother Eberhard of Franconia conveyed the choice to the assembly at Fritzlar in 919.

How it ended: Henry died at Memleben on 2 July 936, having designated his son Otto as heir. He was buried at Quedlinburg.

• When Archbishop Heriger of Mainz offered to anoint him, Henry declined, the only king of his time to refuse the rite; tradition says he wished to rule by the people's acclaim rather than the Church's.
• Britannica calls the famous story that he was laying bird snares when told of his election, the origin of the nickname 'Fowler', probably a myth.
• Sources differ on the length of the Magyar truce bought in 924: Britannica says nine years, Wikipedia ten. Either way, Henry stopped paying the tribute in the early 930s and defeated the raiders at Riade in 933.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Henry I, king of Germany; Widukind of Corvey: The Coronation Oath of Otto I (Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham); UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Collegiate Church, Castle and Old Town of Quedlinburg; Wikipedia: Henry the Fowler

Hrotsvit of Gandersheim (born c. 935; died after 973 (Wikipedia gives 973, Britannica c. 1000))

Hrotsvit (Hrotsvitha, Roswitha) of Gandersheim, Canoness and writer · Gandersheim, Saxony

Hrotsvit lived as a canoness at Gandersheim, a wealthy house of noblewomen in Saxony, where she studied under Abbess Gerberga, a granddaughter of Henry I. She wrote six short Latin plays modelled on the Roman comedian Terence but turned to Christian ends, celebrating chaste and steadfast women; Britannica notes they were probably meant for reading rather than staging. She also wrote eight verse legends of saints and two verse histories, one on the deeds of Otto the Great and one on the founding of Gandersheim. She is often called the first German woman poet.

How they rose: Born to a noble Saxon family, she entered Gandersheim, where canonesses took vows of chastity and obedience but not poverty and could use a large library. Her abbess encouraged her to keep writing after she began in secret.

How they died: Little is known of her later life, and estimates of her death range from 973 (Wikipedia) to about 1000 (Britannica).

• Her plays are Gallicanus, Dulcitius, Callimachus, Abraham, Paphnutius and Sapientia; an English translation by Christopher St. John was published in 1923.
• Her manuscripts were rediscovered around 1500 by the German humanist Conrad Celtis; a 1501 woodcut by Albrecht Dürer shows her presenting her poem on Otto the Great to the aged emperor.
• Dumbarton Oaks calls her the first Latin dramatist since late antiquity whose work survives; a complete English translation of all her works appeared only in 2025.

Sources: Hrotsvitha, The Plays of Roswitha, trans. Christopher St. John (1923), Project Gutenberg; Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library: The Works of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim; Encyclopaedia Britannica: Hrosvitha; Wikipedia: Hrotsvitha

Otto I the Great (born 23 November 912; king from 7 August 936; emperor from 2 February 962; died 7 May 973)

Otto I, king of Germany and Holy Roman emperor, Ottonian · Kingdom of Germany

Otto was crowned at Aachen on 7 August 936, seated on Charlemagne's throne, and spent his first years putting down revolts by dukes and by his own brothers and son. He relied on bishops and abbots, whom he endowed with lands and offices, to balance the great nobles, a system historians call the Ottonian church system. In 951 he crossed into Italy, took the title king of the Lombards and married Adelaide, the widowed queen of Italy. After his victory over the Magyars at the Lechfeld in 955 he campaigned against the Slavs east of the Elbe, and in 968 founded the archbishopric of Magdeburg. Pope John XII crowned him emperor in Rome on 2 February 962.

How they came to power: The son of Henry I and Matilda, Otto was designated by his father and elected by the German dukes a month after Henry's death; the archbishops of Mainz and Cologne anointed and crowned him at Aachen.

How it ended: After a great court assembly at Quedlinburg on 23 March 973, Otto died at Memleben on 7 May 973. He was buried in Magdeburg beside his first wife, Edith.

• In 930 Otto married Edith (Eadgyth), daughter of the English king Edward the Elder; Britannica notes she received Magdeburg as her dowry. She died in 946.
• Eleven days after his imperial coronation, Otto and the pope concluded the Privilegium Ottonianum. Historians still dispute whether its clause letting the emperor approve papal elections was in the original or added in 963, when Otto deposed John XII.
• In May 961 Otto had his six-year-old son Otto II elected and crowned king, securing the succession before his second Italian expedition.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Otto I; Widukind of Corvey: The Coronation Oath of Otto I (Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham); UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Aachen Cathedral; Wikipedia: Otto the Great

Battle of the Lechfeld (10 August 955, with fighting and pursuit over 10 to 12 August)

In summer 955 a Magyar army invaded Bavaria and laid siege to Augsburg on the river Lech. Otto I came south with only a few Saxons, since the rest were fighting the Slavs, and gathered an army of about eight legions: three of Bavarians, one of Franks under Duke Conrad the Red, the royal legion, two of Swabians and a rearguard with the baggage. Magyar horse archers crossed the Lech, routed the rearguard and the Swabians and seized the baggage, but Conrad counter-attacked and scattered them, and the heavy cavalry then beat the main army. Captured Magyar leaders, among them Bulcsú, Lél and Súr, were hanged; Wikipedia and the Sourcebook introduction say at Augsburg, while other accounts name Regensburg.

• Conrad the Red, Otto's former rebel son-in-law, was killed in the battle: having loosened his mail in the summer heat, he was struck in the throat by an arrow.
• Widukind of Corvey, a Saxon monk writing within a generation, describes the army swearing oaths first to its leader and then to its comrades on the morning of the battle, and calls the royal legion the largest.
• Britannica notes that after the victory Otto's troops hailed him as imperator, seven years before Pope John XII crowned him emperor in Rome; the Magyars never invaded Germany again.

Sources: Widukind of Corvey: The Battle of Lechfeld, 955 (Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham); Encyclopaedia Britannica: Battle of Lechfeld; Encyclopaedia Britannica: Otto I; Wikipedia: Battle of Lechfeld; Wikipedia: Conrad, Duke of Lorraine (quotes Widukind on his death)

Empress Theophanu (born c. 955; married 14 April 972; regent from 984; died 15 June 991)

Theophanu (Theophano), empress and regent, Empress and regent · Holy Roman Empire

Theophanu was a niece of the Byzantine emperor John I Tzimiskes, sent west after long negotiations to marry Otto I's heir. The Ottonians had hoped for a princess 'born in the purple', a daughter of a reigning emperor, but Theophanu was not one. She married Otto II in Rome on 14 April 972 and was crowned empress the same day. When Otto II died suddenly in 983, their three-year-old son Otto III was seized by his cousin Henry the Quarrelsome, but in 984 the princes forced Henry to hand the boy to his mother, who then governed as regent until her death.

How they rose: She came to the West as part of a peace settlement between Otto I and Byzantium, negotiated in its final stage by Archbishop Gero of Cologne. Her official titles included consors imperii, partner in rule.

How they died: Theophanu died at Nijmegen on 15 June 991 and was buried in the church of St. Pantaleon in Cologne. Her mother-in-law Adelaide took over the regency.

• Her dower charter survives in the Lower Saxony State Archive at Wolfenbüttel (6 Urk. 11): three sheets of parchment glued together, 144.5 by 39.5 cm, dyed purple and written in gold ink.
• A technical study published in 1968 found the purple ground was bright red lead glazed with madder lake, not true murex purple; Bruno Reudenbach notes that both Western and Byzantine scribes used this technique, and argues the charter was made in an Ottonian scriptorium outside the chancery, mixing Byzantine imperial motifs with Ottonian ones.
• The charter is dated 14 April 972 at the Church of the Holy Apostles in Rome, carries the monograms of Otto I and Otto II, and was attested by Willigis, later archbishop of Mainz, as chancellor.

Sources: Monasterium.net: Dower charter of Otto II for Theophanu, 14 April 972 (Wolfenbüttel, 6 Urk. 11); Encyclopaedia Britannica: Otto III; Encyclopaedia Britannica: Otto II; Wikipedia: Theophanu; Bruno Reudenbach: The ‘Marriage Charter’ of Theophanu, manuscript cultures 10 (2017), Universität Hamburg CSMC

Otto II (born 955; co-king 961; co-emperor 25 December 967; sole ruler 973; died 7 December 983)

Otto II, king of Germany and Holy Roman emperor, Ottonian · Holy Roman Empire

Crowned co-king in 961 and co-emperor in 967, Otto II succeeded his father without opposition in 973. His cousin Henry the Quarrelsome, duke of Bavaria, rebelled in 974, and Bavaria was not pacified until 978, the year King Lothar of France raided Lorraine. In 980 Otto marched into Italy and pushed south into Calabria, where a Muslim army from Sicily defeated him at Cape Colonna near Crotone (the battle of Stilo) on 13 or 14 July 982, even though its emir, al-Qasim, was killed. In 983 an assembly at Verona elected his infant son Otto III king, and news of the defeat helped spark a great Slav revolt east of the Elbe.

How they came to power: The son of Otto I and Adelaide, he was crowned at Aachen on 26 May 961 at the age of six and married the Byzantine princess Theophanu in 972 as part of his father's settlement with Byzantium.

How it ended: Otto II died of malaria in Rome on 7 December 983, aged 27 or 28, and was buried in St. Peter's Basilica. His son was three.

• The Battle of Stilo was fought at Cape Colonna, south of Crotone. Otto's heavy cavalry broke the Muslim centre and killed the emir, but the Muslim troops regrouped, surrounded the imperial army and inflicted a severe defeat; the Muslim historian Ibn al-Athir put imperial losses at about 4,000.
• In 976, at the request of Bishop Pilgrim of Passau, Otto freed the people of Passau from paying tolls on any river of his kingdom, a sign of how kings rewarded loyal towns with trade privileges.
• Britannica judges that despite the losses of 982 and 983 he kept his father's main achievements and left a firmly established realm to his son.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Otto II; Otto II: Grant of Freedom from River Tolls, 976 (Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham); Wikipedia: Otto II, Holy Roman Emperor

The Slav revolt of 983 (from 29 June 983 (Wikipedia; David Warner's translation of Thietmar, on the Medieval Elbe site, reads 29 July))

Otto I had pushed Saxon lordship over the Polabian Slavs between the Elbe and the Oder and planted bishoprics at Havelberg and Brandenburg in 948 and an archbishopric at Magdeburg in 968 to convert them. In 983, while Otto II was in Italy after his defeat in Calabria, the Lutici federation rose, starting from their sanctuary at Rethra. They sacked Havelberg on 29 June (or 29 July, in David Warner's translation of Thietmar) and Brandenburg three days later, drove out churchmen and officials, and were joined by the Obotrites. Britannica points to the ruthless methods of Saxon lay lords as a cause of Slav resistance, and says the German position east of the Elbe collapsed.

• German and Polish campaigns in the following years failed to retake the region. In 1003 King Henry II changed course and allied with the pagan Lutici against the Christian Polish ruler Bolesław I.
• Thietmar of Merseburg, writing about 1013, blamed the arrogance of Margrave Dietrich for the rising; the Medieval Elbe project notes the four main accounts disagree on causes and dates, and questions whether "revolt" is the right word.
• Britannica notes that in the 10th century there was little or no German farming settlement beyond the Elbe; Otto I's eastern policy was about tribute, mission and control, not settlers.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Germany, the eastern policy of the Saxons; Encyclopaedia Britannica: Otto II; Encyclopaedia Britannica: Henry II, Holy Roman emperor; Wikipedia: Slavic revolt of 983; The Medieval Elbe (Lisa Wolverton and Jonathan Lyon, orig. University of Oregon): The Events of 983, translated sources incl. Thietmar of Merseburg

Otto III (born June or July 980; king from 983; emperor 21 May 996; died 23 January 1002)

Otto III, king of Germany and Holy Roman emperor, Ottonian · Holy Roman Empire

Elected king at three and governed first by his mother Theophanu and then his grandmother Adelaide, Otto III came of age in 994. In 996 he went to Rome, had his 23-year-old cousin Bruno made pope as Gregory V, the first German pope, and was crowned emperor by him. He made Rome his residence, took titles such as 'servant of the apostles', and in 999 had his former tutor Gerbert of Aurillac elected Pope Sylvester II. In 1000 he travelled to Gniezno to pray at the tomb of the martyred Bishop Adalbert of Prague, raised Gniezno to an archbishopric for Poland and honoured the Polish duke Bolesław I.

How they came to power: Son of Otto II and Theophanu, he was chosen king at Verona in 983 and crowned at Aachen at Christmas, just after his father's death. His cousin Henry the Quarrelsome seized the child, but was forced to give him up in 984.

How it ended: A Roman revolt in February 1001 drove him from the city. While waiting for Bavarian reinforcements he died of a fever near Viterbo on 23 January 1002, aged 21 and childless, and was buried at Aachen.

• In spring 1000 Otto had the floor of the Aachen church dug up to find Charlemagne's grave; three medieval accounts, by the Chronicle of Novalesa, Ademar of Chabannes and Thietmar of Merseburg, say the emperor looked upon the dead Charlemagne.
• At Gniezno in March 1000 Otto gave Bolesław I a copy of the Holy Lance; the titles 'brother and partner of the empire' and 'friend and ally of the Roman people' come from Gallus Anonymus, writing a century later.
• In 1001 Otto pardoned the rebellious town of Tivoli (Tibur) after besieging it, which so angered the Romans, who wanted their rival destroyed, that they rose against him.

Sources: Charles West, University of Sheffield (Turbulent Priests): Aachen, 1000 and the Legend of the Last Emperor; Encyclopaedia Britannica: Otto III; Wikipedia: Otto III, Holy Roman Emperor

Bernward of Hildesheim (born c. 960; consecrated bishop 15 January 993; died 20 November 1022)

Saint Bernward, bishop of Hildesheim, Bishop and patron of the arts · Hildesheim, Saxony

Bernward served as chaplain at the imperial court and was appointed by the empress-regent Theophanu as tutor to the six-year-old Otto III. Made bishop of Hildesheim in 993, he set out to give his city buildings worthy of a centre of Ottonian power. He commissioned a pair of monumental bronze doors with scenes of the Fall of Man and the life of Christ, now in St. Mary's Cathedral, and a bronze column with relief scenes from the life of Christ, the so-called Christ column. His abbey church of St. Michael, built between 1010 and 1020 on a symmetrical plan with two apses, is a landmark of Ottonian Romanesque architecture.

How they rose: A Saxon noble raised by his uncle Bishop Volkmar of Utrecht and taught from about 975 at the Hildesheim cathedral school run by the scholar Thangmar, he became chaplain at the imperial court in 987 and won Theophanu's trust, which opened the way to the bishopric.

How they died: Bernward died on 20 November 1022, a few weeks after the consecration of St. Michael's. Pope Celestine III canonised him on 8 January 1193.

• St. Mary's Cathedral and St. Michael's Church at Hildesheim, with the Bernward doors and column, are together a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
• His life was written by his teacher Thangmar in the Vita Bernwardi, though parts of the text were probably added later in the Middle Ages.
• UNESCO singles out St. Michael's painted wooden ceiling and stucco work, together with the bronze doors and column, as exceptional examples of Romanesque church art in the Holy Roman Empire.

Sources: UNESCO World Heritage Centre: St Mary's Cathedral and St Michael's Church at Hildesheim; Wikipedia: Bernward of Hildesheim; Encyclopaedia Britannica: Otto III; Wilhelm Berges: Bernward, Neue Deutsche Biographie 2 (1955), deutsche-biographie.de

Henry II the Saint (born 6 May 973; king from June 1002; emperor 14 February 1014; died 13 July 1024; canonised 1146)

Henry II, king of Germany and Holy Roman emperor, Ottonian · Holy Roman Empire

Henry, duke of Bavaria, seized the royal insignia when Otto III died in 1002 and, with help from Archbishop Willigis of Mainz, won election and coronation that June. He fought the Polish ruler Bolesław I for years, even allying with the pagan Lutici, until the Peace of Bautzen in 1018. Pope Benedict VIII crowned him emperor in Rome on 14 February 1014. He built up the bishops as royal servants, granting them land and choosing loyal men for the sees, and in 1007 founded the bishopric of Bamberg on his own estates despite objections from the bishop of Würzburg.

How they came to power: Son of the rebel duke Henry the Quarrelsome, he grew up partly in exile from Bavaria, sheltered by Bishop Abraham of Freising and educated at the cathedral school of Hildesheim, and became duke of Bavaria in 995.

How it ended: Henry died at the palace of Grona near Göttingen on 13 July 1024, childless, ending the Ottonian line. He was buried in Bamberg Cathedral.

• Pope Eugene III canonised Henry in 1146, and his wife Cunigunde of Luxembourg was canonised in 1200; he is the only medieval German king venerated as a saint.
• UNESCO describes Bamberg as intended to become a 'second Rome'; its medieval town plan and buildings are a World Heritage Site.
• Britannica notes that, though often ill, he spent 22 years as an itinerant king, riding through his realm to judge disputes and pursue rebels.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Henry II, Holy Roman emperor; UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Town of Bamberg; Wikipedia: Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor; Heinrich Appelt: Heinrich II., Neue Deutsche Biographie 8 (1969), deutsche-biographie.de

Conrad II (born c. 990; elected 4 September 1024; emperor 26 March 1027; died 4 June 1039)

Conrad II, king of Germany and Holy Roman emperor, Salian · Holy Roman Empire

After the Ottonian line died out, the princes met at Kamba on the Rhine, opposite Oppenheim, on 4 September 1024 and elected Conrad, founding the Salian dynasty. He was crowned at Mainz on 8 September, king of Italy at Milan in 1026, and emperor in Rome by Pope John XIX at Easter 1027. When the childless King Rudolf III of Burgundy died in 1032, Conrad claimed his kingdom and joined it to the empire. He relied increasingly on ministeriales, low-born officials tied to the crown, and in Italy issued the Constitutio de feudis, which made the fiefs of lesser vassals hereditary.

How they came to power: His father had been passed over in the family inheritance, and Conrad was raised by the bishop of Worms with little schooling. Marriage around 1016 (the NDB gives 1015 to 1017) to Gisela, widowed duchess of Swabia and a descendant of Charlemagne, raised his standing.

How it ended: Conrad died at Utrecht on 4 June 1039 and was buried in Speyer Cathedral, which he had founded. His son Henry III, already crowned king in 1028, succeeded without trouble.

• His chaplain Wipo of Burgundy attended the election at Kamba and wrote the main account of it; a small equestrian statue of Conrad now marks the site.
• Henry II had used canon-law objections to Conrad's marriage with Gisela, a distant relative, as a pretext to send him briefly into exile.
• Britannica argues his reign showed the German monarchy no longer depended on a pact between king and great nobles, making it far harder to topple by rebellion.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Conrad II; UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Speyer Cathedral; Wikipedia: Conrad II, Holy Roman Emperor; Konrad II. (Salier), Neue Deutsche Biographie, deutsche-biographie.de

Speyer Cathedral is built (begun 1030; first consecrated 1061; rebuilt and vaulted c. 1082 to 1137)

Conrad II founded the cathedral at Speyer in 1030 as a grand church for his new dynasty, and it was consecrated in 1061. His grandson Henry IV rebuilt it on a vaster scale, demolishing the eastern parts, reinforcing the foundations up to eight metres deep and raising the nave, which was covered with groin vaults instead of a flat wooden ceiling. With Cluny in ruins, it is the largest Romanesque church that survives. Its crypt holds the tombs of eight emperors and kings, among them Salians, Staufer, Habsburgs and Adolf of Nassau, the last buried in 1308, along with several empresses.

• UNESCO added Speyer Cathedral to the World Heritage List in 1981 as a major monument of Romanesque art in the German Empire.
• The cathedral was gutted in 1689 and rebuilt several times; after its latest restoration it was reconsecrated in 1961.
• Henry IV, who died excommunicated in 1106, lay in an unconsecrated side chapel of the cathedral until his ban was lifted; his son held the funeral on 7 August 1111.

Sources: UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Speyer Cathedral; Encyclopaedia Britannica: Speyer Cathedral; Wikipedia: Speyer Cathedral

Henry III (born 28 October 1017 (Britannica, NDB; Wikipedia gives 1016); king 1039; emperor 25 December 1046; died 5 October 1056)

Henry III, king of Germany and Holy Roman emperor, Salian · Holy Roman Empire

Conrad II's son was carefully educated under his mother Gisela and took the throne in 1039 without unrest. A firm backer of the church-reform movement, he found three rivals claiming the papacy when he reached Rome in 1046; at a synod at Sutri they were set aside, and Bishop Suidger of Bamberg was made pope as Clement II, who crowned Henry and his wife Agnes on Christmas Day 1046. He went on to name popes three more times and made Goslar in Saxony, beside the Rammelsberg mines, his chosen residence. Late in his reign rebellions in Lorraine and Bavaria, lost influence in Hungary and the advance of the Normans in Italy wore his power down.

How they came to power: Crowned co-king in 1028 at the age of about ten, he held the duchies of Bavaria and Swabia before his father's death and inherited the throne smoothly in 1039.

How it ended: Henry died at Bodfeld in the Harz on 5 October 1056, not yet 40. His heart was buried at Goslar and his body at Speyer, and his five-year-old son Henry IV succeeded.

• Britannica calls him the last emperor able to dominate the papacy; within a generation the reformers he supported turned against his son.
• His first wife Gunhilda, daughter of King Cnut of England and Denmark, died in 1038; in 1043 he married Agnes of Poitou, a devoted supporter of the Cluniac reform.
• From his reign, according to Britannica, German kings invested bishops with a ring as well as a staff, the very ritual later fought over in the Investiture Controversy.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Henry III, Holy Roman emperor; Encyclopaedia Britannica: Investiture Controversy; Wikipedia: Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor; Heinrich III., Neue Deutsche Biographie 8 (1969), deutsche-biographie.de

Henry IV (born 11 November 1050; king 1056 (crowned 1054); emperor 1084; deposed by his son 31 December 1105; died 7 August 1106)

Henry IV, king of Germany and Holy Roman emperor, Salian · Holy Roman Empire

Henry IV inherited the crown as a child in 1056, and in 1062 Archbishop Anno of Cologne seized him in the Coup of Kaiserswerth, luring him onto a Rhine boat; the boy leapt into the river and had to be rescued. As an adult he clashed with the reforming Pope Gregory VII over the right to appoint bishops. In January 1076 a synod at Worms of two archbishops and 26 bishops declared Gregory's election invalid, and the pope answered by deposing and excommunicating Henry, which set many German princes against him. After his penance at Canossa in 1077 and a second excommunication in 1080, Henry took Rome in 1084, set up Clement III as antipope and was crowned emperor by him.

How they came to power: The son of Henry III and Agnes of Poitou, he was elected king at Tribur in 1053 and crowned at Aachen in 1054, so he succeeded automatically when his father died; his mother acted as regent.

How it ended: His son Henry V rebelled, took him prisoner and forced him to abdicate on 31 December 1105. Henry IV tried to win back power but fell ill and died at Liège on 7 August 1106, still excommunicated.

• In 1090 Henry issued charters protecting the Jews of Speyer and Worms from violence and forced baptism and confirming their liberties.
• In 1103 he proclaimed the first imperial peace (Reichsfriede) covering the whole of Germany.
• Henry's letter of 24 January 1076, in Ernest Henderson's 1910 translation, addresses Gregory as 'not pope but false monk' and insists his kingdom came from God, not from the pope.

Sources: Henry IV: Letter to Gregory VII, 24 January 1076 (Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham); Gregory VII: First Deposition and Banning of Henry IV, 22 February 1076 (Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham); Encyclopaedia Britannica: Henry IV, Holy Roman emperor; Wikipedia: Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor

The Walk to Canossa (25 to 28 January 1077)

Excommunicated and facing princes who threatened to replace him, Henry IV decided to meet Pope Gregory VII before the pope could reach Germany and judge him there. With his wife Bertha and young son Conrad he crossed the Alps by the Mont Cenis pass in a harsh winter. Gregory had taken refuge in Canossa, the castle of Margravine Matilda of Tuscany. Henry arrived on 25 January 1077 and, dressed as a penitent, waited at the gate for three days before he was admitted, absolved and given communion. Historians still argue whether it was a humiliation or a shrewd move that split the pope from the rebel princes.

• Gregory's own letter to the German princes, written about 28 January 1077, says Henry came with a small retinue and stood at the gate barefoot and in wool, weeping and begging absolution, for three days.
• The Sourcebook's editors judge Canossa at least a diplomatic triumph for Henry, since it kept the pope from joining the rebel princes in Germany.
• During his Kulturkampf against the Catholic Church in the 1870s, Chancellor Bismarck told the Reichstag that Germany would not go to Canossa, making the phrase a byword for humiliating submission; a column with his words was put up at Harzburg Castle in 1877.

Sources: Gregory VII: Letters on the Conflict with Emperor Henry IV, incl. letter on the penance at Canossa (Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham); Encyclopaedia Britannica: Investiture Controversy; Wikipedia: Road to Canossa

The Rhineland massacres (May to June 1096)

In spring 1096 bands of crusaders, the largest led by Count Emicho, moved up the Rhine and attacked the Jewish communities of Speyer, Worms and Mainz, known in Hebrew as the SHUM cities. At Speyer Bishop John gave the Jews shelter, but 11 were killed on 3 May (some accounts say 12). At Worms the attack began on 18 May and crusaders stormed the bishop's palace a week later; those killed were reckoned at 800, of whom about 400 names survive. At Mainz, where Archbishop Ruthard had gathered Jews in his courtyard, Emicho's men stormed in and at least 1,100 were killed. Some Jews, faced with death or forced conversion, killed their families and themselves rather than be baptised.

• Twelve years earlier, in 1084, Bishop Rüdiger of Speyer had invited Jews to settle in his new town, giving them a walled quarter, the right to trade and change money, a cemetery and their own chief rabbi as judge.
• Hebrew chronicles, among them those of Solomon bar Samson and Eliezer bar Nathan, record the killings and honour the dead as martyrs; Christian writers such as Albert of Aix also described them.
• Archbishop Hermann III of Cologne sent many Jews to outlying villages to hide them, and Ruthard of Mainz saved a few by putting them in boats on the Rhine.

Sources: Solomon bar Samson: The Crusaders in Mainz, May 27, 1096 (trans. Jacob Marcus; Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham); Albert of Aix and Ekkehard of Aura: Emico and the Slaughter of the Rhineland Jews (Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham); Bishop Rüdiger of Speyer: Grant of Lands and Privileges to the Jews, 1084 (Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham); Wikipedia: Rhineland massacres

Henry V (born 11 August 1086; crowned king 6 January 1099; sole ruler 1106; emperor 13 April 1111; died 23 May 1125)

Henry V, king of Germany and Holy Roman emperor, Salian · Holy Roman Empire

Crowned king in his father's lifetime after his elder brother Conrad rebelled, Henry turned on Henry IV himself in 1104, siding with Bavarian and Saxon rebels, and forced his abdication at the end of 1105. In Rome in 1111 he took Pope Paschal II prisoner until the pope granted him the right of investiture and crowned him emperor on 13 April. In 1114 he married Matilda, daughter of King Henry I of England. Saxon princes rebelled, and on 11 February 1115 Duke Lothair of Saxony defeated him at Welfesholz, ending Salian control of Saxony. In 1122 he settled the long quarrel with the papacy in the Concordat of Worms.

How they came to power: The younger son of Henry IV and Bertha of Turin, he was made co-king in 1099 and won over church reformers and rebel princes against his excommunicated father.

How it ended: Henry V died at Utrecht on 23 May 1125, childless, and was buried at Speyer. The Salian line ended with him.

• On the fifth anniversary of his father's death, 7 August 1111, Henry held a memorial ceremony for him at Speyer, once the papal ban had been lifted.
• Paschal II had first offered a radical bargain: the German churches would hand back all lands and rights received from the crown if Henry gave up investiture. The German bishops and princes refused it.
• Britannica gives his birth as 11 August 1086, correcting the older date of 8 November 1081 found in some works.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Henry V, Holy Roman emperor; The Concordat of Worms, 1122, trans. Ernest F. Henderson 1910 (Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham); Wikipedia: Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor

Concordat of Worms (23 September 1122)

After nearly half a century of conflict, Emperor Henry V and Pope Calixtus II agreed a compromise at Worms on 23 September 1122. Henry gave up investing bishops and abbots with ring and staff, the symbols of spiritual office, and allowed free canonical election and consecration. Calixtus agreed that elections in the German kingdom would take place in the emperor's presence, that the emperor could intervene in disputed elections, and that he could invest the person elected with the regalia, the lands and rights held from the crown, by touching him with a sceptre. Britannica notes that a similar settlement had already been reached in England in 1107.

• The agreement was issued as two short charters, one in the emperor's name and one in the pope's, both translated by Ernest F. Henderson in 1910.
• In Germany the bishop-elect received the regalia before consecration; in Burgundy and Italy he was to receive them within six months after it, giving the emperor less control there. Henderson's 1910 translation renders the symbol of investiture as a lance.
• Britannica calls it the end of the first phase of the struggle between empire and papacy, not of the struggle itself.

Sources: The Concordat of Worms, 1122, trans. Ernest F. Henderson 1910 (Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham); Encyclopaedia Britannica: Concordat of Worms; Wikipedia: Concordat of Worms

Lothair III (born c. June 1075; elected 1125; emperor 4 June 1133; died 3 or 4 December 1137)

Lothair III (Lothar of Supplinburg), king of Germany and Holy Roman emperor, Supplinburg · Holy Roman Empire

Lothair, duke of Saxony from 1106, led the Saxon rebellion that crushed Henry V at Welfesholz in 1115. When Henry died childless in 1125, the princes met at Mainz; Duke Frederick of Swabia, Henry's Staufer nephew, expected to be chosen but the assembly elected Lothair instead. Frederick and his brother Conrad resisted, and Conrad was even set up as anti-king, until Frederick submitted at Bamberg in March 1135 and Conrad made peace that September, helped by Lothair's son-in-law Henry the Proud, the Welf duke of Bavaria from 1126. In the papal schism Lothair backed Innocent II, who crowned him emperor in the Lateran on 4 June 1133, and he received oaths of fealty from Denmark and Poland.

How they came to power: His father, Count Gebhard of Supplinburg, died fighting Henry IV's troops in 1075 shortly before Lothair was born. Marriage in 1107 to Richenza of Northeim brought him great Saxon estates.

How it ended: Returning from a campaign in southern Italy against Roger II of Sicily, Lothair died at Breitenwang in the Tyrol in December 1137. He was buried in the monastery church at Königslutter, later joined by Richenza and his son-in-law Henry the Proud.

• A contemporary account says the Mainz assembly chose ten princes from each of Bavaria, Swabia, Franconia and Saxony to make the choice, and named three candidates: Frederick of Swabia, Margrave Leopold of Austria and Lothair.
• The same account says that laymen suddenly shouted for King Lothar and raised him on their shoulders; many princes, especially the Bavarian bishops, rose angrily to leave, and the archbishop of Mainz had the doors barred.
• Britannica sees his election as an assertion of the princes' right of free election over the Staufer family's hereditary claim.

Sources: An Account of the Election of Lothar III (Narratio de electione Lotharii), trans. Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds; Encyclopaedia Britannica: Lothar II (or III); Wikipedia: Lothair III, Holy Roman Emperor

Hildegard of Bingen (born 1098; abbess c. 1136; died 17 September 1179; proclaimed Doctor of the Church 7 October 2012)

Saint Hildegard of Bingen, Abbess, visionary and composer · Rupertsberg near Bingen

Hildegard was given to the Benedictine community at Disibodenberg as a child and succeeded her teacher Jutta of Sponheim as its head around 1136. At about 43 she revealed the visions she had had since childhood; a church commission accepted them, Pope Eugene III authorised her to write in 1147, and her Scivias, 26 visions written between 1141 and 1152, made her famous. Around 1147 to 1150 she founded her own convent on the Rupertsberg near Bingen, and in 1165 a second across the Rhine. She wrote on medicine and nature in the Physica and Causae et curae, set 77 of her own poems to music, and even invented a private language, the Lingua ignota.

How they rose: Born to a noble family (the Vatican gives Bermersheim, Britannica Böckelheim), she entered Disibodenberg at eight and made her profession in 1115. The backing of Bernard of Clairvaux and Pope Eugene III turned a local visionary into a figure consulted across Europe.

How they died: She fell ill in summer 1179 and died among her sisters at the Rupertsberg on 17 September 1179. Long venerated as a saint, she was formally canonised by Benedict XVI in May 2012 and named a Doctor of the Church that October.

• At the invitation of popes Adrian IV and Alexander III she made preaching journeys, speaking in cathedrals and public squares at Cologne, Trier, Liège, Mainz, Metz, Bamberg and Würzburg.
• Her Ordo Virtutum, a sung drama of the Virtues fighting for a soul, is regarded as an early morality play.
• She is one of only four women named Doctors of the Church, and Britannica notes she is revered as patron of musicians, writers and natural science.

Sources: Benedict XVI: Apostolic Letter proclaiming Hildegard of Bingen a Doctor of the Church, 7 October 2012 (vatican.va); Encyclopaedia Britannica: St. Hildegard; Wikipedia: Hildegard of Bingen

Conrad III (born 1093; elected 7 March 1138; died 15 February 1152)

Conrad III, king of Germany, Staufer (Hohenstaufen) · Kingdom of Germany

A grandson of Henry IV, Conrad had been set up as anti-king against Lothair III in 1127 before submitting in 1135. After Lothair's death, princes meeting at Koblenz under Archbishop Albero of Trier elected him on 7 March 1138, and he was crowned at Aachen six days later. Lothair's Welf son-in-law Henry the Proud refused to submit; Conrad stripped him of Saxony, and in December 1140 defeated Henry's brother Welf at Weinsberg. In 1147 he led a German army on the Second Crusade, which ran short of food in Anatolia and failed before Damascus in 1148.

How they came to power: Son of Duke Frederick I of Swabia and grandson of Henry IV through his mother, he was made duke of Franconia by his uncle Henry V in 1115 and left as joint regent of Germany with his brother in 1116.

How it ended: Conrad died at Bamberg on 15 February 1152 and was buried in Bamberg Cathedral. He passed over his young son and designated his nephew Frederick, duke of Swabia, the future Barbarossa, as his successor.

• Conrad's own letters from the crusade to the abbot of Corvey describe his army running out of food on the road to Iconium and blame unnamed traitors for moving the siege camp at Damascus to a side with no water.
• Before leaving on crusade in 1146 he had his young son Henry elected and crowned king, with Archbishop Henry of Mainz as the boy's guardian. Unable to reach Rome after his return, Conrad never received the imperial crown.
• Britannica notes that the rivalry between Welfs and Staufer that began under Conrad dominated German politics for the rest of the 12th century.

Sources: Conrad III: Letters to the Abbot of Corvey, 1148 (Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham); Encyclopaedia Britannica: Conrad III; Wikipedia: Conrad III of Germany

Henry the Lion (born 1129 or 1131; duke of Saxony 1142 to 1180, of Bavaria 1156 to 1180; died 6 August 1195)

Henry the Lion (Heinrich der Löwe), duke of Saxony and Bavaria, Welf · Saxony and Bavaria

Henry the Lion held both Saxony and Bavaria and ruled lands stretching from the North and Baltic coasts to the Alps. He founded Munich in the late 1150s and in 1159 re-founded Lübeck after a fire, making it the main meeting point of Baltic and western trade, and he founded or developed many other towns, among them Lüneburg, Stade, Schwerin and his capital Brunswick. In 1168 he married Matilda, daughter of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine, and his son became Emperor Otto IV.

How they rose: Son of Henry the Proud, he regained Saxony as a boy in 1142 and backed his cousin Frederick Barbarossa's bid for the throne in 1152; Frederick rewarded him with Bavaria in 1156.

How they died: After he refused to help Frederick in Italy in 1176, a court of bishops and princes tried him in his absence in 1180 and stripped him of his lands. He submitted at Erfurt in November 1181, spent years in exile with his father-in-law Henry II, and died at Brunswick on 6 August 1195.

• Between about 1164 and 1176 (one chronicler says 1166) he set up a bronze lion, his heraldic animal, in the courtyard of his castle of Dankwarderode in Brunswick, beside his new collegiate church of St. Blaise.
• In 1188 Frederick Barbarossa confirmed the rights Henry had given Lübeck and let Russian, Gotland, Norse and other eastern merchants come and go there free of toll.
• Britannica records that Lübeck had first been founded by Count Adolf II of Holstein in 1143 and rebuilt by Henry after the fire of 1157.

Sources: Frederick I: Charter to Lübeck, 1188 (Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham); Encyclopaedia Britannica: Lübeck; Wikipedia: Henry the Lion

Frederick I Barbarossa (born mid-December 1122 (Wikipedia; Britannica gives c. 1123); elected 4 March 1152; emperor 18 June 1155; drowned 10 June 1190)

Frederick I 'Barbarossa', king of Germany and Holy Roman emperor, Staufer · Holy Roman Empire

Elected at Frankfurt in 1152 and crowned emperor by Pope Adrian IV in 1155, Frederick set out to restore imperial rights and revenues in northern Italy, leading six expeditions south. Milan surrendered in March 1162 and much of it was destroyed on his orders, but the Lombard cities allied with Pope Alexander III, and on 29 May 1176 their militia defeated him at Legnano, where he was for a time thought dead. In 1177 at Venice he made peace with Alexander, and the Peace of Constance in 1183 settled terms with the cities. In Germany he broke the power of his cousin Henry the Lion in 1180 and in 1184 held a vast court festival at Mainz to knight his sons.

How they came to power: Nephew of Conrad III, with a Staufer father and a Welf mother, he was acceptable to both great families and was designated by the dying Conrad in place of Conrad's own six-year-old son.

How it ended: On the Third Crusade, on 10 June 1190, Frederick drowned in the Saleph river in southern Anatolia; the surviving accounts of how it happened conflict. Most of his army then broke up before reaching Acre.

• In 1157 Frederick added the word sacrum, 'holy', to the empire's name, creating a 'holy empire' to stand beside the 'holy church'.
• A crusade chronicle translated by James Brundage says he tried to swim across the swift river against everyone's advice and was swept into a whirlpool.
• He staged a grand celebration at Aachen for the canonisation of Charlemagne under the antipope Paschal III, and the great Barbarossa chandelier he gave sometime after 1165 still hangs in Aachen Cathedral.

Sources: Historia de expeditione Friderici imperatoris: Death of Frederick Barbarossa, trans. James Brundage (Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham); The Struggle Between Frederick Barbarossa and Alexander III (Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham); Encyclopaedia Britannica: Frederick I; Wikipedia: Frederick Barbarossa

Henry VI (born autumn 1165; king 1169; emperor April 1191; king of Sicily 25 December 1194; died 28 September 1197)

Henry VI, king of Germany, Holy Roman emperor and king of Sicily, Staufer · Holy Roman Empire and Sicily

Henry married Constance, heiress of the Norman kingdom of Sicily and 11 years his senior, in 1186, and became emperor in 1191. His first attempt on Sicily stalled at Naples, but in December 1192 Duke Leopold of Austria captured Richard I of England returning from crusade and handed him to Henry, who held him in captivity, for three weeks of 1193 at Trifels Castle. Richard's ransom, reported at 150,000 silver marks, helped pay for a second campaign: Henry entered Palermo in November 1194 and was crowned king of Sicily on Christmas Day. In 1196 he tried to make the imperial crown hereditary, but enough princes resisted that he had to settle for having his infant son Frederick elected king.

How they came to power: Elected king at Bamberg in 1169 at the age of three, he ran the empire while his father was on crusade and succeeded him in 1190.

How it ended: While preparing a crusade, Henry crushed a Sicilian revolt with great cruelty in 1197 and then died of malaria at Messina on 28 September 1197, aged 31 (Wikipedia; Britannica says 32, as his birth month in autumn 1165 is uncertain). He was buried at Palermo, and his death left a two-year-old heir and two decades of disputed kingship.

• Britannica says Richard agreed to hand his kingdom to Henry and receive it back as a fief, and to pay 100,000 marks plus another 50,000 in place of military help against Sicily.
• Henry's son Frederick II was born on 26 December 1194 at Jesi in Italy, the day after his father's coronation in Palermo.
• The chronicler Otto of St. Blasien, writing soon after, gives a vivid account of the conquest of Sicily and the German crusade of 1197, though he muddles some dates.

Sources: The Chronicle of Otto of St. Blasien, 1184-98, trans. Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds; Encyclopaedia Britannica: Henry VI, Holy Roman emperor; Wikipedia: Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor

Walther von der Vogelweide (born c. 1170; died c. 1230)

Walther von der Vogelweide, Minnesinger and political poet · Vienna, imperial courts, Würzburg

Walther learned his craft at the Vienna court (Britannica says under Duke Leopold V; the Neue Deutsche Biographie thinks under his son Duke Frederick I), but failed to win the favour of Leopold VI and took to the road. He wrote in support of Philip of Swabia against the Welfs, then for Otto IV against Pope Innocent III, and finally welcomed Frederick II, who gave him a small fief, probably near Würzburg. About 200 of his poems survive; rather more than half are political, moral or religious and the rest love songs, among them the famous Under der linden. Britannica calls him the greatest German lyric poet of the Middle Ages.

How they rose: The title hêr that other poets give him suggests knightly birth, and his poems show a monastery-school education; his talent, not his family, made him known across the German courts.

How they died: He probably spent his last years on his fief, which two 14th-century records place in the see of Würzburg, and died about 1230. A Würzburg cleric writing about 1350 placed his grave in the cloister of the Neumünster, the later Lusamgärtchen, a claim the Neue Deutsche Biographie calls unverifiable.

• Much of his political verse is sharply anti-papal, a hostility that began when Innocent III backed the Welf cause.
• His work is preserved above all in the Codex Manesse, the largest collection of Middle High German song, compiled in Zürich between about 1300 and 1340, with almost 6,000 verses by 140 poets and full-page miniatures of 137 of them; it is now in Heidelberg University Library.
• Only a handful of his melodies survive, among them the crusading Palästinalied.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Walther von der Vogelweide; Heidelberg University Library, Bibliotheca Palatina digital: Codex Manesse (Cod. Pal. germ. 848); Wikipedia: Walther von der Vogelweide; Walther von der Vogelweide, Neue Deutsche Biographie 27 (2020), deutsche-biographie.de

The Teutonic Order (founded 1189/90 at Acre; Golden Bull of Rimini 1226; seat at Marienburg from 1309; defeated at Grunwald 1410)

The order traced its origins to the siege of Acre in 1190, during the Third Crusade, and was later reorganised on the model of the Hospitallers as a military order. Under Grand Master Hermann von Salza it turned to eastern Europe. Duke Conrad of Masovia invited it to fight the pagan Prussians, and in the Golden Bull of Rimini Emperor Frederick II granted it the right to conquer and hold Prussia. Over the 13th and 14th centuries the knights conquered Prussia and much of the Baltic coast, built castles, brought in German settlers and traded widely; in 1309 the Grand Master moved his seat to Marienburg (Malbork). In 1410 a Polish-Lithuanian army broke the order's power at Grunwald (Tannenberg).

• The order's own prologue says merchants from Bremen and Lübeck set up the first hospital for sick crusaders at Acre under the sail of a cog, a Hanseatic cargo ship.
• Its rule, preserved in a Middle German text of 1264, bound brethren to chastity, obedience and life without property, and devoted a whole section to running hospitals.
• At Grunwald, Grand Master Ulrich von Jungingen and, by one count, 50 of the order's 60 senior officers were killed, though the knights went on to hold Marienburg against a siege.

Sources: The Rule and Statutes of the Teutonic Knights, trans. Indrikis Sterns (Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham); Encyclopaedia Britannica: Teutonic Order; UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Castle of the Teutonic Order in Malbork; Wikipedia: Teutonic Order

Two kings: Philip of Swabia and Otto IV (double election March and June 1198; Philip murdered 21 June 1208; Bouvines 1214)

With Henry VI's heir only three, the Staufer party elected his brother Philip of Swabia king in March 1198, while a party led by Archbishop Adolf of Cologne elected Otto of Brunswick, Henry the Lion's son, in June. Otto was crowned at Aachen, the proper place; Philip only at Mainz. Pope Innocent III backed Otto in 1201, but defections, including Adolf himself, swung the war to Philip by 1207. On 21 June 1208, at Bamberg, Philip was murdered by Count Palatine Otto of Wittelsbach, to whom he had refused a daughter in marriage. Otto IV was then recognised and crowned emperor in 1209, but quarrelled with the pope, who backed the young Frederick II instead.

• Philip was the first German king to be murdered during his reign.
• Otto IV, raised at the court of his uncle Richard I of England, fought on the losing side at Bouvines in 1214, lost most of his supporters, and died at Harzburg Castle in 1218.
• Walther von der Vogelweide wrote political poems first for Philip, then for Otto, then for Frederick II, a running commentary on the conflict.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Philip, German king; Encyclopaedia Britannica: Otto IV; Wikipedia: Philip of Swabia; Encyclopaedia Britannica: Walther von der Vogelweide; Philipp von Schwaben, Neue Deutsche Biographie, deutsche-biographie.de

The Nibelungenlied is written (c. 1200)

The Song of the Nibelungs was written around 1200 in Middle High German by an anonymous poet, probably from the Passau region. Its first part tells how the dragon-slayer Siegfried wins Kriemhild, sister of the Burgundian king Gunther, and is murdered by Gunther's vassal Hagen. In the second part Kriemhild marries Etzel (Attila), king of the Huns, lures her brothers and Hagen to his court and takes a revenge that destroys the Burgundians. The story draws on oral legends with roots in real events and people of the 5th and 6th centuries.

• Some 37 manuscripts and fragments survive, 11 of them essentially complete; its three main manuscripts were added to UNESCO's Memory of the World Register in 2009.
• In the climax Kriemhild has Gunther killed and slays Hagen herself, and is then killed by the old warrior Hildebrand.
• Richard Wagner's 19th-century opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen draws on the same legend, though mostly through Old Norse versions rather than the Nibelungenlied itself.

Sources: The Nibelungenlied, trans. George Henry Needler (1904), Project Gutenberg; UNESCO Memory of the World: Song of the Nibelungs, a heroic poem from mediaeval Europe; Encyclopaedia Britannica: Nibelungenlied; Wikipedia: Nibelungenlied; e-codices, Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland: Cod. Sang. 857, the St. Gall Nibelung manuscript B

Albertus Magnus (born c. 1200; died 15 November 1280)

Saint Albert the Great (Albertus Magnus), Dominican scholar · Cologne and Paris

Albert was born at Lauingen on the Danube around 1200 and became a Dominican friar in 1223. After teaching in German convents he took his master's degree in theology at Paris in 1245, and in 1248 went to Cologne to found the Dominican house of higher studies, bringing his student Thomas Aquinas with him. He wrote commentaries on Aristotle that made Aristotle's knowledge of nature available to Latin scholars, adding his own observations, and Britannica credits him with establishing the study of nature as a legitimate science within the Christian tradition. It also calls him the most prolific writer of his century and the only scholar of his age called 'the Great' in his own lifetime.

How they rose: From a noble Swabian family, he probably studied at Padua, where he joined the Dominicans, and rose through teaching posts at Hildesheim, Freiburg, Regensburg and Strasbourg to the chair at Paris.

How they died: After serving as bishop of Regensburg from 1260 to 1262 against his order's wishes, he preached the crusade and taught again before returning to Cologne, where he died in 1280. His remains lie in the crypt of St. Andreas in Cologne.

• In 1254 his fellow Dominicans elected him prior provincial of Teutonia, the order's German province.
• Several years after Aquinas died in 1274, Albert travelled to Paris to defend his former student's condemned writings.
• Pope Pius XI declared him a saint and Doctor of the Church in 1931, and in 1941 Pius XII made him patron saint of natural scientists.

Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Albert the Great; Encyclopaedia Britannica: St. Albertus Magnus; Wikipedia: Albertus Magnus

Frederick II (born 26 December 1194; king of Sicily 1198; German king crowned 9 December 1212; emperor 23 November 1220; died 13 December 1250)

Frederick II, king of Sicily and Germany, Holy Roman emperor, Staufer · Holy Roman Empire and Sicily

Raised in Sicily, Frederick crossed into Germany in 1212 to claim the throne from Otto IV and was crowned emperor in Rome in 1220. He ruled mainly from southern Italy, founded the University of Naples in 1224 to train lawyers and officials, and issued the Constitutions of Melfi for Sicily in 1231. On crusade in 1228 to 1229, while excommunicated, he obtained Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth for ten years by the Treaty of Jaffa with the Ayyubid sultan al-Kamil, and was crowned king of Jerusalem there on 18 March 1229. In Germany he bought the princes' support with sweeping privileges, and his long war with the papacy led Pope Innocent IV to declare him deposed at the Council of Lyon in 1245.

How they came to power: Son of Henry VI and Constance of Sicily, he was elected German king as an infant in 1196, crowned king of Sicily in 1198, and in 1211 was backed by Pope Innocent III as a candidate against the excommunicated Otto IV.

How it ended: Frederick died at Castel Fiorentino in Apulia on 13 December 1250 and was buried in Palermo Cathedral. His son Conrad IV died in 1254, and the Staufer kingship collapsed.

• The Statute in Favour of the Princes, issued by his son Henry in 1231 and confirmed by Frederick in 1232, promised that no new castles or cities would be built to the princes' harm and confirmed each prince's jurisdiction over his counties and hundreds; the Medieval Sourcebook's editors see it as a step toward Germany's breakup into small states.
• He wrote De arte venandi cum avibus, a treatise on hunting with birds that draws on his own observation.
• In 1226 he made Lübeck a free imperial city, and the same year, in a charter freeing Lübeck from tolls at Cologne and Tiel, stopped the Cologne hanse from hindering Lübeck's foreign trade.

Sources: Frederick II: Statute in Favor of the Princes, 1231, trans. Thatcher and McNeal 1905 (Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham); Frederick II's Crusade: Letters, 1229 (Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham); Frederick II: Grant to Lübeck of Freedom from Tolls at Cologne and Tiel, 1226 (Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham); Encyclopaedia Britannica: Frederick II, Holy Roman emperor; Wikipedia: Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor

The Sachsenspiegel (compiled between 1220 and 1235)

The Sachsenspiegel, or 'Saxon Mirror', is the most important medieval collection of Saxon customary law. Eike von Repgow, a knight and judge, compiled it between 1220 and 1235 at the request of his lord, Count Hoyer of Falkenstein, first in Latin and then in German; it is the first prose work in Middle Low German. It has two parts: the Landrecht, covering what we would call constitutional, criminal and civil law, and the Lehnrecht on feudal relations. Through the Magdeburg town law based on it, its rules spread through German and eastern European towns.

• More than 400 manuscripts survive. In the illustrated copies each page has pictures on the left and text on the right, linked by capital letters, so that even people who could not read could follow the law.
• Pope Gregory XI condemned 14 of its articles in 1374, but the book remained in use, in places until about 1900.
• Some of its rules survive as proverbs, such as 'who comes first grinds first' at the mill, the origin of the German saying for 'first come, first served'.

Sources: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, German Museum of Books and Writing: Sachsenspiegel (Saxon mirror); Encyclopaedia Britannica: Sachsenspiegel; Wikipedia: Sachsenspiegel

The Hanseatic League (Lübeck-Hamburg treaty 1241; first general diet c. 1300 or 1356 (sources differ); Peace of Stralsund 1370)

The Hanse began as associations of German merchants trading abroad and grew into a league of towns protecting their shared trade. In 1241 Lübeck and Hamburg agreed to fight robbers on the road between them and share the costs, and other towns made similar pacts against pirates. At its height in the mid-14th century more than 100 towns took part, from Cologne to Riga and Tallinn, with great trading stations (Kontore) at London's Steelyard, Bruges, Bergen and Novgorod. Lübeck, the 'queen of the Hanse', usually hosted the irregular diets, and its town law was granted to more than 100 Baltic towns. From 1361 to 1370 the towns fought King Valdemar IV of Denmark, sacked Copenhagen and Helsingborg, and won wide trading privileges.

• The Hanse's typical ship was the cog, which appears on Hanseatic seals and coats of arms.
• Its diets had no power to force towns to obey; towns that sent no delegates were not bound, and envoys sometimes left early to avoid ratifying decisions.
• The league slowly unravelled as towns merged into other realms or left, and it finally dissolved in 1669; Lübeck's medieval centre is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Sources: Lübeck and Hamburg Treaty, 1241 (Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham); Encyclopaedia Britannica: Hanseatic League; UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Hanseatic City of Lübeck; Encyclopaedia Britannica: Lübeck; Wikipedia: Hanseatic League

Meister Eckhart (born c. 1260; died probably 28 January 1328)

Eckhart von Hochheim, known as Meister Eckhart, Dominican mystic and theologian · Erfurt, Paris, Strasbourg, Cologne

Eckhart was born around 1260, probably at Tambach near Erfurt, joined the Dominicans there, and studied and taught at Paris, where he twice held the Dominican chair of theology, in 1302 and 1311; the second appointment was an honour previously given only to Thomas Aquinas. As provincial of the new Dominican province of Saxony he oversaw at least 47 houses. From 1313 he worked at Strasbourg, in close contact with convents of nuns and with the Beguines, and preached more and more in German. His German sermons described the soul's path to union with God through detachment.

How they rose: His scholarly reputation at Paris, where he earned the title Meister (master), and his work as a church administrator made him one of the leading Dominicans of his day.

How they died: In 1326 the archbishop of Cologne opened heresy proceedings against him. Eckhart appealed to the pope at Avignon in 1327 but most likely died on 28 January 1328, before judgement. In 1329 Pope John XXII's bull In agro dominico condemned 28 propositions drawn from his works; Britannica notes the bull speaks of him as already dead.

• At his Cologne hearing Eckhart argued that he might be wrong in what he said but could not be a heretic, since heresy is a matter of the will, and he offered to retract any errors found.
• The bull ranked the 28 condemned articles by severity, judging 11 of them merely likely to be misunderstood.
• The Stanford Encyclopedia notes that some scholars think many of his German sermons were aimed at women religious, though this is disputed.

Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Meister Eckhart; Encyclopaedia Britannica: Meister Eckhart; Wikipedia: Meister Eckhart

Rudolf I of Habsburg (born 1 May 1218; crowned 24 October 1273; died 15 July 1291)

Rudolf I, king of Germany, Habsburg · Kingdom of Germany

After Frederick II's son Conrad IV died in 1254, the Staufer kingship collapsed, and the double election of 1257 produced two foreign kings: Richard of Cornwall and Alfonso X of Castile, who never set foot in Germany. Historians call these years the Great Interregnum. When Richard died, the electors chose Rudolf, count of Habsburg, at Frankfurt in 1273, partly to keep out the powerful Otakar II of Bohemia. Rudolf placed Otakar under the ban of the empire, defeated him in 1276, and when Otakar tried to win back his lands he was killed at the battle of Dürnkrut on 26 August 1278. In 1282 Rudolf granted Austria and Styria to his sons, the territorial core of later Habsburg power.

How they came to power: Son of Count Albert IV of Habsburg, he inherited lands in Alsace, the Aargau and the Breisgau around 1239 and built them up at his relatives' expense. He had backed the Staufer emperors and joined a Teutonic Order crusade in Prussia in 1254.

How it ended: Rudolf died at Speyer on 15 July 1291 and was buried in the cathedral there. French influence at the papal court had kept him from ever being crowned emperor.

• Pope Gregory X recognised Rudolf in 1274 only after he renounced imperial rights in Rome, the papal lands and Italy, and promised to go on crusade.
• Rudolf worked with the princes to enforce public peace (Landfriede) and in 1274 reasserted the crown's right to tax the cities.
• According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, six electors voted for Rudolf on 1 October 1273 and the seventh, Otakar of Bohemia, abstained; Alfonso X of Castile, chosen by some electors in 1257, gave up his claim only in 1275.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Rudolf I; Catholic Encyclopedia (1907-1912), Franz Kampers: Rudolf of Habsburg (catholic.com); Wikipedia: Interregnum (Holy Roman Empire)

Louis IV the Bavarian (born 1282 or 1283, Munich; king 1314; emperor 17 January 1328 (Britannica gives 11 January); died 11 October 1347)

Louis IV (Ludwig der Bayer), king of Germany and Holy Roman emperor, Wittelsbach · Holy Roman Empire

In 1314 rival groups of electors chose both Louis, duke of Upper Bavaria, and the Habsburg Frederick the Fair. Louis won the war at Mühldorf on 28 September 1322, capturing Frederick and some 1,300 nobles. Pope John XXII refused to recognise him and excommunicated him in 1324; Louis replied by accusing the pope of heresy, and in January 1328 accepted the imperial crown in Rome from representatives of the Roman people instead of a pope. The Franciscans Michael of Cesena and William of Ockham and the philosopher Marsilius of Padua, all enemies of the pope, joined his court in Munich. In the Declaration of Rhens of 1338 the electors asserted that a king's title and power came from his election alone, without papal approval.

How they came to power: Duke of Upper Bavaria from 1294, he was elected king in 1314 by the electors opposed to the Habsburgs, and made good his claim on the battlefield.

How it ended: Louis died of a stroke during a bear hunt at Puch near Fürstenfeldbruck on 11 October 1347, still excommunicated, and was buried in the Frauenkirche in Munich. His rival Charles IV, elected in 1346, then won general recognition.

• Born in Munich, he was the first emperor from the Wittelsbach family, the dukes of Bavaria.
• Louis's old residence, the Alter Hof in Munich, is described as the first imperial residence of the Holy Roman Empire.
• Britannica notes that the excommunication of 1324 was never lifted, putting his supporters in a lasting conflict of conscience.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Louis IV, Holy Roman emperor; Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie: Ludwig der Bayer (Wikisource); Wikipedia: Louis IV, Holy Roman Emperor

Charles IV (born 14 May 1316, Prague; German king 1346; emperor Easter 1355; died 29 November 1378)

Charles IV, king of Bohemia and Germany, Holy Roman emperor, Luxembourg · Holy Roman Empire and Bohemia

Charles was raised partly at the French court, where one of his teachers was the future Pope Clement VI. He was elected German king in 1346 by five of the seven electors while Louis IV still reigned, and became king of Bohemia that same year when his blind father, John, was killed fighting for France at Crécy. He gained more through diplomacy, purchases and marriages than through war. In Prague he founded in 1348 the first university in central Europe, laid the foundations of St. Vitus' Cathedral and Karlštejn castle, and made the city the political and cultural centre of the empire. Crowned emperor in Rome in 1355, he issued the Golden Bull the following year.

How they came to power: Eldest son of King John of Bohemia, of the house of Luxembourg, he governed Bohemia for his father from the 1330s and won papal support against the excommunicated Louis IV.

How it ended: Charles secured the election of his son Wenceslas as German king, died in Prague on 29 November 1378, and was buried in St. Vitus' Cathedral.

• William of Ockham mocked him as rex clericorum, 'the priests' king', for his closeness to the pope.
• He wrote an autobiography describing how he redeemed pawned royal castles and towns in Bohemia when he took over its government.
• His Prague university of 1348 was followed in 1386 by Heidelberg, founded by Rupert I, elector palatine, with permission from Pope Urban VI; it is the oldest university in present-day Germany, and its charter is dated 1 October 1386.

Sources: The Golden Bull of the Emperor Charles IV, 1356, trans. Ernest F. Henderson 1896 (Avalon Project, Yale Law School); Encyclopaedia Britannica: Charles IV, Holy Roman emperor; Wikipedia: Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor; Heidelberg University: History

The Black Death and the massacres of the Jews (plague 1347 to 1351; Strasbourg massacre 14 February 1349)

The Black Death, plague caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe between 1347 and 1351, according to Britannica. Jews were accused of causing it by poisoning wells, and confessions extracted under torture, such as that of Agimet, arrested at Chatel on Lake Geneva in 1348, were sent from town to town. In the German lands whole communities were destroyed, sometimes before the plague arrived: at Strasbourg about 2,000 Jews were burned in their cemetery on 14 February 1349, and in 1349 the communities of Erfurt, Frankfurt, Mainz, Cologne and Worms were attacked and destroyed. The Encyclopaedia Judaica counts about 300 Jewish communities destroyed in this period, and a medieval memorial book lists over 300 towns.

• The Strasbourg chronicler Jacob von Königshofen records that the city council tried to protect the Jews but was overthrown; Jews who accepted baptism were spared, children were taken and baptised against their parents' will, and all debts owed to Jews were cancelled.
• Pope Clement VI issued two bulls in 1348, on 6 July and 26 September, declaring that the plague could not be blamed on Jews, but, as Wikipedia notes, the Church's influence proved limited and most such efforts to protect Jews were futile.
• The persecutions drove many Jews east to Poland and Lithuania. In Strasbourg the plague struck soon after the massacre and, the chronicler says, killed 16,000 people.

Sources: The Black Death and the Jews, 1348-1349 (Jacob Marcus; Internet Jewish History Sourcebook, Fordham); Encyclopaedia Britannica: Black Death; Wikipedia: Persecution of Jews during the Black Death

The Golden Bull (chapters 1 to 23 issued at Nuremberg 10 January 1356; chapters 24 to 31 at Metz 25 December 1356)

Named after its golden seal, the Golden Bull was issued by Charles IV with the imperial diet at Nuremberg and Metz. It named the seven prince-electors: the archbishops of Mainz, Cologne and Trier, the king of Bohemia, the count palatine of the Rhine, the duke of Saxony and the margrave of Brandenburg. Elections were to be held at Frankfurt, and for the first time a majority, four of seven votes, was declared enough, so three electors could no longer block a choice. The electoral lands were declared indivisible and their succession regulated, making the electors, in Britannica's phrase, real sovereigns in their lands.

• To force a quick decision, the bull says that if the electors had not chosen a king within 30 days they 'shall live on bread and water' until they did (trans. Ernest F. Henderson, 1896).
• It built on the Declaration of Rhens of 1338, in which electors under Louis IV had rejected any papal role in confirming a king.
• In June 2013 the surviving copies of the Golden Bull were added to UNESCO's Memory of the World Register.

Sources: The Golden Bull of the Emperor Charles IV, 1356, trans. Ernest F. Henderson 1896 (Avalon Project, Yale Law School); Encyclopaedia Britannica: Charles IV, Holy Roman emperor; Wikipedia: Golden Bull of 1356

Sigismund and the Council of Constance (born 15 February 1368; German king 1411; Council of Constance 1414 to 1418; emperor 1433; died 9 December 1437)

Sigismund, king of Hungary, Germany and Bohemia, Holy Roman emperor, Luxembourg · Holy Roman Empire, Hungary and Bohemia

A younger son of Charles IV, Sigismund became king of Hungary in 1387 and German king in 1411. With three rival popes claiming office, he pressed Pope John XXIII to summon a general council at Constance on Lake Constance, which met from 1414 to 1418. It voted by nations, declared in the decree Sacrosancta that a council stood above the pope, deposed John XXIII and Benedict XIII, accepted Gregory XII's resignation, and in November 1417 elected Martin V, ending the Great Schism. The council also tried the Czech reformer Jan Hus, who had come under Sigismund's safe-conduct, and on 6 July 1415 he was condemned as a heretic and burned.

How they came to power: Married to the heiress of Hungary, he was crowned king there in 1387. After rival elections in 1410, the death of his cousin Jobst in 1411 left him sole German king.

How it ended: His wars against the Hussites in the 1420s were mostly disasters and delayed his acceptance as king of Bohemia. He died at Znojmo (Znaim) on 9 December 1437, the last emperor of the house of Luxembourg, and was buried at Oradea (Großwardein) in Hungary.

• Hus had come to Constance under a letter of safe conduct; the Neue Deutsche Biographie records that he was burned on 6 July 1415 in Sigismund's presence.
• Hus's follower Jerome of Prague came to Constance to help him, was arrested, and was later burned in the same way.
• Earlier, in September 1396, he had led a European army against the Ottoman Turks and was decisively defeated, barely escaping capture.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Council of Constance; Encyclopaedia Britannica: Jan Hus; Encyclopaedia Britannica: Sigismund; Wikipedia: Council of Constance; Sigismund, Neue Deutsche Biographie, deutsche-biographie.de

Johannes Gutenberg (Born c. 1393-1406 (NDB: between 1394 and 1399), Mainz; Bible completed c. 1455; died 3 February 1468)

Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg, Printer and inventor · Mainz

Gutenberg was a patrician's son from Mainz who spent about ten years in Strasbourg, where records show him working as a goldsmith. Back in Mainz by 1448, he developed a system of cast metal type, oil-based ink and a screw press. Borrowing twice from the moneylender Johann Fust, he printed indulgences and then the 42-line Bible, finished around 1455, of which about 180 copies were made, most on paper and the rest on vellum. Printing spread rapidly and made the pamphlet wars of the Reformation possible two generations later.

How they rose: His family belonged to the Mainz patriciate, and political quarrels between patricians and guilds kept him away from his home city for years. In Strasbourg from 1434 to 1444 he ran a goldsmith's workshop, and it was there, around 1440, that he is said to have worked out a secret project he called 'Aventur und Kunst' (enterprise and art).

How they died: Fust sued him in the archbishop's court and was given control of the Bible workshop; the surviving court record is dated November 1455, though some accounts put the quarrel in 1456. After the sack of Mainz in 1462, Archbishop Adolf of Nassau took him into his court service in January 1465 with a yearly allowance of grain and wine. He died in Mainz on 3 February 1468 and was buried in the Franciscan church.

• Fust's two loans of 800 guilders each had grown with interest to 2,026 guilders by the time he sued; Wikipedia and the World History Encyclopedia give the rate as 6 percent, the Neue Deutsche Biographie as 5 percent.
• Fust and Peter Schöffer, who had joined Gutenberg's enterprise and became Fust's son-in-law, issued the Mainz Psalter in August 1457, the first European book to name its printer and date; it did not mention Gutenberg.
• In 1436-37 a Strasbourg patrician's daughter, Ennelin, sued him in the church court for breaking a promise of marriage; the verdict is unknown, but he did not marry her.

Sources: Deutsche Biographie (NDB): Gutenberg, Johannes; World History Encyclopedia: Johannes Gutenberg; Wikipedia: Johannes Gutenberg

Frederick III (Elected king 2 February 1440; crowned emperor in Rome March 1452; died 19 August 1493)

Frederick III, King of the Romans and Holy Roman Emperor, Habsburg · Holy Roman Empire

Frederick was King of the Romans from 1440 and emperor from 1452, and Wikipedia counts his 41 years as emperor the longest reign in the history of the Holy Roman Empire. He spent much of it fighting for his Austrian lands: his own brother Albert VI besieged him for six weeks in the Vienna Hofburg in 1462, and King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary defeated him in 1485 and held Vienna until his death. Yet he arranged his son Maximilian's marriage to Mary, heiress of Burgundy, and kept the imperial title in Habsburg hands, where it stayed with one short break until 1806. He was the last emperor to be crowned in Rome.

How they came to power: Born at Innsbruck on 21 September 1415, he became duke of Inner Austria (Styria, Carinthia, Carniola) as a boy after his father died in 1424. After the death of his cousin King Albert II, the electors meeting at Frankfurt chose him unanimously as King of the Romans on 2 February 1440.

How it ended: In June 1493 surgeons at Linz Castle amputated his diseased leg, one of the best-documented operations of the Middle Ages. He survived the surgery but died at Linz on 19 August 1493, aged 77, and was buried in St Stephen's, Vienna.

• He entered Rome on 9 March 1452, married the Portuguese princess Eleanor there on 16 March, and was crowned emperor by Pope Nicholas V on 19 March. No later emperor was crowned in Rome.
• From his youth he used the letters A.E.I.O.U. as a kind of personal motto; the letters have been given many different readings.
• In 1440 the Hungarian Holy Crown of St Stephen was smuggled into Austria; a lady-in-waiting, Helene Kottannerin, had stolen it from Visegrád for the widowed Queen Elizabeth. Frederick finally handed it to King Matthias Corvinus in 1463 in return for a payment.

Sources: Deutsche Biographie (NDB): Friedrich III., Kaiser; German History in Documents and Images: A Brave Woman Steals the Royal Crown, Helene Kottannerin; Wikipedia: Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor

Jakob Fugger (Born 6 March 1459, Augsburg; died 30 December 1525, Augsburg)

Jakob Fugger 'the Rich' of Augsburg, Merchant-banker · Augsburg

Jakob Fugger turned his family's textile business into a Europe-wide firm trading in money, silver and copper, with mines in Tyrol and in the kingdom of Hungary. As banker to the Habsburgs he financed Maximilian I and paid for the election of Charles V in 1519. His firm also handled papal money transfers and helped finance Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz, whose indulgence campaign provoked Luther. In 1521 he founded the Fuggerei in Augsburg, still lived in today.

How they rose: The tenth of eleven children of an Augsburg merchant family, he took minor orders as a boy, held church benefices and learned the trade in Venice. From 1487 he was in effect head of the family business, which grew rapidly once it began lending to the Habsburgs and the papal court and moved into silver and copper mining.

How they died: He died in Augsburg on 30 December 1525 and was buried in the Fugger chapel he had built at St Anna's church. His nephew Anton Fugger inherited company assets of about two million guilders.

• Winning the electors' votes for Charles V in 1519 cost more than 850,000 florins in all. The Neue Deutsche Biographie says Fugger gathered this sum (it says ducats) in Frankfurt, mostly from his own funds; Wikipedia puts Fugger's own share at around 550,000 guilders, with the Welser firm adding about 150,000 and Italian bankers the rest.
• Rent in the Fuggerei was one gulden a year plus three daily prayers for the founder and his family; GHDI calls it the world's first social housing project.
• Albrecht Dürer painted his portrait around 1518, during the Imperial Diet, when Fugger was almost sixty.

Sources: Deutsche Biographie (NDB): Fugger, Jakob der Reiche; German History in Documents and Images: Jakob Fugger the Rich (c. 1518); German History in Documents and Images: The Princely Fuggerei in Augsburg; Wikipedia: Jakob Fugger

Albrecht Dürer (Born 21 May 1471, Nuremberg; died 6 April 1528, Nuremberg)

Albrecht Dürer of Nuremberg, Painter and printmaker · Nuremberg

Dürer trained in his father's goldsmith shop and then for three years in Michael Wolgemut's large Nuremberg workshop, which also illustrated and printed books. Two stays in Venice put him in touch with Italian art, and his Apocalypse woodcuts of 1498 made his name across Europe. His engravings Knight, Death and the Devil, St Jerome in His Study and Melencolia I (1513-14), and his 1515 Rhinoceros, are among the best-known prints ever made. He also wrote treatises on geometry, fortification and human proportion.

How they rose: He was the third child of Albrecht Dürer the Elder, a goldsmith who had moved to Nuremberg from Hungary. His father let him switch from goldsmithing to painting, and after an apprenticeship with Wolgemut from 1486 and years of travel he returned to marry Agnes Frey on 7 July 1494.

How they died: On a journey to the Netherlands in 1520-21 to have his imperial pension renewed by Charles V, he caught an illness that troubled him for the rest of his life. He died in Nuremberg on 6 April 1528, while his Four Books on Human Proportion were being printed, and was buried in the Johannisfriedhof; the marriage was childless.

• A silverpoint self-portrait inscribed as drawn when he was a child is dated 1484, and it is one of the earliest surviving children's drawings of any kind.
• Records place him in the service of Emperor Maximilian I from about 1512, and he made several portraits of the emperor, one shortly before Maximilian died in 1519.
• In 1520 he wrote in a letter to Georg Spalatin that he hoped to portray Martin Luther; his friend Willibald Pirckheimer later wrote that Dürer, like himself, had at first believed in Luther.

Sources: Deutsche Biographie (NDB): Dürer, Albrecht; World History Encyclopedia: Albrecht Dürer; German History in Documents and Images: Albrecht Dürer, Knight, Death and the Devil (1513-14); Wikipedia: Albrecht Dürer

Josel of Rosheim (Born probably 1478 (GHDI: c. 1480, at Hagenau), Alsace; died before 6 April 1554, Rosheim)

Josel (Joseph ben Gershon) of Rosheim, Spokesman of the Empire's Jews · Alsace

Josel was a Jewish money-lender in Alsace who in 1510 was chosen as head of the rural Jewish communities of Lower Alsace. From about 1529 Jews across the Empire accepted him as their 'commander', although no emperor ever formally appointed him. He pleaded their cases before Maximilian I, Charles V and Ferdinand I and at imperial diets from Regensburg to Augsburg, defended Jews accused of host desecration, and won confirmation of imperial privileges in 1544. In 1530 he drew up a code of conduct for Jewish business dealings with Christians.

How they rose: His family probably came from Louhans in France; his mother was from Hagenau, and three of his father's brothers were executed in 1470 at Endingen on a false ritual-murder charge. He made his name in 1507 by successfully defending Jews expelled from Oberehnheim (Obernai), which led to his election as their regional leader in 1510.

How they died: He kept travelling on his communities' behalf into old age, and his Hebrew memoir, the first by a German Jew, ends in 1547. He died at Rosheim in Alsace before 6 April 1554.

• In 1525 he persuaded the rebellious Alsatian peasants to spare his town of Rosheim.
• According to the Neue Deutsche Biographie he tried in vain to win a meeting with Martin Luther in 1537 (Luther's letter refusing him survives); GHDI says Luther struck him as a violent enemy of the Jews, and in the 1540s Josel worked to counter Luther's attacks on them.
• Sources disagree on whether he was a rabbi: GHDI describes him as rabbi, merchant and money-lender, while the Neue Deutsche Biographie says he was probably never a rabbi.

Sources: German History in Documents and Images: The Commander of Imperial Jewry, Josel von Rosheim (c. 1480-1554); Deutsche Biographie (NDB): Josel von Rosheim; Wikipedia: Josel of Rosheim

Martin Luther (Born 10 November 1483 (the NDB marks the birth date as uncertain), Eisleben; died 18 February 1546, Eisleben)

Martin Luther, theologian and reformer, Reformer · Wittenberg, Electoral Saxony

Luther was an Augustinian friar and professor of theology at Wittenberg when his attack on indulgences in 1517 spread across the Empire in print. He taught that salvation is a free gift received through faith, and that Scripture alone outranks popes and councils. Excommunicated in January 1521 and outlawed at the Diet of Worms that spring, he survived under the protection of Elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony. His German New Testament (1522) and full Bible (1534), his hymns and his marriage to the former nun Katharina von Bora shaped Protestant life for centuries.

How they rose: The son of Hans Luder, who leased copper mines and smelters around Mansfeld, he studied at Erfurt from 1501 to prepare for a career in law. By his own later account, a lightning strike near him in a thunderstorm on 2 July 1505 made him vow to St Anne to become a monk; he entered the Augustinian friary at Erfurt, was ordained priest in 1507 and later became professor of theology at Wittenberg.

How they died: He died in his birthplace, Eisleben, early on 18 February 1546 after a stroke, having travelled there to settle a dispute between the counts of Mansfeld. He was buried in front of the pulpit of the Castle Church in Wittenberg.

• Hidden at the Wartburg castle near Eisenach after the Diet of Worms, he translated the New Testament from Greek into German, calling the castle his 'Patmos'.
• In 1543 he published On the Jews and Their Lies, calling for synagogues to be burned and Jews expelled. Josel of Rosheim, spokesman of the Empire's Jews, worked in the 1540s to counter these attacks.
• In 1937 the city of Nuremberg presented a first edition of On the Jews and Their Lies to Julius Streicher, editor of the Nazi paper Der Stürmer.

Sources: Deutsche Biographie (NDB): Luther, Martin; German History in Documents and Images: The Commander of Imperial Jewry, Josel von Rosheim; World History Encyclopedia: Martin Luther; Wikipedia: Martin Luther

Maximilian I (King of the Romans 1486 (sole ruler from 1493); took the title of emperor at Trento in 1508; died 12 January 1519)

Maximilian I, King of the Romans and Holy Roman Emperor, Habsburg · Holy Roman Empire

Maximilian ruled the Empire alongside his father from 1486 and alone from 1493. His marriage to Mary of Burgundy in 1477 and his son's marriage to Joanna of Castile brought the Habsburgs the Low Countries and, through his grandson Charles V, Spain. At the Diet of Worms in 1495 he and the princes agreed the Perpetual Public Peace, which banned private feuds, created the Imperial Chamber Court and tried a first imperial tax, the Common Penny. His wars and image-making were financed by Upper German bankers such as the Fuggers.

How they came to power: Born at Wiener Neustadt on 22 March 1459, the only surviving son of Frederick III and Eleanor of Portugal, he married Mary, heiress of Burgundy, at Ghent on 19 August 1477. The electors chose him King of the Romans at Frankfurt on 16 February 1486, and he was crowned at Aachen on 9 April 1486.

How it ended: From 1514 he is said to have travelled with his own coffin. He died at Wels in Upper Austria on 12 January 1519 and was buried in the castle chapel of Wiener Neustadt, paid for with borrowed money; his heart was placed in Mary's tomb in Bruges.

• Venice blocked his road to Rome, so in 1508 he proclaimed himself emperor-elect at Trento, and Pope Julius II accepted it. This broke the old rule that an emperor needed a papal coronation.
• The Common Penny of 1495 was the first direct tax levied by the Empire; GHDI notes it was renewed several times until 1544 and then abandoned, while the Chamber Court survived.
• In 1496 he issued a decree expelling all Jews from Styria and Wiener Neustadt.

Sources: German History in Documents and Images: Imperial Reform (1495), Perpetual Public Peace and Common Penny; Deutsche Biographie (NDB): Maximilian I., Kaiser; Wikipedia: Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor

Katharina von Bora (Born 29 January 1499 by tradition (no contemporary record), probably at Lippendorf near Leipzig; died 20 December 1552, Torgau)

Katharina von Bora, 'die Lutherin', Reformer's wife and estate manager · Wittenberg

Katharina von Bora was sent to a convent as a child and later became a Cistercian nun at Nimbschen near Grimma. She and other nuns fled in April 1523, and on 13 June 1525 she married Luther in Wittenberg. In the Black Cloister, a former Augustinian dormitory given to the couple by Elector John of Saxony, she raised six children and four orphaned children, bred and sold cattle, ran a brewery and fed the students who boarded with the family. Luther's letters to her call her by playful titles such as 'doctor' and 'preacher'.

How they rose: In 1504, when she was about five, her father sent her to the convent at Brehna to be educated; at about nine she moved to Nimbschen, where a maternal aunt was a nun. On Holy Saturday, 4 April 1523, Luther arranged for the Torgau merchant Leonhard Köppe, who delivered herring to the convent, to carry her and other nuns away hidden in his covered wagon.

How they died: After Luther's death in 1546 she struggled financially and had to flee Wittenberg more than once during the Schmalkaldic War (to Magdeburg and then Braunschweig), and again during plague and a failed harvest in 1552. On the way to Torgau she was thrown from her cart into a ditch, and after three months of illness she died there on 20 December 1552; she was buried in St Mary's church, Torgau.

• Witnesses at the wedding included Justus Jonas, Johannes Bugenhagen and the painter Lucas Cranach with his wife Barbara.
• Of her six children, Elisabeth died as a baby and Magdalena at 13 in 1542; the household also raised four orphaned children, among them Katharina's nephew Fabian.
• Their marriage set a model for Protestant clergy. In Strasbourg Katharina Schütz Zell, who married a priest in 1523, published pamphlets defending clerical marriage, showing how hotly the question was debated.

Sources: Deutsche Biographie (NDB): Bora, Katharina von; German History in Documents and Images: The Reformer as Husband, Luther and His Wife (1529, 1534, 1546); German History in Documents and Images: Defending Clerical Marriage, Katharina Schütz Zell (1524); World History Encyclopedia: Katharina von Bora; Wikipedia: Katharina von Bora

The Ninety-five Theses (1517 (letter to Archbishop Albrecht 31 October; the posting on the church door is traditionally dated 31 October but is disputed))

In 1515 Pope Leo X granted an indulgence to raise money for rebuilding St Peter's Basilica in Rome, and in Germany it was preached under the sponsorship of Archbishop-Elector Albrecht of Mainz, with Johann Tetzel as its best-known preacher. Martin Luther, professor of theology at Wittenberg, drew up 95 Latin theses for an academic disputation, attacking the idea that paid indulgences could free souls from punishment. On 31 October 1517 he sent them to Albrecht with a letter. Printers in Basel, Leipzig and Nuremberg reissued them, and several hundred copies of the Latin text were printed in Germany that year.

• The first thesis, in the 1915 translation by Adolph Spaeth and others, says Christ 'willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.'
• The story that Luther nailed the theses to the door of the Castle (All Saints') Church comes from Philip Melanchthon, writing after Luther's death; historians debate whether the posting happened on 31 October, in mid-November or at all.
• A popular rhyme of the time, quoted by GHDI, promised that as soon as the coin rang in the box, the soul would spring from purgatory; the Church taught that forgiveness required contrition, but many buyers did not see the difference.

Sources: Martin Luther, Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences, trans. Adolph Spaeth et al. (1915), Project Gutenberg; German History in Documents and Images: Martin Luther, Ninety-five Theses (October 31, 1517); German History in Documents and Images: Johann Tetzel, Sermon on Indulgences (c. 1517); Wikipedia: Ninety-five Theses

Charles V (Elected 28 June 1519; crowned at Aachen 23 October 1520 and as emperor at Bologna 24 February 1530; abdicated 1555-56; died 21 September 1558)

Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (Charles I of Spain), Habsburg · Holy Roman Empire, Spain and the Netherlands

Charles inherited the Netherlands, Spain with its American empire, southern Italy and the Austrian lands, and in 1519 the electors chose him over Francis I of France. At Worms in 1521 he condemned Luther, but wars with France and the Ottomans kept him away from Germany for years. He tried to settle the faith at the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, then crushed the Protestant Schmalkaldic League at Mühlberg in 1547, yet a princes' revolt in 1552 forced him to flee. Worn out by gout, he left the religious settlement of 1555 to his brother Ferdinand and gave up his crowns.

How they came to power: He was born in Ghent on 24 February 1500, the son of Philip the Handsome and Joanna of Castile, and grandson of both Maximilian I and Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. He became king of Spain in 1516, and the Fugger bank's money helped win the electors' votes in 1519.

How it ended: In October 1555 he announced to the notables of the Netherlands that he was handing the Netherlands to his son Philip, and the imperial title passed to Ferdinand. He retired in 1557 to the monastery of Yuste in Extremadura and died there on 21 September 1558 of an illness diagnosed in the 21st century as malaria.

• His coronation by Pope Clement VII at Bologna in 1530 was the last papal coronation of an emperor.
• In 1527 his mutinous troops sacked Rome and held the pope a virtual prisoner.
• He had handed the rule of the Austrian lands to his brother Ferdinand as early as 1522; Ferdinand was elected King of the Romans in 1531.

Sources: German History in Documents and Images: The Abdication of Emperor Charles V (1555-56); Deutsche Biographie (NDB): Karl V., Kaiser; World History Encyclopedia: Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor; Wikipedia: Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor

Luther before the Diet of Worms (Diet sat January to May 1521; Luther's hearings 17-18 April; Edict of Worms May 1521 (World History Encyclopedia: issued 25 May))

Charles V presided over an Imperial Diet at Worms in 1521 and, unusually, offered the already excommunicated Luther a hearing under a safe conduct. Asked by the spokesman Johann von Eck whether he would recant his books, Luther asked for time and on 18 April refused, appealing to Scripture, conscience and reason. Charles answered the next day that he would defend the Church of his ancestors. The Edict of Worms, issued in the Diet's name in May, outlawed Luther, his followers and anyone who printed or sold his writings.

• The safe conduct mattered because the Bohemian reformer Jan Hus had been burned at the Council of Constance in 1415 despite a promise of safe passage.
• The famous ending, 'Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise. God help me', is reported by tradition; Wikipedia gives it only as what Luther 'is said to have declared'.
• On his way home Luther was 'kidnapped' in a staged attack arranged by Elector Frederick of Saxony and hidden, disguised as a knight, at the Wartburg from early May 1521 to early March 1522.

Sources: German History in Documents and Images: Luther and Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms (1521); World History Encyclopedia: Diet of Worms; Wikipedia: Diet of Worms

The Peasants' War (Summer 1524 (Stühlingen) to 1525; Twelve Articles drafted 27 February-1 March 1525; Battle of Frankenhausen 15 May 1525)

The revolt began in the summer of 1524 among serfs near Stühlingen, south of the Black Forest, and spread through Swabia, Franconia, Thuringia and the Alpine lands in 1525. Peasant bands, some several thousand strong, demanded an end to serfdom and the right to choose their own pastors, citing the Bible. The army of the Swabian League under Georg Truchsess von Waldburg and the Saxon and Hessian princes defeated them one by one; Thomas Müntzer's Thuringian army was destroyed at Frankenhausen on 15 May 1525. Wikipedia puts the number of peasants killed at up to 100,000; the World History Encyclopedia says about 100,000 or more.

• The Twelve Articles, drafted at Memmingen by the journeyman furrier Sebastian Lotzer with a preamble by the preacher Christoph Schappeler, summarized more than 300 local grievances and went through 25 printings within weeks.
• Luther's pamphlet Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants (May 1525) urged the princes to strike the rebels down; it appeared just as they were being defeated.
• Müntzer, a former ally of Luther who had preached a radical 'Sermon to the Princes' in 1524, was captured after Frankenhausen and beheaded.

Sources: German History in Documents and Images: The Twelve Articles of the Swabian Peasants (1525); German History in Documents and Images: Thomas Müntzer, Sermon to the Princes (1524); World History Encyclopedia: German Peasants' War; Wikipedia: German Peasants' War

Augsburg Confession and the Schmalkaldic War (Diet of Augsburg 1530; Schmalkaldic League formed 1531; war July 1546 to May 1547; Battle of Mühlberg 24 April 1547)

At the Diet of Speyer in 1529 the evangelical estates protested against enforcing the Edict of Worms, and the name 'Protestant' was born. At the Diet of Augsburg in 1530 the Lutheran princes and cities presented Charles V with the Augsburg Confession, which became the defining Lutheran statement of faith, but talks failed. They formed the Schmalkaldic League, led by Elector John of Saxony, then his son John Frederick, and Landgrave Philip of Hesse. In 1546, with Luther dead, Charles allied with the Lutheran Duke Maurice of Saxony and attacked; on 24 April 1547 his army routed the League at Mühlberg on the Elbe and captured John Frederick.

• John Frederick was at first sentenced to death and, to be pardoned, signed the Capitulation of Wittenberg on 19 May 1547; he lost the electoral title to his cousin Maurice.
• On 15 May 1548 Charles imposed the Augsburg Interim, meant to prepare the Protestants' return to the Catholic Church.
• In 1552 Maurice turned against Charles, with backing from Henry II of France; the emperor had to flee and agreed to the Peace of Passau, which freed the captive princes.

Sources: German History in Documents and Images: The Reformation Defined, the Diet of Augsburg (1530); German History in Documents and Images: Protestant Resistance, the Schmalkaldic League (1531-35); German History in Documents and Images: Battle of Mühlberg on April 24, 1547; Wikipedia: Schmalkaldic War

The Peace of Augsburg (25 September 1555)

After the Schmalkaldic War and the princes' revolt of 1552, King Ferdinand, acting for his brother Charles V, negotiated a religious settlement with the Imperial Diet at Augsburg. It allowed each prince and imperial estate to choose between Catholicism and the Lutheranism of the Augsburg Confession, a principle later summed up as cuius regio, eius religio. Subjects who did not share their ruler's faith could emigrate with their property. Zwinglians and Anabaptists were left outside the peace, and Calvinism was not formally recognized until 1648; serfs were in practice excluded from the right to emigrate.

• Under the 'ecclesiastical reservation', the principle of choosing the faith did not apply when a church prince, such as a prince-bishop, converted to Lutheranism.
• A separate declaration by Ferdinand, the Declaratio Ferdinandea, let Lutheran knights and towns in church territories keep their faith; the Catholic Edict of Restitution of 1629 revoked it, which helped fuel the Thirty Years War.
• GHDI notes that the peace was meant only to last until Christian unity was restored; it was broken in the early 17th century, restored and widened to the Reformed faith in 1648, and stayed the Empire's basic religious law until 1803.

Sources: German History in Documents and Images: The Religious Peace of Augsburg (September 25, 1555); German History in Documents and Images: The Catholic Triumph, the Edict of Restitution (March 6, 1629); Wikipedia: Peace of Augsburg

The great witch hunts (Main wave c. 1570s to 1660s; the Bamberg mass trials peaked in 1626-1632)

Charles V's criminal code of 1532, the Carolina, fixed witchcraft as a capital crime in imperial law, and territorial laws followed in Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed states alike. Between the 1570s and the 1660s a great wave of trials swept the German lands; GHDI puts the number executed at at least 22,000 and perhaps 30,000, disproportionately women. The worst mass trials came in Catholic prince-bishoprics such as Bamberg, Würzburg, Fulda and Trier: in Bamberg alone Wikipedia counts around 1,000 executions over the whole period, about 900 of them in 1626-32, though estimates for those years run from 300 to more than 900. Judicial torture produced confessions and the names of supposed accomplices, so trials fed on themselves.

• In June 1628 the Bamberg official Johannes Junius wrote to his daughter Veronica from prison that he was innocent but had been tortured into confessing and naming others; he was executed.
• The Bavarian Witchcraft Law of 1611 was drafted by hardliners, but moderates at the Munich court limited its use, and Bavaria saw no more large waves of prosecutions.
• In 1631 the Jesuit Friedrich Spee published his Cautio Criminalis anonymously, arguing that torture and the procedures used made a fair witch trial impossible.

Sources: German History in Documents and Images: The Bavarian Witchcraft Law (1611); German History in Documents and Images: A Skeptic Looks at Witch Hunting, Friedrich von Spee (1631); Wikipedia: Bamberg witch trials

Johannes Kepler (Born 27 December 1571, Weil der Stadt; died 15 November 1630, Regensburg)

Johannes Kepler, imperial mathematician, Astronomer · Graz, Prague, Linz and Regensburg

Kepler studied at the Lutheran seminary in Tübingen, where Michael Maestlin taught him the Copernican system. After teaching in Graz he joined Tycho Brahe in Prague in 1600 and became imperial mathematician to Rudolf II and his successors. In Astronomia nova (1609) and Harmonice Mundi (1619) he showed that planets travel in ellipses with the Sun at one focus and at varying speeds, the basis of his laws of planetary motion. He also did fundamental work in optics and finished the Rudolphine Tables, published in 1627.

How they rose: The son of Heinrich Kepler, a mercenary soldier, and Katharina Guldenmann (an innkeeper's daughter according to Wikipedia, a mayor's daughter according to the World History Encyclopedia), he entered the Tübingen seminary in 1589 to train as a Lutheran pastor. His first book, Mysterium Cosmographicum (1596), led to a correspondence with Tycho Brahe, who invited him to Prague.

How they died: Driven from post to post by confessional conflict and owed large sums by the imperial treasury, he set out in October 1630 to collect money and reached the Diet at Regensburg, where he died of a fever on 15 November 1630. He was buried in the Protestant cemetery of St Peter outside the city; in 1808 Karl von Dalberg raised a small monument to him in Regensburg.

• In 1615 his mother Katharina was accused of witchcraft in Leonberg; he defended her by letters and in person, and after being held in prison in 1620-21 she was absolved and released on 4 October 1621.
• His own Lutheran church excommunicated him, and in 1619 the excommunication was declared final; some historians see the case against his mother as part of the same campaign against him.
• In 1628 he moved to Sagan in Silesia at the invitation of the imperial general Wallenstein; according to the World History Encyclopedia his main task there was casting horoscopes.

Sources: Deutsche Biographie (NDB): Kepler, Johannes; German History in Documents and Images: Historian Ulinka Rublack on the Life and Work of Johannes Kepler (2021); World History Encyclopedia: Johannes Kepler; Wikipedia: Johannes Kepler

Albrecht von Wallenstein (Born 24 September 1583 (14 September in the old calendar), Heřmanice, Bohemia; killed 25 February 1634, Eger (Cheb))

Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von Wallenstein, Duke of Friedland, Imperial generalissimo · Bohemia

Wallenstein was born into a poor Protestant branch of the Bohemian Waldstein family, converted to Catholicism and fought for the Habsburgs against the Bohemian rebels, gaining confiscated Protestant estates that he formed into the Duchy of Friedland. In 1625 he offered to raise a whole army for Ferdinand II on the principle that war should feed itself, and soon commanded about 50,000 men. With Tilly he defeated Christian IV of Denmark and was rewarded with the duchies of Mecklenburg. Dismissed in 1630 because the emperor grew wary of his ambition, he was recalled after Swedish victories and fought Gustavus Adolphus at Lützen in November 1632.

How they rose: After serving the Habsburgs as a young officer, he profited from the defeat of the Bohemian rebels: he became an imperial count palatine in 1622, a prince in 1623 and Duke of Friedland in 1625. He received his commission to raise an imperial army on 25 July 1625.

How they died: In the summer of 1633 he arranged armistices to negotiate peace on his own account, and an imperial patent charging him with high treason was signed on 18 February 1634. He went with about a hundred men to Eger (Cheb), hoping to meet the Swedes, and on the night of 25 February Scottish and Irish officers of his own army killed his leading companions at a banquet and then him; Captain Walter Devereux ran him through in his bedroom.

• In 1608 he commissioned a horoscope from Johannes Kepler through intermediaries, and in 1625 he asked Kepler to extend it.
• His financier De Witte, who had run up huge debts paying for the army, killed himself the day after the decision taken at Regensburg on 13 August 1630 to dismiss Wallenstein.
• He was made Admiral of the Baltic Sea in April 1628, while also commanding as imperial generalissimo on land.

Sources: Deutsche Biographie (NDB): Wallenstein, Albrecht von; German History in Documents and Images: Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von Wallenstein (1631 portrait); Wikipedia: Albrecht von Wallenstein

Defenestration of Prague and the Thirty Years War (Defenestration 23 May 1618; Battle of White Mountain 8 November 1620; war 1618 to 1648)

On 23 May 1618 about 200 representatives of the Protestant Bohemian estates, protesting against restrictions on their religious freedom, stormed the chancellery in Prague Castle and threw two Catholic regents and their secretary out of a window; all three survived. The estates deposed Ferdinand II and crowned Elector Palatine Frederick V, but imperial and Catholic League armies crushed them at White Mountain on 8 November 1620. The war spread as Denmark (1625), Sweden (1630) and France (1635) intervened against the Habsburgs. Armies lived off the land, and plague, hunger and typhus killed far more people than battle.

• Death tolls are disputed: Wikipedia gives 4.5 to 8 million soldiers and civilians dead and notes that older claims of up to 12 million out of 18 million are no longer considered realistic. It reports that historians broadly agree the German lands fell from 18-20 million people in 1600 to 11-13 million in 1650, a loss of about 40 percent, and that parts of Germany lost more than half their people.
• Local records cited by Wikipedia attribute only about 3 percent of civilian deaths to military action, against 64 percent to bubonic plague and 12 percent to starvation.
• Hans Heberle, a cobbler and smallholder near Ulm who began a chronicle after seeing the comet of 1618, recorded hunger, flight and the deaths of seven of his children during the war.

Sources: German History in Documents and Images: The War Begins, the Defenestration of Prague (May 1618); German History in Documents and Images: Defenestration of Prague on May 23, 1618 (Merian engraving, 1629); German History in Documents and Images: A Swabian Cobbler-Farmer Survives the Thirty Years War, Hans Heberle; Wikipedia: Thirty Years' War

The Sack of Magdeburg (Siege from March 1631; city stormed 20 May 1631; looting ended 24 May)

Magdeburg, a Protestant city and one of the largest in what is now Germany, refused to pay a tribute demanded by the emperor, and in November 1630 Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden sent the officer Dietrich von Falkenberg to command its defence. Imperial and Catholic League forces under Tilly and Gottfried Heinrich von Pappenheim besieged it from March 1631 and stormed it on 20 May with about 40,000 men. Pappenheim lost control of his troops, fires spread through the city and soldiers plundered and killed until Tilly stopped the looting on 24 May. Estimates of the dead centre on about 20,000: Wikipedia says only 5,000 of some 25,000 inhabitants survived, while GHDI estimates that perhaps two-thirds of 30,000 people were killed or died afterwards of hunger and exposure.

• About 1,000 survivors took refuge in Magdeburg Cathedral, which Tilly sent soldiers to protect; for two weeks afterwards charred bodies were thrown into the Elbe to prevent disease.
• News of the sack spread through at least 20 newsletters and nearly 250 pamphlets, and 'Magdeburg quarter', meaning no mercy, became a Protestant battle cry.
• The most famous eyewitness account is the chronicle of Otto Guericke (1602-86), who became the city's mayor only in 1646; Falkenberg, the garrison commander, was killed in the street fighting.

Sources: German History in Documents and Images: A Local Apocalypse, the Sack of Magdeburg (1631), with Otto Guericke's account; German History in Documents and Images: Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden (1631); Wikipedia: Sack of Magdeburg

The Peace of Westphalia (Negotiations from 1643; treaties signed 24 October 1648 (14 October in the old-style calendar))

Peace talks began in 1643, with the Empire negotiating with France at Catholic Münster and with Sweden at partly Lutheran Osnabrück; 109 delegations took part at one time or another. On 24 October 1648 two treaties were signed, one with Queen Christina of Sweden and one with Louis XIV of France. They restored the Peace of Augsburg and extended it to the Reformed (Calvinist) faith, fixed church property as it stood on 1 January 1624, and gave the imperial estates a limited right to make foreign alliances. Sweden gained half of Pomerania and a seat in the Imperial Diet, France kept Metz, Toul and Verdun and received the Décapole cities of Alsace, and Brandenburg received the other half of Pomerania and the archbishopric of Magdeburg.

• The Münster treaty with France opens by promising a 'perpetual oblivion', an amnesty for everything done by either side since the troubles began.
• Rulers lost the right to force their subjects to choose between the ruler's faith and emigration, and the Imperial Diet now split into Catholic and Protestant bodies on religious questions.
• The peace recognized that the Swiss Confederation stood outside the Empire's order; separately, Spain and the Dutch Republic made peace at Münster on 30 January 1648, ending the Eighty Years' War.

Sources: Avalon Project, Yale Law School: Treaty of Westphalia (Treaty of Münster), English text; German History in Documents and Images: Peace Treaties of Westphalia (October 14/24, 1648); World History Encyclopedia: Peace of Westphalia; Wikipedia: Peace of Westphalia

Frederick William, the Great Elector (Born 16 February 1620; reigned 1640-1688; died 29 April 1688 (9 May in the new-style calendar), Potsdam)

Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia, Hohenzollern · Brandenburg-Prussia

Frederick William became elector at 20 in 1640, while the Thirty Years War still ravaged Brandenburg. He rebuilt his scattered lands from Cleves on the Rhine to Prussia on the Baltic with taxes, a standing army of 45,000 by 1678 and a war commissariat that grew into a bureaucracy. In the Second Northern War (1655-60) he won full sovereignty over the Duchy of Prussia, which had been a Polish fief, and in 1675 he beat the Swedes at Fehrbellin. He welcomed Huguenot refugees, built the Friedrich-Wilhelm Canal between the Oder and the Spree and founded a colony on the West African coast.

How they came to power: The son of Elector George William and Elisabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate, he spent four formative years, from age 14 to 18, in the Dutch Republic with his Orange relatives and studied briefly at Leiden. He succeeded his father in 1640, and in 1646 married Louise Henriette of Orange-Nassau.

How it ended: Dropsy afflicted him from early 1688, and he died at Potsdam on 29 April 1688 (old style) after a reign of nearly half a century. He was buried in Berlin Cathedral and succeeded by his son Frederick, who made himself king in 1701.

• At Fehrbellin on 28 June 1675 his vanguard of barely 6,000 men, mostly cavalry, defeated about 11,000 Swedes, according to the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie.
• In 1682 he chartered the Brandenburg Africa Company, whose fort Gross-Friedrichsburg on the Gold Coast took part in the Atlantic slave trade; between 17,000 and 30,000 enslaved Africans were shipped to the Americas before the colony was sold to the Dutch in 1721.
• Historians long read the Brandenburg Recess of 1653, in which the estates agreed new taxes, as the founding charter of Prussian absolutism; GHDI notes that recent research rejects this, since the noble-dominated estates kept significant power.

Sources: Deutsche Biographie (NDB and ADB): Friedrich Wilhelm, der Große Kurfürst; German History in Documents and Images: The Brandenburg Recess of 1653; Wikipedia: Frederick William, the Great Elector

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (Born 1 July 1646 (21 June old style), Leipzig; died 14 November 1716, Hanover)

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Philosopher and mathematician · Leipzig, Hanover and Berlin

Leibniz was the son of a Leipzig professor of moral philosophy and took his law doctorate at Altdorf after Leipzig refused him. From 1676 until his death he served three successive rulers of the House of Brunswick in Hanover as librarian, privy councillor and historian. He developed differential and integral calculus independently of Isaac Newton, and his notation is still the one used today. In philosophy he wrote the Théodicée (1710), arguing for the goodness of God's creation, and the Monadology (1714), and his ideas shaped the German Enlightenment.

How they rose: He inherited his father's library as a boy and had mastered Latin by 12. Leipzig refused him a law doctorate in 1666, probably because of his youth, so he took it at Altdorf; a diplomatic mission for the Elector of Mainz then kept him in Paris from 1672 to 1676, where Christiaan Huygens guided his mathematics.

How they died: His last years were clouded by the bitter dispute with Newton's supporters over who invented calculus, and George I refused to take him to London. When he died in Hanover on 14 November 1716, only his personal secretary attended the funeral, and his grave went unmarked for more than 50 years.

• With Queen Sophie Charlotte of Prussia, his friend and admirer, he founded the Berlin Society of Sciences in 1700, forerunner of the Prussian Academy of Sciences.
• He devised the modern binary number system, though the English astronomer Thomas Harriot had worked out the same system decades earlier.
• On his way to Hanover in 1676 he made a short visit to London; in the later priority dispute Newton's side claimed he had seen Newton's unpublished work on calculus there, although GHDI and other sources agree he had developed it independently.

Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz; German History in Documents and Images: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (portrait and introduction); German History in Documents and Images: Sophie Charlotte, Queen of Prussia (1705); Wikipedia: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Maria Sibylla Merian (Born 2 April 1647, Frankfurt am Main; died 13 January 1717, Amsterdam)

Maria Sibylla Merian, Naturalist and illustrator · Frankfurt, Nuremberg and Amsterdam

Merian was the daughter of the engraver and publisher Matthäus Merian the Elder and was trained by her stepfather, the flower painter Jacob Marrel. Showing each insect in its stages of development together with the plant it fed on, she published a two-volume book on caterpillars in German in 1679 and 1683. In 1699, with Amsterdam's permission, she sailed with her daughter Dorothea Maria to the Dutch colony of Suriname and spent two years recording its plants and insects. Her Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium (1705) made her name across Europe.

How they rose: At 13 she raised silkworms and painted insects she had caught. She married her stepfather's apprentice Johann Andreas Graff in 1665 and moved to his home town of Nuremberg in 1670, where she published flower books used as pattern sheets by the young women she taught to draw.

How they died: In 1685 she moved with her mother and daughters to the Labadist religious community in Friesland, which refused to admit her husband, and later settled in Amsterdam. She suffered a stroke in 1715 and died in Amsterdam on 13 January 1717.

• Her caterpillar book of 1679 was popular with some of high society because it was in the vernacular, but scientists of the day largely ignored it.
• In Suriname an enslaved person was forced to assist her research, and enslaved Africans and Amerindians in the colony helped her study its plants and animals.
• The Neue Deutsche Biographie calls her the first woman to carry out scientific research overseas and publish it in illustrated books she wrote and published herself; an illness, possibly malaria, ended her stay in Suriname in June 1701.

Sources: German History in Documents and Images: Maria Sibylla Merian, Metamorphosis of a Frog (c. 1701-05); Deutsche Biographie (NDB): Merian, Maria Sibylla; Wikipedia: Maria Sibylla Merian

The Edict of Potsdam (29 October 1685, days after Louis XIV's Edict of Fontainebleau)

In October 1685 (sources give the 18th or the 22nd) Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, which since 1598 had protected France's Calvinist Huguenots, and more than 400,000 of them, by some counts half a million, went into exile. A week later Elector Frederick William, himself a Calvinist, invited his fellow Reformed Protestants from France to settle in Brandenburg-Prussia, still underpopulated after the Thirty Years War. The edict promised freedom from duties on their goods, tax holidays, abandoned land to farm, full civic equality, French-language church services and their own schools. About 20,000 came, strengthening the country's crafts and manufacturing; most refugees, though, chose lands further west.

• It was not a general edict of toleration: GHDI points out that it pointedly refused its favours to French Catholics who might want to settle.
• German, French and Dutch translations of the edict were printed on 9 November 1685.
• Berlin's French Cathedral (Französischer Dom) was established in 1705 for the Huguenot immigrants.

Sources: German History in Documents and Images: 'Edict of Potsdam' (October 29, 1685); German History in Documents and Images: Frederick William Receives the Huguenots (Chodowiecki etching, 1782); Wikipedia: Edict of Potsdam

Johann Sebastian Bach (Born 21 March 1685 (31 March new style), Eisenach; died 28 July 1750, Leipzig)

Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer and cantor · Weimar, Köthen and Leipzig

Bach came from a large family of Thuringian musicians and worked as a church organist in Arnstadt and Mühlhausen, then at the courts of Weimar and Köthen, where he wrote much of his secular music. From 1723 until his death he was cantor of St Thomas's in Leipzig, writing music for the city's main Lutheran churches and directing the university's Collegium Musicum. His works include The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Brandenburg Concertos, the St Matthew Passion, The Musical Offering and The Art of Fugue. His style seemed dated by his last years, though he was never truly forgotten; his fame soared after Felix Mendelssohn conducted the St Matthew Passion in Berlin in 1829.

How they rose: Orphaned at ten, he was raised by his eldest brother Johann Christoph, an organist who taught him music. At 18 he took his first church post in Arnstadt; in 1705-06 he stretched a four-week leave into about four months to hear Dieterich Buxtehude in Lübeck, some 450 kilometres away, reportedly on foot.

How they died: Almost blind in his last years, he had eye operations in March and April 1750 by the British surgeon John Taylor and died in Leipzig on 28 July 1750, aged 65, of complications. Four of his twenty children, among them Carl Philipp Emanuel and Johann Christian, became composers.

• When he pushed too stubbornly for release from his post at Weimar, the duke had him held in detention from 6 November to 2 December 1717 before dismissing him.
• In 1721 he presented six concertos to Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg, son of the Great Elector; GHDI notes they were probably never played at the margrave's court because they were thought too difficult.
• The libretto of his 1725 cantata 'Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt' was written by Christiana Mariana von Ziegler, a Leipzig poet who wrote nine of his cantata texts.

Sources: German History in Documents and Images: Johann Sebastian Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 1; German History in Documents and Images: Johann Sebastian Bach, Cantata 'Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt' (1725); World History Encyclopedia: Johann Sebastian Bach; Wikipedia: Johann Sebastian Bach

Frederick I, first King in Prussia (Elector from 1688; crowned himself king at Königsberg 18 January 1701; died 25 February 1713)

Frederick I, King in Prussia (Frederick III as Elector of Brandenburg), Hohenzollern · Brandenburg-Prussia

Frederick succeeded his father as Elector of Brandenburg in 1688. Unlike the thrifty Great Elector, he spent heavily on court ceremony, palaces and the arts, and he founded the Academy of Arts in Berlin in 1696 and, with his wife Sophie Charlotte and Leibniz, the Society of Sciences in 1700. His great aim was a royal crown. In return for troops for Emperor Leopold I in the War of the Spanish Succession, the emperor accepted his self-coronation on 18 January 1701 in Königsberg as 'King in Prussia', a title based on the Duchy of Prussia, which lay outside the Empire.

How they came to power: Born in Königsberg on 11 July 1657, he became heir after his elder brother Charles Emil died on campaign in Alsace in 1674. Estranged from his father and stepmother, he relied heavily on his tutor and adviser Eberhard von Danckelman, according to the Neue Deutsche Biographie.

How it ended: He died in Berlin on 25 February 1713 and was buried in Berlin Cathedral. His thrifty son Frederick William I did not close the Society of Sciences but diverted its money and made a court jester its vice president; his grandson Frederick II revived it in 1740.

• Out of deference to Prussia's historic ties to the Polish crown he called himself 'King in Prussia' rather than 'King of Prussia'; even so, the Polish-Lithuanian Sejm objected and called the coronation illegal.
• His second wife, Sophie Charlotte of Hanover, known as 'the philosophical queen', made the court more lavish and lent her name to Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin.
• Wikipedia records that he provided 8,000 Prussian troops to Leopold's service as part of the bargain for recognition of the crown.

Sources: German History in Documents and Images: Prussia Is Proclaimed a Kingdom on January 18, 1701; German History in Documents and Images: Sophie Charlotte, Queen of Prussia (1705); Deutsche Biographie (NDB): Friedrich I., König in Preußen; Wikipedia: Frederick I of Prussia

Frederick William I, the Soldier King (Born 14 August 1688, Berlin (Kölln); reigned 1713-1740; died 31 May 1740, Potsdam)

Frederick William I, King in Prussia, Hohenzollern · Kingdom of Prussia

Frederick William I poured the state's resources into the army, which grew from 38,000 men in 1713 to 80,000 in 1740. His canton system of 1733 divided the country into recruiting districts whose sons served short active terms and otherwise worked their farms and trades. He settled peasant colonists in depopulated East Prussia, tried to stabilize the lot of peasants on crown and noble estates, and founded schools and hospitals. Cautious in foreign policy, he made few conquests, so the army he built was used mainly by his son.

How they came to power: The son of Frederick I and Sophie Charlotte, he had already reordered the state's finances and removed rival officials before he came to the throne in 1713, according to GHDI.

How it ended: Plagued by gout, obesity and stomach pains, which Wikipedia attributes to an inherited porphyria, he died at Potsdam on 31 May 1740 and was buried in the Potsdam Garrison Church. After wartime removal his coffin was kept at Hohenzollern Castle from 1953 until 1991, when it was laid to rest in the Church of Peace (Friedenskirche) at Sanssouci.

• When his son, the future Frederick the Great, tried to flee to England in 1730 with his friend Hans Hermann von Katte, the king had Katte beheaded before the prince's eyes and kept the prince confined at Küstrin fortress.
• In 1732 he invited Lutherans expelled by the Archbishop of Salzburg, about 20,000 in all, to settle in East Prussia; GHDI says they travelled in 26 groups of about 800 people each.
• He widened military obligations for peasants while letting the urban middle class pay an annual tax instead of serving, and with Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau he raised the infantry's rate of fire by introducing the iron ramrod.

Sources: German History in Documents and Images: Frederick William I, Prussia's 'Soldier King' (1729); German History in Documents and Images: Introduction of the Canton System of Military Recruitment (May 1, 1733); German History in Documents and Images: The Salzburg Protestants Settle in Prussia (1732); Deutsche Biographie (NDB): Friedrich Wilhelm I., König in Preußen; Wikipedia: Frederick William I of Prussia

Immanuel Kant (Born 22 April 1724, Königsberg; died 12 February 1804, Königsberg)

Immanuel Kant, Philosopher · Königsberg, East Prussia

Kant spent nearly his whole life in Königsberg, studying at its university from 1740, lecturing there from 1755 and holding the chair of logic and metaphysics from 1770. After a decade of near-silence he published the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781, followed by the Critique of Practical Reason (1788) and the Critique of Judgment (1790). He argued that the mind shapes experience through forms such as space and time, and that reason itself is the source of morality through the categorical imperative. His 1784 essay 'What Is Enlightenment?' defended freedom of public thought and writing, and Toward Perpetual Peace (1795) proposed republican constitutions and a federation of free states.

How they rose: The son of a master harness-maker, he was born into a Lutheran family in Königsberg and enrolled at its university at 16. He worked as a private tutor in nearby towns, then taught for fifteen years as an unsalaried lecturer paid directly by his students; during the Russian occupation of the Seven Years War he even petitioned Empress Elizabeth for a chair, without success, before becoming professor in 1770.

How they died: He died in Königsberg on 12 February 1804, reportedly with the words 'Es ist gut' ('It is good'). He was buried in the cathedral; in 1880 his remains were moved to a chapel built against its northeast corner, in what is now Kaliningrad, Russia.

• In 1763 he came second to Moses Mendelssohn in the Berlin Academy's prize essay competition.
• Under Frederick William II, the censors blocked part of his Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, and after he republished it in 1794 a royal order forbade him to publish or speak publicly on religion.
• He never married; Wikipedia records the story that neighbours set their watches by his daily walk.

Sources: German History in Documents and Images: Immanuel Kant, 'What Is Enlightenment?' (1784); German History in Documents and Images: Immanuel Kant (portrait, c. 1775); Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant; Wikipedia: Immanuel Kant

Moses Mendelssohn (Born 6 September 1729, Dessau; died 4 January 1786)

Moses Mendelssohn, Philosopher of the Jewish Enlightenment · Berlin

Mendelssohn grew up poor in Dessau, the son of a scribe of Torah scrolls, and followed his teacher to Berlin in 1743 at 14. Working as tutor, bookkeeper and then partner to the silk merchant Isaac Bernhard, he taught himself German philosophy and literature. In 1763 he won the Berlin Academy's essay prize, ahead of Immanuel Kant. His German translation of the Pentateuch and his book Jerusalem (1783), which argued for separating religion and state and for freedom of conscience, made him the leading figure of the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment.

How they rose: He entered Berlin through the Rosenthaler Tor, the only gate through which Jews were allowed to pass. In October 1763 Frederick II granted him, though not his wife or children, the status of 'protected Jew', which secured his right to live in Berlin.

How they died: His last years were darkened by the 'pantheism controversy' over the late Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's beliefs. He died on 4 January 1786, reportedly of a cold caught while taking his reply to Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi to the publishers on New Year's Eve.

• His close friend Lessing modelled the hero of his play Nathan the Wise (1779) on him.
• When the Swiss clergyman Johann Caspar Lavater challenged him to refute Christianity or convert, his reply of 1769 won him wide respect among Enlightenment writers.
• His descendants include the composers Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn.

Sources: German History in Documents and Images: Moses Mendelssohn, Reply to Johann Caspar Lavater (1769); German History in Documents and Images: Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, or On Religious Power and Judaism (1783); Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Moses Mendelssohn; Wikipedia: Moses Mendelssohn

Frederick II, the Great (Born 24 January 1712, Berlin; reigned 1740-1786; died 17 August 1786, Sanssouci, Potsdam)

Frederick II, King in (from 1772 of) Prussia, Hohenzollern · Kingdom of Prussia

On 16 December 1740, months after taking the throne, Frederick invaded the rich Austrian province of Silesia, overriding his father's acceptance of Maria Theresa's succession. He kept it through two Silesian wars and the Seven Years War (1756-63), fought against Austria, France, Russia, Sweden and most of the Empire. At home he abolished judicial torture, opened royal appeal courts to villagers in disputes with their lords, demanded proper training of judges and officials, and urged farmers to plant potatoes and turnips against famine. In the First Partition of Poland in 1772 he took West Prussia, which joined East Prussia to Pomerania, though Danzig at the mouth of the Vistula stayed Polish, and styled himself King of Prussia.

How they came to power: His authoritarian father clashed with him over his love of music, literature and French culture; after a failed attempt to flee in 1730 he was imprisoned at Küstrin and released from tutelage there in February 1732 on condition that he marry Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Bevern. At Rheinsberg he wrote the Anti-Machiavel, published anonymously in 1740 and spread by Voltaire, and succeeded his father on 31 May 1740.

How it ended: Increasingly isolated, he spent his last years at Sanssouci with his Italian greyhounds and died there on the morning of 17 August 1786, aged 74. He was first buried in the Potsdam Garrison Church; Wikipedia notes that he now lies at Sanssouci, his favourite residence.

• In a 1777 essay he described the king as the state's first servant, whose power is justified by upholding the law and defending the realm, and argued that a ruler should govern as if answerable to the people.
• A gifted flautist, he composed 121 sonatas for flute and continuo, four flute concertos and other works, often with his teacher Johann Joachim Quantz, who joined his court in 1741.
• After his defeat at Kunersdorf on 12 August 1759 the Russian and Austrian armies failed to press on, which he later called the 'Miracle of the House of Brandenburg'; the death of Empress Elizabeth of Russia in January 1762 then broke the coalition against him.

Sources: German History in Documents and Images: Frederick II ('the Great') (portrait by Anton Graff, 1781); German History in Documents and Images: Frederick II, Forms of Government and the Duties of Rulers (1777); Deutsche Biographie (NDB): Friedrich II. der Große; World History Encyclopedia: Frederick the Great, Forging the Prussian State; Wikipedia: Frederick the Great

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Born 28 August 1749, Frankfurt am Main; died 22 March 1832, Weimar)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Poet and minister · Frankfurt and Weimar

Goethe trained in law at Leipzig and Strasbourg, then made his name with the drama Götz von Berlichingen and the novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), based partly on his own love for Charlotte Buff and a friend's suicide. In 1775 he moved to the small duchy of Saxe-Weimar, where he sat on Duke Karl August's privy council, oversaw mines and roads, and ran the court theatre from 1791. His friendship with Friedrich Schiller from 1794 created what is called Weimar Classicism. He also wrote on plant metamorphosis and colour, and worked on Faust all his life, publishing Part I in 1808 and finishing Part II in 1831, the year before his death.

How they rose: His father, Johann Caspar Goethe, had studied law and held the title of imperial councillor but took no part in Frankfurt's affairs. After law studies and a small legal practice in Frankfurt, the success of Götz and Werther brought him to Weimar in 1775, and Duke Karl August had him ennobled in 1782.

How they died: He died in Weimar on 22 March 1832, aged 82, cared for in his last years by his daughter-in-law Ottilie von Pogwisch. He was buried in the ducal vault (Fürstengruft) in Weimar.

• When Napoleon's army entered Weimar on 14 October 1806, the day of the Battle of Jena, his partner Christiane Vulpius drove marauding soldiers out of their house; days later, on 19 October, he married her after 18 years together.
• After returning from his Italian journey in 1788 he published his first major scientific work, The Metamorphosis of Plants, in 1790.
• From 1776 he had a long, close friendship with Charlotte von Stein, a married woman seven years older than him.

Sources: German History in Documents and Images: Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774); German History in Documents and Images: Goethe, Faust (1808); Deutsche Biographie (NDB): Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von; Wikipedia: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The Seven Years War (Prussian invasion of Saxony 29 August 1756; Rossbach 5 November and Leuthen 5 December 1757 (one GHDI page says 4 December); Peace of Hubertusburg 15 February 1763)

After the 'Diplomatic Revolution' of 1756 allied France with Austria, Maria Theresa prepared to win back Silesia with Russian help. Frederick struck first, invading Saxony on 29 August 1756 and forcing its army into Prussian service. In 1757 he lost about 14,000 men at Kolin in Bohemia but then won at Rossbach in Saxony, a battle that lasted under two hours, and routed a much larger Austrian army at Leuthen in Silesia. Hungarian hussars held part of Berlin for a night in 1757, Russian and Austrian troops briefly occupied it in 1760, and Prussia was saved in 1762 when the new tsar Peter III changed sides. The Peace of Hubertusburg in 1763 left Silesia Prussian and confirmed Prussia as a great power.

• The World History Encyclopedia counts more than a million casualties in the whole war, which was also fought in North America and India; in Europe the borders returned to their pre-war state.
• Rossbach was won largely by the Prussian cavalry under General Friedrich Wilhelm von Seydlitz, and it made Frederick popular in many parts of Germany and in Britain.
• A GHDI allegory of the Peace of Hubertusburg shows a grieving mother huddled with her children, a reminder of what the war cost ordinary people.

Sources: German History in Documents and Images: Commemorative Plan of the Battle of Rossbach (November 5, 1757); German History in Documents and Images: Frederick II after the Battle of Kolin (June 18, 1757); German History in Documents and Images: Allegorical Depiction of the Peace of Hubertusburg (1763); World History Encyclopedia: Seven Years' War, the 18th-Century World War; Wikipedia: Seven Years' War

Friedrich Schiller (Born 10 November 1759, Marbach am Neckar; died 9 May 1805, Weimar)

Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, Playwright, poet and historian · Württemberg, Jena and Weimar

Schiller was forced by the Duke of Württemberg to attend his military academy, the Karlsschule, where he studied law and then medicine. There he wrote The Robbers, a Storm and Stress drama of two noble brothers, which he published anonymously at his own expense in 1781; its premiere in Mannheim in 1782 was a success. After years of debt and wandering he became professor of history at Jena in 1789 and wrote histories of the Dutch revolt and the Thirty Years War. His friendship with Goethe from 1794 and later plays such as the Wallenstein trilogy and William Tell put him at the heart of the Weimar circle that shaped German cultural life.

How they rose: The only son of a military doctor, he graduated from the Karlsschule in medicine in 1780 and became a regimental doctor in Stuttgart. When he left his regiment without permission to attend the Mannheim premiere of The Robbers, he faced arrest, and in 1782 he fled the duchy.

How they died: He moved to Weimar with his family in 1799 and was ennobled by the Duke of Saxe-Weimar in 1802. He died there of tuberculosis on 9 May 1805, aged 45.

• His inaugural lecture at Jena on 26 May 1789 asked what universal history is and why we study it.
• In On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795) he argued that people could only reach reason and self-government through an education in beauty and art, a response to the violence of the French Revolution.
• He married Charlotte von Lengefeld on 22 February 1790.

Sources: German History in Documents and Images: Friedrich Schiller, Die Räuber (1781); German History in Documents and Images: Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795); Deutsche Biographie (NDB): Schiller, Friedrich von; Wikipedia: Friedrich Schiller

Ludwig van Beethoven (Baptized 17 December 1770, Bonn (birth date unrecorded); died 26 March 1827, Vienna)

Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer · Bonn and Vienna

Beethoven grew up in Bonn, capital of the Electorate of Cologne, where he gave his first public recital as a child and became organist at the elector's court. In 1792 he moved to Vienna to study with Joseph Haydn and made his name as a pianist in the salons of the nobility. His hearing began to fail from 1798, and by about 1815 he was almost completely deaf, yet he went on composing: the Eroica and Fifth symphonies, the opera Fidelio, the Missa solemnis and the Ninth Symphony of 1824. His music marks the transition from the Classical to the Romantic era.

How they rose: His father Johann, a court singer, pushed him as a child prodigy, advertising him as six at his first public concert in March 1778 when he was seven. He studied with the court organist Christian Gottlob Neefe, published his first work in 1783 and joined the court chapel, and the elector helped pay for his move to Vienna in 1792.

How they died: After several months of illness that kept him in bed, he died in Vienna on 26 March 1827, aged 56.

• According to his pupil Ferdinand Ries he struck Napoleon's name from the Eroica when Napoleon made himself emperor in 1804; GHDI notes that the title page shows an erasure but that the symphony was dedicated to Prince Lobkowitz, who had paid for it.
• The premiere of the Fifth Symphony on 22 December 1808 came in a concert of more than four hours in an unheated Vienna theatre, among his last big concerts as a pianist, though he still played in public in 1814.
• As a teenager in Bonn he was already playing Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, which his teacher Neefe had given him.

Sources: German History in Documents and Images: Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 3 'Eroica' (1803-04); German History in Documents and Images: Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 5 (1804-08); World History Encyclopedia: Ludwig van Beethoven; Wikipedia: Ludwig van Beethoven

Queen Louise of Prussia (Born 10 March 1776, Hanover; queen from 1797; died 19 July 1810, Hohenzieritz near Strelitz)

Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Queen of Prussia, Hohenzollern · Kingdom of Prussia

Louise met the Prussian crown prince Frederick William in 1793 and married him on 24 December that year; he became king as Frederick William III in 1797. In 1806 Prussia went to war with Napoleon and on 14 October was crushed in the twin battles of Jena and Auerstedt; the royal family fled to Königsberg and then Memel in East Prussia. At Tilsit in 1807 Louise appealed to Napoleon in person to soften the peace terms, without success, and the treaty took nearly half of Prussia's territory. Her courage and simplicity made her immensely popular, and GHDI calls her the first woman of Germany's ruling class to become an object of nationalist enthusiasm.

How they rose: The daughter of Prince Charles of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, a field marshal in Hanoverian service, she was born in Hanover and was six when her mother died in childbirth. She met the Prussian crown prince at Frankfurt in March 1793, and in April she and her sister Frederica were betrothed to two Prussian princes.

How they died: She returned to Berlin with the king only on 23 December 1809. On 19 July 1810, while visiting her father, she died in her husband's arms, aged 34; she was buried in a mausoleum in the park of Charlottenburg Palace.

• Napoleon tried to blacken her reputation during the war, but in Prussia this only made her better loved; after her death he is reported to have said that the king had lost his best minister.
• In 1814 her widowed husband founded the Order of Louise for women, as a counterpart to the Iron Cross.
• The couple preferred their country house at Paretz near Potsdam to Charlottenburg Palace; after a stillborn daughter in 1794 she had nine children (five sons and four daughters, two of whom died young), among them the future kings Frederick William IV and William I, later German Emperor.

Sources: German History in Documents and Images: Frederick William III and Queen Louise in the Park at Charlottenburg Palace (1799); German History in Documents and Images: The Battle of Jena on October 14, 1806; Deutsche Biographie (NDB): Luise, Königin von Preußen; Wikipedia: Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz

The end of the Holy Roman Empire (Final Recess of the Imperial Deputation 25 February 1803; Confederation of the Rhine 12 July 1806; Francis II abdicates 6 August 1806)

To compensate German princes for lands lost to France on the left bank of the Rhine, an imperial deputation at Regensburg, with France as 'mediator', redrew the map; its Final Recess of 25 February 1803 handed the church states and almost all the free imperial cities to larger secular rulers. After Austria's defeat at Austerlitz in December 1805, sixteen south and west German states signed the Treaty of the Confederation of the Rhine on 12 July 1806 under Napoleon's protection, renounced the Emperor and declared themselves sovereign. On 6 August 1806 Francis II laid down the imperial crown and declared the Empire dissolved. He had already taken the title of hereditary Emperor of Austria in 1804.

• Only six free imperial cities survived the 1803 settlement: Hamburg, Bremen, Lübeck, Frankfurt, Augsburg and Nuremberg; Hamburg and Bremen are still city-states today.
• The restructuring that began in 1802 cut the number of German states from almost 300 to 39 by the Congress of Vienna; Wikipedia calls it the largest redistribution of property in German history before 1945.
• According to the Neue Deutsche Biographie, Francis declared the Empire dissolved, and not merely abdicated, to prevent Napoleon from placing the imperial crown on his own head.

Sources: German History in Documents and Images: The Founding of the Confederation of the Rhine on July 12, 1806; Deutsche Biographie (NDB): Franz II., Kaiser; Wikipedia: German mediatisation

Jena, Auerstedt and the Peace of Tilsit (Battles of Jena and Auerstedt 14 October 1806; Peace of Tilsit 1807)

After a decade of neutrality, Frederick William III went to war with France in 1806, encouraged by Russia. On 14 October Napoleon routed Prince Hohenlohe's army at Jena, while Marshal Davout's single corps beat the main Prussian army under the Duke of Brunswick and the king at Auerstedt; Brunswick was mortally wounded. Two days later a large Prussian force surrendered at Erfurt with hardly a shot fired, Blücher's corps was beaten at Lübeck on 6 November and capitulated soon after, and Napoleon led a victory parade into Berlin. The Peace of Tilsit in 1807 cost Prussia nearly half its territory, a shock that drove the great reforms that followed.

• At Auerstedt Davout's corps lost about 7,050-7,100 men, against 13,000-15,000 Prussian casualties, according to the figures Wikipedia cites.
• After occupying Berlin, French troops took the Quadriga, the bronze four-horse chariot from the top of the Brandenburg Gate, and shipped it to Paris.
• In 1806 the bookseller Johann Philipp Palm was executed by French troops after a brief trial, accused of distributing writings that called for German unity and resistance to the French; other nationalists saw him as a martyr.

Sources: German History in Documents and Images: The Battle of Jena on October 14, 1806; German History in Documents and Images: The Execution of Johann Philipp Palm (1806); German History in Documents and Images: The Return of the Quadriga to the Brandenburg Gate (1814); Wikipedia: Battle of Jena-Auerstedt

The Prussian reforms of Stein and Hardenberg (October Edict 9 October 1807; Municipal Ordinance 19 November 1808; University of Berlin opened 1810; Jewish edict 11 March 1812)

The collapse of 1806-07 convinced Frederick William III to let reformers remake the state. Under Karl vom und zum Stein, chief minister in 1807-08, the October Edict of 9 October 1807 ended hereditary serfdom and the personal subjection of villagers to their lords, and the Municipal Ordinance of 1808 gave property-owning townsmen self-government. Karl August von Hardenberg, state chancellor from 1810, pushed through freedom of trade and new taxes, while Gerhard von Scharnhorst and August von Gneisenau rebuilt the army and Wilhelm von Humboldt reformed education and founded the University of Berlin in 1810.

• The Edict concerning the Civil Status of the Jews of 11 March 1812 gave the Jews who had been protected subjects before 1772 a large measure of civic equality, in return for fixed surnames, use of German or another living language in business, and duties such as military service; the many Jews in lands taken from Poland were not covered.
• The 1808 Municipal Ordinance excluded wage-earners who owned no house, and all women, from the urban vote, yet GHDI calls the new city councils effective schools of liberal politics.
• Freed peasants with insecure tenures often lost land to noble estates in the following years, as GHDI notes in its introduction to the October Edict.

Sources: German History in Documents and Images: The Prussian October Edict (October 9, 1807); German History in Documents and Images: Ordinance for All Cities of the Prussian Monarchy (November 19, 1808); German History in Documents and Images: Edict concerning the Civil Status of the Jews in the Prussian State (March 11, 1812); German History in Documents and Images: Wilhelm von Humboldt on the Organization of the Higher Scientific Institutions in Berlin (1810); Wikipedia: Prussian Reform Movement

The Battle of the Nations at Leipzig (16-19 October 1813; Prussia's 'To My People' appeal 17 March 1813)

After Napoleon's disastrous Russian campaign of 1812, Frederick William III appealed 'To My People' on 17 March 1813 for volunteers, and Prussia fought alongside Russia, Austria and Sweden against France. A reformed army and the new territorial reserve, the Landwehr, made Prussia a 'nation in arms'. Around Leipzig from 16 to 19 October 1813 about half a million soldiers (GHDI) or 560,000 (Wikipedia) fought in what GHDI calls the largest battle in Europe before the First World War. Napoleon ordered a retreat early on 19 October, and his control of Germany and the Confederation of the Rhine collapsed.

• Wikipedia counts about 133,000 casualties in the four days of fighting.
• During the battle 5,400 Saxon troops of Napoleon's army went over to the coalition; Prince Józef Poniatowski, wounded, drowned trying to cross the White Elster during the French retreat.
• The 91-metre Monument to the Battle of the Nations was completed in 1913 for the centenary.

Sources: German History in Documents and Images: The Battle of Nations in Leipzig on October 19, 1813; German History in Documents and Images: Frederick William III's Call for National Mobilization, 'To My People' (March 17, 1813); German History in Documents and Images: Deployment of the Prussian Landwehr in 1813; Wikipedia: Battle of Leipzig

Waterloo and the Congress of Vienna (Congress from September 1814 to June 1815; Final Act signed 9 June 1815; Battle of Waterloo 18 June 1815)

Chaired by the Austrian minister Klemens von Metternich, the Congress of Vienna met from September 1814 to rebuild Europe after Napoleon; Prussia was represented by Chancellor Hardenberg and Wilhelm von Humboldt. Prussia wanted all of Saxony, whose king had sided with Napoleon, but received three-fifths of it, together with Swedish Pomerania, Danzig, land in western Poland and large territories on the Rhine and in Westphalia. In place of the old Empire a German Confederation of 39 states was created under the presidency of the Austrian emperor. The Final Act was signed on 9 June 1815, nine days before Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo by Wellington's army and the Prussians under Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher.

• Talks went on undisturbed even after Napoleon returned from exile and resumed power in France for the Hundred Days in 1815.
• At Waterloo Wellington is said to have exclaimed 'Give me Blücher, or give me night'; the Prussians arrived in time, and Blücher was then 72.
• Prussian troops entering Paris in 1814 found the Quadriga from the Brandenburg Gate, taken by the French in 1806, still in its crates in the Louvre and brought it back to Berlin.

Sources: German History in Documents and Images: Prince Blücher and the Duke of Wellington Meet at Waterloo (June 18, 1815); German History in Documents and Images: The Return of the Quadriga to the Brandenburg Gate (1814); Deutsche Biographie (NDB): Blücher, Gebhard Leberecht Fürst von Wahlstatt; Wikipedia: Congress of Vienna

The Brothers Grimm (First volume of tales 1812; second volume late 1814 (dated 1815); Jacob lived 4 January 1785 to 20 September 1863, Wilhelm 24 February 1786 to 16 December 1859 (timeline year 1815 used to place them in this era))

Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm and Wilhelm Carl Grimm, Scholars and folklorists · Kassel, Göttingen and Berlin

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were born in Hanau a year apart and studied law at Marburg, where the jurist Friedrich Carl von Savigny turned them toward old German literature. Working as librarians in Kassel, they published the first volume of their Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales) in 1812 with 86 tales, and a second volume with 70 more appeared late in 1814, dated 1815. Between 1812 and 1857 the collection went through seven large editions and became one of the most influential works in world folklore. Jacob also helped lay the foundations of historical German linguistics with his German Grammar (first part 1819), and from 1838 the brothers began the vast Deutsches Wörterbuch.

How they rose: Through Savigny they met the Romantic poets Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim and helped with their song collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Many tales came not from peasants but from educated friends, including Dortchen Wild, who later married Wilhelm.

How they died: In 1837 both lost their professorships at Göttingen as two of the 'Göttingen Seven', who protested when King Ernst August of Hanover abolished the constitution. In 1840 Frederick William IV of Prussia gave them posts in Berlin, where they worked on the dictionary until the end; Wilhelm died there on 16 December 1859 and Jacob on 20 September 1863.

• The first volume of the tales was printed in an edition of only 900 copies, according to the DHM.
• In 1848 Jacob Grimm sat in the Frankfurt National Assembly as deputy for Mülheim an der Ruhr, belonging to no faction.
• The Deutsches Wörterbuch was far too large to finish in their lifetimes; Jacob himself wrote the entries for A, B, C and part of F, and the last of its 32 volumes appeared only in 1960.

Sources: Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Biografie Jacob Grimm; Britannica: Brothers Grimm; Wikipedia: Brothers Grimm

The German Confederation (Federal Act signed 8 June 1815; dissolved 1866)

The Congress of Vienna, which sat from September 1814 to June 1815 to redraw Europe after Napoleon, did not revive the Holy Roman Empire dissolved in 1806. Instead the German Federal Act of 8 June 1815 bound the German princes and free cities into a permanent league, the Deutscher Bund. The DHM counts 35 sovereign principalities and four free cities at the start; Austria and Prussia joined only with the lands that had belonged to the old Reich, while the kings of Denmark and the Netherlands joined for Holstein and Luxembourg. Its only organ was a Federal Assembly of instructed envoys in Frankfurt am Main, permanently chaired by Austria. Under Metternich's influence it became an instrument for holding down liberal and national movements until the Austro-Prussian War ended it in 1866.

• Article 2 of the Federal Act gave the league's purpose as the external and internal security of Germany and the independence and inviolability of the individual German states. Article 9 seated the Federal Assembly in Frankfurt and set its opening for 1 September 1815.
• Article 13 promised that every member state would have a constitution with representative estates, a pledge many rulers were slow to keep. Article 16 said differences between Christian denominations could not affect civil and political rights, and asked the Assembly to consider civil improvements for Jews.
• Prussia came out of the Vienna settlement with new lands in Westphalia and the Rhine region, which pulled it deep into western Germany. During the revolution the Federal Assembly handed its powers to the Imperial Regent elected by the Frankfurt Parliament (dissolving itself on 12 July 1848, per Wikipedia), and it resumed work only on 1 September 1850, at first without Prussia.

Sources: documentArchiv.de: Deutsche Bundesakte (8 June 1815); Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Der Deutsche Bund; Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Chronik 1850; Britannica: Congress of Vienna; Wikipedia: German Confederation

The Wartburg Festival and the Carlsbad Decrees (Wartburg Festival 18 to 19 October 1817; Carlsbad conference 6 to 31 August 1819; confirmed by the Federal Assembly 20 September 1819)

In October 1817 about 500 students and professors from eleven universities met at the Wartburg near Eisenach, where Luther had translated the New Testament, to mark 300 years of the Reformation and the fourth anniversary of the Battle of Leipzig, and demanded unity and freedom for the German nation. After the student Karl Ludwig Sand murdered the conservative writer August von Kotzebue on 23 March 1819, Austria's Metternich gathered ministers of the leading German states, including Prussia, at the Bohemian spa of Carlsbad (Britannica lists eleven states including Austria; the DHM counts ten). They agreed on uniform censorship of periodicals, the dissolution of the student fraternities, supervisors for the universities and a central investigating commission at Mainz. The Federal Assembly in Frankfurt passed them as federal law on 20 September 1819, opening years of 'persecution of demagogues' against professors, journalists and students.

• The Wartburg students had grown out of the Burschenschaft movement founded at Jena in 1815, whose black, red and gold colours, taken from the Lützow Free Corps of the wars against Napoleon, later became the German flag.
• After the official festivities, followers of the gymnast leader Friedrich Ludwig Jahn burned books they considered reactionary, along with symbols of Napoleonic rule. The Nazis cited this in 1933 to justify their own book burnings.
• Sand was executed on 20 May 1820. Britannica notes that the decrees were enforced with varying severity from state to state, suppressing liberal politics for a time without stifling German nationalism.

Sources: documentArchiv.de: Provisorischer Bundesbeschluss über die Universitäten (20 September 1819); Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Chronik 1817; Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Chronik 1819; Britannica: Carlsbad Decrees; Wikipedia: Wartburg Festival

Clara Schumann (Touring from about age eleven (c. 1830); lived 13 September 1819 to 20 May 1896)

Clara Josephine Schumann, née Wieck, Pianist and composer · Leipzig, Düsseldorf and Frankfurt

Clara Wieck was born in Leipzig in 1819 to the piano teacher Friedrich Wieck and the singer Mariane Tromlitz, and was drilled by her father from the age of five. She toured from the age of about eleven, and her recitals in Vienna in 1837 and 1838 sold out, and on 15 March 1838 she was named Royal and Imperial Austrian Chamber Virtuoso. Against her father's fierce opposition she went to court to win the right to marry the composer Robert Schumann, which she did in 1840; they had eight children between 1841 and 1854. Over a concert career of 61 years she changed the format and repertoire of the piano recital, and she also composed songs, chamber music including a piano trio, and piano works.

How they rose: Her father trained her to play from memory, and she was performing from memory in public by the age of thirteen, which reviewers found exceptional.

How they died: After Robert's mental collapse in 1854 and death in 1856 she supported the family by touring, often with the violinist Joseph Joachim, and from 1878 taught at Dr Hoch's Conservatory in Frankfurt. She suffered a stroke on 26 March 1896, died on 20 May and was buried beside Robert in Bonn.

• She and Joachim gave more than 238 concerts together in Germany and Britain, and were especially noted for Beethoven's violin sonatas.
• The young Johannes Brahms arrived at the Schumanns' house in Düsseldorf in 1853 and became a lifelong friend of Clara's.
• From 1989 to 2002 her portrait, taken from an 1835 lithograph, appeared on the German 100-mark banknote.

Sources: Library of Congress: Clara Schumann, A Guide to Resources; Britannica: Clara Schumann; Wikipedia: Clara Schumann

The Zollverein and the first German railway (Customs union in force 1 January 1834; Nuremberg to Fürth railway opened 7 December 1835)

After the Napoleonic wars, goods moving across Germany paid duty at border after border. Prussia abolished its own internal tariffs in 1818 and drew neighbours into treaties, and on 1 January 1834 the German Customs Union, the Zollverein, came into force under Prussian leadership, with Austria left outside. Britannica counts 18 founding states, the DHM 21; Hamburg and Bremen were the last to join, in 1888. Within two years Germany's first steam railway opened between Nuremberg and Fürth in Bavaria, on 7 December 1835, a 6 km line whose locomotive Adler came with its driver from Stephenson's works in England. Customs union and railways together laid the economic tracks for later political unification.

• The economist Friedrich List was the most active campaigner for a German free-trade zone; in April 1819 he founded a merchants' and manufacturers' association in Frankfurt to demand an end to internal customs borders.
• The Nuremberg to Fürth company raised its 132,000 guilders of share capital within six months, and King Ludwig I of Bavaria, who preferred his canal project, lent only his name and bought two shares.
• Rival blocs came first: in 1828 Bavaria and Württemberg set up a southern customs union, and the central German states, including Saxony and the Thuringian states, formed another, before most of them merged into the Prussian-led union of 1834.

Sources: Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Chronik 1834; Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Chronik 1835; Britannica: Zollverein; Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Chronik 1819; Wikipedia: Bavarian Ludwig Railway

Karl Marx (Active from 1842; lived 5 May 1818 to 14 March 1883)

Karl Heinrich Marx, Philosopher and revolutionary · Trier, Cologne and London

Marx was born in Trier in Prussia's Rhineland in 1818, into a family of Jewish descent that had converted to Lutheranism. He took a doctorate in philosophy at Jena in 1841 and on 15 October 1842 became editor of the Rheinische Zeitung, a liberal paper in Cologne. In Paris in August 1844 he began his lifelong partnership with Friedrich Engels, and the two wrote the Manifesto of the Communist Party, published in London in February 1848. After the revolution of 1848 to 1849, when he edited the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne, he settled in London, where the first volume of Das Kapital appeared in 1867.

How they rose: Barred from an academic career by Prussia's hostility to the Young Hegelians, he turned to radical journalism. The Manifesto, written at the end of 1847 for the Communist League, made his name among socialists across Europe.

How they died: He lived in poverty in London for years, helped by Engels, and studied in the reading room of the British Museum. He died in London on 14 March 1883, aged 64, and was buried in Highgate Cemetery; Engels edited the second and third volumes of Das Kapital after his death.

• The Manifesto ends, in Samuel Moore's 1888 English translation approved by Engels, with the line 'Working Men of All Countries, Unite!'
• In 1864 Marx helped found the International Working Men's Association, the 'First International', in London, writing its inaugural address and rules.
• In 1843 he married Jenny von Westphalen after a seven-year engagement. They had seven children, four of whom died young.

Sources: Marx and Engels: Manifesto of the Communist Party, ch. IV (Samuel Moore translation, 1888), Marxists Internet Archive; Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Biografie Karl Marx; Britannica: Karl Marx; Wikipedia: Karl Marx

The Revolution of 1848 and the Frankfurt Parliament (March 1848 to July 1849; National Assembly opened 18 May 1848; constitution proclaimed 28 March 1849)

News of the February 1848 revolution in Paris spread to south-western Germany, and on 27 February a meeting in Mannheim raised the 'March demands' for freedom of assembly, speech and the press, independent courts and a national parliament. Street fighting in Berlin on 18 March 1848 cost more than 250 lives and forced King Frederick William IV to appoint a liberal ministry. On 18 May about 600 deputies elected across the Confederation began meeting in St Paul's Church in Frankfurt; they passed a catalogue of basic rights in December 1848 and a constitution for a German Reich in March 1849. On 28 March 1849 the assembly elected Frederick William IV 'Emperor of the Germans', but he turned the crown down, the larger states rejected the constitution, and Prussian troops crushed the last uprisings in Saxony, the Palatinate and Baden.

• The assembly was dominated by the educated middle classes: more than three quarters of its members had studied at university, which later earned it the mocking nickname 'Professors' Parliament'.
• The vote electing Frederick William IV emperor was 290 in favour, with 248 abstentions and 20 against. He gave his final refusal on 28 April 1849, and on 18 June Württemberg troops broke up the rump parliament that had moved to Stuttgart.
• The revolution ended on 23 July 1849 when the Baden revolutionaries in the fortress of Rastatt surrendered after a three-week siege by Prussian troops led by Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, the future Emperor Wilhelm I.

Sources: documentArchiv.de: Verfassung des Deutschen Reiches (Frankfurter Reichsverfassung), 28 March 1849; Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Revolution 1848; Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Chronik 1849; Wikipedia: Frankfurt National Assembly

Louise Otto-Peters (Writing from the 1840s; Frauen-Zeitung first issued 21 April 1849; ADF founded 15 to 18 October 1865; lived 26 March 1819 to 13 March 1895)

Louise Otto-Peters, née Otto, Writer and women's rights campaigner · Meissen and Leipzig

Louise Otto was born in Meissen in Saxony, the daughter of a senior court official. Like other girls of her time she could not go on to secondary school after confirmation. Visiting her sister in the Erzgebirge she met women lace-makers working at home, and her poem about them caused outrage for its social criticism. Writing at first under the pen name Otto Stern, she pressed for two things: opening paid work to middle-class women and improving the lot of working women. Her novel Schloß und Fabrik (Castle and Factory), about the poverty of Saxon weavers and lace-makers, was banned as soon as it was printed and appeared only after the censors' cuts.

How they rose: In a newspaper letter she declared that women's part in the affairs of the state was not only a right but a duty. In April 1849 she launched the Frauen-Zeitung, the first political women's newspaper in Germany.

How they died: In October 1865, at a women's conference in Leipzig, she founded the General German Women's Association (ADF) with Auguste Schmidt and Marie Löper-Houselle, and she chaired it and co-edited its paper Neue Bahnen. Her last public appearance was at the opening of the first grammar-school courses for girls in Leipzig in 1894, and she died in Leipzig on 13 March 1895.

• A new Saxon press law barred women from editing a newspaper, so the Frauen-Zeitung moved to Gera; it had to close when Prussia passed a similar law.
• She became engaged to the writer August Peters while he was imprisoned in Bruchsal for his part in the revolution of 1848 to 1849, and married him after his pardon.
• The ADF campaigned for women's right to education, to paid work and to study at university; the DHM sees its founding as the start of the organised German women's movement.

Sources: Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Biografie Louise Otto-Peters; Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Chronik 1865; Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Chronik 1849; Wikipedia: Louise Otto-Peters

Wilhelm I (Regent 1858; King of Prussia 2 January 1861; German Emperor 18 January 1871 to 9 March 1888)

Wilhelm Friedrich Ludwig, King of Prussia and German Emperor, Hohenzollern · Prussia and German Empire

Wilhelm, born in Berlin on 22 March 1797, was the second son of Frederick William III and Queen Luise and was not expected to reign. He fought against Napoleon as a teenager, earning the Iron Cross, and was a professional soldier all his life. Because his brother Frederick William IV was childless, Wilhelm became heir, served as regent from 1858 and king in 1861. His clash with the Prussian parliament over army reform led him to appoint Bismarck in 1862, and for 26 years he backed his chancellor and refused every offer of resignation. As emperor from 1871 he left government largely to Bismarck and became a frugal, popular symbol of the new Reich.

How they came to power: In March 1848 his call for force against the Berlin revolution earned him the nickname 'Kartätschenprinz' (grapeshot prince), and he was sent to England for a time; in 1849 he commanded the troops who crushed the revolution in Baden and the Palatinate. He crowned himself King of Prussia at Königsberg on 18 October 1861.

How it ended: He survived two assassination attempts in Berlin in 1878, the second of which, on 2 June, left him badly wounded; Bismarck used them to push through the Anti-Socialist Law. He died on 9 March 1888, aged 90, and was succeeded by his son Friedrich III.

• He agreed to the imperial title only reluctantly, regarding the crown of Prussia as far higher, and he complained to his son that he had to swap the shining Prussian crown for this 'dirt crown', according to the DHM.
• His wife Augusta of Saxe-Weimar leaned toward liberalism, while he disliked it; the DHM describes theirs as a marriage of reason.
• Many monuments followed his death, among them the Kyffhäuser monument, the memorial at Porta Westfalica and the equestrian statue at the Deutsches Eck in Koblenz.

Sources: Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Biografie Wilhelm I.; Britannica: William I, emperor of Germany; Wikipedia: Wilhelm I

Otto von Bismarck (Prussian minister president 23 September 1862 to 20 March 1890 (except January to November 1873, when Roon held the post); Reich chancellor 21 March 1871 to 20 March 1890)

Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck, Prince von Bismarck, Minister President of Prussia and Chancellor · German Empire

Bismarck was born at Schönhausen in the Altmark on 1 April 1815 into the Prussian landowning gentry, studied law at Göttingen and left the civil service to farm the family estates in Pomerania. As Prussia's envoy to the Federal Assembly in Frankfurt and then ambassador in St Petersburg he learned to see Austria as Prussia's rival. Appointed minister president in 1862, he governed for four years without a budget approved by parliament and won the wars against Denmark in 1864, Austria in 1866 and France in 1870 to 1871 that produced a German national state without Austria. As the first Reich chancellor he fought the Catholic Church in the Kulturkampf, banned the socialist party in 1878 and introduced the first national social insurance laws, while his alliance system aimed to keep the peace in Europe.

How they came to power: On 23 September 1862, as the Prussian lower house refused all spending on King Wilhelm I's army reform, the king made Bismarck acting minister president. A week later he told the budget committee that the great questions of the day would be decided not by speeches and majority resolutions, the mistake of 1848 and 1849, but by iron and blood.

How it ended: After Wilhelm II came to the throne in 1888 the two men clashed over social policy and the chancellor's control of ministers, and Bismarck submitted his resignation on 18 March 1890; he was dismissed two days later. He died at Friedrichsruh near Hamburg on 30 July 1898 and was entombed in a mausoleum there; his sarcophagus describes him as a loyal servant of Wilhelm I, a pointed snub to Wilhelm II.

• On 7 May 1866 a Tübingen student, Ferdinand Cohen-Blind, fired a pistol at Bismarck on Unter den Linden in Berlin; Bismarck was unhurt.
• In 1884 he backed the first German colonial acquisition, Angra Pequena on the coast of south-west Africa, and with Jules Ferry he called the Berlin Congo Conference, which sat from November 1884 to February 1885.
• For his 80th birthday in 1895 more than 450 towns made him an honorary citizen, and by 1914 at least 500 Bismarck monuments had been built in Germany.

Sources: Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Biografie Otto von Bismarck; Britannica: Otto von Bismarck; Wikipedia: Otto von Bismarck

The Austro-Prussian War and Königgrätz (June to August 1866; Battle of Königgrätz 3 July 1866; Peace of Prague 23 August 1866)

Prussia and Austria had jointly taken Schleswig and Holstein from Denmark in 1864, and their quarrel over the duchies became a contest for leadership in Germany. When Prussian troops marched into Holstein, the Federal Assembly in Frankfurt voted nine to six for federal action against Prussia, and Prussia declared the Confederation dissolved. Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover and other states sided with Austria, while Italy, allied to Prussia, attacked Austria in the south. On 3 July 1866 the Prussian armies under Helmuth von Moltke defeated the Austrians and Saxons at Königgrätz (Sadowa) in Bohemia. In the Peace of Prague on 23 August Austria recognised the dissolution of the Confederation and a new Germany without itself, transferred its rights in Holstein and Schleswig to Prussia and accepted a Prussian-led federation north of the Main.

• Prussian infantry carried the Dreyse needle gun, a breech-loading bolt-action rifle that could be fired faster than the muzzle-loaders of the Austrian army.
• Prussia annexed Hanover, Hesse-Kassel, Nassau and the free city of Frankfurt outright, joining the eastern and western halves of the Prussian state.
• In the peace talks Bismarck, with Crown Prince Friedrich, persuaded King Wilhelm I not to annex Austrian territory, so as to make a quick peace and keep France out.

Sources: Peace of Prague, 23 August 1866 (English translation), Wikisource; German History in Documents and Images (GHI): Preliminary Peace of Nikolsburg (26 July 1866); Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Chronik 1866; Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Biografie Wilhelm I.; Wikipedia: Austro-Prussian War

The Franco-Prussian War and the founding of the Empire (War 19 July 1870 to 10 May 1871; Empire proclaimed at Versailles 18 January 1871; constitution of 16 April 1871)

A dispute over a Hohenzollern candidate for the Spanish throne, which Bismarck exploited through the Ems telegram, led Napoleon III's France to declare war on Prussia on 19 July 1870. Bavaria, Württemberg and Baden fought alongside the North German Confederation, and Napoleon III and his army were trapped and forced to surrender at Sedan at the start of September 1870. Under the November treaties of 1870 the four southern states joined the Confederation, and on 18 January 1871, in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, King Wilhelm I of Prussia was proclaimed German Emperor. Paris capitulated after a four-month siege, and the Treaty of Frankfurt of 10 May 1871 took Alsace (without Belfort) and northern Lorraine with Metz from France and imposed five billion francs in reparations.

• The Reich constitution gave the presidency of the federation to the King of Prussia 'with the name German Emperor', and Article 20 had the Reichstag chosen in universal and direct elections by secret ballot (voting was for men only).
• The first Reichstag election in March 1871 made the National Liberals by far the largest party, with 30 percent of the vote. The Reichstag passed the constitution on 14 April 1871 with only seven votes against.
• The date of the proclamation, 18 January, became a day of celebration in the Empire; it was also the anniversary of the coronation of the first King in Prussia in 1701.

Sources: documentArchiv.de: Verfassung des Deutschen Reichs (16 April 1871); Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Chronik 1871; Britannica: Franco-German War; Wikipedia: Proclamation of the German Empire

The Kulturkampf (c. 1871 to 1887; Prussian May Laws 1873)

Bismarck, a Protestant, distrusted the loyalty of Germany's Catholics, who were represented by the Centre Party, and was alarmed by the Vatican Council's 1870 proclamation of papal infallibility. From July 1871, with liberal support, he abolished the Catholic department in the Prussian culture ministry, made it a crime for clergy to use the pulpit for political agitation (the Kanzelparagraph of December 1871), put church schools under state inspection and, in 1872, banned the Jesuit order. The Prussian May Laws of 1873 put the training and appointment of priests under state control. Catholics resisted and the Centre Party doubled its vote in the 1874 Reichstag election, so Bismarck retreated after a new pope, Leo XIII, was elected in 1878.

• The physician and liberal politician Rudolf Virchow coined the word Kulturkampf, 'struggle for culture', in a speech to the Prussian parliament on 17 January 1873.
• On 14 May 1872 Bismarck told the Reichstag that 'we will not go to Canossa', recalling Emperor Henry IV's penance before the pope in 1077.
• The Jesuit law of 4 July 1872 banned all houses of the order in Germany and stayed in force until 1917. Leo XIII declared the conflict over in 1887, but state control of schools and civil records remained.

Sources: Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Chronik 1872; Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Chronik 1873; Britannica: Kulturkampf; Wikipedia: Kulturkampf

Robert Koch (Anthrax work published 1876; lived 11 December 1843 to 27 May 1910)

Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch, Physician and bacteriologist · Wollstein and Berlin

Koch, a mining official's son from Clausthal in the Harz, studied medicine at Göttingen and became a district doctor at Wollstein in the Prussian province of Posen. In his four-room home, with a microscope his wife had given him, he showed that a specific microbe caused anthrax, and the botanist Ferdinand Cohn published the work in 1876. Called to the Imperial Health Office in Berlin in 1880, he developed ways of growing pure bacterial cultures on solid media, and on 24 March 1882 announced the discovery of the tuberculosis bacterium. In 1883, leading a German commission to Egypt and India, he identified the cholera germ.

How they rose: His proof that a specific organism causes a specific disease overturned the old idea that 'miasmas' in the air were to blame, according to the DHM. The rules for linking a pathogen to a disease became known as Koch's postulates.

How they died: His tuberculin, announced in 1890 as a cure for tuberculosis, did not work as he had hoped, though it proved useful for diagnosis. He won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1905, suffered a heart attack in April 1910 and died at Baden-Baden on 27 May 1910, aged 66.

• When Koch made his discovery, tuberculosis caused every second death among Germans aged 15 to 40, according to the DHM.
• The World Health Organization has marked 24 March, the day of his announcement in 1882, as World Tuberculosis Day since 1982.
• The Institute for Infectious Diseases he headed in Berlin from 1891, where Paul Ehrlich and Emil von Behring worked, was renamed the Robert Koch Institute after his death.

Sources: NobelPrize.org: Robert Koch, Biographical (from Nobel Lectures, 1967); Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Biografie Robert Koch; Britannica: Robert Koch; Wikipedia: Robert Koch

Bismarck's social insurance laws (Health insurance 15 June 1883; accident insurance 1884; old-age and invalidity insurance 1889)

Bismarck wanted to win workers away from the Social Democrats, whose party he had banned under the Anti-Socialist Law of 1878. An imperial message read to the Reichstag on 17 November 1881 announced the programme, which he called practical Christianity. The Reichstag passed health insurance for workers on 15 June 1883, accident insurance in 1884 and, on 24 May 1889, invalidity and old-age insurance. Britannica calls these the first compulsory social insurance programmes on a national scale, and Austria and Hungary soon copied them. The old-age and invalidity law came into force on 22 June 1889.

• Under the 1883 law employers paid one third of the contributions and workers the rest, into local sickness funds that guaranteed medical treatment and sick pay for up to 13 weeks.
• The government had to put three drafts before the Reichstag before the accident insurance bill passed in 1884.
• The 1889 pension was paid from age 70 and, unlike the first two schemes, covered farm workers, artisans and servants as well as industrial workers from the start.

Sources: Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Chronik 1883; Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Chronik 1889; Britannica: Social insurance; Wikipedia: State Socialism (Germany)

Carl and Bertha Benz and the first automobile (Patent dated 29 January 1886; Bertha Benz's drive 5 August 1888)

Carl Benz, a Karlsruhe-trained engineer, co-founded Benz & Cie. in Mannheim in 1883 to build stationary gas engines and then turned to a self-propelled vehicle. His three-wheeled Patent-Motorwagen, powered by a petrol engine, was built in 1885 and patented in Germany with a patent dated 29 January 1886. The DHM calls it the first automobile in the world. On 5 August 1888 his wife Bertha, who had invested in the business, took the car with their teenage sons Eugen and Richard from Mannheim to her home town of Pforzheim, about 105 to 106 km by the figures Wikipedia gives, without telling her husband or the authorities. The journey made the car famous and brought the firm its first sales.

• There were no filling stations: Bertha Benz bought ligroin, a petroleum solvent, at the town pharmacy in Wiesloch, cleared a blocked fuel line with a hat pin and had a cobbler fit leather to the wooden brakes.
• Bertha Ringer, born in Pforzheim in 1849, could not go to university because women were not then admitted; in 2008 her route was signposted as the Bertha Benz Memorial Route.
• Benz & Cie. merged with its rival Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft in 1926 to form Daimler-Benz, maker of Mercedes-Benz cars. Carl Benz died at Ladenburg near Mannheim on 4 April 1929.

Sources: Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Chronik 1886; Britannica: Karl Benz; Wikipedia: Bertha Benz

Wilhelm II (15 June 1888 to 9 November 1918 (abdication announced by Max von Baden; formal abdication signed 28 November 1918))

Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert, German Emperor and King of Prussia, Hohenzollern · German Empire

Wilhelm, born in Berlin on 27 January 1859, was the eldest son of the future Friedrich III and Victoria, Princess Royal, daughter of Queen Victoria. A difficult breech birth damaged the nerves of his left arm, which remained about 15 cm shorter than his right. He became emperor at 29 in June 1888 when his father died after a reign of 99 days, and in 1890 forced Bismarck out. From 1898 he backed Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz's battle fleet, which strained relations with Britain, and outbursts such as the Kruger telegram of 1896, the 'Hun speech' of 1900 and the Daily Telegraph interview of 1908 caused storms at home and abroad. In July 1914 he promised Austria-Hungary unconditional support after the assassination in Sarajevo.

How they came to power: His grandfather Wilhelm I died on 9 March 1888, and his father Friedrich III died on 15 June 1888, making Wilhelm emperor and King of Prussia.

How it ended: From 1916 the army command under Hindenburg and Ludendorff increasingly sidelined him. On 9 November 1918 Chancellor Max von Baden announced his abdication on his own authority, and the next day Wilhelm crossed into the Netherlands, which refused Allied demands to hand him over. He died at Doorn on 4 June 1941 and was buried there.

• In the 1900 'Hun speech' to troops leaving to put down the Boxer rising in China, he called for merciless reprisals, according to the DHM.
• In exile he married Hermine Reuss in 1922 after the death of his first wife Auguste Viktoria, received Hermann Göring at Doorn in the hope of a restored monarchy, and sent Hitler a telegram of congratulation on the capture of Paris in 1940.
• Through his mother he was the eldest of Queen Victoria's 42 grandchildren, making him a first cousin of Britain's George V.

Sources: Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Biografie Wilhelm II.; Britannica: Wilhelm II; Wikipedia: Wilhelm II

The Herero and Nama genocide (Herero rising 12 January 1904; Waterberg 11 August 1904; extermination order 2 October 1904; fighting until 1908)

On 12 January 1904 the Herero of German South West Africa, today Namibia, rose under Samuel Maharero against the curbing of their traditional way of life and political and social discrimination, killing 123 German settlers on the first day according to the DHM (Wikipedia cites 123 or as many as 160 German dead). After the Battle of Waterberg in August 1904, General Lothar von Trotha's troops drove the Herero into the Omaheke desert, where many died of thirst, and on 2 October he proclaimed what the DHM calls the merciless extermination of the Herero: any Herero found in the territory, armed or not, was to be shot, and women and children driven back or fired on (a supplementary instruction said to fire over their heads). The order was withdrawn in December, but the deaths went on. The Nama rose in turn in 1904 and fought until 1908. Survivors of both peoples were put in concentration camps, where about half of those captured died of disease, hunger and forced labour.

• Death tolls are estimates. Wikipedia's summary of the research gives 40,000 to 80,000 Herero dead, about 80 percent of the people, and about 10,000 Nama, half their population; the DHM says only 12,000 of a former 80,000 Herero were still alive in 1905.
• Protests in Germany against the shooting of unarmed people, women and children led Wilhelm II to object, and Trotha's order was withdrawn in favour of imprisonment in camps.
• On 28 May 2021 Foreign Minister Heiko Maas announced that Germany would officially call the events a genocide, ask Namibia and the descendants for forgiveness and fund a 1.1 billion euro programme, while stating that no legal claims for compensation could be derived from it.

Sources: Federal Foreign Office: Foreign Minister Maas on the conclusion of negotiations with Namibia (28 May 2021); Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Chronik 1904; Wikipedia: Herero and Nama genocide

The First World War (1 August 1914 (declaration of war on Russia) to 11 November 1918 (armistice))

After the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914, Germany backed Austria-Hungary, declared war on Russia on 1 August and on France on 3 August, and marched into Belgium, bringing Britain into the war. On 4 August even the Social Democrats voted for war credits in the Reichstag. In the west the German advance stalled in September 1914 and the war turned into trench warfare, with battles of attrition such as Verdun in 1916. At home the British naval blockade and shortages brought hunger, food riots from 1915 and the 'turnip winter' of 1916 to 1917. Unrestricted submarine warfare from 1 February 1917 helped bring the United States into the war on 6 April 1917, and after the failed spring offensives of 1918 the army command itself demanded an armistice, which was signed on 11 November 1918.

• Casualty figures vary by source. The 1924 US War Department figures cited by Britannica give Germany 11 million mobilised and 1,773,700 dead; the DHM puts German mobilisation at about 13.2 million, and worldwide deaths at about nine million soldiers and more than six million civilians.
• On 4 December 1916 all swede turnips (Kohlrüben) in the Reich were requisitioned to feed the population, giving the 'Kohlrübenwinter' its name.
• The armistice required Germany to evacuate occupied France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Alsace-Lorraine within 15 days and to hand over its submarines and large quantities of weapons.

Sources: Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Erster Weltkrieg; Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Chronik 1914; Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Chronik 1918; Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Chronik 1916; Britannica: World War I, Killed, wounded, and missing

The November Revolution and the Weimar Constitution (Fleet mutiny at Wilhelmshaven from 28 October 1918 (DHM); Kiel sailors' revolt 3 to 4 November; republic proclaimed 9 November 1918; constitution adopted 31 July and signed 11 August 1919)

The revolution began at the end of October 1918 when sailors at Kiel and Wilhelmshaven refused orders to sail against the British fleet; by 4 November workers' and soldiers' councils had taken over Kiel and the revolt spread across Germany. On 9 November Chancellor Max von Baden announced the Kaiser's abdication and handed his office to the Social Democrat Friedrich Ebert, and the SPD's Philipp Scheidemann proclaimed a republic from a window of the Reichstag. On 19 January 1919, with women voting for the first time, 83 percent of those eligible elected a National Assembly, which met in Weimar because Berlin was unsafe. It adopted a constitution on 31 July 1919 by 262 votes to 75, and Ebert signed it on 11 August.

• Article 1 declared the German Reich a republic in which state power comes from the people, and Article 22 gave the vote to men and women over twenty under proportional representation.
• On 15 January 1919 the Spartacist leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were captured and murdered in Berlin by members of the Guard Cavalry Rifle Division; the later trials of their killers were not seriously pursued, according to the DHM.
• The Reich president was elected for seven years and could issue emergency decrees under Article 48 to restore public security, a power later used to bypass parliament.

Sources: documentArchiv.de: Verfassung des Deutschen Reichs (Weimarer Reichsverfassung), 11 August 1919; Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Chronik 1918; Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Chronik 1919; Wikipedia: German revolution of 1918–1919

Friedrich Ebert (Chancellor 9 November 1918; Reich President 11 February 1919 to 28 February 1925)

Friedrich Ebert, Reich President · Weimar Republic

Ebert was born in Heidelberg on 4 February 1871, the son of a master tailor, trained as a saddler and joined the SPD and the trade unions. He settled in Bremen, where he ran a pub that became a hub of union activity and sat in the city parliament, then moved to Berlin as secretary of the party executive. He became co-chairman of the SPD with Hugo Haase in 1913 after August Bebel's death, and in 1914 supported the war credits, a dispute that split the party in 1917. On 11 February 1919 the National Assembly in Weimar elected him the first Reich President. To contain the revolution he allied with the army command under General Wilhelm Groener and backed Gustav Noske's use of force against strikes and uprisings, which earned him lasting hostility on the left.

How they came to power: On 9 November 1918 Max von Baden handed him the chancellorship as leader of the largest party in the Reichstag, and the next day he became co-chairman, with Haase of the USPD, of the revolutionary Council of People's Deputies, where he pressed for early elections to a national assembly.

How it ended: Nationalist opponents attacked him relentlessly. In December 1924 a Magdeburg court trying a libel case found that, in a narrow legal sense, his part in the January 1918 strike had amounted to treason. He died in Berlin on 28 February 1925 of appendicitis that had been left too long, aged 54, and was buried in Heidelberg.

• During the January 1918 strikes in Berlin he joined the strike leadership to bring the stoppage to a quick end, and was abused by the left as a traitor to the workers and by the right as a traitor to the country.
• In October 1922 the Reichstag extended his term with a constitution-amending majority to 23 June 1925, so he was never elected by popular vote.
• As a young socialist on the police black list he moved constantly between towns such as Kassel, Braunschweig and Bremen, setting up local branches of the saddlers' union.

Sources: Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Biografie Friedrich Ebert; Britannica: Friedrich Ebert; Wikipedia: Friedrich Ebert

The Bauhaus (Founded in Weimar 1 April 1919; Dessau 1925; Berlin 1932; closed 1933)

The architect Walter Gropius merged Weimar's academy of fine art and its school of arts and crafts into the Staatliches Bauhaus, 'house of building', in 1919. Students took a preliminary course, taught at different times by Johannes Itten, Josef Albers and László Moholy-Nagy, then trained in workshops for carpentry, metal, pottery, weaving, typography and other crafts, each led by an artist and a craftsman. Its teachers included Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Lyonel Feininger, Oskar Schlemmer and the weaver Gunta Stölzl. Under pressure from conservatives in Thuringia it moved in 1925 to Dessau, where Gropius designed its school building and masters' houses. Its directors after Gropius were Hannes Meyer from 1928 and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe from 1930.

• After the Nazis took over the government of Anhalt the Dessau school was closed in 1932; Mies van der Rohe moved it to Berlin, where it closed in 1933 under pressure from the new regime.
• The Nazis denounced the Bauhaus as a 'church of Marxism'. Gropius left Germany for England and then became professor of architecture at Harvard.
• In 1996 four Bauhaus sites in Germany were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List, with two more in 2017.

Sources: Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Biografie Walter Gropius; Britannica: Bauhaus; Wikipedia: Bauhaus

Albert Einstein (Relativity and light-quantum papers 1905; general relativity 1915; eclipse results confirming it announced 6 November 1919 (timeline year 1919 used to place him in this era); in Berlin 1914 to 1933; lived 14 March 1879 to 18 April 1955)

Albert Einstein, Physicist · Bern, Berlin and Princeton

Einstein was born in Ulm on 14 March 1879 and grew up in Munich, then studied in Zurich to become a physics and mathematics teacher. Unable to find a teaching post, he took a job at the Swiss patent office in Bern, and in 1905 published four groundbreaking papers, including the special theory of relativity and the light-quantum hypothesis. In 1914 he moved to Berlin, where the Prussian Academy of Sciences gave him a research post without teaching duties, and in November 1915 he formulated the general theory of relativity. Observations of the solar eclipse of 29 May 1919, presented in London on 6 November 1919, matched his predictions and made him world-famous.

How they rose: He was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics, presented in 1922, for his services to theoretical physics and especially his law of the photoelectric effect. Because of his work and his Jewish origins he faced growing hostility in Germany, and after the murder of Walther Rathenau in 1922 he left the country for a time out of fear of antisemitic attacks.

How they died: When Hitler came to power on 30 January 1933 Einstein was in Pasadena; he protested against the regime and resigned from the Prussian Academy before it could expel him. He settled at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, became a US citizen in 1940 and died in Princeton on 18 April 1955.

• On 2 August 1939, despite his pacifism, he signed an appeal to the American president urging work on an atomic bomb, fearing German nuclear research.
• The Einstein Tower, an observatory by the architect Erich Mendelsohn, was finished in Potsdam in the early 1920s and officially opened on 6 December 1924, to test the theory of relativity.
• After the Second World War he was offered the presidency of Israel and declined it.

Sources: NobelPrize.org: Albert Einstein, Biographical; Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Biografie Albert Einstein; Britannica: Albert Einstein; Wikipedia: Albert Einstein

The Ruhr occupation and hyperinflation (1922 to November 1923; Ruhr occupied 11 January 1923; Rentenmark from mid-November 1923)

Germany had abandoned its gold-backed currency during the war, and after 1918 it owed reparations in gold-backed currency under the Treaty of Versailles; the government chose to print money to pay its debts. On 11 January 1923 French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr to secure coal deliveries, and on 13 January Chancellor Wilhelm Cuno proclaimed passive resistance. The dollar, worth 7,525 marks on 3 January 1923, passed one million marks on 30 July and stood at 53 million in New York on 7 September; by November one dollar was worth about 4.2 trillion marks. On 26 September a loaf of bread in Berlin cost 10.37 million marks. The new Rentenmark, issued from the middle of November 1923 at one Rentenmark for one trillion paper marks, ended the inflation.

• On 20 November 1923 an exchange rate of 4.2 Rentenmarks to the dollar was fixed, the same rate as the paper mark had stood at against the dollar in 1914.
• The crisis gave extremists their chance: on 8 and 9 November 1923 Hitler tried to seize power in Munich's Bürgerbräukeller, and the putsch was put down by the Bavarian police at the Feldherrnhalle.
• Savings were wiped out; Britannica notes that farmers refused to sell food for worthless money and food riots broke out.

Sources: Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Chronik 1923; Britannica: Hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic; Wikipedia: Hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic

1933: from democracy to dictatorship (30 January 1933 (Hitler appointed) to 2 August 1934 (death of Hindenburg))

President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor of a nationalist-conservative cabinet on 30 January 1933, with only two other Nazis in it. After the Reichstag building burned on 27 February, the Reichstag Fire Decree of 28 February suspended basic rights, and mass arrests followed, aimed above all at Communists and Jews. Even amid terror the NSDAP won only 43.9 percent in the election of 5 March. On 23 March the Reichstag, meeting in the Kroll Opera House, passed the Enabling Act, letting the government make laws without parliament; only the Social Democrats voted against, after their leader Otto Wels spoke against it. The first concentration camps opened, Dachau among them in March (Sachsenhausen followed only in July 1936), trade unions were smashed on 2 May, books were burned on 10 May, and on 14 July 1933 new parties were banned.

• The vote was 444 to 94 according to the DHM's chapter on the Enabling Act and Wikipedia; the DHM's 1933 year chronicle gives 441 votes in favour. The mandates of the 81 Communist deputies had been annulled on 8 March under the Reichstag Fire Decree, so they could not vote, and 26 Social Democrats were absent, many of them arrested or in hiding.
• The Enabling Act was officially called the 'Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich'. Its text let laws passed by the cabinet depart from the constitution, and it was due to lapse on 1 April 1937 or if the government was replaced.
• On 1 April 1933 the regime organised a boycott of Jewish shops, doctors and lawyers, with SA men attacking Jews and anyone who ignored the boycott.

Sources: documentArchiv.de: Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich (Ermächtigungsgesetz), 24 March 1933; Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Chronik 1933; US Holocaust Memorial Museum: Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Rise to Power, 1918–1933; Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Das "Ermächtigungsgesetz" von 1933; Wikipedia: Enabling Act of 1933

Adolf Hitler (Chancellor 30 January 1933; head of state from 2 August 1934; died 30 April 1945)

Adolf Hitler, 'Führer and Reich Chancellor', Nazi dictator · Third Reich

Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in Braunau am Inn in Austria, the son of a customs official. Rejected twice by the Vienna art academy, he drifted into poverty, then served in a Bavarian regiment in the First World War. In 1919 he joined the small German Workers' Party in Munich, which became the NSDAP, and by July 1921 he led it with dictatorial powers. As dictator from 1933 he destroyed parliamentary democracy, rearmed Germany, annexed Austria in March 1938 and the Sudetenland after the Munich Agreement, and began the Second World War by attacking Poland on 1 September 1939. Antisemitism was central to his politics from the start: in his first known political writing, in 1919, he called for a government that would remove Jews from Germany entirely, and his regime carried out the Holocaust.

How they came to power: After his Munich putsch failed in November 1923 he was sentenced to five years' fortress detention, was released early from Landsberg fortress in December 1924, having written the first volume of Mein Kampf there, and then sought power through elections. The Depression turned the NSDAP into the largest party in July 1932 with 37 percent, and President Hindenburg appointed him chancellor on 30 January 1933.

How it ended: When Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934 Hitler merged the offices of president and chancellor and had the army swear an oath to him personally. With Soviet troops in Berlin, he married Eva Braun on 29 April 1945, and the next day both killed themselves in the bunker under the Reich Chancellery.

• Hitler gave up Austrian citizenship in 1925 and was stateless until he was granted German citizenship in February 1932, shortly before he ran against Hindenburg for president.
• On 30 January 1939 he threatened in the Reichstag that a new world war would end in the destruction of the Jews of Europe.
• He survived several attempts on his life, including Georg Elser's bomb in the Munich Bürgerbräukeller on 8 November 1939 and Claus von Stauffenberg's bomb on 20 July 1944.

Sources: US Holocaust Memorial Museum: Adolf Hitler, Early Years, 1889–1921; US Holocaust Memorial Museum: Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Rise to Power, 1918–1933; Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Biografie Adolf Hitler; Britannica: Adolf Hitler

The Holocaust (1933 to 1945; systematic mass murder from 1941; Wannsee Conference 20 January 1942)

The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators. Persecution began in 1933 with the boycott of Jewish businesses and grew through the Nuremberg Laws of 1935. From the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, mobile killing units shot Jews in more than 1,500 towns and villages; at Babi Yar near Kiev some 33,000 Jews were murdered in September 1941. From September 1941 German Jews had to wear a yellow star, and in October their deportation to the east began. On 20 January 1942 fifteen senior officials met at a villa at Wannsee in Berlin, under SS General Reinhard Heydrich, to coordinate the 'Final Solution'. About 2.7 million Jews were murdered in the killing centres of Chełmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka and Auschwitz-Birkenau.

• Six million is the figure used by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem. Yad Vashem notes that research estimates range from 5.1 million (Raul Hilberg) to 5.95 million (Jacob Leschinsky), the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (Gutman and Rozett) 5.59 to 5.86 million, and a study led by Wolfgang Benz 5.29 to 6 million.
• The Nazis also murdered other groups: the USHMM estimates at least 250,000 and possibly 500,000 Roma and Sinti, 250,000 to 300,000 people with disabilities in institutions, around 1.8 million non-Jewish Poles and around 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of war.
• Anne Frank, born in Frankfurt am Main on 12 June 1929, fled with her family to Amsterdam, hid for two years and was discovered on 4 August 1944; she and her sister Margot died at Bergen-Belsen in February or March 1945.

Sources: US Holocaust Memorial Museum: How Many People did the Nazis Murder?; US Holocaust Memorial Museum: Wannsee Conference and the 'Final Solution'; Yad Vashem: The Holocaust Resource Center, FAQ; US Holocaust Memorial Museum: Anne Frank Biography; Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Chronik 1941

The Nuremberg Laws and Kristallnacht (Nuremberg Laws 15 September 1935; November Pogrom 9 to 10 November 1938)

About 500,000 Jews lived in Germany in 1933, less than one percent of the population. On 15 September 1935 the Reichstag, summoned to the Nazi party rally in Nuremberg, passed the Reich Citizenship Law, under which Jews could no longer be full citizens, and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, which banned marriage and sexual relations between Jews and non-Jewish Germans. Under the laws' definitions anyone with three or four Jewish grandparents counted as a Jew. After 17-year-old Herschel Grynszpan, whose parents had just been deported from Germany to Poland, shot the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris, Hitler and Goebbels unleashed a nationwide pogrom on the night of 9 to 10 November 1938. Nazis burned more than 1,400 synagogues, wrecked thousands of Jewish shops and homes and killed Jewish people, and the police sent about 26,000 Jewish men to concentration camps.

• On 27 to 29 October 1938 German authorities had rounded up and deported more than 17,000 Jews with Polish citizenship, many of them born in Germany; Grynszpan's parents were among them.
• Hundreds of Jewish people died during the pogrom and its aftermath, including by suicide, according to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
• Afterwards the regime made the Jewish community pay a collective 'atonement payment' of one billion Reichsmarks and rapidly issued many new anti-Jewish laws and decrees.

Sources: documentArchiv.de: Gesetz zum Schutze des deutschen Blutes und der deutschen Ehre, 15 September 1935; US Holocaust Memorial Museum: The Nuremberg Race Laws; US Holocaust Memorial Museum: Kristallnacht; Wikipedia: The Holocaust

The Second World War (1 September 1939 (invasion of Poland) to 8 May 1945 (unconditional surrender))

A week after the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 23 August 1939, whose secret protocol divided eastern Europe, Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, and Britain and France declared war. Germany overran Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries and France in 1940. On 22 June 1941 it attacked the Soviet Union without a declaration of war, in what Hitler had told his generals would be a war of annihilation, and SS and police units followed the troops to murder Jews, Communist officials, Sinti and Roma and prisoners of war. The German Sixth Army surrendered at Stalingrad between 31 January and 2 February 1943. Allied armies met at Torgau on the Elbe on 25 April 1945, fighting in Berlin ended on 2 May, and Germany surrendered unconditionally on 7 and 8 May 1945.

• Death tolls are estimates. Britannica's table gives Germany about 3.5 million military dead and 780,000 civilian deaths, not counting an estimated 2,384,000 German deaths in 1944 to 1946 from the Soviet invasion and the expulsions from the eastern provinces. The DHM gives more than 50 million dead worldwide.
• The US Holocaust Memorial Museum counts around 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of war among the non-Jewish victims murdered by Nazi Germany and its allies.
• On 20 July 1944 a bomb planted by Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg in a briefing room at the 'Wolfsschanze' headquarters only lightly injured Hitler; the coup attempt in Berlin failed and Stauffenberg and three other officers were shot that night.

Sources: US Holocaust Memorial Museum: World War II in Europe; Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Der Zweite Weltkrieg; Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Chronik 1944; Britannica: World War II, Costs of the war; US Holocaust Memorial Museum: How Many People did the Nazis Murder?

Sophie Scholl and the White Rose (White Rose leaflets 1942 to 1943; Sophie Scholl lived 9 May 1921 to 22 February 1943)

Sophia Magdalena Scholl, Resistance · Munich

Sophie Scholl was born in Forchtenberg in Württemberg, the daughter of a liberal mayor, and grew up in Ulm. Like her brother Hans she first joined the Nazi youth movement, rising to group leader in the League of German Girls, but after the Gestapo questioned her in 1937 over Hans's youth group activities she turned firmly against the regime. In May 1942 she began studying biology and philosophy in Munich, where Hans, a medical student, had formed the White Rose with Christoph Probst, Willi Graf and Alexander Schmorell, guided by the philosophy professor Kurt Huber. Their leaflets condemned the regime's crimes, including the mass murder of Polish Jews, and were mailed and distributed in cities including Cologne, Stuttgart, Berlin and Vienna.

How they rose: She first helped produce a leaflet, the fifth, in January 1943. After the defeat at Stalingrad the group issued a sixth, drafted by Huber, calling on students to rise against the regime.

How they died: On 18 February 1943 Hans and Sophie scattered about 1,500 copies in the main university building; a janitor saw them and held them for the Gestapo. On 22 February the People's Court under Roland Freisler sentenced them and Christoph Probst to death, and they were executed the same day at Munich-Stadelheim prison. Huber and other members were later executed too.

• The sixth leaflet was smuggled to Britain, reprinted and dropped over Germany by British aircraft, and its content was broadcast by the BBC.
• Before her studies she trained as a kindergarten teacher, and in the summer of 1942 she was sent for four weeks of war service in a munitions factory in Ulm.
• The US Holocaust Memorial Museum describes the White Rose as one of the few German groups that spoke out against Nazi genocidal policies.

Sources: Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand: Biography of Sophie Scholl; Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Biografie Sophie Scholl; US Holocaust Memorial Museum: The White Rose Opposition Movement; Wikipedia: Sophie Scholl

1945: surrender, occupation and Potsdam (Surrender signed at Reims 7 May and in Berlin 8 May 1945; Potsdam Conference 17 July to 2 August 1945)

On 7 May 1945 at Reims, General Alfred Jodl signed the unconditional surrender of all German forces, and a second, military surrender document dated 8 May was signed in Berlin, ordering all German forces to cease fighting at 23:01. On 5 June the Berlin Declaration announced that the four victorious powers had assumed supreme authority in Germany; the country within its 1937 borders was divided into four occupation zones and Berlin into four sectors, under an Allied Control Council. At Potsdam from 17 July to 2 August, Truman, Churchill (replaced by Attlee from 28 July) and Stalin agreed on demilitarisation, reparations and the prosecution of war criminals, put German lands east of the Oder and Neisse under Polish administration and approved the transfer of German populations. Millions of refugees, people bombed out of their homes and war orphans had to find a new home in a devastated country.

• The Oder-Neisse line was fixed at Potsdam only as Poland's provisional western border; it was finally confirmed in the German-Polish Border Treaty of 1990.
• On 20 November 1945 the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg began the trial of 24 major war criminals.
• Soviet and American troops first met inside Germany at Torgau on the Elbe on 25 April 1945, and on 2 May the German troops in Berlin surrendered.

Sources: documentArchiv.de: Militärische Kapitulationsurkunde, 8 May 1945; Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Chronik 1945; Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Der Zweite Weltkrieg; Wikipedia: Potsdam Agreement

1949: the Basic Law and two German states (Berlin blockade 24 June 1948 to 12 May 1949; Basic Law in force 23 May 1949; GDR founded 7 October 1949)

After a currency reform introduced the Deutsche Mark in the western zones on 20 June 1948, the Soviet military administration blockaded the western sectors of Berlin by land and water from 24 June. American and British aircraft supplied the city for almost eleven months, until the Soviet Union lifted the blockade on 12 May 1949. Meanwhile a Parliamentary Council, chaired by Konrad Adenauer, met in Bonn from 1 September 1948 and adopted the Basic Law on 8 May 1949; it came into force on 23 May, founding the Federal Republic of Germany. After the first Bundestag election on 14 August, Theodor Heuss became federal president and Adenauer chancellor. On 7 October 1949 the German Democratic Republic was founded in the Soviet zone, with the SED leader Wilhelm Pieck as president.

• The Basic Law opens with the words that human dignity shall be inviolable, declares that men and women have equal rights, and states plainly that the death penalty is abolished.
• The American and British air forces landed in Berlin more than 200,000 times during the airlift (the HdG counts over 277,000 relief flights by the end of the airlift on 30 September 1949), delivering about 2.3 million tons of food, fuel and other necessities in all, an average of about 5,000 tons a day, with a peak of about 13,000 tons at Easter 1949.
• In the GDR a strike by about 80 building workers on East Berlin's Stalinallee on 16 June 1953 grew the next day into an uprising in 72 towns and many villages, which Soviet troops and East German police put down by force.

Sources: Bundesministerium der Justiz, gesetze-im-internet.de: Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland; Haus der Geschichte, LeMO: Jahreschronik 1948; Haus der Geschichte, LeMO: Jahreschronik 1949; Haus der Geschichte, LeMO: Jahreschronik 1953; Wikipedia: Berlin Blockade

Konrad Adenauer (15 September 1949 to 15 October 1963)

Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer, Chancellor · Federal Republic (CDU)

Adenauer was born in Cologne on 5 January 1876, studied law and as a Centre Party politician was lord mayor of Cologne from 1917 to 1933. The Nazis removed him from office, and he was arrested for periods during the dictatorship. After the war he became the first chairman of the new CDU in the British zone and president of the Parliamentary Council that wrote the Basic Law. As chancellor he steered the Federal Republic into the western alliance: it joined NATO in May 1955 and founded the Bundeswehr the same year, and in 1957 it signed the Treaties of Rome founding the European Economic Community. With his economics minister Ludwig Erhard he presided over the social market economy and the post-war boom.

How they came to power: In February 1933 he refused to receive Hitler in Cologne and had swastika flags removed from a Rhine bridge; in March he was deposed and spent a year sheltering in the abbey of Maria Laach. On 15 September 1949 the first Bundestag elected him chancellor by a majority of a single vote.

How it ended: After the CDU/CSU lost its absolute majority in 1961, the FDP made his early departure a condition of coalition, and he resigned on 15 October 1963 in favour of Ludwig Erhard. He died at his home in Rhöndorf on 19 April 1967 and was buried there after a state ceremony and a requiem in Cologne Cathedral.

• On 10 September 1952 he signed the Luxembourg Agreement with Israel, under which West Germany paid restitution for Nazi crimes.
• On a trip to Moscow in September 1955 he established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, which led to the return of many German prisoners of war.
• In January 1963 he signed the Élysée Treaty with France, the culmination of his lasting reconciliation with Germany's old enemy.

Sources: Haus der Geschichte, LeMO: Biografie Konrad Adenauer; Britannica: Konrad Adenauer; Wikipedia: Konrad Adenauer

The Berlin Wall (13 August 1961 to 9 November 1989)

By 1961 about 3.5 million East Germans, some 20 percent of the population, had left the GDR, many through the open sector border in Berlin. On 15 June 1961 the SED leader Walter Ulbricht told an international press conference that nobody intended to build a wall. Early on 13 August 1961 armed East German police sealed off East Berlin, and the building of the Wall began. It grew into a fortified border of about 155 km around West Berlin, with guard towers and a wide 'death strip', and soldiers had orders to shoot anyone trying to flee. Wikipedia cites estimates that more than 100,000 people tried to escape in these years and more than 5,000 got over the Wall.

• The research project of the Berlin Wall Foundation and the Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam counts at least 140 dead at the Wall between 1961 and 1989: 101 people trying to flee, 30 people from East and West with no intention of escaping and one Soviet soldier, and 8 GDR border guards; 16 further cases remain unclear, and at least 251 travellers, mostly older people, died during or after checks at Berlin crossing points. Earlier official counts ranged from 78 to 122, while the Arbeitsgemeinschaft 13. August gave more than 200.
• Checkpoint Charlie, at the corner of Friedrichstrasse and Zimmerstrasse, was the best-known crossing point and was reserved for Allied personnel and foreigners.
• The last-generation wall, begun in 1975, was built from about 45,000 separate sections of reinforced concrete.

Sources: Berlin Wall Foundation (Stiftung Berliner Mauer); Hans-Hermann Hertle and Maria Nooke (ZZF Potsdam and Stiftung Berliner Mauer): Die Todesopfer an der Berliner Mauer 1961-1989 (2017); Berlin Wall Memorial: Bernauer Strasse; Haus der Geschichte, LeMO: Jahreschronik 1961; Wikipedia: Berlin Wall

Willy Brandt (Chancellor 1969 to 1974 (resigned 6 May 1974); lived 18 December 1913 to 8 October 1992)

Willy Brandt (born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm), Chancellor · Federal Republic (SPD)

Brandt was born Herbert Frahm in Lübeck in 1913 to a shop assistant and a father he never knew, and joined the socialist youth movement. In 1933 he fled Nazi persecution via Denmark to Norway, taking the name Willy Brandt; when Germany occupied Norway in 1940 he was briefly captured without being recognised as a German and escaped to Sweden. Back in Berlin he became governing mayor of West Berlin from 1957 to 1966, through the building of the Wall, then foreign minister in the grand coalition. In 1969 he became the first Social Democratic chancellor since 1930, heading an SPD-FDP coalition. His Ostpolitik sought reconciliation with the Soviet bloc: treaties with Moscow (12 August 1970) and Warsaw (7 December 1970) and the Basic Treaty with the GDR in December 1972.

How they came to power: After the 1969 election the SPD and FDP formed a social-liberal coalition with Brandt as chancellor and Walter Scheel as vice chancellor and foreign minister. In his first government statement he spoke of two German states that were not foreign countries to each other.

How it ended: He resigned on 6 May 1974 after his close aide Günter Guillaume was exposed as an East German spy. He remained SPD chairman until 1987 and died at Unkel near Bonn on 8 October 1992.

• On 7 December 1970, after signing the Warsaw Treaty, he knelt in silence before the memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, a gesture of atonement for German crimes.
• He received the Nobel Peace Prize on 10 December 1971 for his policy of détente and Ostpolitik.
• On 19 March 1970 he met the GDR premier Willi Stoph in Erfurt for the first summit between the two German states, and crowds there greeted him enthusiastically.

Sources: NobelPrize.org: Willy Brandt, Biographical; Haus der Geschichte, LeMO: Biografie Willy Brandt; Haus der Geschichte, LeMO: Jahreschronik 1970; Britannica: Willy Brandt; Wikipedia: Willy Brandt

Helmut Kohl (1 October 1982 to 27 October 1998; lived 3 April 1930 to 16 June 2017)

Helmut Josef Michael Kohl, Chancellor · Federal Republic (CDU)

Kohl was born in Ludwigshafen to a Catholic family, joined the CDU in 1946 at 16 and took a doctorate in history at Heidelberg in 1958. He was minister president of Rhineland-Palatinate from 1969 to 1976 and CDU chairman from 1973 to 1998. On 28 November 1989 he presented a ten-point programme for overcoming the division of Germany and Europe, and he led the Federal Republic through reunification in 1990, becoming the first chancellor of united Germany. With French president François Mitterrand he was an architect of the Maastricht Treaty, which created the European Union and the euro.

How they came to power: When the FDP left Helmut Schmidt's SPD-led coalition in 1982, the Bundestag elected Kohl chancellor on 1 October 1982 through a constructive vote of no confidence, forming a coalition with the FDP.

How it ended: He lost the 1998 federal election to Gerhard Schröder of the SPD, whose red-green government replaced his on 27 October 1998. In December 1999 he admitted on television to accepting 1.5 to 2 million marks in donations between 1993 and 1998 that had not been declared as the party law required, and on 18 January 2000 he gave up his honorary CDU chairmanship. He died on 16 June 2017 and was honoured with the first European act of state, in Strasbourg.

• At Verdun on 22 September 1984 Kohl and Mitterrand stood hand in hand for minutes during their national anthems to commemorate the dead of both world wars.
• His tenure of 16 years is the longest in post-war German history, ten days longer than Angela Merkel's.
• He and Mitterrand jointly received the Charlemagne Prize of the city of Aachen in 1988 for their work for European unity.

Sources: Haus der Geschichte, LeMO: Biografie Helmut Kohl; Britannica: Helmut Kohl; Wikipedia: Helmut Kohl

The peaceful revolution and the fall of the Wall (Hungarian border opened 10 to 11 September 1989; Leipzig 9 October 1989; Wall opened 9 November 1989)

In summer 1989 East Germans fled to the West via Hungary, which had begun dismantling its border fence, and crowded into West German embassies in Budapest, Prague and Warsaw. On the night of 10 to 11 September Hungary let all East Germans there leave for the West, and about 30,000 had come through by the end of the month. On 9 October more than 70,000 people demonstrated in Leipzig for democratic renewal, chanting 'We are the people' and 'no violence'. Erich Honecker was removed on 18 October, and on 4 November between half a million and a million people rallied on Berlin's Alexanderplatz. On the evening of 9 November SED Politburo member Günter Schabowski announced new travel rules at a live press conference and said they applied immediately; crowds gathered at the crossings, and shortly before midnight the first barriers opened.

• On 30 September 1989 West German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher announced from the balcony of the embassy in Prague that the refugees there and in Warsaw could leave; the first special trains carried about 6,800 people west across GDR territory.
• The opposition group New Forum applied for official recognition in September 1989, the first such application in the GDR, and was at first rejected as 'hostile to the state'.
• On 10 November millions of East Germans visited West Berlin and West German border towns, and Chancellor Helmut Kohl broke off a visit to Poland to speak in West Berlin.

Sources: Haus der Geschichte, LeMO: Jahreschronik 1989; Berlin Wall Foundation: Chronicle of the Wall; Wikipedia: Fall of the Berlin Wall

German reunification (Free Volkskammer election 18 March 1990; monetary union 1 July; Two Plus Four Treaty 12 September; unity 3 October 1990)

In the GDR's first and only free parliamentary election, on 18 March 1990, the conservative Alliance for Germany won about 48 percent. On 1 July a monetary, economic and social union made the Deutsche Mark the only currency in the GDR. On 23 August the Volkskammer voted by the required two-thirds majority to join the area of the Basic Law under its Article 23, with effect from 3 October 1990. The Unification Treaty was signed on 31 August, and on 12 September the two German states and the four wartime Allies signed the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany in Moscow, under which Allied rights were suspended from 3 October 1990 and united Germany became fully sovereign when the treaty took effect on 15 March 1991. Germany was united on 3 October 1990.

• In the first free all-German election since 1932, on 2 December 1990, the CDU/CSU won 43.8 percent, the SPD 33.5 percent and the FDP 11 percent.
• The two German states also agreed to reconfirm the existing border with Poland, accepting that united Germany would consist only of the territory administered by West and East Germany; the German-Polish Border Treaty fixing the Oder-Neisse line was signed in Warsaw on 14 November 1990.
• The Bundestag and the Volkskammer approved the Unification Treaty on 20 September 1990, with the Greens/Alliance 90 and the PDS voting against.

Sources: documentArchiv.de: Einigungsvertrag (31 August 1990); Haus der Geschichte, LeMO: Jahreschronik 1990; Wikipedia: Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany

Angela Merkel (22 November 2005 to 8 December 2021)

Angela Dorothea Merkel, née Kasner, Chancellor · Federal Republic (CDU)

Merkel was born Angela Kasner in Hamburg in 1954, the daughter of a Lutheran pastor, and grew up in Templin in the GDR after her family moved east. She took a doctorate in quantum chemistry in 1986 and worked at the Academy of Sciences in East Berlin until 1990. In 1989 she joined the new party Democratic Awakening and in 1990 became deputy spokeswoman of the GDR's only freely elected government. After reunification she entered the Bundestag and served under Helmut Kohl as minister for women and youth from 1991 and for the environment from 1994. She became CDU leader in 2000 and led four governments: grand coalitions with the SPD from 2005 and 2013, a coalition with the FDP from 2009, and a third grand coalition from 2018.

How they came to power: After the 2005 election the Bundestag elected her chancellor on 22 November 2005 with 397 of 611 valid votes. She was the first woman to hold the office and the first chancellor raised in East Germany.

How it ended: She stepped down as CDU leader in 2018, did not stand for a fifth term in 2021 and left office on 8 December 2021, when Olaf Scholz was elected and sworn in as her successor.

• After the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011 her government decided to shut down all German nuclear power stations by 2022 and expand renewable energy.
• On 4 and 5 September 2015, in agreement with Austria, she allowed refugees stranded in Hungary to travel on to Germany; nearly 1.1 million asylum seekers were first counted that year, a figure corrected in 2016 to about 890,000, and her phrase 'Wir schaffen das' ('we can do this'), said on 31 August, became a focus of years of debate.
• On 9 December 2015 the US magazine Time named her its Person of the Year.

Sources: Haus der Geschichte, LeMO: Biografie Angela Merkel; Britannica: Angela Merkel; Wikipedia: Angela Merkel

From Scholz to Merz: the 2025 election (Scholz chancellor 8 December 2021; coalition collapse 6 November 2024; election 23 February 2025; Merz chancellor 6 May 2025)

Olaf Scholz of the SPD became chancellor on 8 December 2021 at the head of a 'traffic light' coalition with the Greens and the FDP. In a speech to the Bundestag on 27 February 2022, three days after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he announced a change of course in defence policy, including a one-off 100 billion euro fund for the armed forces. On 6 November 2024 he dismissed the FDP leader Christian Lindner from the government and the coalition collapsed; Scholz lost a vote of confidence on 16 December (207 yes, 394 no, 116 abstentions), and an early election was held on 23 February 2025 for a Bundestag reduced to 630 seats. The CDU/CSU and SPD agreed a coalition on 9 April 2025.

• Official final results of the second (party) vote: CDU 22.6 percent and CSU 6.0 percent, AfD 20.8, SPD 16.4, Greens 11.6, Die Linke 8.8; the BSW (4.98) and FDP (4.3) fell below the five percent threshold. Turnout was 82.5 percent.
• Seats: CDU 164 and CSU 44, AfD 152, SPD 120, Greens 85, Die Linke 64 and the SSW 1.
• On 6 May 2025 Merz received only 310 votes in the first round in the Bundestag, short of the majority needed, which had not happened before in post-war Germany; he was elected the same day in a second round with 325 of 630 votes.

Sources: Die Bundeswahlleiterin: Bundestag election 2025, results for Germany; Britannica: Olaf Scholz; Britannica: Friedrich Merz; Wikipedia: 2025 German federal election