Margraviate of Meissen
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The March or Margraviate of Meissen (German: Mark(grafschaft) Meißen) was a mediæval principality, a march, of the Holy Roman Empire in the area of the modern German state of Saxony.
The March of Meissen was sometimes called the Thuringian March or March of Thuringia. Usually, however, this was a term for the eastern part of the Meissen march, that is, the land east of the Elbe as far as the Saale, a land inhabited by Slavs. Formerly, the "Thuringian march" was called the "Sorbian march".
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[edit] Founding
In 928 or 929, during a campaign against the Slavs, Henry the Fowler built a castle on a hill on the Elbe. This castle he named Meissen after the nearby stream of Meisa. A town soon developed at the foot of the fortress. Henry, however, made no attempts to Germanise the Slavs or to create a chain of supporting burgwards for his new fortress, rather Meissen sat alone, like Brandenburg, with little organisation around it.[1] That did not last, however. The town grew, eventually becoming one of the most important city's in the large marca Geronis which covered the eastern part of the Duchy of Saxony. When the marca was divided in 965 on the death of the margrave Gero the Great, Meissen formed the centre of a new march primarily against the Sorabians. The first mention of a margrave in Meissen comes in 968. That same year, the castle became the seat of the Diocese of Meissen.
By 982, the territory of the march had extended as far as the Neisse to the east and in southern direction the Erzgebirge. In 983, following word of the defeat of the Emperor Otto II at the Battle of Stilo, the Slavic tribes bordering eastern Saxony rebelled. Havelberg and Brandenburg were destroyed and the March of Zeitz devastated. The margraves of Meissen, Lusatia, and the Nordmark joined with the troops of the Bishops of Halberstadt and Magdeburg and defeated the Slavs at Belkesheim, near Stendhal.[2] Nevertheless, the Germans were once again limited to the land west of the Elbe.
[edit] Wettin rule
In 983, a certain Rikdag became the margrave, and, from 985 on, the title was held by the Ekkehardinger family. In 1002, Boleslaus I of Poland conquered the Thuringian March.[3] In 1046, the margraviate went to the Weimar-Orlamünder family and, in 1067, to the Brunonen, whose representative, Egbert II, was deposed during the Investiture Controversy in 1089. Henry of Eilenburg, of the Wettin dynasty, under whose rule the margraviate would remain for the rest of its existence, succeeded him to the title later that year. Under Wiprecht von Groitzsch in the 1120s, the Germanisation of the Meissen finally began.[4] Following him were Conrad the Great (1123–56), Otto the Rich (1156–91), and Dietrich the Hard-Pressed (1191–1221), under whom the march was expanded and developed.
In 1264, Henry III asserted himself in the war of the succession of the Landgraviate of Thuringia, where his uncle, Henry Raspe, had died childless. Between 1243 and 1255, Henry III acquired Pleisseland around Altenburg as a security measure. The Emperor Henry VII's attempt to force the Margraves of Meissen back into submission, failed in 1307 with his defeat in the Battle of Lucka. By that time the margraviate was de facto independent of any sovereign authority.
In the years following Lucka, there would be joint rule of the principality by multiple members of the Wettin dynasty at any given time. In the years 1382 and 1445, this even led to the division of the march. However, the cadet branches of the family frequently became extinct and the lands consequently reunited. At the same time, the territory could be extended by marriage, purchase, or conquest, which is how the margraviate gained the rights to the burgraviate of in 1426. At the end of 15th century, the ruling area of the Wettin dynasty was spread between the Werra and the Oder.
In 1423, Frederick the Militant became Margrave and was assigned the Duchy of Saxony-Wittenberg. With it the Margraviate of Meissen entered into the electorate of Saxony and lost its status as an independent principality. In 1485, the Leipzig Partition divided Saxony and Thuringia between the brothers Ernest and Albert, which marked the beginning of the permanate separation of the two states.
[edit] Burggraviate
Around 1068, Meissen received its own burgrave. In time the Meinheringer family would come to control the burggraviate.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Thompson, James Westfall. Feudal Germany, Volume II. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1928.
