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By Root 2221 0

Reich was only a shadow of its former self, expansion eastwards continued unabated. Land east of the Oder River (now Germany’s eastern border) had been settled by German peasants and city dwellers in the mid-12th century. In the 13th century Teutonic knights pushed eastwards, establishing fortress towns such as Königsberg (present-day Kaliningrad). At its peak, the unified state of the knights stretched from the Oder to Estonia. (Later, in the 17th century, a large swathe of this land would become part of Brandenburg-Prussia.)

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What’s in a name? Past German monarchs include Karl the Fat (r 881–87), Arnulf the Evil and Friedrich the Handsome (both medieval anti-kings), and the righteous Heinrich the Holy (r 1014–24).

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THE HOUSE OF HABSBURG

In 1273 a Habsburg dynasty emerged from the royal heap, mastered the knack of a politically expedient arranged marriage, and dominated European affairs until the 20th century. The arrival of Rudolf (r 1273–91) ended the Terrible Time, but more importantly the Declaration of Rhense (1338) dispensed with the pope’s role in crowning a Kaiser. Now the king, elected by the Kurfürsten, was automatically Kaiser. In 1356 the Golden Bull set out precise rules for elections and defined the relationship between the Kaiser and the princes. It was an improvement but the Kaiser was still dancing to the tune of the princes.

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Heinrich the Fowler: Father of the Ottonian Empire by Mirella Patzer brings 10th-century Germany to life in a heady blend of history and fiction.

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Dancing, however, was the last thing on the minds of ordinary Germans. They battled with panic lynching, pogroms against Jews and labour shortages – all sparked off by the plague (1348–50) that wiped out 25% of Europe’s population. While death gripped the (Ger)man on the street, universities were being established all over the country around this time. The first was in Heidelberg, making it Germany’s oldest – and arguably its most spectacular – university city.

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Once asked who he thought would win an Austria versus Hungary football match, Otto von Habsburg (1912–), the surviving head of the Habsburg family today, is said to have replied: ‘Who are we playing?’

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A QUESTION OF FAITH

The religious fabric of Germany was cut from a pattern created in the 16th-century Reformation. In the university town of Wittenberg in 1517, German theology professor Martin Luther (1483–1546) made public his Ninety-Five Theses, which questioned the papal practice of selling indulgences to exonerate sins. Threatened with excommunication, Luther refused to recant, broke from the Catholic Church and was banned by the Reich, only to be hidden in Wartburg castle (outside Eisenach, in Thuringia; ), where he translated the New Testament into German. Today, the death mask of Luther can be viewed in the Marktkirche in Halle; another can be seen at Luthers Sterbehaus in Eisleben.

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WHAT WAS THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE?

It was an idea, mostly, and not a very good one. It grew out of the Frankish Reich, which was seen as the successor to the defunct Roman Empire. When Charlemagne’s father, Pippin, helped a beleaguered pope (Charlemagne would later do the same), he received the title Patricius Romanorum (Protector of Rome), virtually making him Caesar’s successor. Having retaken the papal territories from the Lombards, he presented them to the Church (the last of these territories is the modern Vatican state). Charlemagne’s reconstituted ‘Roman Empire’ then passed into German hands.

The empire was known by various names throughout its lifetime. It formally began (for historians, at least) in 962 with the crowning of Otto I as Holy Roman Emperor and finally collapsed in 1806, when Kaiser Franz II abdicated the throne. The empire sometimes included Italy as far south as Rome. Sometimes it didn’t – the pope usually had a say in that. It variously encompassed present-day Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Lorraine and Burgundy