The Rise of Germany
German history was taboo for most of the 20th century because of the German
nation’s involvement in World War I and World War II. Such events as the Holocaust
cast a pall over the German people for a period of time in which they themselves
repudiated their own history. The rise of Germany as a nation, however, is a fascinating
study and unique among our other European nation studies. We will trace German
history from 222 BC when Rome first clashed with “Germans” to 1250 AD and the death
of a man you’ve already met, Frederick II (Stupor Mundi). The unique aspect is that
during this entire period Germany never made it as a nation in the way that England,
France, and Spain did. The political history of Germany did not get off the ground until
nine centuries after the death of Julius Caesar when it became a part of the Empire of the
West under Charlemagne.
The barbarous origins of the German people are evident even in their name which
is a Celtic term that means, “The shouters.” Julius Caesar borrowed this word to use for
his Commentaries on the Gallic Wars. In Latin, the word Alemanni was applied to what
actually were dozens of tribes including the Angles, Saxons, Teutons, etc. Germanic
tribes were located around the L-shaped formation of the Rhine and Danube river valleys
and were distributed, interestingly, by hair color. Red-haired Germanic tribes lived in the
north, blonde tribes in the center, and brunettes in the south. Is it proper to refer to
barbaric tribesmen as “brunettes?” Nevertheless, Germanic tribes advanced along these
two river valleys and shouted at the Celts driving them away to England and Iberia.
German expansion ran smack into the Roman Empire in 222 BC and some tribes
were annihilated by Roman legions. In 107 BC, however, Germans destroyed four
Roman legions. By now you can surely predict Rome’s response—in 101 BC, 55,000
Roman soldiers attacked again, and this time even German women joined in the fighting!
Rome prevailed and carted off thousands of males into slavery, but the women killed
their children and themselves. Germanic tribes were so warlike that their tribal names
were taken from their weapons. The Franks fought with a battle axe called a francisca.
The Saxons used a single-edged sword called a saxe, and the Angles preferred an angon,
or javelin.
Germanic religion was animistic, or based on worshipping spirits in nature. A list
of some of their gods makes apparent a degree of influence their religion had on Western
civilization—Tieu was the god of war; Woden had created mankind; Thor was the god of
Thunder; Friga was the god of love and marriage; and Saturn was the god of time.
Maybe that’s why you go out on dates on Friday night and Saturdays seem so short. If
one worships the moon on Monday and the sun on Sunday, then there’s Tuesday,
Wednesday, and Thursday to worship these others. What’s more, Easter was Thor’s wife
and goddess of rain, and Yule was the god of hunters.
Rome’s relationship with Germanic tribes was never settled. The Rhine and the
Danube were always battle frontiers with intermittent subjection of certain tribes, but
never all the Alemanni. Whenever a coalition of several tribes formed, the Romans were
driven back. The great migration of Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Lombards, and Jutes
in the late 4th and 5th centuries AD totaled around two million Germans who swept over
the crumbling Roman Empire. Angles and Saxons went, of course, to England.
Charlemagne’s empire engulfed the Germans, converting them and their
immediate neighbors, the Magyars, to Christianity and tying them to the West. You
remember the Treaty of Verdun in 843 and a man known as Ludwig the German who
inherited the eastern portion of Charlemagne’s holdings. In the absence of Charlemagne,
however, Germany adopted the feudal system along with the other remnants of the
Carolingian Empire. Instead of counts the Germans had dukes, so the land was divided
up into duchies rather than into counties under the loose control of the first German king,
Conrad I (r. 911-919). A nation seemed in the making.
His son Henry I (r. 919-936) launched Germany on a 10-point plan of
centralization and dominance that included 1) pacify the Hungarians (Magyars), 2) make
the King the master of the dukes, 3) make the King master of the Church, 4) gain control
of Italy, and 5) create an empire which would be ruled by Germans and the last large
power structure over Europe until Napoleon. Henry I did not accomplish any of these
five or the rest of the ten points, but what a vision!
Henry’s son Otto I (r. 936-973) did accomplish many of these goals so he got to
be remembered as Otto the Great. Otto I asserted more control over rival dukes and
finally destroyed all Magyar resistance in 955 thereby creating the boundary with
Hungary. He also took upon himself lay investiture, the power to appoint German
bishops. In trying to assert control over Italy, he marched on Rome while removing a
rebellious duke. During the clash, Otto protected Pope John XII who gave Otto a crown
in gratitude. The scene re-enacted the crowning of Charlemagne although I don’t believe
it was on Christmas Day. He did get a title, “Emperor of the Romans and the Franks.”
One year later, Otto the Great was strong enough to depose Pope John XII for
conspiring against him. When Otto I died, however, Germany was still not completely
centralized, and Italy proved to be too much for most German kings to handle. Even Otto
the Great refrained from trying to control France. A whole series of Ottos, Henrys, and
another Conrad all tried to hang onto what Henry I and Otto I had set Germany out to do.
Let’s touch on a few of these kings to identify interesting or momentous
milestones. Otto III in 998 claimed he was the Western equivalent of the Byzantine
Emperor. When he died, however, the Saxon dynasty ended. Henry II (r. 1002-1024)
began a new dynasty called the Salian which would produce three more Henrys and rule
Germany for over a century.
Henry III (r. 1024-1056) used the Cluniac reform movement in 1046 to depose
one Pope, Gregory VI, and to install a Cluniac Pope as a zealous reformer. The Cluniac
Popes became so powerful that every subsequent Emperor of the Romans and the Franks
would try to depose them. If that is not confusing enough, civil war erupted in the 11th
century that saw three Popes in a row excommunicate Henry IV (r. 1056-1106) until,
remember, his penance in the snow at Canossa. Once restored to the Church, Henry IV
drove Pope Gregory VII (Hildebrand) into exile and set up the anti-Pope Clement III. In
the conflict, Rome was burned in 1084 by Sicilians trying to rescue Gregory VII.
Henry V, the last of the Salian dynasty, died in 1125 after choosing Frederick
Hohenstaufen to succeed him. The dukes, however, chose another man, Conrad III (r.
1138-1152) who almost ruined the empire completely by going on the 2nd Crusade (11471149). Conrad’s army was decimated which allowed the empire to fall into another civil
dispute; enter again Frederick I to start the Hohenstaufen dynasty.
Frederick I, whom you know as Barbarossa, reigned from 1152 to 1190 and was
destined to found the most conceited of all medieval dynasties. He also committed what I
consider the most heinous acts any ruler claiming to be a Christian has ever done. While
assailing Crema, a walled town in Italy, he tied prisoners to his siege engines to prevent
their being fired upon. When the walls proved impregnable, he fired prisoners against
the walls. When the people of Crema still refused to open the gates, Frederick put
children prisoners in his siege engines and fired them against the walls. Crema quit, then.
As Frederick I solidified his control he gave the feudal system in Germany
hereditary lineage. He married into possession of Sicily. After invading Italy he made
peace at last with the real Pope, got his son crowned co-emperor of what he was the first
to call the Holy Roman Empire, subdued his most unruly vassal (Henry the Lion), and
then at the age of 70 went on the 3rd Crusade. I wonder if he thought of those children in
the trebuchets while lying facedown in the river drowning. But the Empire was
weakened under Henry VI (r. 1190-1197) because of Frederick’s treaties with Italians of
the Lombard League, a confederation of towns in northern Italy, and with the Pope.
A period of further civil strife followed the death of Frederick’s son, Henry VI.
Frederick’s grandson was only three when his father died, but that boy eventually
attained the crown by becoming a vassal to Innocent III, the most powerful Pope of the
medieval period. He was crowned Frederick II (r. 1215-1250), but took the name Stupor
Mundi. Frederick II, the German Holy Roman Emperor, favored Sicily saying, “It is
impossible that the God of the Jews would have so praised the land that he gave his
chosen people had he only known the kingdom of Sicily.” Germany had produced an
apostate Holy Roman Emperor! Frederick also said, “The world has permitted itself to
be duped by three deceivers—Jesus Christ, Moses, and Mohammed.” But with a
“Christian” grandfather like Barbarossa, how could one not turn out to be a cynic?
Frederick II called Sicily the Fortunate Isle and refused to include it as part of the
Empire, merely ruling it separately while living there. He basically let Germany go, even
appointing his son Henry as king there while remaining absent for fifteen years at a time.
All the while he used the wealth gleaned from Germany to maneuver for Sicily against
Gregory IX, a Pope consumed by two passions—love of the Church and hatred for
Frederick II. As you have seen, Gregory excommunicated Frederick several times for his
behavior on the 5th Crusade (Why would an apostate go on crusade in the first place?).
Frederick returned the animosity as evidenced by his message he sent to Gregory when
the Pope lay dying. Frederick II, Stupor Mundi, sent the following verse which he
composed himself: “I am Frederick, the Hammer, the Doom of the World./ Rome
tottering long since, to confusion is hurled,/ shall shiver to atoms and never again be Lord
of the World.”
Meanwhile, Germany as a nation was barely surviving against renewed pressure
from Magyars and from Mongols. Frederick II was distracted from being the Holy
Roman Emperor in the tradition of a Caesar or being ruler of a unified German nation.
The Holy Roman Empire disintegrated, and there was no German nation to replace it.
Other dynasties claimed rule over the Holy Roman Empire, but Central Europe unraveled
into several competing states not consolidated into a nation until 1870 by a man named
Bismarck who worked for the Hohenzollern dynasty. More on him later.