Germany Sipping Charlemagne

By 58 BC, the Roman Republic had expanded its borders to the Rhein, forcing pagan clans of the Germanic peoples in Central Europe (including the Saxons, Franks, Frisians, and Thuringians) to join forces for defense. In AD 9, when battles erupted in the Teutoburg Forest (near present-day Osnabrück), the allied Germans’ resounding homecourt victory against the Romans earned them the nickname “Teutons” and marked the first assertion of a truly Germanic culture. After five centuries of mutual antagonism and several barbarian attacks on Rome, the weakened Roman Empire fell in 476. Without a common enemy to unify them, the clans dispersed. In 800, the Holy Roman Empire, founded by Charlemagne (known in Germany as Karl der Große) in France and western Germany, became the first major German state. Charlemagne initiated administrative reforms and cultural advancements in his kingdom (Reich), reviving European commerce along the way. He built his permanent residence in Aachen because of its soothing hot springs . After Charlemagne’s death in 814, the Franconian realm divided along the language separation between early Medieval French in the west and Old High German in the east (called “deutsch,” meaning “as the people speak”—as opposed to Latin, the language of scholars). Charlemagne’s son Louis I gained control of the empire, but after his death, his misfit sons spent three years tearing their grandfather’s kingdom apart with civil war. The Treaty of Verdun in 843 finally brought peace by dividing the realm into three parts.

Otto I initiated a close relationship between the church and monarchy, but in the Investiture Crisis of 1075, the Pope demanded autonomy, specifically in appointing church officials, which sparked conflict that ravaged Germany for nearly 50 years. The Concordat of Worms (1122) restored peace, setting up checks and balances between pope and king.

War broke out time and again between the dozens of minor dukes and princes vying for power, while the bubonic plague of the 14th century killed roughly a third of Europe’s population. The Golden Bull of 1356 declared that seven electors—three archbishops and four secular leaders—should approve the selection of the Holy Roman Emperor. Under the leadership of the House of Hapsburg which occupied the throne for five centuries, the empire began to define itself clearly. Manufacturing and sea trade transformed small North Sea towns into wealthy merchant oligarchies, which banded together in 1358 to form the Hanseatic League. This trade federation had outposts as far away as England, Norway, and Russia, and grew powerful enough to successfully defeat Denmark in war. Yet while German interests focused on wealthy towns, discontent roiled in rural regions, and outlying areas of the empire slipped out of the Hapsburgs’ control entirely.