High Middle Ages : Germany

The transition from the East Franconian to the German “Reich” is usually dated from 911, when, after the Carolingian dynasty had died out, the Franconian duke Conrad I was elected king. He . regarded as the first German king. (The official title waS “Frankish King”, later “Roman King”; from the â– nth century the name of the realm was “Roman Empire”/ from the 13th century “Holy Roman Empire”, and in the 15th century the words “oi the German Nation” were added.) It was an electoral monarchy; that is to say, the high nobility chose the king. In addition, “dynastic right” applied: The new king had to be a blood relation of his predecessor. This principle was broken several times. There were also a number of double elections.

The medieval empire had no capital city; the king ruled roving about from place to place. There were no imperial taxes; the king drew his sustenance mainly from “imperial estates” he administered in trust. His authority was not always recognized by the powerful tribal dukes unless he was militarily powerful and a skillful forger of alliances. Conrad’s successor, the Saxon duke Henry I (919-936), was the first to succeed in this, and to an even greater extent his son, Otto (936-973). Otto made himself the real ruler of the realm. His great power found obvious expression when he was crowned Emperor in 962 in Rome.

From then on, the German king could claim the title “Emperor”. The emperorship was conceived as universal and gave its incumbent control over the entire Occident. However, this notion never became full political reality. In order to be crowned Emperor by the Pope, the king had to make his way to Rome. With that began the Italian policy of the German kings. For 300 years they were able to retain control of upper and central Italy, but because of this they were diverted from important tasks in Germany. And so Otto’s successors inevitably suffered big setbacks.

However, under the succeeding Salian dynasty a new upswing occurred. With Henry III (1039-1056), the German kingship and emperorship reached the zenith of its power, maintaining above all a supremacy over the Papacy. Henry IV (1056-1106) was not able to hold this position. In a quarrel with Pope Gregory VII over whether bishops and other influential church officials should be appointed by the Pope or by the temporal m|er, he was superficially successful. But Gregory retaliated by excommunicating Henry, who thereupon surrendered his authority over the church by doing penance to the Pope at Canossa (1077), an irretrievable loss of power by the emperorship. From that point onward, the Emperor and the Pope were equal-ranking powers.

In 1138 the century of rule by the Staufer, or Hohen-staufen, dynasty began. Frederick I Barbarossa (1152-1190), in wars with the Pope, the northern Italian cities and his main German rival, the Saxon duke Henry the Lion, led the empire into a new golden age. But under him began a territorial fragmentation which ultimately weakened the central power. This decline continued under Barbarossa’s successors, HenryVI (1190-1197) and FrederickII (1212-1250), despite the great power vested in the emperorship. The ecclesiastical and temporal princes became semi-sovereign territorialrulers. The end of Hohenstaufen rule (1268) also meant the end of the Emperor’s universal rule in the Occident. Internal disintegrative forces prevented Germany from becoming a national state, a process just beginning then in other western European countries. Here lies one of the reasons why the Germans became a “belated nation”.