Germany under weak Emperors
A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War
Book Seven
The Hegemony of the Papacy and of France in the Thirteenth Century
Chapter II
The Papacy, Italy, and Germany
3. Germany
p320 ...at the moment when in France the king was beginning to impose his power upon his great vassals, in Germany he was becoming subordinate to them... Frederick II in 1231, merely recognized in law what already existed in fact... by recognizing... [the princes] as the lords of their estates (domini terrae), and by renouncing the right to build fortresses on their domains or to appoint judges, or to mint money, or to regulate trade and circulation. Henceforth Germany was merely a federation of individual sovereigns whom the Emperor left to their own devices...
p321 ...[After the death of William of Holland in 1256] The national ideal was so completely alien to the German princes, and the monarchy seemed to them of such secondary importance, that their one thought was to sell it on the most favorable terms. Some allowed themselves to be bought by Alfonso of Castile, others by Richard of Cornwall, and in 1257 both princes received the crown, as though it had been a parcel of merchandise. Seven princes had taken part in this double election. This was the origin of the College of Electors, which henceforth exercised the right of electing the king of the Romans? [He couldn't name them? I believe they were: Archbishop of Cologne, Archbishop of Mainz, Archbishop of Trier, Count Palatine of the Rhine, Duke of Saxony, Margrave of Brandenburg and King of Bohemia.
Following the death of both of these individuals, the Electors in 1273] ...gave the crown to Rudolf of Habsburg, whose talents, as mediocre as his fortune, were not such as to cause them any disquietude. The period of the "great interregnum" which had begun with the nomination of Henry Raspon [1246?] was at last ended.
...
p324 ... The kingdom of Burgundy... detached itself... from the Imperial bloc... Marseilles and Lyon had never felt that they belonged to the Empire, nor did the Counts of Provence, Dauphine and Franche Comte ever trouble their heads about the nomenal suzerainty which it excercised over them. Thus, the old frontier, drawn on the map at a period of economic stagnation, was erased... by the friction of a more intensive civilization and more complex interests...
p325 ...As the princes of the [Imperial] frontier forgot the Emperor they turned toward the kings of France...
While in the West Germany was gradually crumbling under the influence of a civilization superior to her own, in the East she was expanding largely at the cost of the Barbarians... The fact is that this great effort of expansion, which was afterwards to exert so essential an influence over the destinies of the German people, owned nothing to the Emperors. It was accomplished without their participation... the princes on the banks of the Lower Elbe, and above all Henry the Lion, and the Margrave of Brandenberg, Albert the Bear (1170), energetically furthered the Germanization of the Wendish lands along the Baltic shore. There was no question here of a purely political conquest, but rather of a veritable work of colonization, thanks to which... the Germans took the place of the Slavs in the countries which they had abandoned at the time of the great invasions of the 4th century... Thanks to... a surplus population and the spirit of enterprise. As the raids of the Duke of Saxony's and the Margrave of Brandenberg's knights drove back the Slavs and massacred them, the colonists... took possession of the regions thus cleared... Along the rivers the cities were founded which furnish the peasants with the necessary supplies and served as markets for the surrounding countryside: Brandenburg, Stendal, Spandau, Tangermunde, Berlin, and Frankfort-on-the-Oder.
...
p328 ...The paganism which had disappeared... between the Elbe and the Oder still persisted throughout the plain that extends from the shores of the Baltic between the Elbe and the Niemen. Its inhabitants, the Prussians, a people of Slavic origin, resisted the attempts at their conversion... At the beginning of the 13th century the Polish Duke of Mazovia summoned the knights of the Teutonic Order to undertake the conversion of these obstinate heathen... The poor Prussians with their bows and their wicker shields, could not resist the heavily-armed knights who came to conquer with the sword a new land for Catholicism, but not a new people. For there was no question of converting the Prussians. They were treated as the enemies of Christ and the Pope, though they knew nothing of either... this Holy War was a war of extermination. It ended only in 1283, when there was no more pagans to massacre. As the Teutonic Knights advanced they organized the country. Fortresses... marked the stages of the conquest, and there too, as between the Elbe and the Oder, Germanization was the consequence of war. Nothing was left of the Prussians but the name, which was now borne by the invaders. The knights retained lordship of the country, which they received as a fief from Pope Gregory IX in 1234.
p329 While the Germans were thus colonizing the great plain to the south of the Baltic, they were also swarming along the shores of this sea... Here the movement started from Lubeck... In 1201 a bishopric was established at Riga, and there Bishop Albert of Bienne created the Order of the Brothers of the Sword, whose mission was to fight the pagans of Livonia and Esthonia... in the north Dorpat, captured from the Russians by the Brothers of the Sword, became, like Riga, the seat of a bishopric.
p331 [Discussing the trade of the Baltic] ... These economic relations were the origin of the Hansa: that is to say, the confederation not of the merchants alone, but of the cities of which they were burgesses, from Riga to Cologne... Lubeck, in the middle... became the headquarters of the Hansa as early as the middle of the 13th century. The commercial interest of all the members of the League were sufficiently homogeneous to ensure the maintenance of a good understanding between them... thanks to the Hansa, German navigation retained its preponderance in the two northern seas until the middle of the 15th century.
The contrast with the competition to the death of the Northern Italian maritime cities is striking. I suppose this is because the Hansa were mostly trading among themselves rather than competing for the same trade (with the Near East).
Pirenne tries to argue for the importance of geography -- lack of solid geographical features to separate competing populations -- as the reason for the vicious nature of warfare on the east border of Europe (defined in Carolingian terms). I'm not sure I buy this. This was clearly (he asserts) based more on ethnicity or religion. The lack of major geographical features did play a role in making the area more subject to attack, but it didn't determine how that attack would manifest.
He then goes on to note that there was no intellectual culture in this region, because they had,
...no energy to spare for anything but work and warfare. In the Margraves of Brandenberg and the Teutonic Knights of the 13th century, in the petty nobles who employed the knights and fought for them, were emerging the first characteristics of what was one day to be known as the Prussian spirit.
It's worth noting here that, at the time he wrote this, Pirenne was being held captive by "the Prussian spirit" in a dull town in this very region of Europe.
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