History of Baden-Württemberg
The history of Baden-Württemberg covers the area included in the historical state of Baden, the former Prussian Hohenzollern, and Württemberg, part of the region of Swabia since the 9th century.
In the 1st century AD, Württemberg was occupied by the Romans, who defended their control of the territory by constructing a limes. Early in the 3rd century, the Alemanni drove the Romans beyond the Rhine and the Danube, but they in turn succumbed to the Franks under Clovis I, the decisive battle taking place in 496. The area later became part of the Holy Roman Empire.
The history of Baden as a state began in the 12th century, as a fief of the Holy Roman Empire. As a fairly inconsequential margraviate that was divided between various branches of the ruling family for much of its history, it gained both status and territory during the Napoleonic era, when it was also raised to the status of grand duchy. In 1871, it became one of the founder states of the German Empire. The monarchy came to an end with the end of the First World War, but Baden itself continued in existence as a state of Germany until the end of the Second World War.
Württemberg, often spelled "Wirtemberg" or "Wurtemberg" in English, developed as a political entity in southwest Germany, with the core established around Stuttgart by Count Conrad. His descendants expanded Württemberg while surviving Germany's religious wars, changes in imperial policy, and invasions from France. The state had a basic parliamentary system that changed to absolutism in the 18th century. Recognised as a kingdom in 1806–1918, its territory now forms part of the modern German state of Baden-Württemberg, one of the 16 states of Germany, a relatively young federal state that has only existed since 1952. The coat of arms represents the state's several historical component parts, of which Baden and Württemberg are the most important.
Celts, Romans and Alemani
The origin of the name "Württemberg" remains obscure. Scholars have universally rejected the once-popular derivation from "Wirth am Berg". Some authorities derive it from a proper name: "Wiruto" or "Wirtino," others from a Celtic place-name, "Virolunum" or "Verdunum". In any event, from serving as the name of a castle near the Stuttgart city district of Rotenberg, the name extended over the surrounding country and, as the lords of this district increased their possessions, so the name covered an ever-widening area, until it reached its present extent. Early forms included Wirtenberg, Wirtembenc and Wirtenberc. Wirtemberg was long accepted, and in the latter part of the 16th century Würtemberg and Wurttemberg appeared. In 1806, Württemberg became the official spelling, though Wurtemberg also appears frequently and occurs sometimes in official documents, and even on coins issued after that date.Württemberg's first known inhabitants, the Celts, preceded the arrival of the Suebi. In the first century AD, the Romans conquered the land and defended their position there by constructing a rampart. Early in the third century, the Alemanni drove the Romans beyond the Rhine and the Danube, but they in turn succumbed to the Franks under Clovis, the decisive battle taking place in 496. For about 400 years, the district was part of the Frankish empire and was administered by counts until it was subsumed in the ninth century by the German Duchy of Swabia.
Duchy of Swabia
The Duchy of Swabia is to a large degree comparable to the territory of the Alemanni. The Suevi belonged to the tribe of the Alemanni, reshaped in the 3rd century. The name of Swabia is also derived from them. From the 9th century on, in place of the area designation "Alemania," came the name "Schwaben". Swabia was one of the five stem duchies of the medieval Kingdom of the East Franks, and its dukes were thus among the most powerful magnates of Germany. The most notable family to hold Swabia were the Hohenstaufen, who held it, with a brief interruption, from 1079 until 1268. For much of this period, the Hohenstaufen were also Holy Roman Emperors. With the death of Conradin, the last Hohenstaufen duke, the duchy itself disintegrated although King Rudolf I attempted to revive it for his Habsburg family in the late 13th century.With the decline of East Francia power, the House of Zähringen appeared to be ready as the local successor of the power in southwestern Germany and in the northwest in the Kingdom of Burgundy-Arles. Duke Berthold V of Zähringen founded the city of Bern in 1191, which became one of the House of Zähringen power centers. East of the Jura Mountains and west of the Reuss was described as Upper Burgundy, and Bern was part of the Landgraviate of Burgundy, which was situated on both sides of the Aar, between Thun and Solothurn. However Berthold died without an heir in 1218 and Bern was declared a Free imperial city by Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor. Berthold's death without heirs meant the complete disintegration of southwest Germany and led to the development of the Old Swiss Confederacy and the Duchy of Burgundy. Bern joined Switzerland in the year 1353.
Swabia takes its name from the tribe of the Suebi, and the name was often used interchangeably with Alemannia during the existence of the stem-duchy in the High Middle Ages. Even Alsace belonged to it. Swabia was otherwise of great importance in securing the pass route to Italy. After the fall of the Staufers there was never again a Duchy of Swabia. The Habsburgs and the Württembergers endeavored in vain to resurrect it.
Hohenstaufen, Welf and Zähringen
Three of the noble families of the southwest attained a special importance: the Hohenstaufen, the Welf and the Zähringen. The most successful appear from the view of that time to be the Hohenstaufen, who, as dukes of Swabia from 1079 and as Frankish kings and emperors from 1138 to 1268, attained the greatest influence in Swabia. To the Zähringer sphere of influence originally belonged Freiburg and Offenburg, Rottweil and Villingen, and, in modern Switzerland, Zürich and Bern. The three prominent noble families were in vigorous competition with one another, even though they were linked by kinship. The mother of the Stauffer King Friedrich Barbarossa was Judith Welfen. The Staufers, as well as the Zähringers, based their claims of rule on ties with the family of the Frankish kings from the House of Salier.During the Middle Ages, various counts ruled the territory that now forms Baden, among whom the counts and duchy of Zähringen figure prominently. In 1112, Hermann, son of Hermann, Margrave of Verona and grandson of Duke Berthold II of Carinthia and the Count of Zähringen, having inherited some of the German estates of his family, called himself Margrave of Baden. The separate history of Baden dates from this time. Hermann appears to have called himself "margrave" rather than "count," because of the family connection to the margrave of Verona. His son and grandson, both called Hermann, added to their territories, which were then divided, and the lines of Baden-Baden and Baden-Hochberg were founded, the latter of which divided about a century later into Baden-Hochberg and Baden-Sausenberg. The family of Baden-Baden was very successful in increasing the area of its holdings.
The Hohenstaufen family controlled the duchy of Swabia until the death of Conradin in 1268, when a considerable part of its lands fell to the representative of a family first mentioned in about 1080, the count of Württemberg, Conrad von Beutelsbach, who took the name from his ancestral castle of Württemberg.
The earliest historical details of a Count of Württemberg relate to one Ulrich I, Count of Württemberg, who ruled from 1241 to 1265. He served as marshal of Swabia and advocate of the town of Ulm, had large possessions in the valleys of the Neckar and the Rems, and acquired Urach in 1260. Under his sons, Ulrich II and Eberhard I, and their successors, the power of the family grew steadily.
Further Austria and the Palatinate
Other than the Margraviate of Baden and the Duchy of Württemberg, Further Austria and the Palatinate lay on the edge of the southwestern area. Further Austria was the collective name for the old possessions of the Habsburgs in south-western Germany, the Alsace, and in Vorarlberg after the focus of the Habsburgs had moved to Austria.Further Austria comprised the Sundgau and the Breisgau east of the Rhine and included some scattered territories throughout Swabia, the largest being the margravate Burgau in the area of Augsburg and Ulm. Some territories in Vorarlberg that belonged to the Habsburgs were also considered part of Further Austria. The original homelands of the Habsburgs, the Aargau and much of the other original Habsburg possessions south of the Rhine and Lake Constance were lost in the 14th century to the expanding Old Swiss Confederacy after the battles of Morgarten and Sempach and were never considered part of Further Austria, except the Fricktal, which remained a Habsburg property until 1805.
Further Austria was ruled by the Duke of Austria until 1379. After that, the regent of Further Austria was the Count of Tyrol.
The Palatinate arose as the County Palatine of the Rhine, a large feudal state lying on both banks of the Rhine, which seems to have come into existence in the 10th century. The territory fell to the Wittelsbach Dukes of Bavaria in the early 13th century, and during a later division of territory among the heirs of Duke Louis II of Upper Bavaria in 1294, the elder branch of the Wittelsbachs came into possession not only of the Rhenish Palatinate, but also of that part of Upper Bavaria itself which was north of the Danube, and which came to be called the Upper Palatinate, in contrast to the Lower Palatinate along the Rhine. In the Golden Bull of 1356, the Palatinate was made one of the secular electorates, and given the hereditary offices of Archsteward of the Empire and Imperial Vicar of the western half of Germany. From this time forth, the Count Palatine of the Rhine was usually known as the Elector Palatine.
Due to the practice of division of territories among different branches of the family, by the early 16th century junior lines of the Palatine Wittelsbachs came to rule in Simmern, Kaiserslautern, and Zweibrücken in the Lower Palatinate, and in Neuburg and Sulzbach in the Upper Palatinate. The Elector Palatine, now based in Heidelberg, converted to Lutheranism in the 1530s.
When the senior branch of the family died out in 1559, the Electorate passed to Frederick III of Simmern, a staunch Calvinist, and the Palatinate became one of the major centers of Calvinism in Europe, supporting Calvinist rebellions in both the Netherlands and France. Frederick III's grandson, Frederick IV, and his adviser, Christian of Anhalt, founded the Evangelical Union of Protestant states in 1608, and in 1619 Elector Frederick V accepted the throne of Bohemia from rebellious Protestant noblemen. He was soon defeated by the forces of Emperor Ferdinand II at the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, and Spanish and Bavarian troops soon occupied the Palatinate itself. In 1623, Frederick was put under the ban of the Empire, and his territories and Electoral dignity granted to the Duke of Bavaria, Maximilian I.
At the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, the Sundgau became part of France, and in the 18th century, the Habsburgs acquired a few minor new territories in southern Germany such as Tettnang. In the Peace of Pressburg of 1805, Further Austria was dissolved and the formerly Habsburg territories were assigned to Bavaria, Baden, and Württemberg, and the Fricktal to Switzerland.
By the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, Frederick V's son, Charles Louis, was restored to the Lower Palatinate, and given a new electoral title, but the Upper Palatinate and the senior electoral title remained with the Bavarian line. In 1685, the Simmern line died out, and the Palatinate was inherited by the Count Palatine of Neuburg, a Catholic. The Neuburg line, which moved the capital to Mannheim, lasted until 1742, when it, too, became extinct, and the Palatinate was inherited by the Duke Karl Theodor of Sulzbach. The childless Karl Theodor also inherited Bavaria when its electoral line became extinct in 1777, and all the Wittelsbach lands save Zweibrücken on the French border were now under a single ruler. The Palatinate was destroyed in the Wars of the French Revolution—first its left bank territories were occupied, and then annexed, by France starting in 1795, and then, in 1803, its right bank territories were taken by the Margrave of Baden. The provincial government in Alsace was alternately administered by the Palatinate and by the Habsburgs. Only the margraves of Baden and the counts and dukes of Württemberg included both homelands within their territories. With the political reordering of the southwest after 1800, Further Austria and the Electorate Palatine disappeared from history.