The German Question, Part Six

Beginning before the death of Charlemagne in 814 A.D., the eastern border areas of his empire were secured by fortified territories. The territories were given by the emperor to nobles to administer. These nobles had fairly substantial military forces at their disposal, and the areas were called “Marks” or “Marches” (see Word History below the notes). As time passed, these various Marks had their own boundaries and designations changed, one of the most famous being the “Ostmark,” or “East Mark,” which formed what became a substantial part of modern Austria, and another, “Mark Brandenburg,” which became the modern area of Berlin and environs.

From about 1000 A.D. and continuing for the next couple of centuries, Germans began to migrate from densely populated western areas of Europe into many of the sparsely Slavic populated regions of eastern Europe.* Since Christianity had spread throughout most of western and central Europe, and part of eastern Europe, Church authorities looked upon these “Christian” migrations with favor.** The Germans, who brought various skills and even wealth with them, were even welcomed by the Slavic rulers of many of these areas, and much of this relocation was done peacefully. It seems that some of these Germans eventually were assimilated (absorbed) into the Slavic population, thus losing their “German” identity, but many formed essentially all German communities, or the German population overtook the Slavic population in certain areas, eventually absorbing (assimilating) the Slavs, who then lost their “Slavic” identity. These latter were/are usually referred to as “Wends.”

*This was something of a “reverse migration,” as earlier, Germanic tribes, some, but not all, later to be called “Germans,” had tended to migrate from east to west.

** It should be noted that the Franks eventually subdued their main rival among the Germanic tribes, the Saxons, and forcibly “Christianized” them. The wars, which accomplished that feat, continued from about 780 and ended in about 804 A.D. The Saxons are very important to our story, and they were a large confederation of Germanic tribes in northern Europe, part of which migrated to Britain along with other Germanic tribal elements, conquered the local Celtic population after the withdrawal of Roman forces during the 400s A.D., and founded England ("the land of the Angles," after one of those Germanic tribes, the Angles).

WORD HISTORY:
Mark-This word goes back to the Indo European base "mereg," which meant "border, edge, boundary" (Latin, another Indo European language, had "margo," which meant "margin"). The Old Germanic offshoot was "marko." This gave Old English "mearc/merc," which continued the same basic meaning with "boundary, limit," but eventually it also came to mean "a sign of a boundary or border," and this eventually evolved into any sign designating a boundary, perhaps traced on a map. These various general meanings gave us our more modern meanings of "putting a mark on something to show ownership," "marking something on paper," "putting a mark on something (as in "Oops!) and "in taking notice" ("Mark my words"). The other Germanic languages have: German has "Mark" (noun), Low German  has "Mark" (noun) and "marken" (verb), West Frisian has "merke" (both noun and verb form), Dutch has "merk" (noun) and "markeren/merken" (verbs), Danish has "maerke" (noun) and "markere/maerke" (verbs), Icelandic has "merki" (noun) and "merkja" (verb), Norwegian has "merke" (noun) and "merke/markere" (verbs), Swedish has "märke" (noun) and "märka" (verb).