The German Question, Part Nine

While the German-dominated Holy Roman Empire sounded impressive, in fact, it was basically a loose confederation of “states.” As the famous French writer and philosopher Voltaire noted, it was “neither holy, Roman, nor an empire.”* The rulers of some of the states** even took over lands, by agreement or warfare, outside the borders of the empire; thus establishing their own “little empires” beyond the reach of the German emperor, and the feudal structure of the empire. Often religion lay at the root of some of this expansion (of course "power" was undoubtedly the main driving force), as the Germans sought to “Christianize” people living east of the imperial boundaries, and these ventures into other territories were therefore, at times, supported by the emperor. Further, the old "Marches/Marks" (border areas) I wrote about in an earlier segment had been whittled away in places by non-German elements pressuring from the East. The emperor definitely wanted these areas restored to the empire. A fairly large part of eastern Europe was populated, although seemingly sparsely in many areas, by Slavic people of various names; the forerunners of modern Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Serbians, and Croatians. Also, to the northeast, were the Baltic people, the Prussians, Lithuanians, and Latvians, as well as the Estonians.***

The "Teutonic Knights" was an order established in the Middle East by Christians during the Crusades. Initially the knights were established to help and care for Christian pilgrims and soldiers, but they also provided "protection," and from this element, the order became a military force to be reckoned with. It moved from the Middle East to Europe, and eventually led "Crusades" into northern Europe against non-Christian Slavs, Prussians, and Lithuanians. The core of the Teutonic Knights was a relatively small force of knights, but they often took on volunteers and mercenaries to augment their number. The history of the German eastward expansion is extensive and complicated, so suffice it to say that gradually the Teutonic Knights and some of the German princes gradually took over the Slavic dominated areas known as "Mecklenburg" (named after a castle there) and "Pomerania" ("Pommern" in German, but the name is from Slavic and basically means "land/area along the seacoast," as it borders the Baltic Sea). Then came the area known as "Prussia,"**** named after the Baltic people who lived there. A bit further south, a "Crusade" was launched against the Wends (a Slavic people) in the area of the Brandenburg Mark (modern Berlin area), and not only was it successful in recapturing lost territory, it expanded the German dominated area. All of this activity took place during the 1100s, and the recaptured areas and much of the newly acquired areas, were incorporated into the empire.

*While I’ve more or less covered this, it bears repeating that the empire was not “holy,” except that the Pope crowned the German Emperor after his election, technically he was elected as the German "king." He didn’t become “emperor” until the Pope crowned him. Nor was it “Roman,” as it was German-led, but the term “Roman” was used to symbolize that the Roman Empire’s mantle had been picked up once again. And it wasn’t really an “empire,” but a large-scale feudal structure, with the individual constituent states having tremendous power, and the central authority, embodied by the emperor, being relatively weak, with some exceptions.

**As mentioned previously, the rulers of the “states” were collectively known as “the German princes,” regardless of their individual titles; that is, king, prince, archduke, etc., and I will likely use that term often.

*** The Estonians are closely related to the Finns, and even to the Hungarians. Linguistically they do not speak an Indo European language, but rather they speak a language part of another language family, “Uralic.” Some ethnologists (they study “ethnic groups”) and linguists also believe the Estonians, Finns, and Hungarians are related to other peoples who came out of Asia, like the Turks, and that “theory” was more widely accepted until recent decades when it was contested by a number of ethnographers and linguists; so, I’ll say that aspect is “unresolved.”

**** The name "Prussians" outlived the original Baltic (non-German) people, as the province continued to be called "Prussia" ("Preussen" in German--pronounced proy-sen) and the German people who lived there came to be called "Prussians." Actually, the original Prussians were simply absorbed into the German population and ceased to exist. Many German noble families and aristocrats were given/established large estates in areas there, and they came to be called "Junkers" (a contraction from "junger Herr," literally "young master," with the implicit meaning of someone who had control over others and lands). Later, as you'll see, (German) Prussia expanded tremendously beyond its original borders.

WORD HISTORY:
Knight-Not all is known about the history of this word, but it is "assumed" by "some" linguists to go back to the Indo European base "gen/gn," whose Germanic offshoot, "kun," gave us the basis for "kin" (relative). From that developed the word that gave English "knave" (the "kn" was pronounced back then) and German "Knabe," both originally meaning "young male servant." A variant(?) then gave Old English "cniht" (the "cn"="kn" also pronounced back then), which also meant "boy servant," and sometimes even just "boy," and the other West Germanic languages had closely related forms of the word with the same meaning. It wasn't long before it simply came to mean "male servant," with no connection to age, and then simply to "military servant," a meaning that likewise developed in the other West Germanic languages. During the Middle Ages in England, the word came to be applied to "men who gave military service in exchange for land," and later still, "men who were given nobility status in exchange for military service," and by the 1500s, it became a noble title in its own right in England. Its relatives on the Continent didn't develop that last sense, but the notion of "servitude" remained, and German has "Knecht," which still means "servant, bondsman." Further, the servitude idea even gives the German word a meaning of "slave" in certain situations. In English, the verb, meaning "to knight," developed from the noun and the servitude of a man to the grantor or to the king. The other Germanic languages have: German and Low German "Knecht" (servant, farm worker, can also mean slave), Dutch "knecht" (servant, trade worker under a master), Frisian "knjocht" (servant, worker). The North Germanic languages (Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic and Swedish) do not use forms of the word.