The German Question, Part Twenty-One

"Competition For The Habsburgs"

In a previous article in this series, we learned that a family originating in the southwestern area of the German territories, the Habsburgs, came to dominate a large part of southern German lands, and indeed, eventually established a virtual permanent lock on providing the German emperor (technically of the "Holy Roman Empire," which in fact was the old German Empire); thus making Vienna the de facto capital of the German Empire. Interestingly, a second family, originating in the same general southwestern area, began a rise to power that eventually challenged the Habsburgs. This family was the "Hohenzollerns." Like their future rivals, their name came from their family castle, "Burg Hohenzollern," located at the town of Hechingen, in the area known as Swabia. It is about thirty to thirty-five miles south of Stuttgart. The original castle was destroyed during a war in the 1420s and was followed a couple of decades later by another castle with sturdier fortifications. This castle eventually came into the possession of..... the Habsburgs! By the mid 1800s, not much remained of castle #2, and a third castle was built, with only the chapel remaining from #2, and construction of #3 lasting for nearly twenty years. It is this castle that remains today, still owned by members of the Hohenzollern family, and it is open for tours, with hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.

Just as with so much of this series, the era of German history we're entering is far more complicated and extensive than I will write about, and my aim is to be as general as possible, but to try to give a good idea of the overall developments in events.

The Hohenzollerns eventually established a strong position in and around the Nuremberg area (Nürnberg, in German), which is a region known as "Franken," usually rendered in English as "Franconia," and named after a branch of the Germanic tribe, the Franks.* Due to marriages and land purchases, a part of the Hohenzollern family came into possession of large territories in the northeastern German lands. With these acquisitions, the Hohenzollern family separated into two parts, with the other part, I guess I'll call it the "original" part, remaining in the Nuremberg area.** The territories in the northeast were in the German area called "Brandenburg," which includes Berlin. A bit later, the family inherited much of what was known as "Prussia" (Preussen, in German, with the "eu" being equivalent to English "oi" or "oy"). The Hohenzollerns then merged these two provinces in the 1600s and eventually called it the "Kingdom of Prussia" in 1701.*** (See earlier parts of this series for how the Germans initially came to these lands.) When the Reformation came along in the 1500s, the Hohenzollerns embraced Protestantism. By the 1600s, when French Protestants, called the Huguenots, were in battles with, and persecuted by, the French Catholics, the Hohenzollerns invited these Frenchmen to settle in Prussia, where they were granted asylum. Thousands took the Prussian offer (figures vary, but somewhere between 15-20,000), supposedly with more than six thousand settling in Berlin alone. By this time, the Hohenzollerns were becoming something of a rival to the dominant Habsburgs, a rivalry that would only grow in coming years. (A Word History is below the notes)

* Another part of the Franks conquered much of what is now modern France, eventually giving their tribal name to the country, and the name of their language, "Fraenkish," which has become our word "French." The Frankish language was eventually absorbed by the Latin-based dialects in the overall area, but provided a fair number of words that were borrowed into these dialects, some of which still remain in modern French. This is a case of the "conquerors," the Franks (and their language), eventually being peacefully overtaken and absorbed by the "conquered," what was mainly a Celtic-Roman population present when the Franks invaded.

** Both branches of the family are owners of the existing castle mentioned above, but the "northern" (Prussian) branch, holds the majority ownership.

*** Originally, Brandenburg was a "Margrave" (Markgraf, in German), that is, it was ruled by a type of "count," who also was an elector; that is, he had a vote in the election of any new German emperor; the title of elector in German was "Kurfürst" ("fürst" is really the same word as English "first," and is pronounced similarly). Prussia was originally ruled by a "duke" (Herzog, in German). When the two were merged as a kingdom (Königreich, in German), the ruler was henceforth known as a "king," although regardless of title, high German nobles were known collectively as the "German princes." (Note: Elector Frederick III crowned himself as the first King of Prussia, as King Frederick I)

WORD HISTORY:
Wright-Not commonly used in modern English, except as a name or in compounds (like "playwright" and "wheelwright"), this word goes back to Indo European "werg," which meant "work or do something." It is indeed closely related to the word "work." The Old Germanic offshoot was "werkam," with the same meaning. This produced in Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "wyrcan," again with the same meaning. A noun variant developed as "wyhrta," meaning "worker," but later, the "r" and the vowel were transposed, giving English "wrytha." This eventually developed into the more modern "wright" (and don't forget, the "gh" was once pronounced), with the general meaning "skilled worker, craftsman." From what I can find, while other Germanic languages (or dialects might be more proper) from days of old had similar words directly related to the English "wright" (Old High German had "wurtho," for example), they have all died out, except for Dutch "wrecht" (meaning "worker, builder of something"), although it too is now archaic. Just as the closely related word "work" has survived in English, there are living relatives of "work" in the other Germanic languages.