The German Question, Part Twenty-Four

"The Thirty Years' War Brings Death, Destruction & A Partial Answer To The German Question," Part Two-"The War"

Bohemia* was a part of the Holy Roman Empire, and in the latter part of the 1300s and early 1400s, a man named Jan (John, in English) Hus was a leader of a group of political and religious reformers. He was executed as a heretic, but his popularity brought together his followers in what eventually became more of a religious movement, and they were called "Hussites," and they became a Protestant sect which dominated Bohemia, much to the chagrin of the Church and of the Habsburgs, who were staunch Catholics, and emperors of the German Empire. The territory was ruled by the "King of Bohemia,"** but when one king, Louis II ("Lajos" in Hungarian, as he was also King of Hungary) was killed in battle against the Ottoman Turks in the 1500s, he left no son as an heir. His brother, Ferdinand, who was married to a Habsburg, became king, and thus Bohemia joined the growing possessions of the Habsburgs. While the Habsburgs were Catholic, there was a bit of a truce for decades, allowing freedom of religion until another Habsburg, German emperor Ferdinand II (and also King of Bohemia), wanted to establish Catholicism throughout his lands. This brought about a revolt in Bohemia in 1618.

The revolt in Bohemia triggered other religious conflicts within the Habsburg lands, including in certain parts of Austria, where Protestants were majorities. Certain Hungarian Protestants sought to aid the other Protestants, and later still, the Danes, staunch Lutherans, joined the military operations in northern Germany to aid the Protestant German state of Lower Saxony against advancing Imperial (Catholic) forces. Then later still, Sweden, another staunchly Protestant country, joined the action in the northern/northeastern part of Germany. One major exception to the religious reasons for the conflict was France. France was heavily Catholic, but the French hated and feared the Habsburgs, and they agreed to support Sweden financially, and then later, actually entered the military conflict by declaring war on Spain (ruled by a branch of the Habsburgs) and on the German Empire/Holy Roman Empire, which had a Catholic Habsburg as emperor. The war raged on, with Catholic armies gaining ground at times, and then Protestant armies retaking many lands. The French had a difficult time, suffering some terrible defeats, with Paris itself threatened at one time by Habsburg forces.

The Protestant forces and their French allies gradually turned the tide, inflicting some devastating defeats on the Catholic forces of the Habsburgs. Both sides were exhausted, and a series of treaties were negotiated between the various participants, but two major treaties, one signed in Osnabrück and one in Münster, two German cities in the province of Westphalia (Westfalen, in German), brought about the end of the Thirty Years' War and its companion war, the Eighty Years' War between Spain and the Dutch, which had essentially become one with the Thirty years' War. See: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2010/07/german-question-part-twenty.html

To be continued, as this will require a Part Three..... (A Word History is below the notes)

* For those unfamiliar with European geography, Bohemia later became the leading part of the new nation of Czechoslovakia after World War One. It now has a similar role in the "Czech Republic." In the time period involved in this article, while it undoubtedly had a Czech majority population (the Czechs are Slavs), it had a substantial German minority, mainly formed in a German majority populated sort of semi-circle around Bohemia, but Germans were also somewhat mixed in with the "interior" Czech population.

** The individual "states" within the German Empire (Holy Roman Empire) were more like independent "countries," with some being ruled by kings, princes, dukes, archdukes, etc. Further, it was not uncommon for some rulers to carry several titles, if they ruled a variety of states: for example, one German emperor, Rudolf, was designated "Rudolf II," as his title as emperor, but simply as "Rudolf," with no numeral, in his capacity as King of Hungary and Croatia, but again as "Rudolf II" as King of Bohemia, but as Rudolf V, in his capacity as Archduke of Austria. Initially, the ruler of Bohemia was called a "duke," but later it was changed to "king," then back to duke, before returning once again to king.

WORD HISTORY:
War-This seems to go back to the Indo European root "wers." This gave Old Germanic "werso," which seems to have meant "cause or bring into confusion," and probably also "mix," which would certainly tie in with "confusion." This gave Frankish (the Franks were a Germanic tribe) "werra," seemingly with the same basic meaning. This then passed into Old French as "guerre," but in the northern dialect of Old French as "werre," with the meaning "war" (Italian and Spanish, for example, also picked this up, but as "guerra," their word for "war"). Old English acquired the word from the northern French dialect at some point prior to the Norman Invasion as "werre/wyrre/warre," later being reduced to the shorter form "war." Interestingly, the Germanic dialects, including Anglo-Saxon, of long ago did not have a set word for "war," and English used a whole variety of forms, too numerous to get into, to express the notion of "war." Modern German has the related word (ver)wirren, which still has the meaning "confuse, bewilder," but also "tangle/entangle," which also adds the "mix" meaning.

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.