The Eastern Frankish Kingdom is a state created as a result of the Treaty of Verdun (843) of the Frankish Empire as the hereditary possession of Louis II of Germany and included the territory to east of the Rhine and north of the Alps. The East Frankish Kingdom was the forerunner of the Holy Roman Empire and modern Germany.
Most often, the period of existence of the East Frankish kingdom is limited, on the one hand, to the Verdun Treaty of 843, and, on the other, to 919, when regnum teutonicorum (the German kingdom ) was first mentioned. Namely, under the 919 year in the Salzburg annals it is written that ” Arnulf , Duke of Bavaria, was elected to rule the Kingdom of Germany “. But the official title of kings remained “king of the eastern francs” until 962, when king Otto I took the title “Emperor of the Romans and Francs”. Therefore, sometimes historians consider the years 843 to 962 to be the timeframe for the existence of the East-Frankish Kingdom.
The territory of the state was relatively stable and tended to expand: in 870, the eastern part of Lorraine was annexed, including the Netherlands, Alsace and Lorraine itself, the seizure of lands inhabited by the Slavs along the Elbe began.
Separatism and integration trends
The main feature of the East Frankish kingdom was the fact that it actually consisted of five major tribal duchies: Saxony, Bavaria, Franconia, Schwabia and Thuringia (later Lorraine was added to them), which are relatively homogeneous in the tribal composition of semi-independent principalities. The lesser influence of the Roman state-legal institutions and the long-term preservation of tribal relations in the West Frank Kingdom predetermined the relative backwardness of the socio-political development of the East Frank Kingdom kingdom from its western neighbor. The tribal dukes represented a real source of power in the state, while the power of the king turned out to be rather limited and highly dependent on the country’s largest feudal lords. This was also facilitated by the absence in the East-Frankish kingdom of the king’s large land domain and the need to rely on the military forces of the dukes in foreign policy issues.
The unity of the state was maintained, above all, by the ruling home of the Carolingians, as well as by administrative institutions and a wide layer of the Frankish aristocracy, inherited by the East Frankish Kingdom from the empire of Charlemagne. During the 9th century, in parallel with the process of consolidation of power, the duchy developed an awareness of the unity of the German nation and state. The East Frankish kingdom was much more homogeneous in its ethnic composition than other states formed on the ruins of the Frankish Empire. In addition, the land ownership of the church and the Frankish aristocracy was scattered across the territory of all the duchy, which also created the prerequisites for unification.
Social institutions
Feudalization processes in the East-Frankish Kingdom developed at a slower pace than in the West-Frankish. This is especially characteristic of the northern regions of the country – Saxony, Frisia. The process of enslaving the peasants in the kingdom was still at an early stage and in many regions a fairly wide layer of free peasantry remained (Swabia, Saxony, Tyrol ). The long-term supremacy of allodial land ownership and the relatively slow process of its crowding out by feral relations based on conditional feudal holding are also essential. Moreover, the Lenten system of the East Frankish kingdom was non-hereditary in nature: fiefs complained, usually, to the confidant of a king or a duke for the duration of their service without the right to be inherited. The judicial immunity of the feudal lords also did not receive such completeness of clearance as was observed in the West-Frankish lands, and the prerogative of resolving the bulk of conflicts and cases remained with the king and his representatives, the counts.
The East Frankish kingdom was a hereditary monarchy: power passed from father to son in the youngest line of the Carolingian dynasty – descendants of Louis II the German. By the end of the 9th century, the principle of state inseparability was formed, the power in which was to be inherited by the eldest son of the deceased monarch. The termination of the German Carolingian line in 911 did not lead to the transfer of the throne to the French Carolingians: the East Franks knew they chose the Saxon duke Conrad I as their ruler, thus securing the right of the German princes to elect the heir to the deceased monarch.
Political development
The founder of the East-Frankish Kingdom was Louis II of Germany ( 804–876 ), during whose rule this state entity acquired sovereignty and constitutional integrity. The king successfully fought on the eastern frontier of the state, subduing the encouragement and establishing suzerainty over Great Moravia, but his attempts to restore the unity of the empire of Charlemagne were unsuccessful. The war with the West-Frankish kingdom for the inheritance of the intersected line of Lothar ended with the signing of the Treaty of Mersen of 870, according to which the eastern part of Lorraine was ceded to the East-Frankish kingdom. At the end of his reign, Louis II, following the ancient tradition of the Carolingians and yielding to the armed demands of his sons, divided the monarchy into three parts, transferring Bavaria to the eldest son Carlomann, Saxony to the middle Louis III, and Schwabia and Lorraine to the younger Charles.
At the end of the 870s Again exacerbated the struggle with the West-Frankish kingdom for power over Lorraine. In 876, the troops of Louis III defeated the West-Frankish army of Charles II the Bald in the battle of Andernach, which secured the territory of Lorraine for Germany. By agreement in Ribmont ( 880 ), the border was established between the kingdoms of the Western and Eastern Franks, which existed until the XIV century. The threat of Viking invasions became more serious for the state: from the middle of the 9th century, Norwegian and Danish fleets of Normans regularly ravaged North German lands, almost without encountering resistance from the central government. Despite the individual successes of Louis III and Charles III, in general, due to the economic weakness of the state and the difficulty of mobilizing military forces, the Vikings could not organize a decisive rebuff.
Under Charles III ( 882–887 ), for the first time since the time of Louis I the Pious, all parts of the Carolingian empire were briefly united: in 879 Charles the Fat inherited Italy and the title of emperor, and in 884 the throne of the West-Frankish kingdom. However, the new monarch turned out to be a rather weak ruler and was unable to organize a reflection of the invasion of the Vikings, who reached Paris in 886. In 887, an uprising broke out against him in Southeast Germany led by Arnulf of Carinthia, the illegitimate son of King Carloman, who seized power in the East-Frankish Kingdom.
During the reign of Arnulf ( 887–899 ), the East Frankish kingdom experienced a period of ascent: he managed to establish the principle of state inseparability, subordinate tribal dukes to his authority and fight back the Normans. In 895, Arnulf conquered Italy and was crowned emperor, thus laying the beginning of a nearly thousand-year history of uniting the titles of the emperor of the Roman Empire and the king of Germany. Less successful were the wars of Arnulf with the Slavs of the Great Moravian Empire and the Hungarians, who settled in 895 in the Middle Danube, and began to carry out predatory raids on German lands.
Arnulf’s successor, his young son Louis IV the Child was under the complete control of the greatest German princes and bishops. The power of the tribal dukes again increased, while the mechanisms of royal power were weakened. The situation was complicated by continuous wars with the Hungarians, who completely destroyed the defense system of the south-eastern borders of the state. The initiative to repel external threats and maintain state power passed to regional rulers: the dukes of Bavaria, Saxony, Franconia. With the death of Louis IV in 911, the German line of the Carolingians ceased. At the council in Forchheim, the princes of the East-Frankish kingdom elected Conrad I, duke of Franconia and nephew of the deceased king, as new monarch. The short reign of Conrad I was a continuation of the period of internal political crisis. Power was usurped by the regional rulers, the central government practically ceased to control the state of affairs in the duchy.
In 918, Konrad I died, bequeathed the throne to the Duke of Saxony, Heinrich I the Bird-catcher ( 918-936 ), who was elected king in 919. However, part of the feudal lords did not recognize Henry, having elected Arnulf the Evil, the Duke of Bavaria, in 919. In the chronicle record of this fact, the expression “the kingdom of Germany” ( lat. Regnum teutonicorum ) was first mentioned, which is often considered the moment when the new state, the kingdom of Germany, appeared on the site of the East-Frankish kingdom. In 921, Arnulf Evil recognized Heinrich I the Bird-catcher as king. In the same year of 921, Heinrich concluded a treaty in Bonn with the king of the West-Frankish Kingdom, Charles. In this case, Heinrich was called the king of the Oriental Franks.
In 936, after the death of Heinrich I, his son Otto I was elected king of the East Frankish kingdom. In 962, Otto I took the title “Emperor of the Romans and Franks” ( lat. Imperator Romanorum et Francorum ). This year is considered the founding year of the ” Holy Roman Empire “.
Sources:
Balakin V. D. The creators of the Holy Roman Empire
Vodovozov V.V. Germany // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron : in 86 tons
Rapp F. The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation
Theis L. [fr] . Heritage Carolingian. IX — X century