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East Germany Carolingian Empire, 752 - 911
Charles the Great (Charlemagne) inherited the Frankish crown
in 768. During his reign (768-814), he subdued Bavaria, conquered
Lombardy and Saxony, and established his authority in central
Italy. By the end of the eighth century, his kingdom, later to
become known in German historiography as the First Reich,
included the territories of present-day France, a part of Spain,
the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, and the
greater part of Italy. Charlemagne, the founder of an empire that
was Roman, Christian, and Germanic, was crowned Holy Roman
Emperor by the pope in the year 800.
The Carolingian Empire was based on an alliance between the
emperor, a temporal ruler supported by his military retinue, and
the pope of the Roman Catholic Church, who granted spiritual
sanction for the imperial mission. Charlemagne and his son, Louis
I (Louis the Pious, 814-40), established centralized authority,
appointed imperial counts as administrators, and developed a
hierarchical feudal structure headed by the emperor. However, the
empire of Charlemagne, which, in contrast with the legalistic and
abstract Roman concept of government, relied on personal
leadership, lasted less than a century.
A period of internecine warfare followed the death of Louis.
The Treaty of Verdun (843) restored peace and divided the empire
among his three sons, geographically and politically delineating
the future territories of Germany, France, and the area between
them, known as the Middle Kingdom
(see
fig. 2). The eastern
Carolingian kings ruled in present-day Germany and Austria, the
western Carolingian kings in the area of France. The imperial
title, however, came to depend increasingly on rule over the
Middle Kingdom (primarily Italy). By this time, in addition to a
geographical and political delineation, a cultural and linguistic
split had occurred. The east Frankish tribes still spoke Germanic
dialects; the language of the west Frankish tribes, under the
influence of Gallo-Latin, had developed into Old French.
Meanwhile, the eastern Carolingian kingship was being weakened by
the rise of regional duchies, which acquired the trappings of
petty kingdoms. This marked the beginning of particularism, in
which territorial rulers promoted their own interests and
autonomy without regard to the kingdom. These duchies were
strengthened when the Carolingian line died out in 911, leaving
kings who had no direct line to the throne to assert their power
against the territorial dukes.
Data as of July 1987
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