December 28, 2005
Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach
Because you demanded it.
Last post, I mentioned that the little town of Ostheim had an interesting history. Here, we'll briefly glance at the what and why.
First, the map. (Warning: not for the faint of heart.)
Go easy, it's not as bad as it looks. This is a map of central Germany around 1850 or so. Bavaria is on the bottom, Bohemia -- the modern Czech Republic -- down and to the right.
See those awful green splotches? Those make up the Grossherzogtum, the Grand Duchy, of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. Yup, it's broken up into pieces: three big ones, and eight or ten little ones. That was normal, back then. (Did a lot of Central European history suddenly just click into place for you? Yah, me too.)
Now, look down and to the left. See the little green dot below the big green splotch? Ostheim.
Ostheim was the, um, capital of an enclave of about 10 square miles. There was one small town -- Ostheim itself -- and three or four villages. The total population, in the 19th century, was maybe 2,000 or 3,000 people.
But! While this enclave was small, it sat in a peculiarly strategic location. One, it straddled the valley of the Streu. The Streu is tiny -- more a creek than a river -- but its valley is the easiest north-south route into what would one day be called the Fulda Gap.
Two, the enclave was inside the powerful kingdom of Bavaria. Bavaria was Catholic, and had a history of being chummy with certain foreign powers -- Austria, France. Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, though, was overwhelmingly Protestant, and was historically friendly with Prussia. So, S-W-E and Bavaria viewed each other with a certain suspicion. Hostility, even.
The Streu runs through a region known as lower Franconia, which has been part of Bavaria since forever, but which remains culturally distinct and which has occasionally entertained secessionist yearnings. So, the Ostheim enclave wasn't just in Bavaria. It was a Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach foothold in an area which, while Catholic, was not too wild about being Bavarian.
-- "Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach" is rather ungainly, isn't it. But it's important to distinguish it from the Duchy of Saxe-Altenburg, the Duchy of Saxe-Meiningen, the Principality of Saxe-Gotha, and the tiny Principality of Saxe-Coburg... that last, of course, being the ancestral home of the current British Royal Family. I couldn't make this stuff up. Anyway, Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach was by far the biggest and most important of all of these; it was not just a Duchy, but a Grand Duchy. It was nearly as big as Rhode Island, and by the mid-1800s it was home to around a quarter of a million people.
Of course, that was only after Napoleon forced the Duchy of Saxe-Weimar (the two eastern pieces) to combine with the Duchy of Saxe-Eisenach (the western bit, including Ostheim). Before that, they'd been separate.
Where were we... oh, yes, Bavaria. The Dukes and Grand Dukes of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach tended to be plump, conservative, strongly Protestant, and Prussophile. The Kings of Bavaria tended to be skinny, liberal, Catholic, Francophile, and Prussophobe. (Excepting the ones who were barking, raving mad. Story for another time.)
One example. Back in the day, King Maximilian of Bavaria was Napoleon's most loyal ally. He stuck with the little Corsican for years, even through the disastrous Russian campaign. Didn't turn his coat until the eve of the Battle of Leipzig in 1813. And when he did, he sold his loyalty high: he demanded that Bavaria be treated as a full member of the anti-Napoleonic alliance, and not have to give up any territory or pay any indemnities. To countries like Britain and Austria, who'd been fighting Napoleon nonstop for a decade or more, this was pretty galling. They needed Bavaria to switch sides, so they agreed. But it left a rather bad taste.
This was far from the first time. The Bavarians had a long, long history of this kind of thing, going all the way back to the 15th century when they first grabbed Franconia for no better reason than that they wanted it, and could. So, the plump solid Protestant Dukes of Saxe-whatever had no reason to like or trust their sly, Catholic neighbors to the south.
Which brings us back to the slightly oversized architecture of Ostheim. Here we have a town of less than 3,000 people. In the 1600s, it was more like 1,000 people. But it already had a huge town hall -- big enough for a small city -- an enormous fortified church, and a castle sitting on a hill just a mile away, looking down over it all.
Why? Because this was the Dukes' way of saying to the Bavarians, Don't even try it, creeps. The Ostheim enclave might be small, but it was heavily fortified, and it sat right on the best invasion route. It could even, in a pinch, appeal to Franconian separatism against the Bavarian crown. In a war, that big town hall could end up being a military headquarters for a surprisingly large region. It happened, more than once.
I should add that there are still traces of all this today. Ostheim is still mostly a Protestant town; a Catholic church was built in the 1960s, but it's small. Just a few kilometers away, though, towns like Fladungen and Mellrichstadt are strongly Catholic. Even the architecture is slightly different.
Oh, and Franconians still hate being called Bavarian. Especially Franconians here in Ostheim.
But that's a story for another post.
Posted by douglas at December 28, 2005 11:26 PMFascinating. But there are lots of protestant bits of Lower Franconia, and surely not all of them were Saxon exclaves? Würzburg, for example, is as catholic as it gets. Yet there are lots of nearby towns and vilages that are solidly Lutheran (with, typically, a heavy ancient evangelische church on the square, and maybe a spaceship-like postwar RC chapel on the edge of town serving the Neubürger who moved in when the place became a de facto suburb).
The more diplomatic Franconians, BTW, will accept the label 'Bavarian' readily enough (at least if it's a Saupreiss using it; really, can one expect them to know any better?), but will remind you that they are 'die Elite Bayerns'.
This all makes me think of a Kommilitone whom I'd queried as to his home. He was from Aschaffenburg; as he explained, 'isch bin Bayä'.
Posted by: Mrs Tilton at December 29, 2005 03:39 AMHi Mrs. T.,
Yes, Franconia was always more religiously mixed -- than the rest of Bavaria. This was another reason Ostheim was more important than it looks: it was a Protestant outpost in a Bavarian borderland that had a large Protestant minority.
Ostheim, BTW, perfectly fits the pattern you describe: /very/ heavy, ancient Protestant church in the center, modern 1970-ish Catholic church further towards the edge of town.
The Franconians I know (my in-laws and their friends, mostly) do seem to have an odd love-hate relationship with Bavaria. And they're not Bavarian at all. Except when they are. The closest American analogy -- and it's not very close -- might be the weird relationship between mouth-breathing American patriotism and neo-Confederate Southern regionalism.
It's not that sort of creepy, but it is contradictory in the same sort of way.
Doug M.
I should add that this is interesting for another reason. I'd had no idea Claudia was from so close to my old stomping-ground of Würzburg. (I'm not sure why, but I'd formed a notion she was from much farther east in Oberfranken: Coburg or some place like that).
And I learn from a glance at de.wikipedia that Ostheim became part of Thüringen in 1920 (the year, IIANM, when Coburg left Thüringen to join Bavaria) and was only annexed to the weissblauer Freistaat by the Amis in 1945 (bit of luck, that, by the way). No wonder the locals have their problems with the Lederhosen-wearers to their south; it's a bit as though a bunch of Brazilians had marched into Dover two generations back and told the people that they were henceforth part of la Normandie.
Posted by: Mrs Tilton at December 29, 2005 03:36 PMI've always had a fondness for pre-unification German maps. All those marvelous enclaves and leopard spots. The absurd, needless (to me) complexity of the whole situation is just so thrilling, somehow.
There are still a bunch of places like this in the world-- Wikipedia's article on 'enclave' discusses a few, such as the Belgium/Netherlands one and the India/Bangladesh one. But the German situation here is even more fun, what with the big number of political entities involved.
I posted a WI along these lines to That Newsgroup a couple of months ago, but got few takers.
So, what's a "grand" duchy, and how does it differ from, say, a non-grand duchy or an archduchy?
Posted by: Dennis Brennan at December 29, 2005 07:06 PMFranconians have an advanced form of Stockholm syndrome.
This is a post-unification map. Before 1866 it would have to show Hesse-Nassau as a country and between 1866 and 1871 it would have to show national borders for Bohemia and Bavaria.
A Grand Duke is higher in rank and has precedence, provided both are reichsunmittelbar.
'Archduke' was pretty much a family-internal usage amongst the Habsburgs. (Perhaps something very roughly like 'royal duke' or 'prince of the blood royal' as used in the UK?) I use the word 'family' here, of course, in both its genetico-sociological and its mafia sense.
According to wikipedia, both the title and Austria's very status as an 'archduchy' were basically just something the Habsburgs blatantly made up, using a batch of forged deeds to fool the world and grab status equal to the Electors of the Holy Roman Empire. (The forgery wasn't discovered until after the HRE was dissolved, so the Habsburgs got clean away with it.)
Hmmm, maybe I should try something like that. What, you mean you've never heard of the Donum Bobdobbsianum, whereby the Tiltons were granted perpetual ownership rights over all the world's oxygen? Well, your ignorance is neither here nor there. Just see that you pay the bill you'll be getting presently for all that air you've been breathing.
Posted by: Mrs Tilton at December 30, 2005 04:41 PMSee
http://www.hiddeneurope.co.uk/hidden_europe_3_tangled_territories.pdf
for a cute article about enclaves, exclaves and similar geographic curiosities in Europe.
Posted by: Dennis Brennan at January 4, 2006 06:43 PMI'm wondering if any of you folks know of a village/town called Gahans. My grandfather was born in Saxe Weimar according to the 1860 census and his Civil War discharge papers indicate he was born in Gahans Germany. I'm wondering where that might be in modern Germany. I haven't been able to find any reference to that town anywhere.
Dick B.
I believe Ostheim wasn't technically annexed by Bavaria in 1945. At least prior to reunification,
it was part of Thuringia but “administered by the Free State of Bavaria”. This was a strange
situation since in order to reunify Germany the old states of eastern Germany had to reconstitute
themselves in order to join the Bundes Republik Deutschland (West Germany) state by state. In
other words between around 1946 and 1989 just prior to reunification, I don’t think there was a
Thuringia existing in the DDR to which Ostheim could be a part of.
My great grandfather was from Saxe-Weimar or Saxony Weimar. Sometimes he listed his birthplace as Kronkicker. He left Germany in 1840. I've never been able to locate that village/town.
Any help would be appreciated.
Paul Orf
My great grandfather was from Saxe-Weimar or Saxony Weimar. Sometimes he listed his birthplace as Kronkicker. He left Germany in 1840. I've never been able to locate that village/town.
Any help would be appreciated.
Paul Orf
Not exactly in the same venue, but the historical connection of the East Franks with the West Franks (aka the French) is there. My grandfather's people are Franks from B-W (in fact, one of the last names in the family tree is precisely that, "Frank".). Grandpa came to the USA as a teenager; his parents stayed in KRW (which of course is not on the above map). . . . When I asked a local Cath. monastary to please translate my greatgrandmother's obit. I was amused to read that "from all around came French relatives" to her funeral . . . I knew of course that it should have stated "Frankish". Jim Chorazy (my mother was from German parents)
Posted by: Jim Chorazy at March 27, 2007 12:21 PMIs Ostheim part of what was called "The Palitinate" in the early 1700's? Is this the region that was overrun by the French army in about 1727 when the Treaty of Nance (sp?) was reversed and the catholic national religion of France was forced upon these deeply protestant Palatinates?
Posted by: Lynda Yost at February 21, 2010 08:11 PM