With the virtual extinction of the Carolingian line, the dukes of the eastern, German kingdom chose one of their own number as king: Conrad of Franconia. He fought against them, but on his deathbed nominated another, Henry of Saxony, as his successor. The dukes of Swabia and Bavaria opposed Henry and it was not until the reign of his son, Otto, that both were pacified. Under the long reign of Otto (936-73), the German kingdom grew to be the most powerful political force in Europe.
Otto I was crowned emperor in 962 and is thus regularly compared to Charlemagne, crowned in 800. He was in many ways an inheritor of Charlemagne's political legacy, and the core of the Ottonian empire was built directly on the German portion of the subdivided Carolingian empire. However, Otto's German empire was far removed from the Frankish state of one and a half centuries earlier.
Following the subdivisions of Charlemagne's empire, the oldest portions, the French-speaking west, tended to fragment. The newest portions, the German-speaking east, on the other hand revealed stronger unifying tendencies. The differences cannot be ascribed to the problems caused by the Vikings. The Magyars proved to be a comparable nuisance to German kings, and political rivals were seen by late Carolingians of the French west and the new kings of the German east alike as greater threats. Indeed, this endemic violent political competition ensured that the simple vagaries of inheritance and succession could not be the sole cause of such different fates.
The suggestion that the western kingdoms fragmented as a result of the feudalization of society has more to recommend it. The German kingdom was more primitive. It was perhaps much like the Frankish kingdom inherited by Charlemagne. When Otto was crowned emperor, the last 200 years had seen the conversion to Christianity, the development of a diocesan organization that was incomplete at the borders of the empire, the foundation of abbeys, and the collection of tithes. The minting of coins east of the Rhine had not long been established. The exploitation of the countryside by ecclesiastics, lay magnates and the king based on land ownership and farming estates worked by servile peasants represented a departure from the more personal forms of authority and the renders of tribute that had gone before. Unlike Carolingian royal estates, some of which may even have gone back to Roman villas, Saxon royal villas (the densest concentration in the Harz hills, among them Tilleda, Goslar, Werla, Quedlinburg and Otto's 'new Rome' Magdeburg) were relatively new foundations. That Otto's Germany was not long out of the Iron Age with a society dominated by chieftains of small power is revealed by its subdivision based on tribal regions: Saxony, Friesland, Thuringia, Franconia, Swabia and
Bavaria. Only Lorraine had a long history of developed complex political and social organization.
Just as Charlemagne's empire was partly held together by eastward expansion against less developed German neighbours, Otto's empire in part maintained cohesion by attacking its barbarian Slavic neighbours. Frontier principalities, marches, were created in this process. From centres such as Brandenburg and Meissen these areas were brought under German political control and 'civilized'.
Unlike the great Frankish empire, the extension of centralized political power in the new German empire was largely achieved through the Church. By 951 Otto successfully declared eighty-five 'royal' monasteries and all the bishoprics exempt from all secular authority. They were 'immune' from ducal administration. Their lands could not be sub-enfeoffed without royal authority.
Rule of the Italian kingdom came when the pope invited the king to help drive out his political rival, Berengar. The campaign was quick and easy and Otto was made emperor by the pope, although Italy did not figure prominently in Otto's political programme, as it would in that of later German emperors.
R. Samson
World History
