Saxony

SAXONY

SAXONY. The rise of Saxony dates from 1423, when the Holy Roman emperor Sigismund gave the electorate and duchy of Saxony to Margrave Frederick of Meissen of the Wettin dynasty. The gift was consequential, unifying the regions of Thuringia and Saxony under the House of Wettin. In return, the strengthened Wettin princes were to guard the Bohemian border during the Hussite wars and protect the Holy Roman Empire's northeastern frontier against the Ottoman Empire. Saxony also possessed parts of the province of Meissen, of the Vogtland, of the Ore Mountains, and that portion of Franconia south of Schwarzburg.

POLITICS

The elector of Saxony was one of seven princes with constitutional authority to elect new emperors and was also the imperial vicar and president of the Imperial Council of Regency, making him second only to the emperor in terms of constitutional power within the empire. Saxon rulers, possessing lucrative salt and mineral mining rights, became financially powerful in the early modern era. This wealth, combined with the Wettins' ability to integrate lesser nobles and cities into their territorial system, made them the strongest of all north German princes by the late fifteenth century. Saxony's location on the northeastern fringe of the empire protected it from direct imperial and papal influence; indeed, the emperor and pope relied on Saxony to guard the Bohemian border.

Saxony was divided in 1485 by the ducal brothers Albert and Ernest. The partition left the dynasty in a perilous condition but can be explained by the fact that fifteenth-century princes regarded their lands as patrimonies and tended not to think territorially. The major towns in Albertine Saxony included Dresden, Leipzig, and Freiberg. Important towns located in the Ernestine portion included Zwickau, Torgau, and Wittenberg. During the sixteenth century none of these achieved a population over ten thousand. Because the electoral title was attached to the possession of territory around Wittenberg, the Ernestine branch retained (until 1547) the electoral dignity. Both lines passed laws that guaranteed the indivisibility of their domains and the succession of the eldest son. Neither line, however, was able to create an enclosed state. Contained within Saxon borders were a plethora of independent territories. These included the domains of the counts of Henneberg, Schwarzburg, and Mansfeld, the city of Erfurt, imperial abbeys, powerful monasteries, and wealthy bishoprics. Indeed, Lutheran visitation committees sent out in the 1520s to consolidate the Reformation often had to ask peasants whether their village lay within Saxony.

Ernestine Electors John the Constant (ruled 1525–1532), and his son, John Frederick the Magnanimous (ruled 1532–1547; died 1554), were devoted Lutherans who exercised less caution in the religious-political realm than had their predecessor Frederick the Wise (ruled 1486–1525), the elector famed for protecting Luther. At the Imperial Diet of Augsburg (1530), electoral Saxony led a group that presented a summary of Lutheran religious beliefs that is now called the Augsburg Confession. The inability of this diet to resolve religious differences and the perceived threat to national institutions within the empire encouraged John the Constant to form the Schmalkaldic League in 1531. This "defensive" league consolidated the gains of the Lutheran movement.

During the time of the league's ascendancy, the Holy Roman emperor, Charles V, had been preoccupied with external dangers presented by the Turks and by France. Peace with France (1544) and the Turks (1545), combined with a grant of money and troops from Rome, allowed Charles to confront the Protestant threat. In June 1546, Duke Maurice of Albertine Saxony, himself Lutheran, committed his domain and forces to the imperial cause against his cousin and rival. The decisive battle of the Schmalkaldic War (1546–1547), fought in April 1547 at Mühlberg, resulted in defeat for the league. The Wittenberg Capitulation (May 1547) transferred most of the Ernestine lands, and the electoral dignity, to Maurice. The Ernestine line was left scant territory around Weimar, Gotha, Eisenach, and Coburg, and a ducal title. Charles's decision to preserve the Ernestine line and his annexation of certain Wettin territories from Electoral Saxony indicated the rise of imperial might and foreshadowed the decline of Electoral Saxony as a political force.

In 1618 Elector John George I rejected approaches to become king of Bohemia. He continued instead a policy of helping the emperor maintain the empire's constitutional foundation, seeking to preserve his power as elector. As war loomed, John George, an enemy of Calvinism, pledged Saxony's support to the Catholic emperor. The first phase of the Thirty Years' War resulted in a persecution of Protestants throughout the empire. Though Saxony absorbed nearly 150,000 Bohemian refugees who had been forced into exile, its position within the Protestant world was compromised. In 1631 Saxony and Sweden allied against the empire, resulting in an invasion of Saxony. After a devastating defeat at Nördlingen, Saxony made peace with the empire in 1635. Saxony was not spared: until 1648 Swedish armies used it as their base and plundered it.

The Peace of Westphalia (1648) created a system that encouraged rivalries of power, and Saxony was quickly eclipsed by Austria, Bavaria, and Prussia. Both Frederick Augustus I (Augustus the Strong; ruled 1694–1733) and Frederick Augustus II (ruled 1733–1763) realized Saxony had to expand outside Germany to survive; each had himself elected king of Poland in an unsuccessful effort to broaden the Wettin dynasty's lands. The Saxon-Polish union did not elevate Saxony's power; rather, its economy declined due to the cost of assuming the Polish crown twice and of establishing a permanent standing army. Saxony's involvement in eighteenth-century conflicts like the Seven Years' War exposed its military frailty and contributed to further decline. Under the regency of Maria Antonia (1763–1768) and during the reign of Frederick Augustus III (1763–1827), Saxony benefited from enlightened reforms, fiscal responsibility, and a prudent foreign policy based on maintaining deferential relations toward greater powers.

ECONOMY

Between 1300 and 1600 Saxony had a diversified and robust economy. Mining, metallurgy, and smelting were crucial industries. Cobalt, tin, zinc, bituminous coal, iron, silver—all indispensable commodities—were mined in the Ore Mountains (Erzgebirge). Copper was plentiful in parts of Thuringia, as was iron ore in eastern Saxony. The growing mining industry absorbed workers, sparing Saxony the destabilizing effects of the fifteenth century's rapid population growth. Sixteen new towns with populations over five thousand were founded in this era. A significant smelting industry existed in the Thuringian Forest. Merchants from southern Germany's wealthy cities were eager to invest in Saxony; the Fuggers of Augsburg established an important foundry at Georgenthal and a smeltery at Hohenkirchen. Lucrative salt mining operations also existed in Thuringia. Because mining in Saxony did not depend on a single mineral, the boom receded slowly.

Textile manufacturing provided another crucial segment of Saxony's economy. An internationally important flax and linen industry developed in southern Saxony, centered around Chemnitz. Over three hundred villages in Saxon-controlled Thuringia specialized in cultivating woad, a plant from which a valuable blue dye was extracted. These towns enjoyed a woad monopoly and, as a result, they prospered economically. A highly developed woolen industry also contributed to Saxony's economic strength. Moreover, Saxony was advantageously situated at the center of international trade routes. Leipzig emerged by the sixteenth century as the principal entrepôt in central Europe and hosted numerous international fairs. One of Europe's largest international cattle markets took place at Buttstädt.

Several factors allowed Saxony to limit the social unrest that befell other parts of Germany in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Though impartible inheritance was practiced east of the Saxon Saale River, the mining boom minimized the economic difficulties that this custom generated elsewhere. Labor-intensive viticulture along the Elbe River around Meissen and along the Unstrut River also absorbed excess population. Saxony thus suffered less from the strains of overpopulation than did other German parts of the empire. The Wettin lords successfully subordinated local nobles into a network of territorial estates, forestalling potential rivalries, and concurrently expanding the state's administrative apparatus in the countryside. Saxony also benefited from an "intermediary" system of landlordship, one based on both wage labor from free peasants and forced labor services performed on large demesnes. This unique form of landlordship kept the organization of rural communes at a rudimentary level and served to mitigate conflicts associated with the "crisis of feudalism." With the noteworthy exception of mining areas in Thuringia and the Ore Mountains, Saxony escaped the violence generated by the Peasants' War of 1524–1525 and avoided the rural unrest that plagued Upper Germany after 1570.

CULTURE

Saxony possessed impressive educational institutions: influential universities at Leipzig (1409), Wittenberg (1502), and Jena (1588); a number of remarkable secondary schools (Lateinschulen) for the privileged and gifted; and, after the Reformation, schools throughout the land to teach every boy and girl reading and writing. Leipzig also was an early center for book publishing (1480s) and for book trading. Humanist circles, encouraged by Duke George of Albertine Saxony (reigned 1500–1539) and Elector Frederick the Wise, emerged in Leipzig and Wittenberg. Thinkers such as Martin Luther, Philipp Melanchthon, and Agricola made Saxony a leading center for humanism in Germany. All these factors were instrumental in making Saxony the birthplace of the Reformation and the home to its crucial events. Early modern Saxony's contribution to world culture cannot be underestimated: Lucas Cranach, Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, and Johann Gottfried von Herder were either born in Saxon lands or developed their talents within them.

See also Augsburg ; Augustus II the Strong (Saxony and Poland) ; Bach Family ; Cranach Family ; Dresden ; Handel, George Frideric ; Herder, Johann Gottfried von ; Holy Roman Empire ; Humanists and Humanism ; Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm ; Leipzig ; Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim ; Luther, Martin ; Lutheranism ; Melanchthon, Philipp ; Reformation, Protestant ; Schmalkaldic War (1546–1547) ; Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) ; Universities ; Westphalia, Peace of (1648) .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Blaschke, Karlheinz. Sachsen im Zeitalter der Reformation. Gütersloh, 1970.

Gagliardo, John G. Germany under the Old Regime: 1600– 1790. London and New York, 1991.

Holborn, Hajo. A History of Modern Germany. The Reformation. Princeton, 1959.

Hughes, Michael. Early Modern Germany: 1477–1806. Philadelphia, 1992.

Karant-Nunn, Susan C. Zwickau in Transition, 1500–1547: The Reformation as an Agent of Change. Columbus, Ohio, 1987.

Scott, Tom. Society and Economy in Germany, 1300–1600. New York, 2002.

Wilson, Peter H. The Holy Roman Empire, 1495–1806. New York, 1999.

James Goodale