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ottothe great with the crown cleaned of later additions

Otto the Great

According to German Historians in the 19th and 20th centuries, Otto the Great (912-973) was responsible for consolidating Germany as a nation. After WW2, the history has been told in a more nuanced way.

Otto I (912-973) was the duke of Saxony (as Otto II, 936–961), German king (from 936), and Holy Roman emperor (962–973). He consolidated the German Kingdom (1) by his suppression of rebellious vassals and his decisive victory over the Hungarians. His use of the church as a stabilizing influence created a secure empire and stimulated a cultural renaissance.

Early years

Otto was the son of the future king Henry I, of the Liudolfing, or Saxon, dynasty, and his second wife, Matilda. Little is known of his early years, but he probably shared in some of his father’s campaigns. He married Edith, daughter of the English king Edward the Elder, in 930; she obtained as her dowry the flourishing town of Magdeburg. Nominated by Henry as his successor, Otto was elected king by the German dukes at Aachen on Aug. 7, 936, a month after Henry’s death, and crowned by the archbishops of Mainz and Cologne.

While Henry I had controlled his vassal dukes only with difficulty, the new king firmly asserted his suzerainty over them. This led immediately to war, especially with Eberhard of Franconia and his namesake, Eberhard of Bavaria, who were joined by discontented Saxon nobles under the leadership of Otto’s half-brother Thankmar.

Thankmar was defeated and killed, the Franconian Eberhard submitted to the King, and Eberhard of Bavaria was deposed and outlawed. In 939, however, Otto’s younger brother Henry revolted; he was joined by Eberhard of Franconia and by Giselbert of Lotharingia and supported by the French king Louis IV. Otto was again victorious: Eberhard fell in battle, Giselbert was drowned in flight, and Henry submitted to his brother.

Nevertheless, in 941 Henry once again joined a conspiracy to murder the King. This was discovered in time, and, whereas the other conspirators were punished, Henry was again forgiven. Thenceforward he remained faithful to his brother and, in 947, was given the dukedom of Bavaria. The other German dukedoms were likewise bestowed on relatives of Otto.

Foreign conquests

Despite these internal difficulties, Otto found time to strengthen and to extend the frontiers of the kingdom. In the east the margraves Gero and Hermann Billung were successful against the Slavs, and their gains were consolidated by the founding of the Monastery of St. Maurice in Magdeburg, in 937, and of two bishoprics, in 948.

In the north, three bishoprics (followed in 968 by a fourth) were founded to extend the Christian mission in Denmark, which however remained a separate kingdom under the rule of Gorm the Old . Otto’s first campaign in Bohemia was, however, a failure, and it was not until 950 that the Bohemian prince Boleslav I was forced to submit and to pay tribute.

Having thus strengthened his own position, Otto could not only resist France’s claims to Lorraine (Lotharingia) but also act as mediator in France’s internal troubles. Similarly, he extended his influence into Burgundy. Moreover, when the Burgundian princess Adelaide, the widowed queen of Italy whom the margrave Berengar of Ivrea had taken prisoner, appealed to him for help, Otto marched into Italy in 951, assumed the title of king of the Lombards, and married Adelaide himself, his first wife, Editha (Eadgyth), having died in 946. In 952 Berengar did homage to him as his vassal for the Kingdom of Italy.

Otto had to break off his first Italian campaign because of a revolt in Germany, where Liudolf, his son by Editha, had risen against him with the aid of several magnates. Otto found himself compelled to withdraw to Saxony; but the position of the rebels began to deteriorate when the Magyars invaded Germany in 954, for the rebels could now be accused of complicity with the enemies of the kingdom. After prolonged fighting, Liudolf had to submit in 955.

This made it possible for Otto to defeat the Magyars decisively in the Battle of the Lechfeld, near Augsburg, in August 955; they never invaded Germany again. In the same year Otto and the margrave Gero also won a victory over the Slavs. A further series of campaigns led, by 960, to the subjection of the Slavs between the middle Elbe and the middle Oder. The archbishopric of Magdeburg was founded in 968 with three suffragan bishoprics. Even Mieszko of Poland paid tribute to the German king.

Coronation as emperor

In May 961 Otto procured the election and coronation of the six-year-old Otto II, his elder son by Adelaide, as German king. Then he went for a second time to Italy on the appeal of Pope John XII, who was hard pressed by Berengar of Ivrea. Arriving in Rome on Feb. 2, 962, Otto was crowned emperor, and 11 days later a treaty, known as the Privilegium Ottonianum, was concluded, to regulate relations between emperor and pope. This confirmed and extended the temporal power of the papacy, but it is a matter of controversy whether the proviso enabling the emperor to ratify papal elections was included in the original version of the treaty or added in December 963, when Otto deposed John XII for treating with Berengar and set up Leo VIII as pope. Berengar was captured and taken to Germany, and in 964 a revolt of the Romans against Leo VIII was suppressed.

When Leo VIII died in 965, the Emperor chose John XIII for pope, but John was expelled by the Romans. Otto, therefore, marched for a third time to Italy, where he stayed from 966 to 972. He subdued Rome and even advanced into the Byzantine south of Italy. Prolonged negotiations with Byzantium resulted in the marriage of Otto II to the Byzantine princess Theophano, in 972. Having returned to Germany, the Emperor held a great assembly of his court at Quedlinburg on March 23, 973. He died in Memleben several weeks later and was buried in Magdeburg at the side of his first wife.

Legacy of Otto I

Otto I’s achievement rests mainly on his consolidation of the kingdom. He deliberately made use of the bishops to strengthen his rule and thus created that “Ottonian church system of the Realm” that was to provide a stable and long-lasting framework for Germany. By his victorious campaigns, he gave Germany peace and security from foreign attack, and the preeminent position that he won as ruler gave him a sort of hegemony in Europe. His Italian policy and the acquisition of the imperial crown constituted a link with the old Carolingian tradition and was to prove a great responsibility for the German people in the future. All areas under Otto’s rule prospered, and the resultant flowering of culture has been called the Ottonian renaissance.

NOTES

(1) Often called the German Reich in English historiography, the term Reich echoes the expression, The Nazi Reich. Here it is called the more neutral “German Kingdom”.

BIOGRAPHIES:

Cover otto der grosse biographie laudage

Cover Katalog Otto der grosse magdeburg und europa COVER Ottonische Neuanfänge

COVER Becher otto der Grosse cover

Paradise. From Cædmon's Book, MS Junius 11, containing poems about Genesis and formerly believed to be composed by Cædmon © Boldleian Library MS Junius 11, fol 54 CC-BY-NC-40

About Cædmon

We know of Cædmon from Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England from c. 731, written at the monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow in Northumbria. Arguably, Cædmon composed the first poem in Old English.

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WEB detail altenberg Madonna Norbert Miguletz Staedel Museum 1

The Altenberg Madonna

The Madonna of Altenberg © Norbert Miguletz / Städel Museum Altenberg Madonna Enters the Städel Museum: A Landmark Acquisition

This morning, the Städel Museum announced what can rightly be described as a watershed moment for the study and appreciation of medieval art in Germany: the acquisition of the Madonna and Child Enthroned, known as the Altenberg Madonna. Dating from around 1320–1330, the sculpture entered the museum’s collection through the joint support of the Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation, the Städelscher Museums-Verein, and the Kulturstiftung der Länder.

With the acquisition of the Altenberg Madonna—made possible through the generous support of leading German cultural foundations—the Städel Museum in Frankfurt achieves the long-awaited reunification of the Altenberg Altar. This exceptional 14th-century Gothic sculpture thus ranks among the most significant acquisitions in the museum’s history.

Considered one of the supreme masterpieces of German Gothic sculpture and among the earliest surviving works of 14th-century Cologne production, the Altenberg Madonna is listed as cultural property of national importance and is therefore subject to strict export protection.

A Long-Awaited Reunion

The sculpture was originally created for the Altenberg Altar, commissioned for the abbey church of the Premonstratensian convent of Altenberg an der Lahn, near Wetzlar in Hesse. For more than a century, the Städel Museum has preserved the painted wings of this extraordinary polyptych—among the oldest examples of German panel painting in its collection. The altar’s central shrine has long been held on permanent loan from the Braunfels Castle Museum. With the acquisition of the Madonna, once positioned at the very heart of the ensemble, the Altenberg Altar can now be fully reassembled and permanently presented to the public for the first time in its history.

The sculpture’s recent history reflects a prolonged period in private ownership. From the late 1920s onward, the Altenberg Madonna was located in southern Germany and, from 1981, remained on permanent loan to the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Munich. Its transfer to the Städel thus represents not only a major enrichment of the museum’s collection, but also a symbolic and historical return of the work to its original artistic and narrative context.

Philipp Demandt, Director of the Städel Museum, remarked:
 “After one hundred years, the celebrated Altenberg Madonna has returned to its rightful place at the heart of the altar—a truly memorable moment in the history of the Städel. This exceptional acquisition was made possible by the foresight of the owners and the extraordinary commitment of our supporters. I extend my sincere thanks to the Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation, the board and members of our supporting association, and the Kulturstiftung der Länder.”

The Altenberg Altar in Context

The Altenberg Altar occupies a distinguished place in the history of European sacred art. From the late 13th century onward, sculpted and painted altarpieces became central fixtures in churches across Latin Europe, fostering close collaboration between painters and sculptors. Particularly north of the Alps, altars with movable wings were developed to accommodate changing liturgical requirements throughout the church calendar. Created around 1330, the Altenberg Altar is among the earliest surviving examples of this innovative format.

On weekdays, the altar displayed scenes from the Passion of Christ against a dark ground. Gradual opening revealed the central shrine containing the Altenberg Madonna, surrounded by the abbey’s relics. On Sundays, a partial opening presented the Virgin flanked by episodes from her life. This sophisticated iconographic program emphasized Mary’s role as patroness of both church and convent, reflecting the significance of Marian devotion in the spiritual and political life of the region.

The abbey of Altenberg maintained close ties to the ruling family of the landgraves of Hesse and Thuringia. After the death of Ludwig IV of Thuringia, Saint Elizabeth of Thuringia entrusted her youngest daughter, Gertrude, to the abbey. Gertrude later became abbess and shaped its fortunes for decades, while the presence of Saint Elizabeth’s relics established Altenberg—alongside Marburg—as a major center of her veneration.

Artistic Excellence and Preservation

Artistically, the Altenberg Madonna belongs to the well-known type of enthroned Virgins with the standing Christ Child, developed in Cologne under strong French influence. Related examples are preserved in numerous collections, including the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung in Frankfurt. The Altenberg Madonna, however, is distinguished by its extraordinary sculptural refinement and the exceptional preservation of its original polychromy—an exceedingly rare survival for wooden sculpture of this period.

Mary is shown as a youthful figure with a gentle, animated smile, seated on a throne with a slender cushion and a high back crowned by a pointed, ornamental gable. Her feet rest upon a polygonal base adorned with tracery. In her right hand she once held a lily, symbol of her virginity and emblem of her queenship, while her left supports the Christ Child, who stands partly on her thigh and partly on the throne. The Child’s gesture—reaching toward the lost lily while clutching a bird that pecks painfully at his finger—subtly prefigures the Passion.

The sculpture’s splendor is further enhanced by the gilded garments of both figures, enriched with glass insets imitating precious stones, and by the original presence of a crown. Mary’s gold mantle, lined with ermine, underscores her role as Queen of Heaven, while the lavishly decorated throne affirms the sacred and regal character of the image.
Monastic Culture and Provenance

The Altenberg Madonna and its altar also stand as eloquent testimony to the artistic and spiritual achievements of medieval female monastic culture. Within a society dominated by male hierarchies, the Premonstratensian nuns of Altenberg fostered a remarkably sophisticated theological and artistic environment, giving rise to one of the most distinguished sacred ensembles of its time.

The sculpture’s provenance is comprehensively documented. Following the secularization of the abbey in 1803, the Madonna passed into the possession of the princes of Solms-Braunfels and was sold in 1916 to Munich art dealer A. S. Drey. By the late 1920s, it entered the collection of Julius Böhler, remaining in family ownership until its acquisition by the Städel Museum.

Martin Hoernes, Secretary General of the Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation, commented:
 “The Altenberg Madonna is a captivating and remarkably early example of Cologne’s medieval sculpture. Preserving cultural heritage for present and future generations lies at the heart of our mission. Bringing this work—from Cologne via Altenberg to Frankfurt—to the Städel Museum fulfills our founder Ernst von Siemens’s conviction that works of art should be placed where they can be experienced by the widest possible audience.”

PHOTOS:

The Altenberg Madonna © Städel Museum and Norbert Miguletz

SOURCE:

PRESS RELEASE: Altenberg Madonna acquired for the Städel

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Putin as Ivan the Terrible

Putin’s Medieval Dream of Ruling an Empire

At his Alaska meeting with Trump, Putin made a curious demand that cut to the heart of the war: he wants to rule as Czar of a medieval-style empire

“Mr. Putin also demanded guarantees that Russian should be an official language in Ukraine, and that security should be established to allow the Russian Orthodox Church to be reinstated as the leader of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine”, wrote New York Times in a reference to Putin’s and Trump’s negotations in Alaska.

In truth, these demands appear downright bizarre. Consider the context: Russia has waged a war of aggression that, so far, has cost around a million Russian lives or ruined their health, without securing any meaningful territorial gains. And yet, Putin shows up in Alaska with demands that, beyond territorial concerns, peace should also reinstate the Russian language and the Russian Orthodox Church as national cultural focal points in the future Ukraine. Why is this so important to him? What is this war really about? Generally, three explanations are put forward:

Putin, the man

The first type of explanation is individual-oriented. Here we note that Putin, for one reason or another, appears as a character deviant. Maybe he is also ill (Parkinson’s has been mentioned). What we have witnessed since 2014, when Crimea was annexed, really looks from the outside like the work of a madman. For who else but psychopaths with delusions of grandeur start a war whose main manifestation is terror-bombings of civilians in Kyiv and the rest of Ukraine? And where more than a million Russian soldiers have ended up dead or maimed in the meat grinder of the battlefield since 2022?

Further on, commentators have attempted to dig deeper into Putin’s personal history. He was born in 1952 in Leningrad as the youngest son of a factory worker and soldier. His childhood home was undoubtedly also marked by a couple of other circumstances, namely that his grandfather had been cook for both Stalin and Lenin, while his mother was a dedicated churchgoer and believer. There must have been a certain “cognitive dissonance” in that home. In addition, it would have been marked by the stories of one of his two brothers, who died of hunger in Leningrad in 1942. The Revolution and the war would have been ghosts that haunted his childhood and youth. After school and university, where he studied law and economics, he was recruited in 1975 to the KGB. He then served in the GDR as liaison officer until 1989. After the coup against Gorbachev, however, he changed horses in midstream to support the restoration of the defunct Russia. In 1998 he was appointed head of the FSB (the KGB’s successor), until he was elected president in 2000. Might this be enough of an explication? Somehow, it does not quite suffice to explain the odd demands quoted here. We need more context

Putin, the medieval emperor

Although the sources are sparse, there is a straight line from Putin’s deeply felt regret over the collapse of the Soviet Union to his self-proclaimed preoccupation with Russia’s medieval history and the Russian Orthodox Church. He has himself mentioned this as a background for his political positioning.

This preoccupation with the Middle Ages is clearly linked to his desire to re-establish the world order that prevailed before the invention of the “nation” in the 1500s as the primary political “actor”. In short, the idea of a Europe of imagined communities configured as nations consolidated during the 15th and 16th centuries, to be finally codified in 1648 in Westphalia. Since then, the idea spread in a way that made it seem “natural.” Today in the Western world we no longer think in terms of empires, but rather nations shaped by the basic dictum: cuius regio, eius religio, with our addition, eius lex. The original dictum was confirmed in 1555 in Augsburg, though first formulated in 1582. It means: “Each kingdom, its religion (and its law.)”

The consequences of this “naturalness” with which we live with the national idea were according to his own words experienced acutely by Putin when the Russian Empire definitively collapsed after 1989, and everything from the Baltic States to Kazakhstan broke out of the Soviet imperial iron fist.

Putin, the latter-day Czar

Kyivan Rus c. 1000. Source: Reddit
Kyivan Rus c. 1000. Source: Reddit

Thus, there seems at least on the discursive and narrative level to be a clear connection between Putin’s loathing of the idea of “national independence,” his desire to restore “the Russian Empire,” and his preoccupation with Russian history as rooted in the Kievan Rus’ Empire.

From about 880–1100 a group of Nordic Vikings ruled over a huge territory that stretched from the Black Sea to the tundra in the north and across the Pontic steppe to the German forests in the west. Although this empire waxed and waned, it ruled the territory until 1240 when the Mongols sacked Kyev. Only with the Mongols’ final defeat by the Russians in 1480 did the center of gravity finally move eastward to Moscow. Apparently, it is this Viking empire that Putin has feared might re-emerge as a strong economic center. One, which perhaps even in the long run draw Belarus into its orbit, further reducing Russia to an even more insignificant periphery – a nation among other nations, leaving the global scene to USA, China and India.

To put it simply: Just as Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great had ambitions of being almighty Czars, the same applies to Putin. In this game he has of course received financial support from the oligarchs, who early on understood how to seize the Soviet Union’s massive natural resources, including the vast gas deposits. Lately, there was presumably a growing concern among these power brokers that Europe was moving toward a sustainable transition to more CO₂-neutral energy production, energizing the plans for “more control”. And following this, the war on Ukraine.

Baptism of Vladimir the great. By Viktor Mikhaylovich Vasnetsov
Baptism of Vladimir the Great. By Viktor Mikhaylovich Vasnetsov, a Russian painter and draughtsman who specialised in mythological and historical subjects. From 1893. Putin has tried to expropriate Vladimir in his continued retelling of the myth of Ukraine and Russia.

Given these economic interests, it is nevertheless significant that throughout the lead-up to the war in 2014 and the massive escalation of hostilities after 2022, Putin has consistently advanced “cultural,” “historical,” and “religious” rather than economic reasons for the war’s necessity.

Thus, Putin has also found support in the Russian Orthodox Church and its ambitions to once again control the Ukrainian church, which achieved independence in 2019 as a result of the schism between the leadership of the Russian church and the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople. It is probably another reason why Putin could be quoted by the New York Times as having stipulated that supremacy over the Ukrainian church must again lie in Moscow.

These historical and cultural narratives have from the very beginning been intertwined and fairly unambiguous. The story is that Ukraine had adopted the West’s decadent culture and was heading toward membership in the EU (and perhaps NATO). Since Ukraine, however, had historically always been the starting point for Russia and therefore a natural part of the Russian Empire, this was an intolerable situation for an imperialist like Putin. In his view, Ukraine could not, historically speaking, continue as an independent nation.

Putin, an imperialist?

It is clear that in Putin’s eyes only empires should exist – that is, centralized spheres of power – and not nations. Which, incidentally, is a perspective he shares with Trump, who also regards nations – for example Canada and Greenland – as political perversions.

But the explanation is not only cultural and historical. It is also economic, in that we are observing here a former centre’s attempt to recapture its previous identity as an empire.

In other words: an entirely necessary insight from what in the social sciences is called “World System History” seems crucial to understanding what is happening.

Within this framework of understanding, Ukraine must be characterised as a former periphery that managed to stage a revolt against the former weakened centre’s economic exploitation. Culturally, Ukraine then escaped by reinventing itself as a cosmopolitan Western country complete with southern-style cafés, its own church, its own language, and a magnificent nature. In an increasingly tense militarized environment in Moscow and its surroundings, the newly established periphery – the nation-state Russia – then prepared to subjugate the former periphery in order, at the same time, to re-establish the Russian Empire as culturally superior and thereby (also) position itself as an economic power.

That Putin in this perspective has drawn heavily on the neo-medieval narrative of Russia’s cultural, popular, and economic superiority is no surprise. But in reality it is banal: it is about strong feelings of powerlessness and the dream of regaining power; and envisioning it as an empire.

It amounts to an almost medieval approach to the future world order of the 21st century.

Karen Schousboe

READ:

World System History. The Social Science of Long-Term Change.
Ed. by Robert A. Denemark,  Jonathan Friedman, Barry K. Gills, and George Modelski.
Routledge 2008.

Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1900:
By C. Tilly
Blackwell 1990

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Putin’s Medievally Imagined Russia

Putin and his Medieval Worldview

Kremlin under Siege – or the Medieval Campaign of Putin

Returning to the Dark Ages?