Ep. 107: Colonisation of the East(700-1200) - The House of Wettin

If you ever come to Dresden, and if you like art, architecture and history, you very much should, you may want to turn into Augustusstrasse right by the Residenzschloss. What you fnd there is the largest porcelain artwork in the world, 102 metres long and made from 23,000 Meissen porcelain tiles. This is the “Fürstenzug”, the procession of princes.

It was made to celebrate 800 years of the House of Wettin who ruled over what we now know as the land of Saxony. It portrays 35 margraves, electors, dukes and kings from 1127 to 1904. Being essentially a 19th century artwork, it depicts all these Saxon rulers as powerful military leaders surrounded by their fighting men and important nobles, all in contemporary costume.

There are 94 depictions and only one female figure in the whole procession. So, was the lasting rule of the House of Wettin built upon their martial prowess? Well they did fight a lot, but the true source of their power is depicted in one of the very last figures of the procession coming after the princes, the army, the intellectuals and the artists and largely obscured by the images of the carpenter and the builder involved in the project. What that figure represents and what lay at the heart of the Wettiner success, we will find out…

The music for the show is Flute Sonata in E-flat major, H.545 by Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach (or some claim it as BWV 1031 Johann Sebastian Bach) performed and arranged by Michel Rondeau under Common Creative Licence 3.0.

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To make it easier for you to share the podcast, I have created separate playlists for some of the seasons that are set up as individual podcasts. they have the exact same episodes as in the History of the Germans, but they may be a helpful device for those who want to concentrate on only one season.

So far I have:

The Ottonians

Salian Emperors and Investiture Controversy

Fredrick Barbarossa and Early Hohenstaufen

Frederick II Stupor Mundi

Saxony and Eastward Expansion

The Hanseatic League

The Teutonic Knights

The Holy Roman Empire 1250-1356

The Reformation before the Reformation

The Empire in the 15th century

The Fall and Rise of the Habsburgs