POLITICAL HISTORY

The following account is an attempt to grasp the essentials of the history of Germany as a whole during the thirteenth century. Unlike other political histories which derive their focus from the rule of a single dynasty, this chapter has to deal with the demise of the Hohenstaufen, the so-called ‘interregnum’, and the following attempts at reconstruction. It has also to render intelligible the complex impact on kingship of the territorial principalities of Germany. Writing Landesgeschichte, the history of the many and different princely territories, is of course impossible and the reader must be referred to the works of the specialists. What will be attempted is Reichsgeschichte in its own right, the charting, within the framework of the history of the kings of Germany, of the interplay between kingship, aristocratic power and the new social classes developing in the period under consideration. Social history thus has an important part, but it should be borne in mind that major themes (the aristocracy, the urban phenomenon, the peasantry, trade and communications, and German expansion into the Slavonic north-east) are treated in chapters of their own within this volume.

Philip of Swabia (1198—1208) and Otto IV (1198—1218)

The death of Emperor Henry VI (Messina, 28 September 1198) could hardly have occurred at a worse time. His three-year-old son Frederick, already elected king of Germany and on his way to be crowned in Aachen, was instead taken to Sicily where he consequently became a pawn in the Italian struggles of Pope Innocent III.