1.
Konstanz
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Konstanz is a university city with approximately 80,000 inhabitants located at the western end of Lake Constance in the south of Germany, bordering Switzerland. The city houses the University of Konstanz and was for more than 1200 years residence of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Konstanz, Konstanz is situated on Lake Constance. The Rhine river, which starts in the Swiss Alps, passes through Lake Constance and leaves it, considerably larger, car ferries provide access across Lake Constance to Meersburg, and the Katamaran provides a shuttle service for pedestrians to Friedrichshafen. At the old towns southern border lies the Swiss town of Kreuzlingen, Konstanz is subdivided into 15 wards or districts. The island of Mainau belonged to the ward of Litzelstetten, a municipality until its incorporation into Konstanz on December 1,1971. The first traces of civilization in Konstanz date back to the late Stone Age, during the reign of Augustus, the Celts living south of the Danube were conquered by the Romans. Around 40 AD, the first Romans settled on the site and this small town on the left bank of the Rhine was probably first called Drusomagus and belonged to the Roman province of Raetia. The remains of the late Roman fortress Constantia were discovered in 2003, around 585 the first bishop took up residence in Konstanz and this marked the beginning of the citys importance as a spiritual centre. By the late Middle Ages, about one quarter of Konstanzs 6,000 inhabitants were exempt from taxation on account of clerical rights, trade thrived during the Middle Ages. Konstanz owned the bridge in the region, which crossed the Rhine. Its linen production had made a name for the city. In 1192, Konstanz gained the status of Imperial City so it was subject only to the Holy Roman Emperor. In 1414 to 1418, the Council of Constance took place, during which, on 6 July 1415, John Hus and it was here that the Papal Schism was ended and Pope Martin V was elected during the only conclave ever held north of the Alps. Ulrich von Richentals illustrated chronicle of the Council of Constance testifies to all the happenings during the Council as well as showing the everyday life of medieval Konstanz. The Konzilgebäude where the conclave was held can still be standing by the harbour. Close by stands the Imperia, a statue that was erected in 1993 to satirically commemorate the Council, in 1460, the Swiss Confederacy conquered Thurgau, Konstanzs natural hinterland. In the Swabian War of 1499, Konstanz lost its last privileges over Thurgau to the Confederation, the Protestant Reformation took hold in Konstanz in the 1520s, headed by Ambrosius Blarer. Soon the city declared itself officially Protestant, pictures were removed from the churches, and the bishop moved to Meersburg
2.
Meersburg
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Meersburg is a town of Baden-Württemberg in the southwest of Germany at Lake Constance. It is known for its medieval city, the lower town and upper town are reserved for pedestrians only, and connected by two stairways and a steep street. The name of the town means Castle on the Sea, referring to a castle which, the commune obtained the status of free city in 1299, though nominally still under the Bishop of Constance. In 1803 it was annexed to the Land of Baden, after World War II, Meersburg was in the French military occupation area in Germany. The town is home to two castles, the Old Castle and the New Castle, the Old Castle, built by Merovingian King Dagobert I in the seventh century, accepts visitors. German poet Annette von Droste-Hülshoff lived there for eight years, the New Castle was built in the eighteenth century. Originally the residence of the bishop of Constance, it was used for various purposes after the Secularization of 1803, there is an entity of Half-timber houses. Also two medieval town-gates can be seen, which are the remainders of the fortification, Meersburg is the northern terminus of a car ferry to Constance. At the opposite side Meersburg is connected to the region by the B31, to exit to Meersburg and to go to the car ferry, one takes B33 to Meersburg and Constance. Meersburg is also reachable by boats from Lake Constance to Überlingen, to Lindau, Bregenz. One of Germanys most celebrated poets, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, lived her final years at Meersburg Castle and she also owned the small vine-covered villa known as Fürstenhäusle. The famous eighteenth-century doctor Franz Anton Mesmer died in 1815 in Meersburg and is buried near the old wall of the graveyard about 0.5 kilometres northeast of the upper town-gate Obertor, the Meersburg vineyards at the northern banks of Lake Constance are famous within Germany. The rosée Weissherbst wine is a specialty of the region
3.
Low Alemannic German
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Low Alemannic is a branch of Alemannic German, which is part of Upper German. Its varieties are only partly intelligible to non-Alemannic speakers, the feature that distinguishes Low Alemannic from Swabian is the retention of the Middle High German monophthongs, for instance Huus house vs. Swabian Hous or Ziit time vs. Swabian Zejt. Sometimes diminutives require umlaut, other times not, weak Declension Strong Declension Comparative Standard ending -er Superlative Standard ending -schd Irregular Personal Pronouns 1. Infinitive Infinitive ends in -e Some monosyllabic verbs do not have this ending 2, conjugation 3.1 Present Tense 3.1.1 Regular Verb Alemannic encyclopedia -German-
4.
Middle Ages
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In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or Medieval Period lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance, the Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history, classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is subdivided into the Early, High. Population decline, counterurbanisation, invasion, and movement of peoples, the large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the seventh century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire—came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was not complete. The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire survived in the east and remained a major power, the empires law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or Code of Justinian, was rediscovered in Northern Italy in 1070 and became widely admired later in the Middle Ages. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions, monasteries were founded as campaigns to Christianise pagan Europe continued. The Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, briefly established the Carolingian Empire during the later 8th, the Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation states, reducing crime and violence, intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, and by the founding of universities. Controversy, heresy, and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the conflict, civil strife. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages, the Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history, classical civilisation, or Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Period. Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the Six Ages or the Four Empires, when referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being modern. In the 1330s, the humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua, leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People. Bruni and later argued that Italy had recovered since Petrarchs time. The Middle Ages first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or middle season, in early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum, or middle age, first recorded in 1604, and media saecula, or middle ages, first recorded in 1625. The alternative term medieval derives from medium aevum, tripartite periodisation became standard after the German 17th-century historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. The most commonly given starting point for the Middle Ages is 476, for Europe as a whole,1500 is often considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there is no universally agreed upon end date. English historians often use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period
5.
Early modern period
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The early modern period of modern history follows the late Middle Ages of the post-classical era. Historians in recent decades have argued that from a worldwide standpoint, the period witnessed the exploration and colonization of the Americas and the rise of sustained contacts between previously isolated parts of the globe. The historical powers became involved in trade, as the exchange of goods, plants, animals, and food crops extended to the Old World. The Columbian Exchange greatly affected the human environment, New economies and institutions emerged, becoming more sophisticated and globally articulated over the course of the early modern period. This process began in the medieval North Italian city-states, particularly Genoa, Venice, the early modern period also included the rise of the dominance of the economic theory of mercantilism. The European colonization of the Americas, Asia, and Africa occurred during the 15th to 19th centuries, the early modern trends in various regions of the world represented a shift away from medieval modes of organization, politically and economically. Historians typically date the end of the modern period when the French Revolution of the 1790s began the modern period. Early modern themes Other In 16th century China, the Ming Dynastys economy was stimulated by trade with the Portuguese, Spanish. China became involved in a new trade of goods, plants, animals. Trade with Early Modern Europe and Japan brought in massive amounts of silver, during the last decades of the Ming the flow of silver into China was greatly diminished, thereby undermining state revenues and the entire Chinese economy. This damage to the economy was compounded by the effects on agriculture of the incipient Little Ice Age, natural calamities, crop failure, the ensuing breakdown of authority and peoples livelihoods allowed rebel leaders such as Li Zicheng to challenge Ming authority. The Ming Dynasty fell around 1644 to the Qing Dynasty, which was the last ruling dynasty of China, during its reign, the Qing Dynasty became highly integrated with Chinese culture. The Azuchi-Momoyama period saw the unification that preceded the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate. The Edo period from 1600 to 1868 characterized early modern Japan, the Tokugawa shogunate was a feudal regime of Japan established by Tokugawa Ieyasu and ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family. This period gets its name from the city, Edo. The Tokugawa shogunate ruled from Edo Castle from 1603 until 1868, in 1392, General Yi Seong-gye established the Joseon Dynasty with a largely bloodless coup. Joseon experienced advances in science and culture, King Sejong the Great promulgated hangul, the Korean alphabet. The period saw various other cultural and technological advances as well as the dominance of neo-Confucianism over the entirety of Korea, during the late 16th and early 17th centuries, invasions by the neighboring Japanese and Qing Chinese nearly overran the Korean peninsula
6.
Prince-bishop
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A prince-bishop is a bishop who is also the civil ruler of some secular principality and sovereignty. If the episcopal see is an archbishopric, the term is prince-archbishop. A prince-bishop is usually considered an elected monarch, later relations between a prince-bishop and the burghers were invariably not cordial. As cities demanded charters from emperors, kings, or their prince-bishops and declared independent of the secular territorial magnates. The stem duchies of the German kingdom inside the Empire had strong and powerful dukes, unlike dukes they could not pass hereditary titles and lands to any descendants. This met with increasing opposition by the Popes, culminating in the fierce Investiture Controversy of 1076, nevertheless, the Emperors continued to grant major territories to the most important bishops. The immediate territory attached to the episcopal see then became a prince-diocese or bishopric, the German term Hochstift was often used to denote the form of secular authority held by bishops ruling a prince-bishopric with Erzstift being used for prince-archbishoprics. Emperor Charles IV by the Golden Bull of 1356 confirmed the status of the Prince-Archbishoprics of Mainz, Cologne. At the eve of the Protestant Reformation, the Imperial states comprised 53 ecclesiastical principalities, with the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, the title finally became defunct. The bishops of Vienna and Wiener Neustadt didnt control any territory, upon the incorporation of the Livonian Brothers of the Sword in 1237, the territory of the Orders State largely corresponded with the Diocese of Riga. Bishop Albert of Riga in 1207 had received the lands of Livonia as an Imperial fief from the hands of German king Philip of Swabia, he however had to come to terms with the Brothers of the Sword. At the behest of Pope Innocent III the Terra Mariana confederation was established, by the 1234 Bull of Rieti, Pope Gregory IX stated that all lands acquired by the Teutonic Knights were no subject of any conveyancing by the Emperor. Within this larger conflict, the dualism of the autonomous Riga prince-bishop. The bishops pursued the conferment of the title by the Holy Roman Emperor to stress their sovereignty. In the original Prussian lands of the Teutonic Order, Willam of Modena established the suffragan bishoprics of Culm, Pomesania, Samland and Warmia. The bishops of Cetinje, Montenegro, who took the place of the earlier secular Voivodes in 1516 had a position of Slavonic. The title survived the union of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707 until 1836, apart from territories formerly within the Holy Roman Empire, no French diocese had a principality of political significance linked to its see. However, a number of French bishops did hold a title, with a tiny territory usually about their seat, it was often a princely title
7.
Council of Constance
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The Council of Constance is the 15th century ecumenical council recognized by the Roman Catholic Church, held from 1414 to 1418. The council ended the Western Schism, by deposing or accepting the resignation of the remaining papal claimants, the Council also condemned Jan Hus as a heretic and facilitated his execution by the civil authority. It also ruled on issues of sovereignty, the rights of pagans. The Council is important for its relationship to ecclesial Conciliarism and Papal supremacy, the councils main purpose was to end the Papal schism which had resulted from the confusion following the Avignon Papacy. After thirty years of schism, the Council of Pisa had sought to resolve the situation by deposing the two claimant popes and elected a new pope, Alexander V. The council claimed that in such a situation, a council of bishops had greater authority than just one bishop, therefore, many voices, including Sigismund, King of the Romans and of Hungary, pressed for another council to resolve the issue. That council was called by John XXIII and was held from 16 November 1414 to 22 April 1418 in Constance, according to Joseph McCabe, the council was attended by roughly 29 cardinals,100 learned doctors of law and divinity,134 abbots, and 183 bishops and archbishops. Sigismund arrived on Christmas Eve 1414 and exercised a profound and continuous influence on the course of the council in his capacity of imperial protector of the Church, an innovation at the Council was that instead of voting as individuals, the bishops voted in national blocs. The vote by nations was in great measure the work of the English, German, the four nations consisted of England, France, Italy, and Germany, with Poles, Hungarians, Danes, and Scandinavians counted with the Germans. While the Italian representatives made up half of those in attendance, they were equal in influence to the English, many members of the new assembly strongly favored the voluntary abdication of all three popes, as did King Sigismund. Although the Italian bishops who had accompanied John XXIII in large numbers supported his legitimacy, partly in response to a fierce anonymous attack on his character from an Italian source, on 2 March 1415 he promised to resign. However, on 20 March he secretly fled the city and took refuge at Schaffhausen in territory of his friend Frederick, haec Sancta Synodus marks the high-water mark of the Conciliar movement of reform. The Church declared the first sessions of the Council of Constance an invalid and illicit assembly of bishops, the acts of the Council were not made public until 1442, at the behest of the Council of Basel, they were printed in 1500. The creation of a book on how to die was ordered by the council, in part because of the constant presence of the King, other rulers demanded that they have a say in who would be pope. This would pave the way for the end of the Western Schism, on 4 July 1415 the Bull of Gregory XII which appointed Malatesta and Cardinal Dominici of Ragusa as his proxies at the council was formally read before the assembled Bishops. The cardinal then read a decree of Gregory XII which convoked the council, thereupon, the Bishops voted to accept the summons. Prince Malatesta immediately informed the Council that he was empowered by a commission from Pope Gregory XII to resign the Papal Throne on the Pontiffs behalf and he asked the Council whether they would prefer to receive the abdication at that point or at a later date. The Bishops voted to receive the Papal abdication immediately, former Pope Gregory XII was then created titular Cardinal Bishop of Porto and Santa Ruffina by the Council, with rank immediately below the Pope
8.
German mediatization
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For convenience, historians use the term mediatization for the entire restructuring process that took place at the time, whether the mediatized states survived in some form or lost all individuality. The secularization of ecclesiastical states took place concurrently with the mediatization of free imperial cities, the mass mediatization and secularization of German states that took place at the time was not initiated by Germans. It came under military and diplomatic pressure from revolutionary France. It constituted the most extensive redistribution of property and territories in German history prior to 1945, although most of its neighbors coalesced into relatively centralized states before the 19th century, Germany did not follow that path. At the time of Emperor Frederick IIs death, it had already decided that the regnum teutonicum was an aristocracy with a monarchical head. Among those states and territories, the principalities were unique to Germany. The German bishop became a prince of the Empire and direct vassal of the Emperor for his hochstift, the bishops, now elected by independent-minded cathedral chapters rather than chosen by the emperor or the pope, were confirmed as territorial lords equal to the secular princes. Having to face with the territorial expansionism of the powerful secular princes. In the course of the Reformation, several of the bishoprics in the north and northeast were secularized, on the other hand, Hildesheim and Paderborn – under Protestant administration for decades and given up for lost – were restored as prince-bishoprics. While no actual secularization took place during the century and a half that followed the Peace of Westphalia, there was a history of rumors. Frederick II added the archbishopric of Salzburg to the list and Charles VII went as far as adding the bishoprics of Eichstätt, although the sudden death of Charles VII put an end to this scheming, the idea of secularization did not fade away. In the late 18th century, the existence of the Holy Roman Empire. It took an external factor — the French Revolution — to shake the Empire to its foundation, by then, the French leaders had already resolved more or less openly to annex those lands to the Republic as soon as circumstances permitted. On the other hand, the secular rulers entitled to compensation should be compensated with secularized ecclesiastical land, a secret Franco-Prussian convention signed in August 1796 spelled out that such a compensation would be the Prince-Bishopric of Münster and Vest Recklinghausen. A secret article, not implemented at the time, added the Archbishopric of Salzburg, the treaty also provided for the holding of a congress at Rastatt where delegates of the Imperial Diet would negotiate a general peace with France. In March 1799, Austria, allied with Russia, resumed the war against France. This time, Francis II signed the treaty not only on Austria’s behalf but also on behalf of the Empire, which conceded the loss of the Austrian Netherlands. They warned that a complete secularization would be such a blow to the Empire that it would lead to its demise, generally, the proponents of secularization were less vocal and passionate, in good part because they realized that the course of events was in their favor
9.
Baden
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Baden is a historical German territory. Together with Württemberg and the former Prussian province of Hohenzollern, two other territories, it currently forms the Federal State of Baden-Württemberg. Finally, the state of Baden-Württemberg was formed a few years later, history of Baden List of states in the Holy Roman Empire Baden-Württemberg Province of Hohenzollern Württemberg Baden in German, French and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland
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Habsburg lands
Teutonic bailiwicks