Limes Sorabicus – Wikipedia

Limes Sorabicus Deutsche Map 19th century.

The Limes sorebicus , also Sorbian Mark or Sorbenmark , denotes a border zone between the Franconian Empire and the sorbs, east of it, which had been created around the mid -9th century by the Franconian Reich Division or the Treaty of Verdun and had already lost its importance at the end of the 9th century . It is only briefly mentioned in four places in the Fulda Annals. This area, which was apparently a border mark, was under the command of a prince ( Chief Sorabic limites ). Three incumbents are known:

which in other sources also as a count ( comes ), Margrave ( brand name ) and even as prince of the Thuringian ( Captain of Thuringians ) appear; Poppo belonged to the family of the elderly or Franconian Babenberger, Ratolf too.

The exact location and expansion of the “Sorbenmark” is not mentioned in the sources and is therefore still controversial. The Information of Einhard, which in his biography of Charles of the Great, the Vita Caroli Magni, which was created around 830, is particularly important that the Saale has already taken over the Saale as a border between Thuringia and Sorben from his fathers ( Salam and Sorabos divides the river ). Already 805 in the Diedenhofen capitular, the Erfurt, located far west of it, was intended as a Franconian customs resort for trade in the Slavs. Accordingly, some archaeologists and historians like Hansjürgen Brachmann (1991) localized ^[first] This “Sorbenmark” west of the Saale. However, both mentions are a lot older than the first mention of the Sorabic Limes and therefore cannot be connected directly to it. In addition, an economic border must not have been identical to the political-military border, especially since a central location comparable to the other trading places from the area east of the Gera is not known.

The majority of researchers (including Rudolf Kötzschke, Hermann Aubin), on the other hand, went out and assumes a legal situation of the Sorabic Limes. Walter Schlesinger wrote in 1963: “It must have been the area east of the Saale to the Elster and Pleisse, perhaps even to the Mulde, a zone that was loosely affiliated to the rich, which had a firm back in the Thuringian hinterland was protected by individual advanced castles. ”

Recently, historical research has increased the problem of the border again. Matthias Hardt (2000) ^[2] assumes that at the time of Charlemagne on the Elbe and Saale, a river boundary of the empire, which was aimed at antique role models, was planned in the further course of the 9th century than was expanded to the Limes Sorabicus based on castles Development at the Limes Saxoniae. The question of whether the “Sorbenmark” included both sides of the Saale or whether it only extended across a western or eastern river edge district cannot be clearly answered. Most of the castle complexes used in home -class literature for the Limes Sorabicus were only founded in the High Middle Ages. Early medieval castles may have been created such as the systems mentioned in the Hersfeld tenth list between lower Saale and Unstrut, including B. the Seeburg am Süßen See, Schraplau Castle and Castle Querfurt and comparable castles on the middle Saale on the Johannisberg near Jena-Lobeda or the old Gleisberg near Bürgel in a temporal and content-related connection with the establishment of the Sorabic Limes.

Of course, boundaries in the early and high Middle Ages were almost always more or less width, settlements zones and not about sharp lines in the sense of today’s limits. In the Orlagbeit near Saalfeld/Saale, the Franconian sphere of influence was demonstrably extended far east beyond the Saale. Also in the Middle Saaletal around Jena, both sides of the river apparently formed a uniform settlement and economic area with the Saale as the most important traffic and connecting path, so that the eastern limitation of the mark was more into the extended forests on the right of the Saale. North of it, on the lower Saale – in the open landscapes from Naumburg, but at the latest from Weißenfels to the seaside – there are no natural limits of the settlement chambers in the form of larger forest areas. The Saale may have formed a border line in the modern sense at least at the end of the 8th and in the first half of the 9th century. However, a gradual expansion of the East Franconian area of ​​power and sphere of influence before the large Slavic sacrifice of King Henry I in the years 928/929 to the Mulde and until shortly before the settlement areas of the Daleminzier is likely.

• Hansjürgen Brachmann: The Limes Sorabicus – History and Effect . In: Journal of Archeology 25. 1991, S. 177–207.
• Lothar Dralle: Limes sorebicus. In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages Volume 5. Hiera middle-Lukania 1991, Sp. 1992–1993.
• Matthias hard: Lines and hems, zones and rooms on the eastern border of the empire in the early and high Middle Ages . In: Walter Pohl, Helmut Reimitz (ed.): Border and difference in the early Middle Ages. Philosophical-History Classicus 287. Research on the History of Middle Ages 1, publisher of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-7001-2896-7, 39–56.
• Matthias hard: Hesse, Elbe, Saale and the Frontiers of the Carolingian Empire . In: Walter Pohl, Ian N. Wood, Helmut Reimitz (ed.): The Transformation of Frontiers. From Antiquity to the Carolingians . The Transformation of the Roman World 10. Leiden/Boston/Cologne 2001, ISBN 90-04-1115-8, S. 219-232.
• Matthias hard: Limes sorebicus. In: Real lexicon of Germanic antiquity (RGA). 2nd Edition. Volume 18, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin/New York 2001, ISBN 3-11-016950-9, pp. 446–448.

1. ↑ Hansjürgen Brachmann: The Limes Sorabicus – history and effect. In: Journal of Archeology 25. 1991, S. 177–207.
2. ↑ Matthias hard: Lines and hems, zones and rooms on the eastern border of the empire in the early and high Middle Ages . In: Walter Pohl, Helmut Reimitz (ed.): Border and difference in the early Middle Ages. Publisher of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-7001-2896-7, pp. 39–56.