Kizo

Kizo († around 995) was a noble Saxon warrior; he played in the battles of the Ottonian kingship with the Slavic Lutizen 991–995 in the battles for Brandenburg as a military leader on both sides.

The "famous knight" (miles inclitus) Kizo, East Saxon vassal of the powerful Margrave of the North Margrave Dietrich von Haldensleben, had fallen away from him because of an offense to the enemy on the other side of the Elbe, the Slavic cult federation of the Lutizen. In September 991 a Saxon-Polish army conquered with the 11-year-old King Otto III. and to the Duke of Saxony Bernhard Billung the fortress of Brandenburg , lost in 983 , the political center of the state. Shortly thereafter, Kizo took the Brandenburg again with support. He was entrusted with their defense and invaded the Saxon border region from here. In August 992 an imperial army moved with contingents from Poland and Bohemiaunder King Otto III, Duke Heinrich of Bavaria and Duke Boleslav II of Bohemia before the Brandenburg. The siege was abandoned on the advice of the princes. The next year, Kizo again submitted to the king, who left him in command of the fortress. When the bitter Lutizen stormed Kizo in Brandenburg, Otto III sent him. Reinforcements under Margrave Ekkehard von Meißen and other counts, but only some of them were able to advance to the defenders. The king hurried across the Elbe with the Saxon field army and drove out the besiegers. Then Kizo resided in the function of a margrave next to Pribislav, the Christian prince of the Heveller, in Brandenburg. When Kizo was in Quedlinburg at the end of 994, his henchman, the noble Heveller Boliliut, brought Brandenburg under his control, but allowed Kizo's faithful and his wife to leave. Kizo was later slain with his people during a new incursion into Havelland.

The research also pays attention to his case because Kizo remained in high esteem among the Saxons after his defection. His behavior was judged not only in terms of membership of the Saxon people and the empire, which is represented in mutual loyalty ties between prince and vassal, but also in light of the concepts of honor and the family loyalty of the high nobility.

swell

• Thietmar von Merseburg: Chronicle IV, 22, ed. by Rudolf Buchner, transferred and explained by Werner Trillmich, Darmstadt 1974, 138 f.
• Hildesheimer Annalen = Annales Hildesheimenses, Scriptores rerum germanicarum, Ed. Georg Waitz, Hannover 1972, for the years 991 to 993
• Annalista Saxo: Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores Vol. 6, Hanover 1844, for the years 991 to 993

literature

• Gerd Althoff : Otto III., Darmstadt 1996, 64 f.
• Ekkehard Eickhoff : Theophano and the king. Otto III. and seine Welt I, Stuttgart 1996, pp. 470-478
• Herbert Ludat : An Elbe and Oder around the year 1000, Weimar Cologne Vienna 1995, pp. 43–51, 147 f.
• Christian Lübke : Regesten on the history of the Slaves on the Elbe and Oder, part III, Berlin 1986, Regesten No. 261, 262, 266, 272, 285, 291 pp. 76-120
• Regesta Imperii Vol. II, 3, Otto III. Edited by Johann Friedrich Böhmer , revised by Mathilde Uhlirz , Graz – Cologne 1956, 529, 547, 568, 570