Division of the country

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A division of a country is understood to be the consensual or enforced partition (division) of a country, from an area previously subject to a uniform government and administration, two or more independent areas emerge after the division.

Types of country division

The country can be divided for various reasons. So let yourself

  • Country divisions for dynastic reasons (country divisions in the narrower sense) and
  • Differentiate between the division of countries for political reasons (e.g. armed conflicts).

Division of land for dynastic reasons

By far the most common form of country divisions are country divisions that occurred for dynastic reasons. Two constellations in particular have led to such dynastic divisions in history:

  • a ruler ( monarch ) dies leaving several descendants ( heirs );
  • a ruler dies without leaving any descendants, several relatives make claims to the deceased's inheritance.

If a ruler has several descendants when he dies (i.e. usually sons, since daughters were not called to the succession due to the Salian law applicable in almost all German states ) the question arose of how the respective land should be divided among the descendants. Either one of the descendants (usually the eldest) inherited everything alone, younger brothers were compensated by monetary or real payments (principle of primogeniture ), or the land was divided among the descendants (principle of real division ). In the second case, the country is divided.

If a ruler dies without descendants, his line dies with him. Relatives from collateral lines then assert claims to the inheritance, it being possible that different relatives can assert claims. Often the land was then divided among these relatives.

A well-known example of the first case is the division of the Roman Empire in 395. After the death of Emperor Theodosius I , his empire was divided between his two sons Honorius and Arcadius , and the Western Roman and Eastern Roman Empire emerged .

The extinction of the Ludowingers with the death of Heinrich Raspe in 1247 may serve as an example for the second case . Both the Wettins and the House of Brabant asserted inheritance claims on the possessions of the Ludowingers (essentially today's federal states of Thuringia and Hesse ), both of which were female related to the extinct Ludowingers. There was a war of succession ( Thuringian-Hessian War of Succession ), as a result of which the Ludowingian possessions were divided, Hesse fell to the House of Brabant, Thuringia to the Wettins.

Often the division of the country did not intend that two different states would develop over the long term. Rather, both parts should continue to be seen as a unit, for example also with the described division of the Roman Empire. Experience shows, however, that the parts of the country developed apart, especially if the division lasted over several generations. This was of course intensified when the various sub-states also differed culturally, for example the Western Roman Empire was Latin , while the Eastern Roman Empire was influenced by Greek .

The procedure for the division was quite different. In some dynasties the custom had become established that the oldest brother worked out a proposal for division, the other brothers could then choose a part of the country one after the other, the oldest brother remained with the remaining part of the country. This was to prevent one of the dividers from taking advantage of the other brothers. Later it was divided mainly according to offices (in many German countries the smallest administrative unit). Each brother was given offices that guaranteed him roughly the same income, with less emphasis on the creation of coherent state structures. There were therefore a large number of enclaves and exclaves , especially in Thuringia and Schleswig-Holstein . Sometimes only the eldest brother received full government sovereignty over his country, while the other brothers only exercised limited governmental power (cf. separate sovereign powers in Schleswig-Holstein, countries without their own sovereignty in Thuringia).

Country divisions for political reasons

Political reasons also led to the division of the country, which was not due to inheritance problems of the ruling dynasty. Due to the persistent insubordination of the dukes striving for independence in the early empire of Bavaria, the later Carinthia, Austria and today's Friuli-Venezia Giulia were split off. Emperor Friedrich I Barbarossa , for example, divided his duchies of Bavaria and Saxony after the fall of Heinrich the Lion in 1180 . In addition to the Bavarian successor state, Styria and the margraviate of Istria emerged from Bavaria , from Saxony a. a. the duchies of Westphalia , Saxony-Lauenburg and Braunschweig-Lüneburg .

Even with the dissolution of modern states (e.g. Czechoslovakia in 1993 in the Czech Republic and Slovakia ), according to the above definition, it is actually a question of the division of countries for political reasons, even if the term division is only used very rarely. Other examples of a division for political reasons are, for example, the three Polish divisions or the German division into the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic after the end of the Second World War .

Examples of divisions

Country divisions took place in large numbers, especially in German history, and played a major role in the development of a colorful patchwork of different territories, the small German states , on “German” territory (i.e. essentially in the Holy Roman Empire ) in the late Middle Ages and early modern times .

The Franconian Empire under the Merovingians

The Franconian Empire under the Carolingians

Country divisions within the German dynasties

Ascanians

Ascanians, Anhalt line
Schematic representation of the Anhalt country divisions
Ascanians, Saxon line

Guelphs

Wittelsbacher

Wittelsbacher, Bavarian line

Badener