Redarians

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Representation of the tribal area of ​​the Redarian Riederiun around the year 1000 in the general historical hand atlas by Gustav Droysen from 1886

The Redarians were a West Slavic tribe who settled in the area of ​​what is now Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in the Middle Ages and belonged to the West Slavic language group. They first appeared in the year 929 and from the 10th century belonged to the Liutizenbund , in which they exercised the leading role. They are no longer mentioned in the 11th century.

Surname

The name of the Redarians is first encountered in a document from the East Franconian King Otto I of October 14, 936 as Riadri . Widukind von Corvey reports about Redarii and Redares in his Saxon history around 965 . In the same year, Otto I von Riedere spoke in an imperial charter . In the chronicle of Thietmar von Merseburg between 1012 and 1018 the spellings Redarii , Rederii and Riedirii can be found . The chronicler Adam von Bremen used the names Retharii , Retheri and Rederi in his Hamburg church history around 60 years later . Finally, Helmold von Bosau used the terms Ridari , Rederi and Riaduri in the Slavic Chronicle he wrote in the 12th century . In the 19th century the spelling was Rhedarier widespread in modern historiography , the term has as Redarier enforced.

A generally recognized definition of the origin and meaning of the name does not yet exist. Opinions range from German to Slavic to Greek. The interpretations are correspondingly different: the linguist Ernst Eichler connects the tribal name to the word Ried , Middle Low German Reet, and thus arrives at Riad-warios , the Riedmen or Riedleuten . The representatives of a Slavic origin of the name assume an original tribe name Redari , which would then have meant something like adviser or people of the oracle. The Slavist Heinrich Kunstmann assumes a Greek origin of the name, which is derived from the temple of Rethra and can be explained from the Greek word for speaker, spokesman, orator.

Settlement area

The settlement area of ​​the Redarians cannot be clearly determined due to a lack of corresponding information in the sources. To make matters worse, the discussion is overshadowed by the not always scientifically driven search for the temple of Rethra . The presumably prevailing opinion localized the Redarians in the process of elimination between Neubrandenburg in the north and Neustrelitz in the south and thus assigned them the area of ​​the later states of Stargard and Wustrow in southeastern Mecklenburg. The settlement area thus includes the Tollensesee . The Tollensians sat next to one another in the northwest, the Ukranians in the southeast .

history

The history of the Redarians can only be determined on the basis of archaeological finds and the records of the neighboring Saxons due to their lack of writing . Mainly the Saxon historians Widukind von Corvey and Thietmar von Merseburg repeatedly report on armed conflicts between Redariern and Saxony for the 10th century. Even if the rulers of the East Franconian-German Empire were involved with the Ottonians on the Saxon side , the disputes in the empire were viewed as an exclusively Saxon matter.

Border wars

In the Saxon history of Widukind von Corvey, written around 967, the Redarians are first mentioned in connection with events of the year 929. Widukind reports on a province of the Redarians that was subordinate to a Bernhard. According to this, the Redarians must have been traditional enemies of the Saxons even before 929. A military organization to defend against them had already been set up and a leader named Bernhard. At the beginning of Widukind's report there was peace between the Redarians and the Saxons, and the Redarians paid tribute to King Henry I of East Franconia . While King Heinrich I had embarked on a campaign against the Bohemian King Wenceslaus after victorious battles against the Hevellers and Daleminzers , he was represented by his eldest son Thankmar . Heinrich had transferred the rulership of Saxony to him until his return. Thankmar was known, however, that his younger half-brother Otto I would then be married to an Anglo-Saxon princess and designated as the king's sole successor. To prevent this, he sent an embassy to the Redarians to incite them to attack. The content of the delivered message is unknown, but the provocation must have been so severe that the Redarians slaughtered the ambassadors. The Redarians then crossed the Elbe and attacked Walsleben Castle in Altmark with a large army , the inhabitants of which they either took into captivity or killed. The Saxons immediately launched a campaign of revenge. Heinrich I commissioned Count Bernhard and Thietmar to counter the attack. Under their leadership, the Saxon army defeated the Redarians on September 4, 929 in the battle of Lenzen in the absence of the king . The entry in Corvey's annals records an incredible 120,000 fallen Slavs and 800 prisoners who, according to Widukind's report, were beheaded at Henry I's court.

No matter how much the Redarians' defeat turned out to be - Widukind even reports up to 200,000 fallen Slavs - it was just as unsuitable for pacifying or subjugating them. Subsequently, the Saxons never succeeded in finally defeating the Redarians and making them permanently tributary. Immediately after his elevation to King of Eastern Franconia, Heinrich I's successor Otto I put a Saxon army on the march against the Redarians. A possible success of the Saxons, however, was not permanent. After Otto I found himself in heavy fighting with the Slavs in the Battle of the Raxa in 955 , the tribes involved, the Tollensans and the Zirzipans, paid tribute after their defeat. Nothing like this is reported by the Redarians at this point. According to Widukind, Otto I therefore undertook another campaign against the Redarians in 957. For 965 an imperial document gives information about a tribute obligation of the Redarians, but in the year 967, while Otto I was in Italy, there seems to have been another fighting between Saxons and Redarians. The emperor then wrote a letter to the Saxon aristocrats who had gathered in the royal palace in Werla not to make peace with the “unfaithful Redariern” while he was away. The appeal, however, was in vain. In view of an imminent campaign against the Danes, the Saxon greats around Hermann Billung thought it wiser to end the dispute with the Redariers.

Rethra

The political and religious center of the Redarians was the Tempelburg Riedegost, better known under the name Rethra . In contrast to the neighboring Abodrites , neither a Redarian prince nor a priest ruled the tribe from the castle. Rather, the castle appears as a meeting place for a political will of the clan-like or clan similar to have served redarischen organized settlement communities. The warriors were bid farewell in Rethra and received again after their return from the campaigns. The castle housed the wooden statues of the redarian gods preserved by the priests and was the scene of the oracle and the common sacrifices.

Web links

Wiktionary: Redarian  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Remarks

  1. ↑ DO No. 2: quando de provincia slavorum, qui vocantur Riadri, in pace venimus ad Magathabur .
  2. ^ DOI, 295
  3. ^ Theodolius Witkowski: The name of the Redarians and their central sanctuary. In: Symbolae Philologicae in honorem Vitoldi Taszycki. Wrocław / Warszawa / Kraków 1968, p. 405 f.
  4. ^ About Georg Christian Friedrich Lisch: The Foundation of the Broda Monastery and the Land of Rhedarians. In: Yearbooks of the Association for Mecklenburg History and Archeology, Volume 3 (1838), pp. 1–33, here p. 6 ( digitized version ).
  5. ↑ Ernst Eichler , Hans Walther: The place names in the Gau Daleminze. (= German-Slavic research on naming and settlement history, nos. 20 and 21). 2 volumes, Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1966 and 1967, Bd.I, p. 282; following him Wolfgang Fritze: The Slavic uprising of 983 - a turning point in the history of Central Europe . In: Eckart Henning, Werner Vogel (Hrsg.): Festschrift of the regional historical association for the Mark Brandenburg on its centenary 1884-1984 . Berlin 1984, pp. 9–55, here p. 11, note 12.
  6. ^ Theodolius Witkowski: The name of the Redarians and their central sanctuary. In: Symbolae Philologicae in honorem Vitoldi Taszycki. Wrocław / Warszawa / Kraków 1968, S., against him Wolfgang H. Fritze: The Slavic uprising of 983 - a turning point in the history of Central Europe . In: Eckart Henning, Werner Vogel (Hrsg.): Festschrift of the regional historical association for the Mark Brandenburg on its centenary 1884-1984 . Berlin 1984, pp. 9–55, here p. 11, note 12.
  7. ^ Heinrich Kunstmann : The Slaves. Her name, her migration to Europe and the beginnings of Russian history from a historical and onomastic point of view. Steiner, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-515-06816-3 , p. 139.
  8. ↑ Ernst Eichler, Hans Walther: The place names in the Gau Daleminze. (= German-Slavic research on naming and settlement history, nos. 20 and 21). 2 volumes, Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1966 and 1967, volume I, p. 281 f .; against him Theodolius Witkowski: The name of the Redarians and their central sanctuary. In: Symbolae Philologicae in honorem Vitoldi Taszycki. Wrocław / Warszawa / Kraków 1968, p. 412 f.
  9. ^ Theodolius Witkowski: The name of the Redarians and their central sanctuary. In: Symbolae Philologicae in honorem Vitoldi Taszycki. Wrocław / Warszawa / Kraków 1968, p. 408 mwN on older Slavic attempts at interpretation.
  10. ^ Heinrich Kunstmann: The Slaves. Her name, her migration to Europe and the beginnings of Russian history from a historical and onomastic point of view. Steiner, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-515-06816-3 , p. 139.
  11. ↑ Fred Ruchhöft: From the Slavic tribal area to the German bailiwick. The development of the territories in Ostholstein, Lauenburg, Mecklenburg and Western Pomerania in the Middle Ages. (= Archeology and history in the Baltic Sea region. Vol. 4). Leidorf, Rahden (Westfalen) 2008, ISBN 978-3-89646-464-4 , p. 105: “a probability bordering on certainty. "
  12. ^ Gerd Althoff : Saxony and the Elbe Slavs in the Tenth Century. In: The New Cambridge Medieval History . Volume 3: Timothy Reuter (Ed.): C. 900 - c.1024 Cambridge University Press, Cambridge u. a. 1999, ISBN 0-521-36447-7 , pp. 267-292, here p. 282.
  13. ↑ Widukind I, 36; on this in detail Sébastien Rossignol: Rise and fall of the Linonen. Failed ethnogenesis on the lower Middle Elbe. in: Karl-Heinz Willroth, Jens Schneewiess (Ed.): Slavs on the Elbe. (= Göttingen research on prehistory and early history ., Vol. 1), Wachholtz, Göttingen 2011, pp. 15–38, here pp. 21–28.
  14. ↑ Christian Hanewinkel: The political importance of the Elbe Slavs with regard to the changes in rule in the East Franconian Empire and in Saxony from 887–936. Political sketches of the eastern neighbors in the 9th and 10th centuries. Münster 2004 p. 97.
  15. ↑ Christian Hanewinkel: The political importance of the Elbe Slavs with regard to the changes in rule in the East Franconian Empire and in Saxony from 887–936. Political sketches of the eastern neighbors in the 9th and 10th centuries. Münster 2004 p. 197 f.
  16. ↑ Christian Hanewinkel: The political importance of the Elbe Slavs with regard to the changes in rule in the East Franconian Empire and in Saxony from 887–936. Political sketches of the eastern neighbors in the 9th and 10th centuries. Münster 2004 p. 215.
  17. ^ Lutz Partenheimer : The emergence of the Mark Brandenburg. With a Latin-German source attachment Böhlau. Cologne, Weimar 2007, p. 21.
  18. ^ Christian Lübke : Between Poland and the Empire. Elbe Slavs and Gentile Religion . In: Michael Borgolte (ed.): Poland and Germany 1000 years ago. The Berlin conference on the "Gnesen Act". Academy. Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-05-003749-0 , pp. 91–110, here p.98.
  19. ↑ Widukind II, 4 describes the war opponent only as a "barbarian", but from the imperial charter of October 14, 936 (DOI No. 2) it is known that it was the Redarians.
  20. ↑ Gerard Labuda : On the structure of the Slavic tribes in the Mark Brandenburg (10th-12th centuries). In: Otto Büsch, Klaus Zernack (Hrsg.): Yearbook for the history of Central and Eastern Germany . Volume 42, Saur, Munich 1994, ISSN  0075-2614 , pp. 103-139, here p. 131.
  21. ↑ Widukind III, 58; on the reason for the Gerard Labuda campaign: On the structure of the Slavic tribes in the Mark Brandenburg (10th – 12th centuries). In: Otto Büsch, Klaus Zernack (Hrsg.): Yearbook for the history of Central and Eastern Germany . Volume 42, Saur, Munich 1994, ISSN  0075-2614 , pp. 103-139, here p. 131.
  22. ^ DOI, 295.
  23. ↑ Widukind III, 70.
  24. ^ Christian Lübke: Between Poland and the Empire. Elbe Slavs and Gentile Religion . In: Michael Borgolte (ed.): Poland and Germany 1000 years ago. The Berlin conference on the "Gnesen Act". Academy. Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-05-003749-0 , pp. 91–110, here p. 102.