sign in sign up
<<
Home , Franconia, Grand duchy, Tilman Riemenschneider

CHAPTER TWO Historical Background I always been interested in history, not that I know a lot about it, but in a more general way. You can not do family history with out wondering what outside forces influenced people to remain in a certain place and others to move on, hopefully to a better life. In the early times of our Great-Great-Great Grandparents when the rulers of the people (Secular or Ecclesiastical) would sneeze the people would get pneumonia. Friedl and Friedel provided some history in their Summary. I would like to provide additional information about the area and German history that affected the village of Astheim and our ancestors, especially the Secularization of the Church. Astheim is a small village located on the river, an important tributary of the river in western . This is an important grape growing . Astheim located in an area known as {fran-kohn'-ee-uh} which consists of the central German lands in the Main River valley and forms the northern segment of the state of in Germany. Franconia derived its name from the who settled there early in the . After the Carolingian collapse, Franconia became one of the five tribal of Germany. The nominal duchies of Eastern and Western Franconia emerged, but ecclesiastical --notably the archbishops of and the bishops of Wurzburg, , and --later dominated the area. Most of this area eventually passed to Bavaria on the dissolution of the empire in 1803-06. Bavaria (Bayern) is a state, or land, in south-central Germany. It has a population of 11,221,000 (1990). It is the largest German state in area and the second largest in population. , its capital, is Germany's third largest city, with a population of 1,206,683 (1989). The Bavarian region was conquered by the Romans, over run by , and incorporated (788) into CHARLEMAGNE's empire. One of the five duchies of medieval Germany. After Germany was conqueror by , Bavaria was proclaimed a kingdom under French auspices in 1806. Bavaria remained an independent kingdom until it became part of the in 1871. The Thirty Years War (1618-48) had a profound impact on this region. It was a long series of political and religious struggles. Eventually it ended with the resettlement and separation of Catholics and Protestants into different areas and villages. Astheim and this part of Bavaria remained strongly Catholic. The result of the war was that Germany was hopelessly fragmented into about 300 virtually sovereign states without effective central government. There is hardly anything that happened before or since the French revolution that had such a profound effect on the peoples of Europe. You can imagine the effect it had on the royalty of Europe. That the peasants could rise against them and the established order of the day. It was down-right frightening. Pro revolution was sweeping Germany. Local, state and church governments were doing all they could do to contain it. Conservatives feared the Enlightenment. It had a bad effect on the status quo. Their worst fears were realized in 1798 in the Rhineland, the region closest to France and therefore most likely to be infected by revolutionary ideals. A few weeks after the fall of the Bastille, for example, peasants and burghers (members of the middle class), protested against high taxes and unfair labor services, and presented the duke with a list of forty specific demands for reform. In October of 1789 there was rioting in Trier when the town's tailors learned that washerwomen were mending clothes and thereby threatening there guild. There seemed to be up-rising spreading throughout the country. In contrast to these trouble spots, Mainz, the largest of the Rhenish polities, was quiet in 1789. When rumors of trouble led the elector to dispatch troops to in early 1790, their arrival came as an unpleasant surprise to the town's tranquil citizens. As you can see every one was uneasy to say the least. Note: Anton Schwab and his family was living there at that time. During the wars of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic period, Germany was conquered by the French. The chief impact of this conquest was to instill a sense of unity and nationalism in the German people. The humiliation of outright domination by French overlords, however, crystallized into the determination to free and unite Germany. , although defeated by Napoleon I, carried out drastic military and social reforms and ultimately led the other German states in the victorious War of Liberation against the French in 1813. The dreams of German patriots were smashed by the peacemakers at the (1814-15). They restored most of the major princes while retaining Napoleon's simplified structure of only about three dozen, instead of three hundred, states. These states were bound loosely together in the . Like the Holy , which Napoleon had dissolved in 1806, the Confederation was dominated by the Habsburgs, who now called themselves of . In the following decades the forces of entrenched conservatism, were increasingly challenged by liberal ideas drawn from the French Revolution and by nationalism. Demands for change and an economic depression combined to produce the Revolutions of 1848. The cause of German nationalism was taken up again in 1862 by Prussia's new minister-president, Otto von Bismarck. A conservative Prussian patriot, he used the liberals’ nationalist issue and assure Prussian leadership in a united Germany. In a series of three he eliminated first Danish, then Austrian, and finally French influence from Germany. Bismarck formed coalitions of parties that were based at least as much on opposition to real or imagined internal enemies as on concrete political issues. He fought the large Roman Catholic minority as enemies of the new state. This campaign, known as the Kulturkampf. Bismarck ended the Kulturkampf in 1878. He had concluded that the best way to deal with a severe economic depression was to protect German industry and agriculture with tariffs, a policy more acceptable to conservatives. The enemy, too, changed. This time it was Germany's mildly Marxist party, the Social Democratic party (SPD), that represented the growing industrial working class. Bismarck had the SPD outlawed as subversive and tried to win over the German workers with the world's first comprehensive social security system.1

1 All of the above was taken from the amalgamation of four books 1. German History 1770-1866 by James J. Sheehan. 2. The course of German History by A.J.P.Taylor. 3. History of nations book 18 by Collier and 4. Mid century Revolution, 1848 Society and Revolution in French and Germany by Robert W. Lougee

Figure 2: Juliusspital in Würzburg

Figure 3: Würtzburg Residence Garden with Pat and Lou Page Break WÜRZBURG HISTORY I thought you may like to learn a little about the history of Würzburg. What happened in Würzburg had a direct impact on the lives of our ancestors and of the people of Würzburg. 689 Würzburg became . 704 The name "castellum viteburch" is recorded for the first in a document. 742 St. Boniface established a bishopric in Würzburg. 788 Consecration of the cathedral in presence of Charlemagne. 1030 The bishop becomes ruler of the town. 1168 Frederic Barbarossa acknowledged the Franconian duchy of the bishops of Würzburg. 1525 In the "Peasant's Revolt" the town supported the peasant armies, which tired unsuccessfully to storm the Fortress Marienberg. 1531 Death of Tilman Riemenschneider, woodcarver, alderman and burgermeister. 1576 Foundatation of the Juliusspital by bishop Julius Echter of Mespel-brunn.

1582 Foundation of the university by Julius Echter. 1631 Wurzburg conquered by Gustav Adolf of Sweden. 1720 Foundation of the prince bishops' palace, designed by Balthasar Neumann. 1750 1753 Tiepolo paints the Palace frescoes. 1802 The high chapter is dissolved Würzburg becomes part of the Electorate of Bavaria. 1805- 1814 Grand-duchy under Ferdinand of . 1814 Würzburg is finally allocated to Bavaria. 1867 Würzburg loses its characteristic when its walls were taken down and a park is laid out around the town and the boundaries were extended. 1895 Röntgen discovers X-rays in Würzburg and is awarded Nobel-Price. 1945 At the end of World War II Wurzburg is almost completely destroyed. 1985 Opening of Congress Centrum Würzburg. 1995 The first time Germany has gone over 50 years without being at war.

Page Break