Otto I

King of Germany (r. 936-973) and Holy Roman Emperor (r. 962-973)

• Born: November 23, 0912
• Birthplace: Saxony (now in Germany)
• Died: May 7, 0973
• Place of death: Memleben, Thuringia (now in Germany)

Otto’s decisive victory over the Magyars shaped the fate of Europe. His coronation as emperor determined the course of German policy for centuries to come. Internally, he overcame tribalism by putting central administration in the unifying hands of the Church.

Early Life

In 912, when Otto (AH-toh) was born the first son of Matilda, second but first legitimate wife of his father, Henry, the latter was still duke of Saxony, and the idea of a powerful central kingship in Germany was a rather remote one. Real power was held by the dukes of the various tribes, and the title king of Germany did not wield much more than ceremonial influence. It would be up to Otto to seek a change. When his father was elected king in 919 after the death of Conrad I, the last Franconian king from the line of Charlemagne, Henry I relied on his might as duke of Saxony and did not require more than ceremonial homage to his royal position from his largely independent ducal colleagues.

Nevertheless, Henry I seemed to have planned more for his successor. Against the wishes of his wife, who favored Otto’s younger son Henry, who had been born when his father was already king, Henry I promoted Otto as heir apparent and succeeded in winning for him the hand of an English princess. In 930, Otto married Edith, whose dowry, the town of Magdeburg, would play an important role in Otto’s later politics.

Henry I had prepared the German nobility to elect Otto I at a council in Erfurt on his death. Accordingly, a splendid coronation ceremony took place at the chapel of Aachen on August 7, 936. There, the nobles swore Otto an oath of fealty, and three archbishops anointed the king and his wife and crowned Otto on the marble chair that had belonged to Charlemagne. A contemporary illustration of the banquet that followed shows the king with his crown; he has long blond hair, a beard, and an open, intelligent face, and he is sitting elevated at a table where the four dukes of the kingdom are waiting on him, each holding an instrument signifying his ceremonial office of chamberlain, steward, cupbearer, and marshal. It is worth noting that Otto wears ceremonial Franconian clothes, not Saxonian clothes; thus, the illustration shows Otto’s awareness of a new status in an office that had its own regal tradition.

Life’s Work

The splendor of the coronation and the demonstration of unity and loyalty of dukes and nobles soon wore off and left Otto with a series of rebellions at home and increasing danger at the boundaries of his kingdom. In the south, the Magyars were barely held at bay, and in the east the Slavs were pressing against the eastern marches; there, Otto relied on the military prowess of his margraves Herman Billung and Count Gero. Because of Otto’s grants of land to Count Gero, his own half brother Thankmar, a bastard son of Henry I from his first, annulled marriage, felt slighted and joined Duke Eberhard of Franconia in an open rebellion against the king. Thus, hardly two years after his accession, Otto faced the first challenge to exercise the rights of his royal position.

Initial combat brought victory for Otto when Thankmar fell and Eberhard submitted to the king. In 939, however, his younger brother Henry, whom Otto had installed in Bavaria and who had been captured by the rebels, switched to the side of his captors. Suddenly, the rebellion gathered momentum. Eberhard turned coat again, the French king supported the insurgents, and Giselbert of Lotharingia and even the archbishop of Mainz closed ranks against Otto. In this precarious position, Otto was saved by a clever attack on the disjointed rebels. A strike by two of his warlords brought the death of Eberhard and the drowning of Giselbert in the Rhine River. Thereafter, the rebellion faltered, and Otto forgave his brother, only to have Henry try to assassinate him in 941. Again, Otto showed largesse when his brother approached him, penitent, on Christmas Day in the cathedral in Frankfurt. From that point onward, Henry proved loyal and valuable, and he obtained the duchy of Bavaria in 947.

After these early struggles to bring the quarrelsome and independent-minded German nobles in line, Otto tried to achieve control of the duchies through a series of dynastic marriages of his Saxon princes and princesses. To counteract the accumulation of hereditary privileges by the nobles, the king relied on ecclesiastical administrators and officers, who could have no legal offspring, to govern his royal holdings.

Yet Otto used the Church for more than interior administration. In the east, his biggest project was the establishment of the archbishopric of Magdeburg, which would serve as a base from which the land between the Rivers Elbe and Oder could be pacified. This territory had long been dominated by the Slavs, whose belligerence presented a constant danger to the Saxonian lands. (Against the resistance of the archbishop of Mainz, who feared a diminution of his own power, Otto finally succeeded in creating the new archdiocese in 968.)

In 951, when his authority had grown so much that even the prince of Bohemia paid tribute to him, Otto had begun to turn his attention to Italy. An occasion to march southward arose with the reception of a distress call from Princess Adelaide of Burgundy, whom Berengar of Ivrea had imprisoned for her refusal to marry his son. Otto, a widower since 946, chased away Berengar, crowned himself king of the Lombards, and married Adelaide in Padua. Many contemporaries believed that they would soon see the imperial crown on Otto’s head, and indeed, in 952, Otto was recognized as king of Italy.

Rome, however, did not welcome Otto, and at home his son Liudolf rebelled, fearing the influence and potential offspring of his new stepmother. Immediately, Otto marched north to discover a huge rebellion, which humiliated him. His battles with the insurgents were indecisive at best, but a new attack by the Magyars brought public opinion against the rebels. Under public pressure from the nobles, the uprising faltered, and Liudolf had to submit to his father early in 955.

Finally able to collect and command a great army, Otto attacked the invaders at their camp by the city of Augsburg. The ensuing Battle of the Lechfeld (955) was a complete victory for the Germans. Never again would the Magyars threaten Europe; instead, they gave up their existence as nomadic plunderers and settled to live peacefully in their homelands in Hungary.

Six years after his great victory, Otto followed the custom of appointing his heir as coregent and saw Otto II, his six-year-old son by Adelaide, elected and crowned king of Germany. Having regulated his succession, Otto received a call for help from Pope John XII , a rather worldly youth who found himself threatened by Berengar. That was Otto’s chance to obtain the imperial crown for himself and thus to fashion himself after the great Charlemagne, who had been the last real emperor. On February 2, 962, after a successful arrival in Rome, Otto was crowned emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, marking the beginning of a tradition for the German kings that would last almost a millennium until the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, who formally abolished the title in 1802.

A few days after his coronation, Otto signed a mutual treaty, the Privilegium Ottonianum, which bestowed land on the Papacy (the grant consisted of territories that were yet to be conquered) in exchange for the emperor’s right to ratify papal elections. Theoretically, the popes were placed under imperial control, but in reality the Romans readily deposed officeholders whom they found objectionable. This practice began almost immediately after Otto engineered the deposition of John XII for committing treason with Berengar; the imperial nominee for the succession was himself deposed, then reinstated, but he died soon after. Otto’s next choice, John XIII, was chased away by the Romans, who elected an antipope. To protect his candidate, Otto had to spend the years from 966 to 972 in Italy.

During this time, Otto also tried to contact the Byzantine Empire, which at first showed only arrogance to the German upstarts. After a new ruler came to power in the East, Otto’s diplomatic mission succeeded, and he obtained the hand of the gifted princess Theophano for his son Otto II, who married her in 972.

At the height of his power, Otto I returned to Germany to hold a great assembly of his court at Quedlinburg in Saxony on March 23, 973. This time, the ceremonies were less perfunctory and reflected the real power of the person venerated as king and emperor. After a reign of thirty-seven years, at age sixty, Otto died a few weeks later in the adjacent town of Memleben and was put to rest beside his first wife, Edith.

Significance

Otto the Great was the first king of Germany to consolidate real power and authority for the kingship and give a clearer sense of national unity to the tribes of Germany. His defeat of the Magyars secured the boundaries of the later empire in the southeast, and his expansion to the Oder River created a stable area for German settlement, the limits of which would mark the eastern frontier for a long time.

Otto’s grasping of the imperial throne gave his kingship additional prestige and influence over the rich cities of northern Italy, but it also allowed for direct German involvement in Roman and Italian politics, which had the potential to strain the resources and muddle the interests of the German rulers and their people. Further, Otto’s coronation laid the foundation for a mutual dependency and rivalry between emperor and pope; in a crippling struggle for power, both sides would vie for control over each other, with the pope claiming superiority over the emperor because of his ultimate spiritual authority and the latter adamantly refusing the pope’s meddling in imperial affairs. Similarly, Otto’s reliance on the clergy to administer his kingdom in order to weaken local power would prove to be a double-edged sword, lending unity to the empire at the price of ecclesiastical (and, consequently, Romish) power in Germany.

Culturally, Otto’s reign brought Germany in touch with the almost forgotten legacy of the great Mediterranean cultures of antiquity and led to a general intellectual flourishing that has been called the “Ottonian renaissance.” The fine arts thrived, some monasteries became true centers of academic life, and the written documents of the era show sophistication of learning.

Saxon Kings of Germany, 919-1024

Reign

• King

919

• Henry I the Fowler (Saxon, not crowned)

936-973

• Otto I

973-983

• Otto II

983-1002

• Otto III

1002-1024

• Henry II the Saint

1024

• Franconian/Salian line begins (Conrad II)

Bibliography

Eyck, Frank. Religion and Politics in German History: From the Beginnings to the French Revolution. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. An analysis of how Germanic peoples preserved links with classical civilization through their ability to assimilate other cultures and peoples, from their alliances with eighth century popes through the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. The initial bond between the Germanic rulers and popes turned to conflict as the Papacy gained power. Tables, maps, bibliography, index.

Fleckenstein, Josef. Early Medieval Germany. Translated by Bernard S. Smith. New York: North Holland, 1978. Apart from providing an excellent portrayal of life in Germany around Otto’s time, this work provides solid information on Otto’s life and puts his achievements and struggles in the larger context of German history.

Haight, Anne Lyon, ed. Hroswitha of Gandersheim: Her Life, Time, Works, and a Comprehensive Bibliography. New York: Hroswitha Club, 1965. Contains translations of this medieval chronicler’s works. Hroswitha’s contemporary account of Otto’s reign reads well and is an invaluable source for further studies.

Henderson, Ernest F. History of Germany in the Middle Ages. Reprint. New York: Haskell House, 1968. Chapters 8 and 9 offer an informed, readable account of Otto’s rule as king and emperor and present his achievements in a larger historic context. Although this work was written in 1894, it is still a useful historical source.

Hill, Boyd H., Jr. Medieval Monarchy in Action. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1972. The introduction to this collection of translations of selected documents of the period has an informed chapter on Otto I that provides a precise overview of his reign.

Hill, Boyd H., Jr. The Rise of the First Reich. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1969. A collection of translations of contemporary sources, such as Widukind’s chronicles and the writings of Liudprand of Cremona on Otto. Fourteen plates of medieval art works and a map of Germany give the reader an illustrated view of Otto’s era.

Jeep, John M., et al., eds. Medieval Germany: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland, 2001. An A-Z encyclopedia that addresses all aspects of the German- and Dutch-speaking medieval world from 500 to 1500. Entries include individuals, events, and broad topics such as feudalism and pregnancy. Bibliographical references, index.

Liudprand, Bishop of Cremona. The Embassy to Constantinople and Other Writings. Translated by F. A. Wright, edited by John Julius Norwich. 1930. Reprint. Rutland, Vt.: Charles E. Tuttle, 1993. Liudprand’s contemporary writings on Otto provide a rare glimpse into his world from a medieval perspective.

Moore, Robert Ian. The First European Revolution, c. 970-1215. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2000. According to the publisher, “a radical reassessment of Europe from the late tenth to the early thirteenth centuries [arguing that] the period witnessed the first true ’revolution’ in European society,” supported by transformation of the economy, family life, political power structures, and the rise of the non-Mediterranean cities. Bibliography, index.