The conquered Wendish areas were organized by the Franks into marches ( German: Marken, meaning border or border lands in German), which were administered by an entrusted noble who collected the tribute, reinforced by military units.
As the Frankish Empire expanded, various Wendish tribes were conquered or allied with the Franks, such as the Obodrites, who aided the Franks in defeating the West Germanic Saxons. They seldom formed larger political entities, but rather constituted various small tribes, dwelling as far west as to a line from the Eastern Alps and Bohemia to the Saale and Elbe rivers. The Slavs living within the reach of the Frankish Empire (later the Holy Roman Empire) were collectively called Wends, also Elbe Slavs. Eastern Marches of the Frankish and Holy Roman Empires At the same time Slav states arose and became dominant in Central and Eastern Europe and large parts of Central Europe in 833 Great Moravia was formed, in 882 Kievan Rus, and in 966 Poland, all of which adopted Christianity.
Some former East Germanic tribes had entered and merged into Rome, their own culture ceasing to exist. In Scandinavia, the former North Germanic tribes entered the Viking Age, affecting the whole of Europe through trade and raids. East Francia, an early predecessor of Germany, aimed to be the successor to the Catholic Western Roman Empire, and developed into the Holy Roman Empire. The Franks had created an empire that, besides former Roman Gallia, had united the former West Germanic tribes and adopted Christianity. The Roman Empire had lost its dominant position. Main articles: History of Europe, Germanic tribes, Slavs, Germania Slavica, and Magna GermaniaĬentral Europe underwent dramatic changes after the Migration period of 300 to 700 CE. Ostsiedlung was heavily exploited by German nationalists as well as the Nazis to press territorial claims of Germany, and to demonstrate supposed German superiority over non-German peoples, whose cultural, urban and scientific achievements in that era were rejected and presented as German. In several areas under the Ostsiedlung the original population was later discriminated and pushed away from administration. Thus Ostsiedlung is part of a process termed Ostkolonisation ("east colonization") or Hochmittelalterlicher Landesausbau ("high medieval land consolidation"), although these terms are sometimes used synonymously.Įthnic conflicts erupted between the newly arrived settlers and local populations, sometimes bloody, and expulsions of native populations are also known. īefore and during the time of German settlement, late medieval Central and Eastern European societies underwent deep cultural changes in demography, religion, law and administration, agriculture, settlement numbers and structures.
19th and 20th century German historians have often exaggerated the importance of the adoption of German law and settlement in Central and Eastern Europe for political reasons while the phenomenon did increase the economic well being of destination countries, at least some of them, like medieval Poland, were already quite developed economically and politically and the local Slavic population was already established in its towns far stronger than previously believed the whole process took part in territories where Slavic solid organisational structures existed. In part, Ostsiedlung followed the territorial expansion of the Holy Roman Empire and the Teutonic Order.Īccording to Jedlicki (1950), in many cases the term "German colonization" does not refer to an actual migration of Germans, but rather to the internal migration of native populations (Poles, Hungarians, etc.) from the countryside to the cities, which then adopted laws modeled on those of the German towns of Magdeburg and Lubeck. The affected area roughly stretched from Slovenia to Estonia, and eastwards into Transylvania. Ostsiedlung ( German pronunciation:, settlement in the east), also called German eastward expansion, was the medieval eastward migration and settlement of Germans from modern day western and central Germany into less-populated regions and countries of eastern Central Europe and Eastern Europe.