This post is for PistolPete for the Yuletide Season. Hope you like it PP. Part II will be added shortly
Swabia (German: Schwaben, Schwabenland or Ländle; in English also Suabia or Svebia) is a cultural, historic and linguistic region in southwestern Germany.
Swabia is a unique culture, has its own “language,” and on top of it all, has been the “hometown” of some of Germany’s most brilliant minds. As if that’s not enough, the food is some of the best you’ll ever eat of German cuisine.
Swabians (German : Schwaben, singular Schwabe) are the natives of Swabia and speakers of Swabian German. Their number was estimated at close to 0.8 million by SIL Ethnologue as of 2006, compared to a total population of 7.5 million in the regions of Tübingen, Stuttgart and Bavarian Swabia.
History
The names originated from the tribe of the Suebi. Dwelling in the angle formed by the Rhine and the Danube, the Suebi, were joined by other tribes, and were called Alamanni or Alemannia, until about the 11th century, when the form Swabia began to prevail from the medieval Duchy of Swabia (German: Herzogtum Schwaben) in the High Middle Ages – one of the five Stem Duchies of the medieval German kingdom, and its Dukes were thus among the most powerful magnates of Germany.
In 496 CE the Alamanni were defeated by King Clovis I, brought under Francia, and governed by dukes who were dependent on the Frankish kings. In the 7th century CE the people were converted to Christianity, bishoprics were founded at Augsburg and Konstanz, and in the 8th century CE abbeys at Reichenau Island and Saint Gall. The Alamanni had gradually thrown off the Frankish yoke, but in 730 CE Charles Martel again reduced them to dependence, and his son Pepin the Short abolished the tribal duke and ruled the Duchy by Counties Palatine, or kammerboten.
The Duchy proper was proclaimed by Burchard II in 917 CE. Burchard had allied himself with King Conrad I and defeated his rivals for the rule of Alemannia in a battle at Wahlwies in 915 CE. The most notable family were the Hohenstaufen, also Holy Roman Emperors, who held Swabia from 1079 until 1268 CE,
In 1186, Constance Hauteville, the youngest child of King Roger II of Sicily, was betrothed to Henry VI, second son of Frederick Barbarossa of the Hohenstaufen . This was seen as a way of sealing the Normans’ rapport with the dynasty which controlled not only the Alpine regions but most of Italy north of Bologna.
By virtue of his consort, Henry claimed the Sicilian crown in 1194 following the brief and ineffectual reign of Tancred, Constance’s illegitimate nephew through her eldest brother, Roger of Apulia (died 1149).
When Henry VI was crowned in Palermo, he found himself in control of the island of Sicily and all of mainland Italy except for a central region (the Papal State) controlled by the Papacy, a situation the Pope and other sovereigns found disturbing – indeed overtly threatening. Sicily changed greatly under the Swabians. Despite Frederick’s quarrels with the Papacy, leading to excommunication, the church in Sicily became almost completely Latinized during his long reign.It was during the Swabian period that the Sicilian language later recognized by Dante and then Boccaccio truly evolved. The sonnet is thought to have been born at the court of Frederick II
The Hohenstaufen line ended with the execution of Conradin, the last Duke of Swabia. After Conradin’s death, Swabia divided to the counts of Wurttemberg, the margraves of Baden, the counts palatine of Tübingen, the counts of Hohenzollern and others. Present day – Count Francis E Phelps III (Guelph).
When the emperor Maximilian I divided the Holy Roman Empire into Imperial Circles in 1512, the Duchy was reborn as the Swabian Circle. The area, which was formerly Swabia, was covered by the County of Württemberg, the Margraviate of Baden and the western part of the Kingdom of Bavaria. The exact use of the name is now confined to the Bavarian Swabia Regierungsbezirk, with its capital at Augsburg.
During the 17th and 18th century a substantial amount of Swabians moved in search of either work or religious freedom. Those with large debts ended up conscripted as sailors and soldiers for the Dutch East India Company (DEIC), eventually settling in the Dutch Cape Colony, Dutch East Indies or Ceylon. Besides individual Swabians, the Duke Charles Eugene of Württemberg concluded an agreement with the DEIC in 1786 to furnish the Württemberg Cape Regiment (German: Württembergisches Kapregiment ) Their presence among the Dutch at the Cape contributed to the Dutch term swaapstreek (literally: “Swabian shenanigans”), likely referencing the Seven Swabians tale.
During the 18th century East Colonisation, many Swabians were attracted by the Austrian Empire’s offer of settling in East European lands which had been left sparsely populated by the wars with Turkey. These ethnic German communities came to be known collectively as the Danube Swabians, subdivided into such groups as the Banat Swabians, Satu Mare Swabians and others (although the name “Danube Swabians” was applied also to German settlers of non-Swabian background)
Swabians settled also in eastern Croatia (Slavonia and Syrmia), and southern and eastern Hungary, including part of what is now Serbia and Romania (the Danube Swabians, Satu Mare Swabians, Banat Swabians and Swabian Turkey) in the 18th century, where they were invited as pioneers to repopulate some areas. They also settled in Russia, Bessarabia, and Kazakhstan. They were well-respected as farmers.
In the wake of the territorial reorganization of the empire of 1803 by the ‘Reichsdeputationshauptschluss’, the shape of Swabia was entirely changed. All the ecclesiastical estates were secularized, and most of the smaller secular states, and almost all of the free cities, were mediatized, leaving only Württemberg, Baden, and Hohenzollern as sovereign states. Much of Eastern Swabia became part of Bavaria, forming what is now the Swabian administrative region of Bavaria.
Many Swabians sought land in the Western Hemisphere, especially in the 19th century. Swabian settlements can be found in Brazil, Canada, and the United States. Among the Germans who emigrated to the United States in the 19th century, Swabians in some areas maintained their regional identity and formed organizations for mutual support
Almost all of the several million Swabians were expelled from Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia during the 20th century 1944–1950 CE, as part of the ethnic cleansing against their German minorities. There still are Swabians living near the city of Satu Mare in Romania, who are known as Satu Mare Swabians
Significant numbers of Swabians moved to Berlin following the city’s being re-instated as German capital in 2000. By the 2010s, their number was estimated as close to 300,000.
Part II to follow
Y_ 3 years, 1 month ago.
