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The history of Saxony began with a small tribe living on the North Sea between the Elbe and Eider River in what is now Holstein. The name of this tribe, the Saxons (Latin: Saxones), was first mentioned by the Greek author Ptolemy. The name Saxons is derived from the Seax, a knife used by the tribe as a weapon.[citation needed]
In the 3rd and 4th centuries, Germany was inhabited by great tribal confederations of the Alamanni, Bavarians, Thuringians, Franks, Frisii, and Saxons. These took the place of numerous petty tribes with their own popular tribal forms of government. With the exception of the Saxons, all these confederations were ruled by kings. The Saxons, in contrast, were divided into a number of independent bodies under different chieftains. In time of war these chieftains drew lots to select a leader, who was followed by the other chieftains until the war ended.[1]
In the 3rd and 4th centuries, the Saxons fought their way victoriously towards the west, and their name was given to the great tribal confederation that stretched towards the west exactly to the former boundary of the Roman Empire, almost to the Rhine. Only a small strip of land on the right bank of the Rhine remained to the Frankish tribe. Towards the south the Saxons pushed as far as the Harz Mountains and the Eichsfeld, and in the succeeding centuries they absorbed the greater part of Thuringia. In the east their power extended at first as far as the Elbe and Saale Rivers. In later centuries it extended much farther. The whole coast of the North Sea (the German Ocean) belonged to the Saxons except the part west of the Weser that the Frisians retained.
The historyofSaxony began with a small tribe living on the North Sea between the Elbe and Eider River in what is now Holstein. The name of this tribe...
Lower Saxony is a German state (Land) in northwestern Germany. It is the second-largest state by land area, with 47,614 km2 (18,384 sq mi), and fourth-largest...
Saxony, officially the Free State ofSaxony, is a landlocked state of Germany, bordering the states of Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria,...
The Electorate ofSaxony, also known as Electoral Saxony (German: Kurfürstentum Sachsen or Kursachsen), was a territory of the Holy Roman Empire from...
Old Saxony was the homeland of the Saxons during the Early Middle Ages. It corresponds roughly to the modern German states of Lower Saxony, eastern part...
The Duchy ofSaxony (Low German: Hartogdom Sassen, German: Herzogtum Sachsen) was originally the area settled by the Saxons in the late Early Middle Ages...
territories named Saxony from the beginning of the Saxon Duchy in the 6th century to the end of the German monarchies in 1918. The electors ofSaxony from John...
The Kingdom ofSaxony (German: Königreich Sachsen), lasting from 1806 to 1918, was an independent member of a number of historical confederacies in Napoleonic...
member of the House of Wettin who reigned as the last Elector ofSaxony from 1763 to 1806 (as Frederick Augustus III) and as the first King ofSaxony from...
1696 – 5 October 1763) was King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1733 until 1763, as well as Elector ofSaxony in the Holy Roman Empire where...
Reichstag of Goslar, the county of Tyrol was no longer counted as part of Bavaria. Duke Henry the Lion focused on his northern duchy ofSaxony rather than...
The historyof Berlin starts with its foundation in the 14th century. It became the capital of the Margraviate of Brandenburg in 1417, and later of Brandenburg-Prussia...
In 1350 the Black Death, one of the deadliest pandemics in human history, killed more than 6,000 in Hamburg, half of the city's population. Two contracts...
The Gau Saxony (German: Gau Sachsen) was an administrative division of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945 in the German state ofSaxony. Before that, from...
of Poland and Saxony, or Saxony-Poland, was the personal union that existed from 1697 to 1706 and from 1709 to 1763 between the Electorate ofSaxony under...
ofSaxony (German: Sächsischer Landtag), also known in English as the Saxon State Parliament, is the legislature of the Free State ofSaxony, one of Germany's...
was a son of Prince Ernst Heinrich ofSaxony (a son of King Friedrich August III ofSaxony and his former wife, Archduchess Luise, Countess of Montignoso)...
(12 May 1670 – 1 February 1733), was Elector ofSaxony from 1694 as well as King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1697 to 1706 and from 1709 until...
maintained a close alliance with Saxony, which led to a pro-Habsburg policy after 1642. Hesse-Darmstadt gained a great deal of territory from the secularization...
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