Whose Rhine is it?
It's a simple question--an easy one to get wrong, and kings, emperors and dictators have spilled enough blood over the centuries in answer to that question to fill the damned river with blood, from Basel to Rotterdam.
From my reading of history, there are two wrong answers to the question:
1. It is the northwestern border of France.
2. It is a German river.
Yet these answers have been applied over and over again. Much to the destruction and re-destruction of towns like Mainz along the river, and to the deaths of soldiers from far and near. Let's look at a few examples.
Lessons from History
The first to see the Rhine as a northern border were the Romans, who fortified cities on the west bank of the river like Cologne, Koblenz, and Mainz. The lands to the east were a rich source of trade, but after an attempt to push the borders of the empire to the Elbe resulted in a disasterous defeate in the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9, the Rhine became a border, and it stayed that way for more than 300 years.
The next great power to follow the Roman Empire was Charlemagne, whose empire stretched from the Pyrenees to the North Sea, from the Atlantic to the Oder River, the present-day border of Germany and Poland. But when Charlemagne died, the tradition of his tribe dictated that he split the empire among his three son. This led, of course, to civil war and conflict.
Much of the conflict in central Europe can be traced to the Treaty of Verdun (843), when Charlemagne's grandsons, split his lands in whays that still echo throughout the following 1200 years. The eastern lands went to Louis the German--if you carefully examine the map below, the Rhine serves as the western border of his empire. Western lands went to Charles the Bald, and they make up much of present-day France. But a buffer-empire was also created between Charles and Louis, and this empire was given to Lothar, uh, just Lothar.
You've heard of France (which kept the name of Charlemagne's tribe, the Franks, and not of Charles's baldness). You've heard of Germany. You've heard of Italy, which made up most of Lother's domain, but most people wouldn't recognize the border region that stretches from the North Sea to Burgundy (and makes up most of the present-day Netherlands and Belgium.
The borderlands stretching north from Italy would be known as Lotharingia. While they didn't become great empires the way France and Germany did, those greater kingdoms would battle back and forth for the west side of the Rhine until 1945.
The next significant event in control of Lotharingia had to do with the Hapsburgs, masters of medieval marriages. In 1477, Maximilian I, the Austrian crown prince and son of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III, married Mary the Rich, who was the sole heir of Burgundian king, Charles the Bold, who had died in battle just a month earlier. France made play for her inheritance, but Maximilian's one a few, key victories on the battlefield, and his claim to the low countries was made fast in 1493, as Columbus was returning to tell the world about his discoveries in America.
Maximilian's son, Philip the Handsome, inherited his mother's lands in the low countries. He, like his father, married well. Joanna of Castille became his bride in 1496. Their son, Charles V, ruled nearly all of western Europe: all but France and Portugal. (Note the brown areas of the former Lotharingia are Hapsburg lands, as are those in present-day Austria, the reset of the Holy Roman Empire was under Charles's control as Kaiser / Emperor.)
Incidentally, the name "Lotharingia" has changed over time. All that remains of Lothar's great inheritance--in name, at least, is a small province on the west bank of the Rhine known today as "Lorraine."
History would swing towards the French. During Charles V's reign, a theological disagreement in Wittenburg spun out of control. More than a century of religious conflict followed. The French intervened in the 30 Years' War, at the end of which, they gained control of Alsace and Lorraine. No longer was the Rhine a German River. It was now, for about 80 miles, the border between France and Germany.
The French weren't done. Vienna became embroiled in another religious war: the Ottoman Turks surrounded the city in 1683, and all resources were thrown to the defense of the empire's capital city. Louis XIV, hoping for Answer #1, rampaged through the Rhineland, waging a scorched-earth campaign that left cities like Heidelberg, Mainz and Wurms in embers (even in my family's tiny village in southwestern Germany, Louis's campaigns remain bitter history.
The war waged on for
nine, long years. During this time many of the castles along the west bank of the Rhine were left in ruins. Louis gained no new ground near the Rhine. For the most part, they remained that way for the next 175 years.
The western border of German lands at the end of the War of Spanish Succession, look remarkably similar to today's border.
The French would reach the Rhine once again under Napoleon. From 1795 to 1814, they pursued Answer #1, using the river as the border between France and a buffer state called the Confederation of the Rhine, but containing only those German states that lay east of the river. Mainz became "Mayence"
Here's the Napoleonic Era map with the French border states.
Sadly, Answer #2 would find a new champion in Prussia, an upstart kingdom based on the Baltic Sea with its capitol in Berlin. At this point, French armies had tromped repeatedly across the Rhineland since 1648. a cry went out for German nationalism, and a deep resentment against France fueled the desire for Germany unity. As Prussia and its indominatble chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, unified the German Empire through a series of wars against Denmark, Austria, and their German allies, they also littered the Rhine with their monuments.
Cologne has the Hohenzöllern Bridge, and the great gothic spires of its cathedral
were completed in 1880. The statue at Deutsches Eck in Koblenz featutes the two Wilhelms of the German Empire. Many of the castles ruined by Louis XIV and left derelict were restored by the royal family and other Prussian magnates. The Niederwald Memorial is a great example of this monumentalist era--which in the United States featured such similar projects as the Lincoln Memorial and the Statue of Liberty. I will cover the symbolism of the Memorial in another blog.
Let's give the Prussians their due. War with France in 1870-71 pushed the border away from the Rhine, well into French territory. The provinces of Alsace and Lorraine were added to the German Empire. Answer #2. The Rhine was once again a German river. See map below with the trans-Rhine territories in orange.
The new borders endured 50 years until the end of World War 1. Germany's loss in that war led to two things: the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, and the occupation of the Rhineland by the French and other armies. The Versaille Treaty of 1919 replaced Answer #2 with an equally bad Answeer #1. Here's the map of the boundary area from 1918-1930.
Answer #2 would be tried one more time in the 20th Century, during one more world war. It ended, for Germany, with loss, another occupation, and--we hope--an end to twelve centuries of conflict over this delicate question:
Who owns the Rhine?
The EU owns it now. There is nothing so much as a border post (which I will cross on a trip to Strassbourg on Saturday--stay tuned). There may even be no "Welcome to Germany" sign or welcome center that one sees when travling between states in the USA.
The question lingers today, however, in the form of statues from an era of conflict--such as the Niederwald Memorial. Let's take a closer look at her next.
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