Europe · The early medieval west
Kingdom of Germany
919–962
The Kingdom of Germany (regnum Teutonicum) evolved out of East Francia. Its conventional starting point is 919, when the Saxon duke Henry the Fowler (Henry I) was elected king, founding the Ottonian dynasty.
- Existed
- 919–962
- Shown on the map
- AD 911–961
- Peak area
- 747k km²
- Region
- Europe
Overview
The Kingdom of Germany (regnum Teutonicum) evolved out of East Francia. Its conventional starting point is 919, when the Saxon duke Henry the Fowler (Henry I) was elected king, founding the Ottonian dynasty. The kingdom was characterized by elective kingship, in which the great dukes and later prince-electors chose the king, rather than strict hereditary succession.
Decline and legacy
Henry's son Otto I (the Great) was crowned emperor in 962, fusing the German kingship with the imperial title and effectively founding the Holy Roman Empire; thereafter the King of Germany (King of the Romans) was normally the emperor-elect. The relationship between the German kingship and the Empire remained central to medieval and early modern European politics. The kingdom endured, in various constitutional forms, until the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806.
Common questions
- What was the Kingdom of Germany?
- The Kingdom of Germany (regnum Teutonicum) evolved out of East Francia. Its conventional starting point is 919, when the Saxon duke Henry the Fowler (Henry I) was elected king, founding the Ottonian dynasty.
- When did the Kingdom of Germany exist?
- The Kingdom of Germany existed 919–962. On this map it is drawn AD 911–961.
- How large was the Kingdom of Germany?
- At its greatest extent drawn on this map, the Kingdom of Germany covered about 747,000 km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.
- How did the Kingdom of Germany end?
- Henry's son Otto I (the Great) was crowned emperor in 962, fusing the German kingship with the imperial title and effectively founding the Holy Roman Empire; thereafter the King of Germany (King of the Romans) was normally the emperor-elect. The relationship between the German kingship and the Empire remained central to medieval and early modern European politics.
Sources
This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia articles for each polity as the primary basis, cross-checked against Encyclopædia Britannica and the World History Encyclopedia, while flagging entries built on thin or contested evidence — Samo's Empire on a single Fredegar passage, Venice's 697 founding date as legendary, the Pacta conventa as a probable forgery. The article this entry is anchored on:
- Wikipedia — Kingdom of Germany en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Germany
This entry was last updated .
This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made
Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.
Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).
Further reading in Knowledge
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