History of Baden-Württemberg

Early in the 3rd century, the Alemanni drove the Romans beyond the Rhine and the Danube, but they in turn succumbed to the Franks under Clovis I, the decisive battle taking place in 496.

Württemberg, often spelled "Wirtemberg" or "Wurtemberg" in English, developed as a political entity in southwest Germany, with the core established around Stuttgart by Count Conrad (died 1110).

Early in the third century, the Alemanni drove the Romans beyond the Rhine and the Danube, but they in turn succumbed to the Franks under Clovis, the decisive battle taking place in 496.

With the death of Conradin, the last Hohenstaufen duke, the duchy itself disintegrated although King Rudolf I attempted to revive it for his Habsburg family in the late 13th century.

During the 15th century, a war with the Count Palatine of the Rhine deprived the Margrave Charles I (died 1475) of a part of his territories, but these losses were more than recovered by his son and successor, Christoph I of Baden (illustration, right).

The family divided its lands among collateral branches several times but, in 1482, the Treaty of Münsingen reunited the territory, declared it indivisible, and united it under Count Eberhard V, called im Bart (The Bearded).

In 1535, his remaining sons Bernard and Ernest, having shared their brother's territories, made a fresh division and founded the lines of Baden-Baden and Baden-Pforzheim, called Baden-Durlach after 1565.

The long reign (1498–1550) of Duke Ulrich, who succeeded to the duchy while still a child, proved a most eventful period for the country, and many traditions cluster round the name of this gifted, unscrupulous and ambitious man.

In this reign, a standing commission started to superintend the finances, and the members of this body, all of whom belonged to the upper classes, gained considerable power in the state, mainly at the expense of the towns,[8] by means of the Oberamture and later, in addition, the Landkreis.

[7] The living conditions of the peasants in the German southwest at the beginning of the 16th century were quite modest, but an increase in taxes and several bad harvests, with no improvement in sight, led to crisis.

[9] The extortions by which he sought to raise money for his extravagant pleasures excited an uprising known as the arme Konrad (Poor Conrad), not unlike the rebellion in England led by Wat Tyler.

The authorities soon restored order, and, in 1514, by the Treaty of Tübingen, the people undertook to pay the duke's debts in return for various political privileges, which in effect laid the foundation of the constitutional liberties of the country.

Soon, however, the discontent caused by the oppressive Austrian rule, the disturbances in Germany leading to the German Peasants' War and the commotions aroused by the Reformation gave Ulrich an opportunity to recover his duchy.

His son and successor Eberhard III (1628–1674), however, plunged into it as an ally of France and Sweden as soon as he came of age in 1633, but after the battle of Nordlingen in 1634, Imperial troops occupied the duchy and the duke himself went into exile for some years.

On the Middle Neckar, in the whole Upper Rhine area and especially in the Electorate Palatine, the wars waged by the French King Louis XIV from 1674 to 1714 caused further terrible destruction.

He was interested in the development of agriculture and commerce, sought to improve education and the administration of justice, and proved in general to be a wise and liberal ruler in the Age of Enlightenment.

The sparsely populated country afforded a welcome to fugitive Waldenses, who did something to restore it to prosperity, but the extravagance of the duke, anxious to provide for the expensive tastes of his mistress, Christiana Wilhelmina von Grävenitz, undermined this benefit.

His favourite adviser was the Jew Joseph Süß Oppenheimer, and suspicions arose that master and servant were aiming at the suppression of the diet (the local parliament) and the introduction of Roman Catholicism.

However, the sudden death of Charles Alexander in March 1737 put an abrupt end to any such plans, and the regent, Duke Carl Rudolf of Württemberg-Neuenstadt, had Oppenheimer hanged.

This latter prince, who had served in the army of Frederick the Great, to whom he was related by marriage, and then managed his family's estates around Montbéliard, educated his children in the Protestant faith as francophones.

In 1803, largely owing to the good offices of Alexander I, emperor of Russia, the margrave received the Bishopric of Konstanz, part of the Rhenish Palatinate, and other smaller districts, together with the dignity of a prince-elector.

[17] In 1866, Württemberg took up arms on behalf of Austria in the Austro-Prussian War, but three weeks after the Battle of Königgrätz on 3 July 1866, her troops suffered a comprehensive defeat at Tauberbischofsheim, and the country lay at the mercy of Prussia.

Although the policy of Württemberg had continued to be antagonistic to Prussia, the kingdom shared in the national enthusiasm that swept over Germany, and its troops took a creditable part in the Battle of Wörth and in other operations of the war.

[19] On 8 March 1933, Adolf Hitler used his powers under the Reichstag fire degree' to appoint the local SA leader Dietrich von Jagow as the police commissioner for Württemberg.

In October 1939, the Action T4 program arrived in Württemberg when the Schloss Grafeneck, a home for "cripples" outside of Stuttgart started to be converted into a killing center with its gas chambers and crematorium.

In Württemberg, 36% of all doctors were NSDAP members, and the majority willingly went along with the effort to kill their "worthless" patients, arranging for those with physical and/or intellectual disabilities to be sent to the Schloss Grafeneck.

[25] Farmers living around Schloss Grafeneck noted the correlation between the arrival of the grey buses, which was followed up shortly afterwards by the smell of burned human flesh coming from the crematorium, leading to the conclusion that people could not possibly be dying of the flu that swiftly all the time.

[25] In October 1940, the Stuttgart public prosecutor wrote to Gürtner say the "rumors of mass murder are spreading like wildfire" and that many people were afraid to take elderly relatives to hospitals out of the fear that they might go to Grafeneck.

[25] In some areas of Württemberg, the Action T4 program caused much shock, and in a form of passive resistance, many ordinary people banded together to find jobs for the "useless eaters" and thereby prove them to be "useful" to the Volksgemeinschaft.

[34] Only in December 1941, when it became clear that the Soviet Union would not be defeated in 1941 as expected, were proper rations provided to the Red Army POWs as their labor was now needed to maintain German war production.