Otto I, who became Holy Roman Emperor in 962, doesn’t have the same place in the popular imagination as his distant predecessor, Charlemagne. In fact, for many of us, the tenth century probably doesn’t conjure up much of anything; it’s one of those periods of the Middle Ages that lacks a particularly well-known battle or event, or a supremely charismatic figure like, well, Charlemagne. But in the history of the German people Otto’s role can hardly be overstated. Although external and internal forces plagued much of his reign, he managed to unite various tribes, quell a formidable enemy, and even spark a renaissance. Not bad.
In this second episode of DW’s The Germans, the life of Otto the Great and his varied accomplishments during the 10th century are explored — with most attention given to the way he brought together for the first time a recognizable and unified German realm.
The son of Henry the Fowler and Matilda, Otto became King of the Germans in 936 when he was crowned in Aachen (the place where Charlemagne, over a century earlier, had established his capital). It was the same throne his father had held until his death. But Otto’s succession made waters rather rough, not smooth.
For as with any transfer of power, things can get tumultuous in a hurry. Though Otto had been nominated by his father to succeed him, and though he was elected by the requisite nobility, the fact that Henry had not spread his power among his other sons became the catalyst for years of infighting within Otto’s kingdom. It was a flood tide of vindictiveness, rebellion, mayhem, and death.
Otto I came out on top, unscathed by the conniving male members of his family — and in many ways emerging more powerful. Remarkably, too, was that Otto had the grace to forgive a two-time scheming brother, one who had tried to usurp his power by having him killed. Though Otto himself was no doubt power-hungry — with plans to become emperor nearly as soon as he became King of the Germans — he seems to have been more of a three-dimensional and nuanced character than many other (implacable) monarchs that fill the history books.
In fact, as the narrative thrust of the documentary shows, Otto could not have achieved the beginnings of a German Reich without being able to unify, inspire, and lead a conglomeration of various tribes — among them Franks, Saxons, Swabians, and Bavarians.
Indeed one of his pinnacle achievements was the decisive victory over the Magyars, in 955, at the Battle of Lechfeld. In the lead up to this, Otto also had to fend off the son of his first marriage, who had rebelled when the child of Otto’s second marriage was marked for succession. Somehow Otto juggled the chaos. Not only did Otto offer forgiveness to his son, he banded together the various tribes at Lechfeld. And the speech he gave to his troops, recorded by a chronicler, was, as the documentary tells us, viewed by later generations as “the birth of the Germans.”
If Otto’s reign had been cut short at a time shortly after this event, his achievements would still have been notable enough. Yet there was more to come.
Seven years after the Battle of Lechfeld, Otto marched across the alps to fulfill a call for aid by one of history’s most depraved popes, John XII. The tangled relationship between the two has historical consequences, not least because the pope would crown him Holy Roman Emperor, in 962 — fulfilling Otto’s long-held dream to become “the successor of Charlemagne in Europe.”
The Privilegium Ottonianum — which the documentary goes into only very indirectly — came about only a couple weeks later, and set forth the relationship between the role of pope and emperor as regards privileges and powers. It proved to have enormous consequences for centuries, as well as immediately: for when Otto later found some of the conditions disagreeable, he went against the man whom he had only so recently crowned.
Like so much of Otto’s life, then, his ten-year stay in Italy was marked by considerable drama and tension. And yet, as with so many instances, he somehow managed to mitigate — if not always solve completely — whatever less-than-desirable situation he found himself in. One of the final calculating decisions of his life was to orchestrate a marriage between his son and a daughter of royalty from the Byzantine Empire, which had control over the south of Italy.
Otto the Great knew how to operate in the political world, achieve ambitious military aims, and unite diverse peoples under an increasingly single ethos. As the lightly humorous final scene of the episode shows, he was indeed the forerunner of the Deutsche.
Spectatio 