Today we are feeling kinda puny. Both children are sick and we will be embarking on what a German doctor is like. The weather is gray and cloudy, as well. And I also have my German class here at the apartment today instead of at the language school. We are trying to do one “in class” day and one field trip day. Today, I am taking the group to the World War II memorial. It sits upon a high hill next to a school. There are park benches nearby where you can have a rest and gaze out onto the Alps. It is one of my favorite places to walk to, but it is a hike up a very steep hill and then around a bit. It takes about 40 minutes to walk there and then another 40 minutes to get back home, so this is going to be a long class.
Yesterday was the anniversary date of a very important figure in what we think of as the Western world and is the subject of the question for the day. It is the influence of this one man that changed a lot of history as we know it. His name was Karl der Große, but he is better known as Charlemagne.
He was born to Pippin the Short and Bertrada of Laon. There is much debate as the exact date and place of his birth, but it ranged from 742 to 748 in either Herstal, a city now in Belgium, or in Aachen, the westernmost city of modern Germany. Little is known of his childhood.
At the death of his father in 768, both Charlemagne and his brother, Carloman, were given the lands of the kingdom – Charlemagne to the north and east, Carloman to the south and west. After a brief first marriage, Charlemagne married Hildegard from Swabia. (We live on the edge of the region known as Schwabia and Bavaria.) That same year, his brother died, making him king of all the Frankish lands. (Frankish lands does not mean France. At this time, it was a region that was much of Europe. Even in Germany, there is a region called Franconia still.) After defeating the Lombards in Italy, he was honored by the Pope for returning those lands to the Holy Roman church.
By 780, he had brought peace to a large portion of Europe. During campaigns that he and his sons, who were appointed regional kings, waged, he eventually conquered the Saxons, the only goal of his father’s that had not been reached, and the Spanish. In each place that was conquered, he made Catholicism the legal religion of the land. He made it punishable by death to not be baptized Catholic and keep the religious festivals. Prior to this time, many Germanic regions had multiple pagan gods that they worshipped. The Saxons did submit, but begrudgingly with many uprisings in the years after. In 804, all resistance was over, both of the Saxons and of the Italians under Byzantine rule.
On the 25th of December, 800, Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III. This effectively changed the balance of power from the Byzantine Empire to Charlemagne’s empire. It was a title with which he was never comfortable, but it served him well.
On January 28th, 814, in the city of Aachen in today’s Germany, Charlemagne died. He was buried in the Aachen Cathedral (a site he had built during his reign and one of the original 12 sites on the World Heritage sites). He was instrumental in changing Europe in significant ways. He removed gold as the base currency and established his own currency based on silver. The British pound is directly related to this currency change. By doing so, he was able to make trade and compensation much more simplistic, as there was now a standard all people in the empire could use. He set up accounting practices and prohibited the lending of money to gain interest. He also set up a price system for commodities. He was instrumental in reforming education and the arts, surrounding himself always with the best minds in the realm. During his reign, a common script of writing was also instituted so that information could be read and understood across Europe. Through his leadership, Europe was united politically, economically, and culturally.
The word for the day is empire: das Reich (r i ch where the “i” makes the long i sound as in kite, and the ch makes that cat sound.)
The question for the day is “What is the easternmost city in Germany?”
Auf Wiedersehen,
Frau spitzer
