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PODCAST

History of the Germans

Dirk Hoffmann-Becking

A narrative history of the German people from the Middle Ages to Reunification in 1991. Episodes are 25-35 min long and drop on Thursday mornings. "A great many things keep happening, some good, some bad". Gregory of Tours (539-594) So far we have covered: Ottonian Emperors (# 1- 21) - Henry the Fowler (#1) - Otto I (#2-8) - Otto II (#9-11) - Otto II (#11-14) - Henry II (#15-17) - Germany in 1000 (#18-21) Salian Emperors(#22-42) - Konrad II (#22- 25) - Henry III (#26-29) - Henry IV/Canossa

history

All Episodes

28:31

Ep. 200 – Divide and Lose, the Leipziger Teilung

History of the Germans ·

2025/07/03

When two brothers, Ernst and Albrecht of Saxony divided up their enormous inheritance that comprised Thuringia, Meissen and the electorate of Sachsen-Wittenberg, they not only undermined their power base as the de facto #2 amongst the imperial principalities and planted the seed for a conflict that would play a key role in the Reformation but they also laid the foundations for the modern Länder of Thuringia and Saxony. And this division was not driven by the usual family feud but came after 20 years

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35:36

Ep. 199 – How Holland was Lost to the Holy Roman...

History of the Germans ·

2025/06/26

So, why did Holland really leave the empire? Was it because the valiant and tragic countess Jacqueline was “hunted down from one land to the other, all of them mine”. Was it a story of misogyny, betrayal, incompetence and ruthless power politics. Yes, it was. But it was a also a story of economic and climate change and one that links into the herring trade of the Hanseatic League, the decline of Teutonic Knights and even into the Hussite Revolt, topics that seem distant, but mattered. This week we

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42:33

Ep. 198 – How Holland was Lost (Part 1),

History of the Germans ·

2025/06/19

Today begins a two part series about how the Low countries modern day Belgium, Netherlands and Luxemburg shifted out of the Holy Empire. These lands, with the exception of Flanders, had been part of the empire for hundreds of years, ever since Henry the Fowler acquired Lothringia for east Francia in 925 – not by conquest but through diplomacy – as was his way.There are two ways to tell the story of the split away from the empire, one is about the dynastic machinations, the marriages, poisonings and

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43:50

Ep. 197 – The Landshuter Hochzeit – Love and War in...

History of the Germans ·

2025/06/12

On November 14th and 15th 1475 one of the grandest events in the history of the Holy Roman Empire took place, the Landshuter Hochzeit, the nuptials of Georg, the Rich, son of Ludwig, the Rich and grandson of Heinrich, the Rich, all of them dukes of Bayern-Landshut, and Hedwig, the daughter of king Kasimir IV of Poland and Lithuania. The event attracted 10,000 guests, amongst them the Counts Palatine on the Rhine, the Dukes of Württemberg, the archduke Maximilian of Austria and the emperor Friedrich

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30:19

Ep. 196 – Love and War in Bavaria – Part 1 (AI voice)

History of the Germans ·

2025/06/05

As you can hear from my voice, I am still all bunged up. I tried to record this episode in the usual way and quite frankly it was horrible. But the show has to go on. So I did have to resort to other means. I cloned my voice with elevenlabs and what you will hear now is not me, but bionic me. If that is not for you, just wait, maybe a week, hopefully no longer and I will record the episode again, this time in the traditional good old human way. The music for the show is Flute Sonata in E-flat major,

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12:19

We Doughnut have a Real Episode this Week

History of the Germans ·

2025/05/29

Unfortunately I have been felled by manflu a much belittled affliction. So no Agnes Bernauer and Bavarian dukes. That will be next week.For now some completely random stories about Berliner, aka Bismarck Doughnuts for our American friends, why and where and how - featuring Felix Mendelssohn, Richard Wagner, Frederick the Great and Cato the Elder and a guy who cuts the hearts out of one age-old culinary traditions...The music for the show is Flute Sonata in E-flat major, H.545 by Carl Phillip

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35:51

Ep. 195 – Engraving the German Renaissance

History of the Germans ·

2025/05/22

Last year I went to an exhibition at the Städel museum in Frankfurt that was entitled Holbein and the Renaissance in the North. That is the elder Holbein, the father of the Holbein who came to England. This exhibition has now ended, but there is still a great summary available on the Städel website.Though obviously not present at the exhibition, one key focus was the Fugger chapel in the church of St. Anne in Augsburg, one of the earliest and most significant Renaissance building north of the Alps

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50:52

Ep. 194 – The Fuggers of Augsburg

History of the Germans ·

2025/05/15

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 194 – The Fuggers of Augsburg, which is also episode 10 of Season 10 “The Empire in the 15th Century”Jakob Fugger had been dubbed the Richest Man Who Ever Lived, but there are many more contenders, my favorite being an African, Mansa Musa, the ninth Mansa of the Mali empire whose generous gifts during a visit to Mecca in 1324 triggered a currency crisis.That is something Jakob Fugger would never have done. He never was a flamboyant banker who

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37:51

Ep. 193 - The Trade and Tribulations of the Free...

History of the Germans ·

2025/05/08

Ravensburg, and you are very much forgiven if you cannot place it on the map, is today a town of 50,000 in the far south eastern corner of Baden-Württemberg between Friedrichshafen, home of the Zeppelins, and the city of Ulm and its majestic church tower. If you have heard of it, it may be because of Ravensburger, the publisher of puzzles and boardgames, but you would not have associated it with any great mercantile or commercial activity.Nevertheless, in the 15th century it housed the headquarters

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47:23

Ep. 192: Württemberg, or How to Build a Success

History of the Germans ·

2025/05/01

The counts, dukes and ultimately kings of Württemberg had risen to the top by winning the genetic lottery. Their eldest sons tended to be competent, some even extremely so, their wives brought in dowries and sometimes entire counties, and they ruled for long enough that the next generation took over when they were ready.But all that falls apart in the 15th century. They are suddenly afflicted with the disease of dynasties, states inherited by babies and buffoons, some of them managing to be both

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42:17

Ep. 191 – The Margraviate of Baden

History of the Germans ·

2025/04/24

What is it like to be a prince? Well, not quite what it is set out to be, in particular when you are a smaller prince, not in stature, but in land.The margraves of Baden are such princes. In the 15th century their main territory, a slither of South-West Germany, just 60km long was too small to play on the European, even on the German stage, but too big to escape the need of massive palaces and warfare.What makes Baden so fascinating is that despite its handicap, it managed to become a medium sized

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47:04

Ep. 190 – A (very) brief History of the German...

History of the Germans ·

2025/04/17

Between the time the first Nobel Prize was awarded in 1901 and 1933, a total of 31 were awarded to German scientists and politicians. To name just a few, Wilhelm Röntgen (1901), Max Planck (1918), Albert Einstein (1921) and Werner Heisenberg (1932) for Physics, Emil Fischer (1902), Fritz Haber (1918), Walther Nernst (1920) and Hans Fischer (1930) for chemistry, Emil von Behring (1901), Robert Koch (1905) and Otto Warburg (1931) for medicine, Theodor Mommsen (1902), Gerhart Hauptmann (1912) and

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36:53

Ep. 189 – The Count Palatinate on the Rhine

History of the Germans ·

2025/04/10

This weekit is back to the political landscape of the empire. We will travel upriver from Mainz via Worms and the not yet existent cities of Mannheim and Ludwigshafen to Heidelberg, my old hometown. And there we will meet the man who held one of the empire’s most confusing titles, the count Palatinate of the Rhine, Elector and High Steward of the Empire. His name is Friedrich, Friedrich der Siegreiche, Frederick the Victorious, and being victorious is barely half of what is interesting about him.The

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37:10

Ep. 188 - What Has Printing Ever Done For Us?

History of the Germans ·

2025/04/03

“We should note the force, effect, and consequences of inventions which are nowhere more conspicuous than in those three which were unknown to the ancients, namely printing, gunpowder and the compass. For these three have changed the appearance and the state of the world.” wrote Francis Bacon in 1620. And almost everybody agreed.Printing changed everything, but how exactly did it change everything? That is a question nobody posed properly until Elisabeth L. Eisenstein got on the academic stage in

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44:10

Ep. 187 – Johannes Gutenberg’s Pressing Matters

History of the Germans ·

2025/03/27

This podcast is now well into its fourth year and I have established my process for research, script writing and recording. As for research, that usually means going to the London Library and bend down to the lowest shelf to dig up some age-old copy of a German language book that happens to be the one and only works that goes into the kind of detail on the topic at hand you guys have gotten used to. Imagine my confusion when I started looking into Johannes Gutenberg and found not just a few books,

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41:16

Ep. 186 - Origin Stories - Mainz and Hessen

History of the Germans ·

2025/03/20

This week we are setting off on our tour of the empire for real. And where better to start than with the most senior, most august of the seven prince Electors, the archbishop of Mainz, archchancellor of the empire, and holder of the decisive vote in imperial elections. We have already encountered a number of archbishops of Mainz in this podcast, from the treacherous Frederick who tried to overthrow Otto the Great (ep.3), to Willigis, the eminence grise of the empire under Otto II, Otto III and Henry

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32:25

Ep. 184 - A German Messallina? Barbara of Celje

History of the Germans ·

2025/03/06

Barbara ist geil und ruchlos is the title of a 17th century description of emperor Sigismund’s second wife, Barbara of Celje and it goes on as follows:“Barbara, was a German Messalina, a woman of insatiable lust; so nefarious / that she had no god / nor angel nor devil / nor heaven nor hell/that she believed in. When her handmaidens fasted and prayed / she scolded them / that they tortured their bodies / to worship a fictitious god. Instead she admonished them / in her good Sardanapalian way / that

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29:35

Ep. 183 – The Aftermath of a Revolution

History of the Germans ·

2025/02/27

This week we bring the series about the reformation before the reformation to an end. It is time to take stock. What changes did 20 years of opposition to the established church and 15 years of war bring to Bohemia?How did Jan Hus, Jan Želivský, Wenceslas Koranda and Petr Chelčický influence Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Müntzer and von Hutten? How did Zizka’s reform impact the Swiss mercenaries and the German Landsknechte?The music for the show is Flute Sonata in E-flat major, H.545 by Carl Phillip

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36:38

Ep. 182 – The Return of the King

History of the Germans ·

2025/02/20

We have a tendency to overlook the history of the smaller European nations even though they do quite often provide the laboratory where one could have seen the sign of things to come or calamities that could be avoided. One of these nations is Czechia, where events took place that could, should or did impact the History of the Germans, in 1989, in 1968, in 1938, in 1618 and in 1419-1437. Today we will talk about the very last one on this list, the moment when a complete confessional split was

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36:36

Ep. 181 – Zizka’s Drum

History of the Germans ·

2025/02/13

“Andanyone who would not wantto keep and truly fulfill the above written pieces and articles, and would not want to help protect and defend them; such a one, without regard to person, we will not suffer amongst us and in this army fighting with God’s help, nor on the castles and in the fortresses, nor in the cities and in the towns, walled or open, nor in the villages and hamlets, no place excepted or exempted. But all persons we will everywhere admonish, advise, push, and urge toward this goodness

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