History of the Germans

After 13 years of fighting in the Low Countries, Maximilian, the newly elected king of the Roman, returns home to a rammed full inbox. There is his cousin, the dissolute count Sigismund of Tyrol who is about to sell out the family fortune to the dukes of Bavaria. The king of Hungary is still occupying Vienna – and there is a new heiress out on the market, Anne of Brittanny.
Some of the issues he tackles together with his now seriously elderly father, the emperor Friedrich III, others are very much his own tasks. In the process Friedrich creates a structurally new political entity, the Swabian League, Maximilian builds a relationship with Jakob Fugger, the money man who will grease the cogs of the Habsburg empire, and once again they fight, one battle after another.
And despite tremendous success, this period from 1489 to 1493, ends with some epic humiliation, not in war, but in love. “No man on earth has ever been disgraced as I have been at the hands of the French” is how he summarised it.
Come along and watch as the plot thickens.
The music for the show is Flute Sonata in E-flat major, H.545 by Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach (or some claim it as BWV 1031 Johann Sebastian Bach) performed and arranged by Michel Rondeau under Common Creative Licence 3.0.
As always:
Homepage with maps, photos, transcripts and blog: www.historyofthegermans.com
If you wish to support the show go to: Support • History of the Germans Podcast
Facebook: @HOTGPod
Threads: @history_of_the_germans_podcast
Bluesky: @hotgpod.bsky.social
Instagram: history_of_the_germans
Twitter: @germanshistory
To make it easier for you to share the podcast, I have created separate playlists for some of the seasons that are set up as individual podcasts. they have the exact same episodes as in the History of the Germans, but they may be a helpful device for those who want to concentrate on only one season.
So far I have:
The Ottonians
Salian Emperors and Investiture Controversy
Fredrick Barbarossa and Early Hohenstaufen
Frederick II Stupor Mundi
Saxony and Eastward Expansion
The Hanseatic League
The Teutonic Knights

In this episode the 15-year long war over the Burgundian succession will come to its end. You may have thought it was done last time, but no. The revolutionary spirit of the Flemish cities is not yet broken and their most audacious move is still to come. And this time they are not going up against an archduke and regent, but against a newly elected king of the Romans.
Maximilian of Habsburg’s experience in Burgundy swung between moments of utter delight and happiness and depths of death, destruction and despair. It shaped this young duke who arrived aged 18 full of dreams of chivalry and left, aged 31 an battle hardened general with a clear view of where he wanted to take the empire. Get ready for the ultimate roller coaster.
The music for the show is Flute Sonata in E-flat major, H.545 by Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach (or some claim it as BWV 1031 Johann Sebastian Bach) performed and arranged by Michel Rondeau under Common Creative Licence 3.0.
As always:
Homepage with maps, photos, transcripts and blog: www.historyofthegermans.com
If you wish to support the show go to: Support • History of the Germans Podcast
Facebook: @HOTGPod
Threads: @history_of_the_germans_podcast
Bluesky: @hotgpod.bsky.social
Instagram: history_of_the_germans
Twitter: @germanshistory
To make it easier for you to share the podcast, I have created separate playlists for some of the seasons that are set up as individual podcasts. they have the exact same episodes as in the History of the Germans, but they may be a helpful device for those who want to concentrate on only one season.
So far I have:
The Ottonians
Salian Emperors and Investiture Controversy
Fredrick Barbarossa and Early Hohenstaufen
Frederick II Stupor Mundi
Saxony and Eastward Expansion
The Hanseatic League
The Teutonic Knights
The Holy Roman Empire 1250-1356
The Reformation before the Reformation

One of the legacies of the Holy roman empire is that Germany does not have just one place where everything happens, where politicians, entrepreneurs, bankers, artists, and actors travel on the same underground trains and eat at the same restaurants. Berlin is the capital with its political class of members of the Bundestag, journalists and lobbyist and at the same time a major gathering place for artists, musicians and thespians of all stripes and home to many tech startups. But the bankers are in Frankfurt, the headquarters of the major companies are in Stuttgart, Munich, Düsseldorf and spread around everywhere. Several of the major publishing houses are in Hamburg, the private TV stations in Munich, but none of these places have a monopoly on any of these activities. There are banks headquartered in Munich and major corporates in Frankfurt, there is great theater in Düsseldorf, Dresden and Schwerin, there are world leading companies headquartered in tiny towns like Künzelsau.
And that cuts through to the major cultural sites. Though the quip that there were 365 states in the Holy Roman empire is vastly exaggerated, there were once a hundred capital cities, from splendid Dresden to tiny Hohenzollern-Hechingen, each with its princely residence, cathedral, grand monastery and theater. The great artists either travelled from court to court, leaving behind their works here or there, or stayed in one of the free imperial cities, operating large workshops.
Therefore what you cannot do in Germany is to go to one city and see all the major treasures the country has “collected” over the centuries, as you can do in the Louvre or the British Museum and the National Gallery. In Germany you have to move around, see one thing at the time, always in the knowledge that its significant counterpart is a few hundred miles north, south, east or west of you. This is one of the legacies of the medieval empire that Germany has in common with Italy.
And hence we are going through each of the Bundesländer trying to pick out one absolute must-see and one place where you are likely to encounter fewer people. And as we have covered 9 Bundesländer up to Mecklenburg-Vorpommern already, the next location we will have to get to is Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany’s most populous state.

Hello friends of the History of the Germans. Great news, the tour is on!
We have set up a website where you can sign up. I have put a link in the show notes, as well as on my website History of the Germans in the Travel, maps and Books section.
Sign up here: History of the Germans Podcast Tour - BikePlanet
We will be travelling on the passenger ship Iris, a converted classic Rhine barge. Travelling by boat is - unsurprisingly - one of my favourite ways to see the world. We do not have to get in and out of hotels, we have breakfast and dinner in spectacular scenery and can see the sights as most travellers did before the invention of the motorcar. Note that Iris has capacity for only 25 passengers in double cabins, so speed is of the essence.... Should there be more demand than we can fulfil, we will give priority to patrons.
So what are we going to do? Subject to the usual caveats, we are planning to meet in Aschaffenburg near Frankfurt and then travel along the Main and Rhine rivers via Frankfurt, Mainz, Eltville, Braubach, Koblenz, Andernach, Remagen to Cologne with a trip up to Aachen. The tour will end in Düsseldorf.

As you are still awaiting your presents, mine has already arrived, which is the chance to make this show. Despite all my occasional moaning and groaning about how much work it is, I have never enjoyed anything as much this. Who could have imagined that digging through often dusty books and articles and trying to put together an interesting and compelling narrative together for a discerning audience was that much fun. And the reason I can do all this is you, the listeners and patrons of the History of the Germans Podcast. So thank you, thank you and thank you.
Now let’s get to your Christmas present. I had promised you 5 to 10 places I particularly love and that are not on the standard itinerary for a trip to Germany. But when I shortlisted the places I particularly like, I noticed a bit of a pattern. They were all within a limited range, basically near places I had lived or that have some link to my family. That is human, but not exactly helpful. Because if you want to go to Germany and for some inexplicable reason choose not to spend all your time in either Hamburg or the sunniest, most beautiful and culinarily attractive area that is Baden, then this episode would be profoundly useless to you.
I clearly needed some discipline. The plan is now to go through each Bundesland and point out two places, one that is a genuine must-see, and the other a place fewer people go and that is still interesting in its own right. That makes it 32 locations plus 2 bonus ones where I will fully indulge myself by dragging you into deepest Tauberfranken. And I know that still leaves room for enormous bias, in particular when it comes to the larger or richer Lands. But note, this is my Podcast and a choose when I want to.
Music: Es ist ein Ros ensprungen (Michael Pretorius, 1609) arranged and performed by Michel Rondeau
ks15.imslp.org/files/imglnks/usimg/2/29/IMSLP271191-PMLP67213-EsIstEn.mp3