St Servatii/ Quedlinburg Abbey

This is it, the place (besides the Kaiser Pfalz) that I'd been waiting for. Not the abbey per se, but the church built by its founder. It's history geek heaven here on this trip, similar to when we went to Rome so many years ago and walked through the Forum (when it was still free). It's a big, mostly empty as they were, solid construction. I liked it.

Founded 936 at the behest of Saint Matilda (formerly queen of Germany), as a memorial for her husband Heinrich der Vogler (Henry the Fowler). It was founded as an order of secular women, and as time went on, was usually headed by wealthy, noble women who had great power in the city and surrounding area. It was also a self-ruling abbey with the right to vote in the Imperial Diet. When Quedlinburg went Lutheran under the Abbess Anna II. In the course of secularization and mediatisation in 1802, the properties, territories, and subjects of the abbey went to the Kingdom of Prussia.

From its founding, it benefited from the patronage of wealthy donors, including the families of many of the noble women who were members. This, along with the abbey’s growing power and religious independence led to come grumbling on the part of the town of Quedlinburg, local nobles, and the Bishop of Halberstadt who thought he should have jurisdiction over the abbey. Of course, this hostility went both ways as such things do, and there was a bit of back and forth over the centuries.

The abbey is the site of Heinrich I’s burial. Heinrich was the first Ottonian king of Germany and the first Ottonian Holy Roman Emperor, and is considered to be the founder of the medieval German state. Yes, no state of Germany as it is today, a unified chunk of land called Germany. It was a feudal-cultural-linguistic idea, a sense of “Germanness” and the idea a group of particular lands and people belonged together. So that aside here’s the story…

Heinrich, an enthusiastic hunter who had been duke of Saxony for seven years, was out fixing his hunting nets one day in 919 when messengers arrived from the recently departed King Conrad I saying, “Surprise, you’re up next! Now good luck with all those revolting nobles of which you have recently been one, and oh, don’t forget about the Magyars raiding the eastern side of the kingdom.”

The rest is history. Literally. Heinrich had a good run. He defeated the rebelling dukes of Bavaria and Swabia. Made a good(second) marriage and increased his holdings, built up fortifications and mobile heavy cavalry to face the Magyars, and defeated them in 933 at the Bottle of Riade. He spread German power in Europe, defeating the Slavs in 929, and in the same year invading Bohemia to gain concessions from Duke Wenceslaus. He expanded German power in Schleswig. All of this made him powerful enough that the other two kings of Karl der Große’s former empire in West Francia and Burgundy both accepted subordination to him, entering into a new alliance. Unfortunately, Heinrich died before he could be crowned as emperor by the Pope. He left a secure kingdom and strong monarchial position for his son Otto I, who almost immediately screwed things up, by feuding with his brothers and the nobles, but managed to get back on track.

Henry the Fowler is a seminal figure in German history. Of course we wanted to see the abbey and palace (couldn't it's closed) for historical reasons and to view whatever treasures might be left, but mainly, I wanted to visit Heinrich’s tomb. While he doesn’t have the mystical power in popular culture of Frederick Barbarossa, he’s had his cults of adherents and fans over the years, including Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, who believed very strongly he shared more in common with the king than just a first name. Heinrich der Vogler became a centerpiece in one of the mystical cults Himmler created. In fact, there’s a famous picture of Himmler laying a wreath on the grave in the abbey (the picture is down at the bottom of the wiki article if you want to see it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_the_Fowler ) , even though the Nazis closed down the church and stole all of its treasures.

So this place is a good find for us, combining two of the eras of history I’ve studied quite a bit about in one. Not to mention, it has a great ecclesiastical treasury and I have a fondness for Romanesque churches. I mean, they’re not Gothic, but in a pinch they’ll do.

Note: the treasury is really small. It's not the Wittlesbach hoard in Munich, or the Wettin hoard in Dresden. Mostly ecclesiastical items, no more than twenty pieces. Still, nice ones.

Note Two: Pictures weren't allowed in the treasury (wah) or the crypt (WAHHH!), but we bought some postcards, and took pictures of them so you could see what I'm so jazzed about. Heinrich's burial place is third from the end, the next is his beard comb, the last the tombs of three of his daughters and the Abbess Agnes of Meissen, another very influential figure in the time period.Read more