The High Middle Ages

Another episode during the time of the Crusades was the spectacular capture of the English King Richard the Lionheart by the Austrian Margrave Leopold the Virtuous. Both took part in the Crusade, but became involved in an irreconcilable personal quarrel. When King Richard attempted to travel home incognito through Austria in 1192, he fell into the hands of his enemy, who had him imprisoned in the castle of Dürnstein in the Wachau region, and did not release him until a ransom of 23 tons of silver had been paid. With the money, Leopold enlarged the two Danube border towns of Enns to the west and Hainburg to the east. Vienna, the principal town of the March of Austria since 1156, almost underwent a second founding through the extensive building work.

The new trading route

The Crusades did, however, have one positive effect: International trade grew enormously. Oriental wares now found their way to the west. And the Danube thereby served as a transportation artery. Flourishing trading towns now lined the river: Regensburg, Passau, Linz, Krems, and Vienna. The first stone bridge now spanned the river in Regensburg, and was marvelled at as a ninth wonder of the world! The waterway enabled the transportation of large quantities of goods. The west-east flow of the Danube, unique in the European river network, gave it a monopoly in long-distance traffic and the transportation of goods from west to east. From the 12th century onwards, an integrative and vibrant economic region developed, starting from Regensburg, and spreading via the Bavarian and Austrian Danube, all the way to Hungary.

The castles, noble residential and defensive constructions, are emblems of High Medieval knighthood, which – in order to show the “lofty” social position of their owners – are symbolically enthroned high on mountains; and, of course, the high rocky ground on the banks of the Danube was a supremely attractive site for castle-builders. Visible far and wide as pillars of the development of medieval rulership, a stately series of castles still tower aloft today. Donaustauf beyond Regensburg, Aggstein in the Wachau region, the castle of Devin, built on a rocky cliff near Bratislava, and the royal Hungarian castle of Visegrad on the bend of the Danube are all mighty monuments to the European age of chivalry.

As though under a magnifying glass, the Crusades and the courtly era of the knights and minnesingers are condensed in The Song of the Nibelungs, the most important medieval heroic epic. The first part of the epic, the Siegfried saga, is set in the Rheingau district. However, the second part, the journey of the Nibelungs, is set on the shores of the Danube. The composition of the epic has been dated to the period between 1190 and 1204. Although the name of its author has not been passed down to us, there are many indications that he hailed from the Bavarian or Austrian Danube region. What is noticeable is that he describes many Danube towns which he had evidently seen for himself: Plattling, Passau, Eferding, Pöchlarn, Melk, Traismauer, Tulln, Vienna, and Hainburg. The Nibelungs travel through all these towns on their fateful eastward journey, while the setting of the end of the drama is evidently the royal Hungarian seat of Esztergom. Thus, the legendary “Nibelung route” is largely identical with the Route of Emperors and Kings.

In the year 1180, Emperor Barbarossa granted the duchy of Bavaria to the Wittelsbach family. For over 700 years, until 1918, this noble family would rule as dukes, electors and, finally, kings of Bavaria, and would thus rule over the Bavarian Danube. The Wittelsbachs’ granting of town ordinances and privileges to Straubing (1218) and Deggendorf (1250) show the importance that the dukes attached to the waterway. Using the profits from the large Danube county of Bogen, thanks to an adroit marriage policy, in 1242 the Wittelsbachs moved over the Danube and reached the Bavarian Forest. One interesting detail is that they adopted the blue and white lozenges of the counts of Bogen and incorporated them into the Bavarian coat of arms. At the end of the 13th century, from the Altmühl river all the way to Engelhartszell, the Danube flowed through Wittelsbach territory on either side of its banks. In 1220, the Bishopric of Passau had been raised to a prince-bishopric by imperial degree, and thus unified both ecclesiastic and secular power “under the crozier”. One outstanding historical figure was Wolfger von Erla, who occupied the bishop’s throne from 1194 to 1204. One finds a single mention of the minnesinger Walther von der Vogelweide in his entourage, in an official document dating from 1203: Wolfger pays “the singer Walther von der Vogelweide six solidi to purchase a fur”. Until the secularisation of 1803, the prince-bishops of Passau ruled independently of both Bavaria and Austria. The dukes of Bavaria had to withdraw from Regensburg after the city was granted rights of freedom in the 13th century, which made it subordinate to the Emperor alone, as a Free Imperial City. Regensburg became the proverbial “lost capital of Bavaria”. Until the end of the Middle Ages, the city represented the largest and – in both a political and economic sense – the most important urban settlement in Southern Germany. The Regensburg merchants held the chair at the Fondacco dei Tedeschi zu Venedig, the central storehouse of the German mercantile community, which traded with the Orient. In his epic Parsifal, the minnesinger Wolfram von Eschenbach expressed admiration for the silks of Regensburg. In the mid-13th century, the construction of St. Peter’s Cathedral began. Bishop, citizens, monasteries, as well as the Duke, all participated in raising up a magnificent Gothic cathedral in the French style. Certainly, at that time, no one could possibly have guessed that its construction would be protracted until 1869.

Linz was long a dependency of the Bishops of Passau. However, that changed when the city was purchased by the dukes of Austria in 1210. For the dukes, Linz, situated on the border to Bavaria and in the midst of Passau’s Danube possessions, was of high strategic importance. This perhaps explains the city’s rapid acquisition of privileges and expansion under the Habsburgs. The impressive castle high above the Danube was the residence of those high-ranking persons, installed there by the Austrian dukes, who ruled the “Land above the Enns”, out of which the province of Upper Austria would gradually develop. Ever since the 13th century, the Enns river had divided two administrative districts of the Margraviate of Austria, or Duchy of Austria – namely, the “Land below the Enns” (Lower Austria) from the “Land above the Enns” (Upper Austria).

In 1106 Leopold III, called the Holy, took up his residence in Klosterneuburg, at the mountain-framed gateway to the Vienna Basin. In 1156, his successor Henry II Jasomirgott then settled further down the Danube, in Vienna. This up-and-coming settlement in the climatically favourable Vienna Basin offered plentiful possibilities for development. Along the axis formed by the townships of Kohlmarkt, Graben and Unter den Tuchlauben, lived the merchants, whose range of wares had seen considerable expansion, due to the Crusades and pilgrimages to the Holy Land. The new district around the newly-built St. Stephen’s church was soon incorporated. Minnesingers, such as Reinmar von Hagenau, Neithart von Reuenthal, and the author of The Song of the Nibelungs, whose name we do not know, consorted together at the court of the Babenbergs in Vienna. It was Walther von der Vogelweide who exclaimed: Daz ist der wünnecliche hof ze Wiene (This is the delightful court, Vienna). In 1227, in the merry month of May, Ulrich von Lichtenstein rode into the town dressed up as Venus and was fittingly celebrated by the ladies of the Viennese court. In the 14th century, Vienna was regarded as “the largest town in the Empire, after Cologne”. The population of the town at that time can be estimated at 20,000. Thanks to its natural gold resources, the Hungarian Kingdom of the Holy Crown of St. Stephen was one of the richest and most powerful states in medieval Europe. Its kings resided in Bratislava (which belonged to Hungary until 1918), in Győr, in Esztergom and Visegrad. From the 14th century onwards, Buda gradually asserted itself as the capital, still divided from the trading town of Pest, which lay on the other side of the Danube.

• Auto route: Middle Ages
• Cycle route: Middle Ages