Altmark - History

History

Before the Migration Period of 300 to 700 AD, the Lombards had settled the Altmark. Subsequently Old Germanic Saxon tribes lived in the northwest and Polabian Slavs in the eastern territories along the Elbe. After the Saxon Wars waged by Charlemagne from 772 to 804, the lands were incorporated into the Carolingian Empire. They were part of the Eastphalian territory of the Duchy of Saxony, from 843 onwards the eastern borderlands of East Francia under Louis the German. The Saxon population was Christianized by the bishops of Verden and Halberstadt.

In 936 the German king Otto I allotted the territory of the later Altmark to the Saxon Count Gero, in order to subdue the West Slavic Wends settling on the Elbe. Gero thereafter campaigned the Slavic lands far beyond the river and thereafter established the Saxon Marca Geronis stretching up to the Oder in the east. Upon Gero's death in 965, his marca was split and the Northern March was bequested to Dietrich of Haldensleben, who nevertheless turned out to be an incapable ruler and again lost all territories east of the Elbe in the Slavic Lutici uprising of 983. He only retained margravial title and the initial land basis of his predecessor Gero's conquests west of the river.

For further one and a half centuries, the lands east of the Elbe defied German control, until in 1134 Emperor Lothair of Supplinburg bestowed the Northern March to the Ascanian count Albert the Bear. Albert was able to sign an inheritance contract with the Slavic Hevelli prince Pribislav and in 1150 succeeded him in his eastern territory around the fortress of Brandenburg an der Havel, which became the nucleus of his newly established Margraviate of Brandenburg in 1157.

As the Brandenburg margraves over the following centuries expanded their territory in the course of the Ostsiedlung into new territories, such as the Mittelmark and the Neumark beyond the Oder river, the original western territory of the Northern March became known as the Altmark (literally "Old March"); it was first mentioned in 1304 as Antiqua Marchia.

The Altmark remained with the Brandenburg margraviate, since 1415 held by the House of Hohenzollern, and thereby became part of rising Brandenburg-Prussia and of the Kingdom of Prussia upon its creation in 1701. After Prussia's defeat at the hands of Napoleon in 1806, the territory was lost under the terms of the Treaty of Tilsit and included within the new Kingdom of Westphalia. It was restored upon Napoleon's defeat under Article XXIII of the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna, however the separation from Brandenburg lasted, as the Altmark then was attached the new Prussian Province of Saxony in 1815. Within Prussian Saxony, the Altmark was subdivided into the districts of Salzwedel, Gardelegen, Osterburg, and Stendal, all administered within the Regierungsbezirk of Magdeburg.

After World War II the Altmark, east of the inner German border, became part of the new state of Saxony-Anhalt in the Soviet occupation zone. The regional administration of East Germany saw it administered within Bezirk Magdeburg from 1952–90. With German reunification in 1990, the Altmark became part of a reconstituted Saxony-Anhalt.