HOHENLÖHE-SCHILLINGSFÜRST, FAMILY. - The principal exponents of this noble family in the 19th century were the two brothers Chlodwig and Gustav Adolf. Chlodwig, a German politician, was born on 31 March 1819 in Rotenburg on the Fulda and died on 6 July 1901 in Ragaz (Switzerland). A descendant of the ruling princes of the Holy Roman Empire, mediatized in 1806, he became a member of the Bavarian Reichsrat in 1846. In 1848, he entered the diplomatic service of the central authorities in Frankfurt, and after the failure of the Paulskirche Assembly, he became a supporter of Prussia’s hegemonic policy in Germany.
President of the Bavarian ministry from 1866 to 1870, with liberal tendencies, he strove in every way to prevent the definition of papal infallibility: on 9 April 1869, he indeed sent to all the representatives of Bavaria at European courts a circular, drafted by Döllinger (q.v.), in which he set forth the necessity for the powers with Catholic subjects to make a collective démarche to the Holy See against the proposed definition of infallibility, citing as his reason the alteration that would result in the relationship between Church and State. The dispatch of H.-S. was not followed up. A member of the Reichstag in 1871, Prince H.-S. was favorable to the policy of the Kulturkampf. Ambassador to Paris from 1874 to 1885, he later served as imperial lieutenant in Alsace-Lorraine until 1894, when he succeeded General Caprivi as chancellor of the Empire. In this high office, he vainly attempted to oppose William II’s personal policy, and, seeing every effort to persuade the Emperor to follow his advice in vain, he resigned on 17 October 1900.
Gustav Adolf, cardinal, was born on 26 February 1823 in Rotenburg on the Fulda and died on 30 October 1896 in Rome. After studying law at Bonn and theology at Breslau and Munich, he went to Rome in 1846 and entered the Ecclesiastical Academy. Ordained priest in January 1849 at Gaeta, where he had accompanied Pius IX, he was highly esteemed by the Pope, who appointed him secret chamberlain and his almoner.
Preconized titular bishop of Edessa in 1857, H. was destined for the administration of some important German diocese, but attempts to entrust him with the archbishoprics of Breslau, Cologne, or Freiburg were unsuccessful. Created cardinal in the consistory of 22 June 1866, he was at the Vatican Council opposed to the dogma of papal infallibility. In 1872, Bismarck designated him as German ambassador to the Holy See, but he did not take up the post owing to the opposition of Pius IX. His attitude in favor of Germany and Italy often caused difficulties for the Holy See and earned him the enmity of the Pope and the Curia, so that he lost all influence and prestige in high ecclesiastical circles.
Hohenstaufen, dynasty of the. - Took its name from the Hohenstaufen, a hill in the Swabian Jura near Göppingen, on which Frederick, count of Büren, built a castle around 1070-80; this became the first seat and then the center of the family’s domains. His son Frederick took the name Count of H. and, in the war between Rudolph, duke of Swabia—his direct feudal lord—and Emperor Henry IV, sided with the latter against the former. After the fall of the Swabian duke, he was rewarded with the investiture of the duchy of Swabia and the hand of Agnes, daughter of Henry IV. From that time (1079) the H. were the most devoted supporters of the house of France. At Frederick V’s death (1125), he explicitly designated his nephew Frederick II as duke of Swabia as his successor, but fear that the Staufen would continue the anti-Church policy of the house of France led to the election of Lothair of Supplinburg. Against the hostility of the Staufen, Lothair relied on the Guelfs, dukes of Bavaria, and thus the conflict between the Staufen and the Guelfs (q.V. Guelfs and Ghibellines) took shape. Against Lothair III, the younger brother of Frederick II of Swabia, Conrad, rose in arms, seeking to usurp the throne and even securing recognition in Italy, but the Staufen had to admit defeat and submit. In 1138, however, Conrad, with the support of the Church of Rome, succeeded Lothair III, and from then on the Staufen held the empire for more than a century.
In 1152, Conrad III was succeeded by Frederick I Barbarossa (q.v.), who received the imperial crown and became the greatest representative of the house, seeking to implement that imperial absolutism which met with resistance in Germany from Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony.
His son Henry VI, after his accession to the throne (1190), persisted in the political stance, rendered more dangerous by the conquest of the Kingdom of Sicily. The Emperor now clearly aimed at a universal monarchy, reducing the papacy to a ministerial subordination. The sudden death of Henry VI (1197) gave the new pope, Innocent III, the opportunity to pursue an audacious policy: to place the Kingdom of Sicily under the feudal dependence of the papacy by taking advantage of the minority of the representative of the Swabian dynasty, Frederick II; and to assert his authority in Germany by bringing to the throne an opponent of the Swabians.
The program to overthrow the Swabians, however, failed. Innocent III, after opposing Philip, brother of Henry VI, to Otto of Brunswick and even crowning him emperor when Philip of Swabia was assassinated (1208), soon realized his mistake when Otto IV resumed the Swabian policy against the papacy and against the Kingdom of Sicily. He then helped the young Swabian Frederick II, king of Sicily, to recover the empire on the condition that the Kingdom of Sicily be separated from the Kingdom of Germany. Frederick II, however, retained both the empire and the Kingdom of Sicily. A clash between the emperor and the papacy was inevitable: the struggle was further complicated by Frederick II’s resumption of his father’s and grandfather’s policy of reducing the communes, now organized and independent states, to submission. In Germany too, the Emperor’s absolutist program provoked discontent and agitation among cities and princes, aggravated by the rebellion of his own son Henry, who represented him there.
The death of Frederick II in 1250 marked the collapse of the anti-papal imperial program and the end of that medieval universalism which had found a secular interpretation in the policy of the house of H. After Frederick II, his son Conrad IV held the empire and the Kingdom of Sicily, but only for a few years (1250-54) and with minimal results; then his natural son Manfredi held the kingdom of Sicily in conflict with the popes, who were now determined to destroy what they called the “race of vipers.” The house of H. ended with the death of Manfred at Benevento (1266) and that of the last of the line, Conradin, son of Conrad IV, beheaded in Naples in the market square after his ill-fated attempt to recover the Kingdom of Sicily (1268).
HOHENZOLLERN, dynasty of. — The cradle of the dynasty, which rose to great power in Prussia, is to be found in the Swabian Jura: on a ridge at 800 m. above sea level there remain the ruins of Zollern Castle. Originally they were small vassals of the Staufer: at the end of the 12th century, Frederick of Zollern became Burgrave of Nuremberg; the Swabian domains were expanding, and others were added in France, so that at the death of Frederick III the family divided into two branches (1201): Conrad III founded the line of the Burgraves of Nuremberg with the French possessions, while Frederick IV retained the title of Count of Zollern with the Swabian possessions. The Zollern line branched out considerably; marriages and inheritances created a rich patrimonial base for each of the branches. The H.-Hechingen line died out only in 1869, and the H.-Sigmaringen line in 1891, though a branch of the latter survived, represented by the dynasty that has reigned in Romania since 1866.
The burgraviate line of Nuremberg shifted the centre of its activity at the beginning of the 15th century, when Emperor Sigismund, to reward FREDERICK VI of H. for his support, granted him the Margraviate of Brandenburg (1415). Frederick VI then acquired such prestige that at the death of Sigismund the electors were uncertain whether to choose Albert of Austria or the Brandenburg elector. The H. were to reach the imperial crown four centuries later. In 1486 Margrave ALBERT ACHILLES established a family statute (Dispositio Achillea) to prevent the dangerous fragmentation of the domains. Yet it was from Albert Achilles that the House of Brandenburg divided into two branches: one retained the electoral dignity of Brandenburg, the other the Burgraviate of Nuremberg and the French possessions. In the 16th century the electoral house presented various ramifications, such as the Margraves of Bayreuth, who died out in 1769, and the Margraves of Ansbach, who died out in 1807. At the beginning of the 16th century, the Ansbach branch included ALBERT of H., who in 1511 was elected Grand Master of the Teutonic Order; in 1525 he adhered to the Lutheran Reformation, dissolved the Order, and proclaimed himself Duke of Prussia, doing feudal homage to the King of Poland. The H., as Dukes of Prussia, died out as early as 1618 with ALBERT FREDERICK, whose succession was taken up by the Elector of Brandenburg JOHN SIGISMUND, who consented to do homage to the King of Poland, undertaking to guarantee Catholics the free exercise of their religion. The Electors of Brandenburg had in fact converted to the Lutheran Reformation in 1539 under JOACHIM II (1535-71). As a result of the acquisition of Prussia, the H. of Brandenburg had two main centres of power: Brandenburg itself, for which they were dependent on the Emperor in Vienna, and Prussia, for which they were vassals of the King of Poland. In 1657, FREDERICK WILLIAM I succeeded in freeing himself from the bonds of vassalage to Poland, and from that moment Prussia became a fully independent principality.
The family agreement of Gera in 1603 established that the domains of the dynasty were to be indivisible and were to be transmitted only by primogeniture. As a result, the Margraviates of Franconia, upon the extinction of the families that held them, passed to the main branch of Brandenburg. During the 15th and 16th centuries, expansion had been sought through an active policy of marriages and inheritances. In the 17th century, the great European wars opened up to the Electors of Brandenburg the possibility of unifying their various domains through conquests on various fronts. The Thirty Years’ War endangered the very existence of Brandenburg, caught between Swedes and Imperials, but it revealed to the electors the need for an active policy of balancing between the contending parties. GEORGE WILLIAM did not yet take a clear position; greater energy was shown by his son FREDERICK WILLIAM, known as the Great Elector (1640-88). At the Peace of Westphalia he obtained Eastern Pomerania. This was the first sign for the H. of the possibility of expansion: it was then that a political programme began to take shape aimed at asserting themselves among the second-rank powers within the Empire. The Great Elector organized a standing army, creating with the feudal elements an officer corps of trained men; he restored the finances to a regular system of taxation; he gave the government an organic administration with stable, salaried, and disciplined officials; he repopulated the war-devastated lands by welcoming the French Huguenots driven out of France by Louis XIV with the revocation of the Edict of Nantes; he gave to his house and to his country an example of Pietist and fanatical religious policy with absolute devotion to Lutheran traditions and legislation hostile to Catholicism. Thus, applying what might be called the fundamental characteristics of the race—tenacity, discipline, frugality—the Great Elector laid the foundations of the Prussian state: a disciplined and loyal army based on the devotion of the feudal nobility, happy to provide officers, and of the peasant class, blindly obedient; a state administration organized militarily with officials convinced they were fulfilling a mystical mission in the service of God and their prince; populations devoted and ready to be manipulated by the primacy.
The work of G. Barbagallo, Storia universale, III, 2, Torino 1935, p. 1113) of H. Frederick of Nuremberg, received the investiture of the Margraviate of Brandenburg (1415). Miniature from the Chronicle of the Council of Constance by U. von Richental.
The nobility’s monopoly of the military profession was matched by the cultured classes’ view of bureaucracy as the most desirable career after that of arms. It was Frederick William I who established the Prussian tradition of meticulousness in the conduct of state business. The last of the great Hohenzollerns was Frederick II the Great (1740–86). Like his father, he held fast to the principle that the king must be the first servant of the State and set an example of unremitting, methodical labour in government. Yet he wished his State to be not merely military and bureaucratic but also civilized and cultured, and he endeavoured to create in Prussia a tradition of learning—not by initiating it, but by imposing II. The idea that Prussia would be Austria’s ultimate rival led him to embark on war to wrest Silesia from the Habsburgs, while the partitions of Poland enabled him to consolidate Brandenburg and Prussia. The Seven Years’ War brought the Hohenzollerns to the brink of ruin, yet they emerged unexpectedly as one of the leading powers of Europe.
The French Revolution brought the clash between the new democratic political ideas and the old monarchical order. Defeated by Napoleon, the Hohenzollerns lost much of their territory, yet they remained faithful to their dynastic traditions. Thus, after the fall of the Napoleonic Empire, Frederick William III (1790–1840) sought to preserve his autocratic power by relying on the bureaucracy and the army, in which the aristocracy jealously guarded its privileges. Around him, however, parties agitated: absolutists and liberals. He heard talk of national unity but distrusted both unitarism and the advocates of unity; he wished to keep Prussia intact, as his ancestors had entrusted it to him. Hence, in the liberal crisis of 1848, Frederick William IV (1840–61) viewed with suspicion the liberals who dreamed of German unity and sought to offer the Prussian king the imperial crown. A traditionalist, he was a convinced adherent of the divine right of kings and abhorred constitutions.
Yet the renewed conflict with Austria over the Danish duchies and the war of 1866 forced Prussia to confront the decisive question of Germany’s future political structure. The minister of William I (1861–88), Count Bismarck, while at the opportune moment concealing the breach with Austria so that it did not reach the point of destroying the Vienna Empire, knew how to bind the fate of the Hohenzollern dynasty tightly to the exigency of war with France for German independence. Thus, at Versailles on 18 January 1871, William I assumed the crown of Emperor of the German Reich, in which there was to be a reconciliation between the Hohenzollerns’ absolutist, militarist traditions and German liberal unitarism. This experiment failed under William II (1888–1918); in this prince there appeared some of the traditional qualities of his line, but not the best of them. The Hohenzollern dynasty fell with William II’s abdication after the Armistice of Rethondes on 11 November 1918; yet it had given Germany the political unity that was to survive.