Albert the Bear was the first margrave of Brandenburg from 1157 to his death and was briefly duke of Saxony between 1138 and 1142.
The House of Ascania was a dynasty of German rulers. It is also known as the House of Anhalt, which refers to its longest-held possession, Anhalt.
Saxony, officially the Free State of Saxony, is a landlocked state of Germany, bordering the states of Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, as well as the countries of Poland and the Czech Republic. Its capital is Dresden, and its largest city is Leipzig. Saxony is the tenth largest of Germany's sixteen states, with an area of 18,413 square kilometres (7,109 sq mi), and the sixth most populous, with more than 4 million inhabitants.
In medieval Europe, a march or mark was, in broad terms, any kind of borderland, as opposed to a national "heartland". More specifically, a march was a border between realms or a neutral buffer zone under joint control of two states in which different laws might apply. In both of these senses, marches served a political purpose, such as providing warning of military incursions or regulating cross-border trade.
Gero I, sometimes called the Great, was a German nobleman who ruled an initially modest march centred on Merseburg in the south of the present German state of Saxony-Anhalt, which he expanded into a vast territory named after him: the marca Geronis. During the mid-10th century, he was the leader of the Saxon Ostsiedlung.
Hermann Billung was the margrave of the Billung March from 936 until his death. The first of the Saxon House of Billung, Hermann was a trusted lieutenant of Emperor Otto I.
The Margravate or Margraviate of Meissen was a medieval principality in the area of the modern German state of Saxony. It originally was a frontier march of the Holy Roman Empire, created out of the vast Marca Geronis in 965. Under the rule of the Wettin dynasty, the margravate finally merged with the former Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg into the Saxon Electorate by 1423.
Rikdag, also called Ricdag, Riddag, or Rihdag, was Margrave of Meissen from 979 until his death. In 982, he also acquired the marches of Merseburg and Zeitz. After the Great Slav Rising in 983, he temporarily reunited all of the southern marca Geronis under his command. His march included the territory of the Chutizi and Dolomici tribes.
The Saxon Eastern March was a march of the Holy Roman Empire from the 10th until the 12th century. The term "eastern march" stems from the Latin term marchia Orientalis and originally could refer to either a march created on the eastern frontier of the East Frankish duchy of Saxony or another on the eastern border of the Duchy of Bavaria: the Bavarian marchia Orientalis, corresponding to later Austria.
The Marca Geronis or March of Gero was a vast super-march in the middle of the tenth century. It was probably created for Thietmar in the 920s and passed consecutively to his two sons, Siegfried and Gero. On Gero's death in 965 it was divided into five different marches: the Nordmark, Ostmark, Meissen, Zeitz, and Merseburg.
The March or Margraviate of Lusatia was an eastern border march of the Holy Roman Empire in the lands settled by Polabian Slavs. It arose in 965 in the course of the partition of the vast Marca Geronis. Ruled by several Saxon margravial dynasties, among them the House of Wettin, the lordship was contested by the Polish kings as well as by the Ascanian margraves of Brandenburg. The remaining territory was finally incorporated into the Lands of the Bohemian Crown in 1367.
OdoI was margrave in the Saxon Eastern March of the Holy Roman Empire from 965 until his death.
Gunther was the Margrave of Merseburg from 965 until his death, upon which the march of Merseburg was united to that of Meissen.
Thietmar (II) (c. 925 – 3 August 979) was Margrave of Meissen from about 976 until his death.
Lothair Udo II was Margrave of the Nordmark from 1057 until his death and also Count of Stade. He was the only son of Lothair Udo I of the Udonids and Adelaide of Rheinfelden.
The Nordthüringgau was a medieval county in the Eastphalian region of the German stem duchy of Saxony.
The Schwabengau was an early medieval shire (Gau) in the Eastphalia region of the medieval Duchy of Saxony. Ruled by the House of Ascania, it became the nucleus of the later Principality of Anhalt, today part of the German state of Saxony-Anhalt.
In the Slavic revolt of 983, Polabian Slavs, Wends, Lutici and Obotrite tribes, that lived east of the Elbe River in modern north-east Germany overthrew an assumed Ottonian rule over the Slavic lands and rejected Christianization under Emperor Otto I.