Talk:Stem duchy

Things removed and why

 * Compare Volkstamm, "tribe", Stammvater, "ancestor".
 * Totally unneeded. Anyone can look up Stamm- in a dictionary.


 * major divisions of the eastern Carolingian kingdom of (East) Francia (corresponding to modern Germany but larger).
 * Only describes the younger stem duchies and not even that accurately as the stem duchies were a phenomenon of the declining Carolingians and their succesors.


 * "Most of these duchies corresponded to major Germanic self-identifying cultural groups, whether "tribes" or confederations
 * Though not all stem duchies had a tribe, the term is defined by tribes. Those without a tribe are exceptions (explained further down). Also, the "confederations" bit is unneeded as it had been a long time since e.g. the Allemans were formed that way.


 * ... which German historians later called "stems" ...
 * No, German historians do not call them "stems", they call them "Stämme", which translates into tribes.


 * ... in the sense of the trunk (German Stamm, also means tribe) of a genealogical tree (Stammbaum).
 * Nonsense, Stämme as in tribe > Stammesherzogtum


 * Historians therefore distinguish between two sets ...
 * Nonsese. The distinction explained above that was between stem/tribal duchy and a mere administrative unit or a territorial state. This here is a new distinction between the stem duchies that existed until the 8th and the stem duchies that existed after the 9th centuries.


 * Each nation or tribal confederacy accepted as leader a warrior chieftain acclaimed from the worthiest men of fighting age in a ruling family.
 * That's pure romance.


 * The military leaders had acquired the Roman title of dux under Carolingian rule, part of the conscious revival of Romanized customs and formulas that characterize Charlemagne's court.
 * Irrelevant.


 * The stem dukes loosely controlled a group of great nobles, and expected to appoint bishops and abbots
 * Irrelevant and overgeneralising - actually appointing bishops was claimed by the king, not the dukes.


 * (some were becoming very rich or even politically significant as prince-bishops) of their own choosing within their territories;
 * This is irrelevant and also childishly worded. Prince-bishops BTW are no phenomenon of the stem duchies but actually developed because these duchies were dismantled.


 * these lay investitures later became crucial in the caesaropapist claims of the German crown.
 * Irrelevant, off topic.


 * the Franks (Freivermerke), Saxons and Thuringians, or confederationsthe confederations called Swabians&mdash;heirs of the Suebi, who were called "Alemanni" by their neighbors&mdash;and the Bavarians&mdash;heirs of the Rugii who were dispersed by Odoacer in 487.
 * Freivermerke is nonsense. Suebi are an earlier people, irrelevant here. Bavarians not descendent from Rugii. Odoacer has zero to do with the topics. Thuringians' status as a stem duchy questionable.


 * Legacy section
 * We do not need to retell the elections of 911 and 919 in this article. The development of the stem duchies to electorate is not as it is portrayed. True, the tribes and their dukes once elected the King and later the electors did this. However, not one of the younger stem duchies was an electorate later on (at least not until the 17th century) as the stem duchy of Saxony has only the name in common with the later Electorate. Hannover (best resembling the stem duchy) only become an Electorat in 1692, Bavaria in 1623. Bohemia, Brandenburg and the Palatinate have no preceding stem duchy (though the Count Palatinate represented Franconia/Eastern Francia in a way). Neither do the three Archbishops.

So please do not restore this stuff again. Str1977 (talk) 17:28, 15 January 2008 (UTC)


 * The reader may want to see the material that has been suppressed. Wikipedia is a reader service.--Wetman (talk) 17:51, 15 January 2008 (UTC)


 * The reader actually expects us to "suppress" inaccurate text. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Str1977 (talk) 16:49, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I was initially concerned by the radical facelift this page had seen myself and feared that information was lost, but upon closer inspection, most of Str's removals seem justified, though perhaps he is being narrow on a couple points. Much of what was removed is either romantic, out-dated, or over-generalised. But now the article could probably use some expansion. Srnec (talk) 05:08, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Everyone is of course welcome to add accurate and on-topic material. Str1977 (talk) 00:13, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Context
This article requires context to explain that this is a concept by historians. Mootros (talk) 20:56, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

duke of Thuringia
How come this isn't a stem duchy? 98.206.155.53 (talk) 16:24, 16 April 2011 (UTC)


 * IIRC, they got exterminated as a country too quickly. Their rulers were mere counts when the others had dukes.155.213.224.59 (talk) 16:41, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

"stem" vs. "tribal"
It is true that the Stammes refers to tribes. But some contributor here took this as an excuse to write a giant tangent about Germanic tribes and what not. But there is a reason this article isn't called "German tribes", and instead is called "stem duchies". It is supposed to be about the constituent duchies of the early HRE. "Lotharingia" is a stem duchy even though there never was a tribe of the "Lotharingii". Otoh, there are no stem duchies of Frisia or Burgundy, even though there were, of course, tribes of Frisians and Burgundians. This is beside the point. I don't know if the duchy of Thuringia is considered a stem duchy, or by whom. It was disestablished in 908, so it clearly was never part of the HRE. I suppose this is a case of citing actual sources making either case. --dab (𒁳) 20:10, 11 February 2015 (UTC)