OTTONIAN HISTORY AND GOVERNMENT

On 2 July 936 Henry I, a member of the Liudolfing family of Saxony (later known as the Ottonians) and king of the east Frankish/German realm, died in Memleben near the border of southern Saxony (see Map I and Genealogical Table I). Almost seven years previously, however, in 929, he had set his house in order and arranged the royal succession. Then shortly before his death Henry had the arrangements of 929 formally ratified by an assembly of the realm at Erfurt. Through these arrangements Henry designated his eldest son, Otto, to succeed him in the kingship. Thus, although he left to his other sons, Thankmar, Henry and Brun, their inheritance in properties and treasures, he placed Otto alone in authority over his brothers and over the kingdom of the Franks.

Three events within the first fourteen months of Otto's reign can be used as symbols of the continuity and the change that were to characterize the new king's practice and structure of government, both in relation to his father's reign and to the traditions of the east Frankish kingdom of the Carolingians. These events were his coronation at Aachen in August of 936, his consent to the establishment of a royal convent of canonesses on his father's burial site at Quedlinburg in Saxony, and the foundation of a new royal monastery and centre of royal power at Magdeburg on the Elbe River, which in 937 was the easternmost border of the realm.

At the beginning of Chapter 2 of his Saxon History, Widukind of Corvey provides us with a detailed account of Otto I's accession to the throne.