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 == Carantania and the Eastern March (Austria) == 

 by Dr. Jožko Šavli, September 5, 2010 

 Under Emperor Diocletian (after ca. 300 AD), Noricum was divided into Noricum mediterraneum and Noricum ripense. It is beyond doubt that the one-time Roman province of Noricum mediterraneum (Inner Noricum) was the predecessor of Carantania.  It is less known, that Noricum ripense, the other ancient province of the Roman Empire, was the predecessor of Bavaria, with the chief town of Lauriacum (Lorch), Upper Austria. In the middle of the 8th century AD, Bavaria was threatened by the Avars, and the Bavarians transferred their capital to Regensburg in Vindelicia, the present-day Bavaria. Carantania included the modern Carinthia and Styria, whereas Carniola, which was part of the Roman province of Pannonia in Roman times, became a province in the lower part of the Principality of Carantania. 

 Was Carantania a Slavic or Slovenian duchy? Historically, Slovenians and Carantanians are an ethnic group. Slavs are only a linguistic group, and certainly not an ethnic one. However, in sense of the 19th century conception, they were considered to be descendants of the ""Ancient Slavs"", who at one-time should have lived in the ""Ancient homeland of Slavs"" behind the Carpathian Mountains. This was purely an academic construction, which was elaborated for the purpose of the pan-Slav ideology. It was, more or less, an answer to the pan-German construction, which refers to Scandinavia as the ""ancestral homeland of the Germanic people"". Today it is well known that both ideologies were used for imperialistic purposes.  

 The naive conception of ""ancient"" Slavs or Germans, crowned by the well financed and ideologically-driven academic institutions, chose as comparison the Spanish speaking world, which today includes all Latin American countries. Does that mean, all Latin American Spanish-speaking inhabitants descended from the ""Ancient homeland of the Spaniards"", which would have been from the Iberian Peninsula? Or, would people from USA and Canada be descendants of the ""Ancient English"", who lived in the ""Ancient homeland of the British Isles""? Only because they speak English? 

 Thus, regardless of all statements made by the well funded academic world, if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that Carantanians are a nation of Slovenians. But in which way did they become Austrians during the centuries? Because, from the historical point of view, Austria is identical with Carantania. Its name derives from the Eastern March (a part of today's Lower Austria) on the Danube. On all maps, the Eastern March is shown as a Bavarian March. But this is a deliberately misleading statement, committed by German and present-day Austrian historiography.  

 I was aware of this fact, when I read the citations of B. Grafenauer, the well-known Slovenian historian. He copied from German material the following ""statement"": ... In 876 AD, Prince Carloman, son of Louis the German (†), inherited Bavaria and Carantania. He ceded Carantania to his son Arnulf, except the Eastern March, which he annexed to Bavaria, where he reigned himself.  

 This was surely a false interpretation. Around 856, King Louis the German deposed of Margrave Ratbod because of his connections with the hostile duke of Great Moravia. Ratbod was the military commander of the Eastern March, which included Carantania and Pannonia. Already in 883, because of the Eastern March, a war broke out between Carantania and Great Moravia. How could that be possible if the Eastern March would not be a Carantanian province? After a while, I solved the puzzle with the help of heraldry. On the seals of the Eastern March, which later became known as Austria, appears the Royal Eagle and the Carantanian Panther, but no Bavarian emblem. This means, that the Eastern March was a military province of the Kingdom of the Eastern Franks (later called Germania). But its civil administration pertained to Carantania.  

 In 976, Leopold was appointed Margrave of the Eastern March. At that time, Leopold did not use the family name Babenberg. It is well known, that the very family of Babenberg originated from Franconia, and that already in 906 their last member fell in battle. The name Babenberg was given to the descendants of Margrave Leopold I about 70 years later by Bishop Otto of Freising (1114 - 1158) (Vajda.42) and passed as such into the historical records. In origin, the Margrave was a member of the line of the Luitpoldings, a Carantanian family. The founder of the Luitpolding line was Luitpold (Leopold), cousin of King and Emperor Arnulf of Carinthia. Margrave Leopold, although not mentioned in the records, was the son of Duke Berthold of Carantania