page_title: Margravate of Meissen
section_title: Wettin rule
hierarchical_section_title: Margravate of Meissen / Wettin rule
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Die Mark Lausitz in der Zeit zwischen 1150 und 1250 English: The March of Lusatia from 1150 to 1250 Русский: Лужицкая марка в 1150-1250 годах
context_page_description: The Margravate 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.
context_section_description: Emperor Henry IV then granted Meissen to Count Henry of Eilenburg of the Wettin dynasty. The margravate would remain under Wettin rule for the rest of its existence. Under Wiprecht von Groitzsch in the 1120s, Meissen underwent a process of Germanisation. He was succeeded by Conrad the Great (1123–56), Otto the Rich (1156–91), and Dietrich the Hard-Pressed (1191–1221), under whom the march would expand and develop. By then, Meissen had become a stronghold of the Wettin dynasty, suspiciously eyed by the Hohenstaufen emperors who nevertheless were not able to deprive the margraves of their power.
  In 1264, during the War of the Thuringian Succession, Margrave Henry III asserted himself in the Landgraviate of Thuringia, where his uncle Henry Raspe had died childless. Between 1243 and 1255, Henry III had also acquired the intermediate Pleisseland around Altenburg in pawn. In 1307, the attempt by the Luxembourg king Henry VII to once again subdue the Margraves of Meissen failed with his defeat at the Battle of Lucka. By that time the margravate was de facto independent of any sovereign authority. In the following years, there would be joint rule of Meissen by multiple members of the Wettin dynasty at any given time. In 1382 and 1445, this even led to the division of the march, however it would reunite soon after each time. Meissen was often enlarged by marriage, purchase, or conquest, which is how it gained the rights to the burgravate in 1426.
  In 1423, Margrave Frederick IV was assigned the heirless Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg, formerly held by the House of Ascania, by Emperor Sigismund in turn for his support against the Hussites. The Wettin rulers thereby entered into the Saxon electorate, in which they ultimately merged their margravial lands abandoning Meissen's status as an independent principality; though they retained the margravial title. In the late 15th century, the dynasty held a large contiguous territory between the Werra and Oder rivers. By the 1485 Treaty of Leipzig, however, the Upper Saxon lands were again divided between Frederick's grandsons Ernest ruling in Wittenberg and Albert, who took the former Meissen territory. The treaty marked the beginning of the permanent separation of the two states of Saxony and Ernestine Thuringia.
caption: Upper Saxony about 1260, Wettin territories of Meissen, Lusatia and Osterland (Landsberg) in pink
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