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( Swabia)
Swabia, Suabia, or Svebia (German Schwaben, Schwabenland or Ländle) is both a historic and linguistic (see Swabian German) region in Germany. Swabia consists of much of the present-day state of Baden-Württemberg (specifically, historical Württemberg and the Hohenzollerische Lande), as well as the Bavarian administrative region of Swabia. In the Middle Ages, Baden, Vorarlberg, the modern principality of Liechtenstein, modern German-speaking Switzerland, and Alsace (now belonging to France) were also considered to be a part of Swabia. 2000 years ago, the Suebi or Suevi were an Elbe Germanic people whose origin was near the Baltic Sea, which was thus known to the Romans as the Mare Suebicum (today, the term "Swabian Sea" is applied to Lake Constance). They migrated to the southwest, becoming part of the Alamannic confederacy. The Alamanni were ruled by independent kings throughout the 4th and 5th centuries. Also, a number of Suevi (20.000-50.000[1]) reached the Iberian Peninsula under king Hermeric and established an independent kingdom in 410 inwhat is now northern Portugal, Galicia, and western regions of Asturias and most of León (in northwest Spain). It endured until 585. Its political center was Braccara Augusta (present-day Braga, Portugal). Swabia became a duchy under the Frankish Empire in 496, following the Battle of Tolbiac. Swabia was one of the original stem duchies of East Francia, the later Holy Roman Empire, as it developed in the 9th and 10th centuries. The Hohenstaufen dynasty (the dynasty of Frederick Barbarossa), which ruled the Holy Roman Empire in the 12th and 13th centuries, arose out of Swabia, but following the execution of Conradin, the last Hohenstaufen, on October 29, 1268, the original duchy gradually broke up into many smaller units. Karl the Great's (or Charlemagne) family is known to hail from Swabia. The major dynasty which arose out of the region were the Habsburgs, but also the Hohenzollerns, who rose to prominence in Northern Germany, stem from Swabia, as well as the dynasties of the Dukes of Württemberg and the Margraves of Baden. Smaller feudal dynasties eventually disappeared; however, for example, branches of the Montforts and Hohenems lived until modern age and the Fürstenberg survive still. The region proved to be one of the most divided in the Empire, containing, in addition to these principalities, numerous free cities, ecclesiastical territories, and fiefdoms of lesser counts and knights.
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