King
Henry the Fowler, on his 928–29 campaign against the Slavic
Glomacze tribes, had a fortress erected on a hill at
Meissen (
Mišno) on the
Elbe river. Later named
Albrechtsburg, the castle about 965 became the seat of the Meissen margraves, installed by
Emperor Otto I when the vast
Marca Geronis (
Gero's march) was partitioned into five new margraviates, including Meissen, the
Saxon Eastern March, and also the
Northern March which eventually became the
Margraviate of Brandenburg. During the tenth century, the Meissen margraves temporarily extended their territory into the
Milceni lands up to the
Kwisa (
Queis) river and the border with the
Silesian region of the
Early Polish state. The eastern lands around
Bautzen (
Budissin), later known as
Upper Lusatia, were ceded to the Polish duke
Bolesław I the Brave according to the 1018
Peace of Bautzen; in 1076 they passed to the
Duke of Bohemia as an Imperial fief. From 1089, the Meissen margravial title became the
honor of the
Saxon House of
Wettin and remained as the dynasty's possession ever since. In the 13th century the Meissen margraves acquired the former
Pleissnerland territory and upon the
War of the Thuringen Succession 1247–1264 also the adjacent
Landgraviate of Thuringia in the west. Finally in 1423 Margrave
Frederick the Warlike was enfeoffed with the
Saxe–Wittenberg lands down the Elbe ('
Upper Saxony'), an
electorate according to the
Golden Bull of 1356. While the Wettin rulers eventually moved their residence to
Dresden, the Meissen margraviate merged into their electorate and became known as the 'Cradle of Saxony'. ==List==