in
Groß Raden In the
Early Middle Ages, the name "
Wends" (probably derived from the Roman-era
Veneti) may have applied to Slavic peoples. However, sources such as the
Chronicle of Fredegar and
Paul the Deacon are neither clear nor consistent in their ethnographic terminology, and whether "Wends" or "Veneti" refer to Slavic people, pre-Slavic people, or to a territory rather than a population, is a matter of scholarly debate. The
early Slavic expansion reached Central Europe in the 7th century, and the West Slavic dialects diverged from common Slavic over the following centuries. The West Slavic tribes settled on the eastern fringes of the
Carolingian Empire, along the
Limes Saxoniae. Prior to the
Magyar invasion of Pannonia in the 890s, the West Slavic polity of
Great Moravia spanned much of Central Europe between what is now Eastern Germany and Western Romania. In the high medieval period, the West Slavic tribes were again pushed to the east by the incipient German
Ostsiedlung, decisively so following the
Wendish Crusade in the 11th century. The
early Slavic expansion began in the 5th century, and by the 6th century the groups that would become the West,
East, and
South Slavic groups had probably become geographically separated. One of the distinguishing features of the West Slavic tribes was manifested in the structure of the
Pagan sanctuaries of the closed (long) type, while the East Slavic sanctuaries had a round (most often open) shape (
see also:
Peryn). Early modern historiographers, such as Penzel (1777) and Palacky (1827) have claimed
Samo's Empire to be first independent Slavic state in history by taking Fredegar's Wendish account at face value. Curta (1997) argued that the text is not as straightforward: according to Fredegar, Wends were a
gens,
Sclavini merely a
genus, and there was no "Slavic"
gens. He further states that "
Wends occur particularly in political contexts: the Wends, not the Slavs, made
Samo their king." Other such alleged early West Slavic states include the
Principality of Moravia (8th century–833), the
Principality of Nitra (8th century–833), and
Great Moravia (833–c. 907). Christiansen (1997) identified the following West Slav tribes in the 11th century from "the coastlands and hinterland from the aby of Kiel to the Vistula, including the islands of Fehmarn, Poel, Rügen, Usedom and Wollin", namely the
Wagrians,
Obodrites (or Abotrites), the
Polabians, the Liutizians or Wilzians, the Rugians or Rani, the Sorbs, the Lusatians, the Poles, and the Pomeranians (later divided into Pomerelians and Cassubians). They came under the domination of the
Holy Roman Empire after the
Wendish Crusade in the Middle Ages and had been strongly
assimilated by
Germans at the end of the 19th century. The
Polabian language survived until the beginning of the 19th century in what is now the German state of
Lower Saxony. == Groupings ==