A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT

Alpine Rhine seen from Hoher Kasten
Source: Alexander Schnurer

A long time ago, in June 1990, when I worked at the EFTA Secretariat in Geneva, I had just completed a thorough investigation into the capital movement practices of EFTA countries. Therefore, I thought I had earned a short leave. Done and dusted! I purchased a hiking package from Raifa (the Swiss Raiffeisenkasse) and set off on a four-day walk in the Canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden. The final day of the hike involved taking a lift to the summit of Hoher Kasten and then slowly descending along the sharp ridge of this mountain before making my way down to Brülisau.

Back then, I had only rather vague ideas about the geography and history of the border region between Switzerland and Austria. However, the excursion made me acutely aware of the wonders of this land. After about a two-hour hike along the mountain ridge, I came across a rather abrupt abyss (the Saxer Lücke) with a towering mountain directly in front of me.

 

Approaching the Saxer Lücke
Source: Endeavour1a

As I proceeded towards the slope, an unhindered view of an immense void of a canyon suddenly opened up before me to the east, shimmering in the heat of high noon, with a blue ribbon of river lazily winding north towards a distant, vast lake. Across the expanse, I admired a range of rugged peaks, partly concealed by high clouds. Overall, it was an enchanting vista! I was gazing at the northern expanse of the Alpine Rhine Valley and, across the valley, at the hills and mountains of the Bregenzerwald in Vorarlberg, the easternmost state of Austria.

With hindsight and maturity, I can more fully appreciate this memory. Looking at the title picture, you see the Rhine bending towards the upper end while the foothills move closer to the river on its right. There lies the domain of Hohenems, where the Emser reached the zenith of their power. However, you can find traces of the family throughout the Alpine Rhine, making the region the primary theatre of Ems history.
Let us journey back in history for a moment. During Roman times, starting from the reign of Diocletian, the Alpine Rhine formed the Province of Raetia Prima, which stretched from Lake Constance all the way south to the sources of the Rhine and, further still, to the mountain passes leading to Northern Italy. Its capital was Curia Raetorum (Chur) in present-day Grison. The location of Raetia Prima was a kind of "neither here nor there." The region did not belong to the heartlands of Italy, being cut off from them by the crest of the Adula Alps (the watershed between the rivers Rhine and Po) and connected only through the Splügen and San Bernardino Passes. It was not a frontier province either, as to its northeast lay the province of Raetia Secunda, with its capital in Augusta Vindelicorum (Augsburg) along the Danube River.

Administration in Raetia Prima, like in most Roman interior provinces of that era, was mainly decentralised and relied significantly on cooperation between the Praeses (the governor appointed by the Emperor) and a network of primarily indigenous, yet romanised landowners. Literacy was high among the landed gentry and, notably, among the inhabitants of the administrative centre of Curia. When central power diminished and eventually collapsed during the time of the Völkerwanderung, this system continued to function; the provincial courts persisted in practising Roman Law, and the regional bishop, residing in Chur, began to gradually assume the role of governor. 

Theodoric, King of Italy (493-526). Safeguard of Roman culture on the Alpine Rhine.
Source: Wikipedia

By a quirk of history, Raetia Prima was largely spared from the main upheavals of the Völkerwanderung. When Odoacer took control of Italy in 476 AD, he regarded the province as part of his realm. His successor, Theoderic the Great of the Ostrogoths, further solidified this by formally establishing the border of Italy along Lake Constance. Although he allowed Alemanni, who were fleeing from a war with the Franks, to immigrate, their settlement was restricted to a small area with its southern border just south of present-day Hohenems. This limited the Alemanni tribes' influence over the Alpine Rhine, which helped protect the predominantly Roman civilization in the region. When the Eastern Roman Empire conquered Italy about fifty years later, the Franks took control of Raetia Prima, thus preventing it from experiencing a potentially challenging Byzantine conquest.

As the Franks became the dominant power in the West, the Lombards chose not to invade the valleys during their later incursions from the east. Instead, they focused on conquering the Italian peninsula. Overall, Roman civilization was preserved in Raetia Prima for nearly 400 years after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The Frankish overlords only gradually took control of their territories, while the Alemannic peoples began to peacefully settle in the region from the north. Even today, a third of the population in the southern parts of the Alpine Rhine (Canton Grison) still speaks a version of the Vulgar Latin that has been present in the area since the Romans first arrived in 15 BC.

Initially, the Franks' hold on the region was fairly weak. Raetia Prima, increasingly referred to as Raetia Curiensis, lay far from the Frankish heartlands, and governance primarily involved appointing a bishop sympathetic to the Franks as governor. This bishop would administer the region alongside a small Frankish military contingent that was hardly visible across the vast territory. As a side note, it is towards the end of this period, in 765, that the family name of Ems, in its Raeto-Roman form "Amedes," first appears in an official bishopric document, alongside the name of a small settlement along the Rhine just south of Chur, which is still known today as Ems.

Raetia Curiensis around 800. In earlier centuries, it reached towards lake Constance.
Source: Wikipedia

Things changed when the Carolingians supplanted the Merovingian kings. At that time, the so-called Victorid dynasty, which had ruled for over a century as both bishop and secular leader in Raetia Curiensis, died out. Consequently, Charles the Great brought an end to ecclesiastical governance. In 807, he enfeoffed a Frankish noble, Hunfried I, as Comes Curiensis, i.e., feudal governor pledging allegiance to the Emperor himself. The Hunfriedings governed as counts intermittently for over a hundred years until, in 917, Burchard II Hunfrieding claimed the title of Duke of Alemannia and combined Raetia Curiensis with the significantly larger former province of Raetia Secunda to the north. He established one of his residences in Vinomna (Rankweil, close to present-day Feldkirch). In 920, the name of Ems re-emerges as one of the judges at the Raeto-Roman Court of Vinomna, inscribed in a donor document at Pfäfers Monastery.

Shortly thereafter, the combined territory was renamed the Duchy of Swabia and became one of the five Stem Duchies, alongside Bavaria, Franconia, Lotharingia, and Saxony. These duchies formed together the successor Kingdom of Germany following the breakdown of Carolingian rule. The glory days of Swabia occurred under the Hohenstaufen dynasty, which rose from it to become Kings of Germany and Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire during 1138 to 1254. At this time, the duchy was undoubtedly the wealthiest province in Germany, providing the resources and income necessary for those rulers to attain and maintain Imperial power.

The southern part of the Duchy, the former Raetia Curiensis, was of particular interest to the emperors due to the Alpine Rhine Valley, which provided a route to Italy. To safeguard this route, several fortifications were constructed during the first half of the twelfth century. Among these was the impressive fortress of Hohenems, built at the lower Alpine Rhine, where the Emser family was appointed as ministerial to govern the area on behalf of the rulers. The first recorded Emser from Hohenems, mentioned in a document dating back to around 1180, are Rudolf and Godwin von Ems.

Duchy of Swabia (in yellow) in 917 AD.
Source: Wikipedia

Swabia's importance came to an abrupt end with the end of the Staufer rule. After this dynasty died out, the duchy effectively lost its ducal lord, leaving the fiefdoms of Raetia in feudal limbo. Rudolf of Habsburg, the successor king of Germany, tried in vain to reestablish the duchy as a fief for his descendants. However, the grandees of Germany were tired of monarchs ruling with the support of Swabian wealth. Instead, Rudolf tried to ingratiate himself by granting the major cities of the former duchy the status of Imperial City (Reichsunmittelbarkeit), which made them subject only to the king and no longer beholden to any feudal overlord. In addition, the Habsburger attempted, initially successfully, to bring under their control the regions surrounding their main domains in Aargau.

All in all, the absence of a duke led to a general free-for-all among lesser lords, imperial cities, and the Eidgenossen looking to enhance their power by acquiring land by any means available, whether through purchase, inheritance, or aggression. This led to a four-century period of unrest that ended only with the Peace of Osnabrück in the mid-1600s. Throughout these times of struggle, the Emser sided primarily with the Habsburger. By the end of the period, much of the former duchy had seceded from the empire, notably the Swiss in the southeast and the Grisons in the south, while numerous smaller feudal domains were scattered throughout the rest of the Alpine Rhine region, leaving the Habsburgs with only a small outpost in the area. This outpost was located on the right side of the Alpine Rhine, south of Lake Constance, and had to be shared with the Emser. The region would eventually become known as Vorarlberg.

Domains of Houses Ems and Habsburg in Vorarlberg, around 1620.

A final drama in miniature unfolded in this smaller region. The Emser dynasty, which by 1620 were lords of Hohenems, Lustenau, and part of Dornbirn in Vorarlberg, had recently acquired the two counties of Schellenberg and Vaduz (in 1613), which at a stroke increased their territory by half, including their domain in Italy, the county of Gallerate near Milan. The Emser also governed the territories of Feldkirch and Neuburg on behalf of the Habsburg Archduke of Tyrol. However, the lust for power and status grows with wealth. Their ambition was to create a contiguous territory along the Alpine Rhine large enough to elevate them to the rank of imperial princes. To this end, the family devised a plan to offer the Archduke of Tyrol 100,000 gulden for his domains of Höchst, Fussau, and Gaißau in the north, as well as the remainder of Dornbirn in the east and Neuburg, along with the stretch of Feldkirch beside the Rhine south.

The Archduke was tempted but ultimately refused. The Vorarlberg estates strongly objected, and the Habsburger preferred to retain their strategic outpost controlling the Alpine Rhine and, thereby, the roads to Italy, rather than risk having a new sovereign neighbour whose alliance they could not fully trust. Had the Habsburger agreed, there would today be no miniature "Liechtenstein" (formerly Schellenberg and Vaduz) wedged between Austria and Switzerland, but a much larger country of "Hohenems" stretching from Lake Constance to the Luciersteig!

It may appear presumptuous to cover more than a thousand years of history in a single blog post. Yet without this general background, understanding the history of the Ems dynasty, which originated in early post-Roman times and declined in the latter half of the 1600s, becomes challenging. Nevertheless, we shall return to our travelogue shortly, to something much easier and hopefully more engaging. So do not despair, dear readers; our night train will soon arrive in Feldkirch (Vorarlberg), allowing our story to continue with flair!