Pioneer of Europe, pious emperor, patron of the sciences and arts, warlord – in today’s historiography, Otto the Great is not without controversy. However, there is no doubt that he left a great legacy to the City of Magdeburg.

Prof Dr Matthias Puhle, long-time director of Magdeburg’s museums, former deputy head of the Department of Culture, Schools and Sport and member of the board of trustees of the Kaiser Otto Cultural Foundation, is an expert in the field of medieval history and explains the myth of “Otto the Great”. A search for clues …

Why does studying Otto I still inspire people centuries later?

Prof Puhle: Otto the Great is undoubtedly one of the outstanding figures in Germany and Europe in the early Middle Ages, both historically and from today’s perspective. He was also of outstanding importance for the city of Magdeburg. His tomb can still be found today in Magdeburg Cathedral. Numerous places in the cityscape commemorate the important medieval ruler.

Magdeburg’s highest and most important honour, the Emperor Otto Prize, goes back to Otto I. How do the statements in the preamble to the Emperor Otto Prize, in which peace and international understanding are prioritised, and the military conflicts with which Otto the Great asserted his claims to power, fit together?

Prof Puhle: The Emperor Otto Prize of the City of Magdeburg is also based on the assessment that the medieval history of Europe plays a not insignificant role for our present in 21st century Europe. The preamble to the statutes states that Otto the Great “as a ruler and mediator of cultures is one of the outstanding pioneers of the European world of states”. According to the statutes, the prize is therefore awarded to “personalities, groups of people or institutions who … have rendered outstanding services to understanding among the peoples of Europe”.

If one were to criticise this “normal” use of force in his time and ask whether such a ruler can be the eponym for a prize that is about peace and understanding in today’s Europe, one would be arguing ahistorically and failing to recognise that rule in the early Middle Ages could not be successful without these means of violence. Otherwise, the Charlemagne Prize of Aachen would have to be judged at least as critically.

It is also hardly possible to approach Otto the Great with the moral concepts of our time and to praise or criticise him for his actions. This form of judgemental historiography was particularly prevalent in the 19th century and in the ideology-driven states of the 20th century. Judgements such as “Slavic butchers” or sentences such as “In the power of their Germanic origins, in the might of their worldly mission close to God, they are our heroes: King Henry and Emperor Otto”. Modern historiography refrains from moralising judgements on pre-modern topics, instead evaluating structures and events and seeing the people involved in the context of their time.

Otto the Great was a ruler of the 10th century. Like the other emperor of the early Middle Ages, who was also nicknamed “the Great”, namely Charlemagne (768-814), he was only able to exercise rule through a mixture of “consensual rule”, as modern historians now call the consensus-seeking style of rule, and a more or less permanent willingness to wage war, whereby not all campaigns were on the scale of the famous, bloody Battle of Lechfeld in 955, in which he inflicted a devastating defeat on the Hungarians.

Seeking consensus with the high nobility and clergy as often as possible was necessary for the rulers of the Middle Ages, as they did not have the means of power to rule “absolutely”, as it became possible in modern times. In the early Middle Ages, for example, there was no standing army that could be mobilised by the emperor at any time. He needed the resources of the “greats” to wage war. Major campaigns were usually discussed at court meetings, at which the emperor had to obtain the approval and support of the “greats”. Waging war was often necessary as there was no generally recognised peace order in Europe and the inviolability of state borders. Otto the Great rarely waged wars of conquest north of the Alps, but rather wars that served to secure the borders of the empire and contain conflicts. In the first years of his reign, from 936 onwards, he was also confronted with a series of uprisings in his own empire, which were led by members of his own family. These uprisings were bloodily suppressed. The co-conspirators were also executed in the process. The family members were left alive and punished in other ways.

After his coronation as Holy Roman Emperor in 962, he also became ruler of the Italian Empire, which was not quite as extensive as modern-day Italy. The wars he waged there until his death in 973 essentially served to enforce his rule in Italy.

How can Otto I’s personality be described?

Prof Puhle: It is difficult to get a concrete picture of Otto and the personalities who were close to him, such as his two wives Editha and Adelheid, his father King Henry I and his mother Matilda, or his son and successor Otto II and his wife Theophanu, who came from Byzantium. We have no portrait-like depictions of anyone, because the early Middle Ages did not yet know portraits. All depictions are modelled and entirely tailored to the position and role of the sitter and bear no individual traits.

The question of the personality and character of Otto and his contemporaries is also difficult to answer. As a rule, the written records do not provide much information on this question either. The contemporary chroniclers Roswitha of Gandersheim and Widukind of Corvey, for example, portray Otto the Great as a highly honourable personality and therefore in no way objective. We therefore have to read Otto’s character from his actions, which of course can only be done in fragments and is probably also flawed. Here we can very well and with even more justification apply the characterisation of the 14th century, which comes from the American historian Barbara Tuchman, to the 10th century. She called her book on the 14th century “The Distant Mirror”.

What merits for the development of the City of Magdeburg can be traced back to Otto the Great?

The City of Magdeburg has special reason to refer to Otto the Great as the patron and actual founder of the city and to keep his memory alive. No sooner had he become king after the death of his father Henry I in 936 than he began to turn the small border settlement on the Elbe into a central location for his rule. He founded the imperial monastery of St Mauritius, promoted the city’s development through coinage, market and customs privileges and urged the Pope to establish an archbishopric in Magdeburg, which would turn the city into a “metropolis”, which was finally achieved in 968 after overcoming much resistance. The Ottonian cathedral, in which Otto the Great and his first wife Editha were buried, was built on the cathedral square next to the Mauritius monastery. Even after the cathedral burned down in 1207, these tombs were not lost but found a worthy place in the newly built Gothic cathedral, where they can still be found today. One thing is certain: The archbishopric of Magdeburg would not have existed without Otto the Great. Magdeburg law, which was introduced in the second half of the 12th century by the important Archbishop Wichmann and became established in around 1,000 European cities, mainly in East Central Europe, around 1500, was based on the privileges of Otto the Great and his successors Otto II and Otto III and was also able to have such a resounding effect thanks to the charisma of the archbishopric.

Even after the end of the archbishopric and despite the destruction of Magdeburg in the Thirty Years’ War, the city retained its central function in the following centuries, which ultimately contributed to Magdeburg becoming the capital of the newly founded federal state of Saxony-Anhalt in 1990.

Despite all the vicissitudes of history, the memory of Otto the Great and his wife Editha has been carried on from generation to generation in Magdeburg to this day, which has recently been emphatically demonstrated by the naming of the new pylon bridge over the old Elbe. The two bridge sections were given the names “Kaiser-Otto-Brücke” and “Königin-Editha-Brücke” following a survey of the population.