Zähringen, House of

The Swiss plateau by 1200 comprises the dominions of the houses of Savoy, Zähringen, Habsburg, and Kyburg.

Some regions (Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, later known as Waldstätten) are accorded the Imperial immediacy to grant the empire direct control over the mountain passes.

Freiburg im Breisgau, the capital and free-market town of the Breisgau area, is established by the Duke of Zahringen in 1120 on the Dreisam River at the western edge of the Black Forest, about ninety-five miles (one hundred fifty kilometers) southwest of modern Stuttgart.

Berthold V, duke of Zahringen, had at the beginning of his reign in 118 reduced the power of the Burgundian nobles and settled the Bernese Oberland and the area of Lucerne.

As a result, he has enlarged Thun and ...

...founds Bern in 1191.

Located in northwestern Switzerland on the Aare River, about sixty miles (ninety-five kilometers) southwest of Zurich, Bern will become the focus of Berthold’s expansionism.

Freiburg im Breisgau begins construction of its Freiburg Münster cathedral, initially in the Romanesque style, on the site of an older parish church under the rule of Berthold V, the last duke of Zähringen.

Numbering approximately six thousand people in 1200, Freiburg was ounded in 1120 by Konrad and Duke Berthold III of Zähringen as a free market town: Frei means "free", and Burg, like the modern English word "borough", is used at this time for an incorporated city or town, usually one with some degree of autonomy.

As the German word Burg also means "a fortified town", as in Hamburg, it is likely that this town, strategically located at a junction of trade routes between the Mediterranean Sea and the North Sea regions, and the Rhine and Danube rivers, is a "fortified town of free citizens".

 

Zurich becomes an Imperial immediacy (Reichsunmittelbar or Imperial free city) in 1218 with the extinction of the main line of the Zähringer family and attains a status comparable to statehood.

Bern, founded in 1191 by Berthold V, Duke of Zähringen, is made a free imperial city by the Goldene Handfeste of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in 1218 after after Berthold dies without an heir.

The Kyburg dynasty falls in 1264 with the extinction of its male line the previous year.

The Habsburgs under King Rudolph I (Holy Roman Emperor in 1273) now lay claim to the Kyburg lands and annex them, extending their territory to the eastern Swiss plateau

The Old Swiss Confederacy is an alliance among the valley communities of the central Alps.

The Confederacy facilitates management of common interests and ensures peace on the important mountain trade routes.

The Federal Charter of 1291 agreed between the rural communes of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden is considered the confederacy's founding document, even though similar alliances are likely to have existed decades earlier.

The three original cantons had joined with the cantons of Glarus and Zug and the Lucerne, Zürich and Bern city states by 1353 to form the "Old Confederacy" of eight states that will exist until the end of the 15th century.

The expansion leads to increased power and wealth for the confederation.