The north-western Slavs and the Germans
The north-western tribes played a special role in the evolution of the German nation. Large parts of the medieval German territories east of Hanover and Bamberg were originally settled by Slav-speaking peoples; in some places this remained the case up to the sixteenth century. After the confusion of the Migration Period they had helped to bring the land into cultivation, and the Frankish and Saxon feudal lords welcomed their contribution. They suffered the same oppression as Frankish, Saxon and Thuringian farmers and enjoyed the same limited rights. Hence they became amalgamated with the German nation at an early stage.
East of the Elbe-Saale, however, things were different. The tribes that were settled here fiercely resisted the attempts of the German lords to subdue them. Developments here were consequently marked by serious strife and unrest which lasted almost 400 years. It was only in the middle of the twelfth century that Slav power really collapsed between the Oder and the Elbe, and the Slav tribal rulers raid allegiance to either German or Danish lords and became their vassals and intermarried with them. The ruling family in Mecklenburg until 1918 could trace its origins back to the Slavic Obodrites. Their arms bore a bull's head, the symbol of primeval force and fertility.
The ordinary people, who had to bear the burden of these wars, had developed the land, in some areas to a high degree of efficiency. From the twelfth century, however, farmers from Flanders, Saxony, Frankonia and Thuringia settled in and around their villages. Although often under great stress, the two elements gradually merged, and new German tribes such as Mecklenburgers, Pomeranians, Brandenburgers and 'new' Saxons emerged from this process of assimilation.
This historic Slav settlement is reflected even today by the many Slav place-names both in the land of the Wends around Hanover but above all to the east of the Elbe-Saale line. About half the villages in the German Democratic Republic trace their origin back to the period of Slav settlement and bear Slav names. The same is true of the towns - Schwerin, Rostock, Leipzig, Dresden, Brandenburg and Berlin-Spandau all originated in the Slav period and formed the nucleus of later medieval towns. The ethnic minority known as the Sorbs, distant descendants of the tribe of the Sorbs mentioned as living in the Elbe-Saale region by a Frankish chronicle in 630, still live in the Ober-and-Niederlausitz area in the midst of a German-speaking neighborhood.