East Frisia

King Radbod from East Frisia was widely known, who in 716 with his army stood in front of Cologne and was the only one who defeated the Frankish mayordom Karl Martell ^[2] .

In the same century, the Christianization of the region began, which at first began with very great difficulty. In 755, Saint Boniface died here by martyrdom at the hands of the frieze. In 785, Charlemagne annexed the Kingdom of the Frisians to his empire.

At the beginning of the XII century, on the border between the Saxons and the Friezes, there was Count Egilmar the First (de.Egilmar I). His nephew Christian aroused the wrath of Heinrich Leo and was forced to seek refuge in the Frisian swamps. After Leo lost his influence, the clan of Saxon counts again gained strength by the beginning of the 13th century. So Burchard of Oldenburg (de. Burchard von Oldenburg) showed himself in 1215 as an energetic leader of the crusade against the Estonians in the Baltic . Then in 1233 , having received a blessing from the pope and support from the archbishop of Bremen , he began a crusade against the Frieze-peasants. However, they showed, unlike Estamas, vigorous resistance, using a previously unknown type of weapon - the Morgenstern (a short-chain ball equipped with spikes). The count’s army suffered losses, and he himself fell in battle. The same fate befell his brother Henry. However, in the end, the colonialists prevailed and, in sign of victory, the archbishop ordered the creation of the largest church in the region.

In the 15th century, the territory of East Frisia was subordinated to the feudal lords of the Zirksen clan, who received the title of counts in 1464, and in 1662 the imperial princes of East Frisia. After the suppression of this genus in 1744, the region was annexed to Prussia .

The Tilsit world took the region from Prussia, in 1808-1810 it was part of the Dutch kingdom of Louis Bonaparte , in 1810, together with this kingdom, it became directly part of the Napoleonic empire .

The Congress of Vienna included the territory of East Frisia into the Kingdom of Hanover , after the annexation of which by Prussia in 1866, it again became part of this state.

As part of Prussia, East Frisia in 1871 became part of the German Empire .

In 1946, with the formation by the British occupation authorities in part of the Prussian territory of the new land of Lower Saxony, East Frisia became part of it.

For more than 1000 years, the inhabitants of this region fought with varying success against the advancing sea, building dams (German Deich) and building canals (German Siel) to drain the land conquered from the sea. There is an opinion that the excavation works carried out at the same time are among the most ambitious monumental buildings in human history. The implementation of these works required the collective participation of almost the entire local population. And this contributed to the emergence of a specific philosophy of life and collectivist morality. One of the local customs of the population was the walled up of living people in a dam under construction. For this purpose, prisoners or little girls stolen by them from the gypsies were used. “There must be something living in the dam” (German: “Es muss was Lebiges in der Deich”) - this was the belief of people who were forced to constantly build dam-destroyed floods. ^[3]

• List of Counts and Princes of East Frisia
• Ostfreezes

• Baedecker. Deutschland. Verlag Karl Baedeker. 2002. ISBN 3-8297-1004-6
• Schiffbau in Papenburg. Papenburg.MEYER WERFT GmbH. 03.2011. (www.meyerwerft.de)
• Roland Hanewald . Nordweeküste Niedersachsens. 5 komplett aktualisierte Auflage. 2004. ISBN 3-8317-1241-7