Letter: What's the name (1977)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard 

What's the name

I noticed in the article “Queen Capital’s Jubilee” (April SS) that you refer to the future King George V as George Wettin. I am curious as to where this name originates. I was told it should really be Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Did the writer of the 1911 article make a mistake which you have followed, or was he really George Wettin? I am writing on behalf of other people besides myself who are curious about this.

F. S., Newcastle 

(name & address supplied)

Reply:

Your letter raises a very interesting point.

The name Wettin goes back in European kingship to the year 997. Frederick, one of the two sons of Dietrich, received lands taken from the Wends, including the county of Gau of Wettin on the bank of the Saale. A succession of kings added to these lands. Thimo (1104), cousin of Henry I, built a castle at Wettin and he was called by this name. In 1288 the county, town and castle of Wettin were sold to the archbishop of Magdeburg and later incorporated in the kingdom of Prussia.

By the time of Frederick the Warlike (1381-1428) the lands of the Wettins stretched from the Oder to the Werra and from the Erzgebirge to the Harz mountains. It is from the son of Frederick that two branches of the family descend, the Ernestine and Albertine. To the former belong the dukes of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. The kings of other European countries came from this line, including Belgium from 1831 and Great Britain from 1901.

Source of information: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 23 o. 551.

Editors.