The Brizani are said to be the Slavic tribe of the Prignitz and the area around Havelberg. Anyone looking for them finds a surprise: the great chroniclers of the 10th and 11th centuries do not know the name, and in the literature it appears chiefly in Helmold of Bosau in the 12th century. This article sets out what is secure on the Havel, what comes only from overview accounts, and where interpretation begins.
Brizani, in the spelling of specialist literature also Brežane or Brisani, is the name of a Polabian Slavic tribe placed in the area around Havelberg and in the Prignitz, that is, in the north-west of present-day Brandenburg, where the Havel turns west and north and runs into the Elbe. That is the core the usual overviews give, the German Wikipedia as well as the lists of Slavic tribes. Even here caution is called for: the lists give the Brizani the date "12th century" and cite no source for it. That is remarkable, for it means that by this classification the name does not date from the Ottonian period but from a time when the land had long come under German and Christian pressure.
The tribe is usually connected with the landscape between the Elbe, Havel, Dosse and Stepenitz, with Havelberg as its most important place. That it therefore does not simply cover the whole area of the later Prignitz is shown by a cross-check: for the same region the overviews name other groups, the Linones on the Elbe and Löcknitz, the Dossani in the north-east and the Neletici in the south at the mouth of the Havel. The name Brizani thus does not stand alone, and it does not stand for a clearly delimited tribal territory. That is the starting point of this article: we ask what place the name has in the sources, and leave open how much tribe lies behind it.
For orientation: to the east lie the Hevelli, who appear in the sources also as Stodorani, and to the north-east and north the network of the Wilzi and the Liutizi confederation. How the Brizani relate to them is the real point of dispute. It cannot be answered in one sentence.
The most secure find for the name is the Chronicle of the Slavs by Helmold of Bosau, whose first book was written, by common account, around 1163 to 1168 at Bosau on the Plön lake. The priest Helmold wrote in Holstein and described chiefly the world of the Abodrites and Wagrians, that is, the north. The Havel lay far from his view. Nevertheless he names the Brizani. The notes to Francis Joseph Tschan's English translation record that Helmold mentions the Brizani and the Stoderani in chapters 37 and 89 of the first book. A chapter overview on a private website summarises chapter 37 as follows: the Abodrite prince Henry besieges, with Saxon help, the Slavic stronghold of Havelberg, his son Mstivoj defeats the Linogi, and the Brizani and Stoderani submit.
Henry besieges Havelberg with the help of the Saxons; his son Mstivoj defeats the Linones, and the Brizani and Stoderani submit.Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum I, 37; paraphrase after a chapter summary, not after the Latin wording, which we have not checked
In our examination the passage yields no more than this sentence. The dating is difficult; Tschan's note places Mstivoj, the son of Prince Henry, at "1112 (?)", with a question mark. We take that as a frame of the early 1110s to the 1120s, not as a certain year. Two things matter for our question. First: the Brizani stand here beside the Stodorani, that is, beside the name the sources know for the Hevelli. They are not equated with them but named as a separate entity. Second: it is a second-hand report, written down almost half a century after the events and far from the place. It shows that the name was known in Holstein in the 12th century. It does not show what the Brizani called themselves or how far their land extended.
The remark that Henry besieges Havelberg is also instructive for the picture of the region. The Abodrites, the Slavs on the Baltic coast, intervene here in the Havel area. More about them is in our article on the Obodrites. For the Prignitz the passage shows that in the early 12th century it was a target and plaything of neighbouring powers, before the Wendish Crusade of 1147 and the Ascanians arrived.
One would expect that the Ottonian period, in which Havelberg first made the headlines, would have named the tribe. It does not. Widukind of Corvey, who wrote his History of the Saxons around 967 to 973, knows the Hevelli. He reports King Henry I's winter campaign against them in 928/929 and, later, Tugumir, the Hevellian prince who is said to have killed his nephew, ruler of the Brennaburg, after being bribed with much money. The stronghold fell back to the Hevelli around 940. This is how the commentary on the Tractatus sources by the Historical Commission of Berlin reports it; we have not checked Widukind's Latin text ourselves.
Thietmar of Merseburg, bishop and chronicler, wrote between 1012 and 1018. In an English translation of Books I to IV, which we searched, Brizani, Brisani, Brezane and the Prignitz are entirely absent. What one reads there is the land of the Hevelli, which is also called Stoderania; an army is said to have marched there in 997. That is, in Thietmar's Books I to IV, the pointer to the Havel region. For the uprising of 983 the same version reports the murder of the garrison and the destruction of the cathedral at Havelberg. The tribe that lived there is given no name.
This is a finding. For the period up to 1018 the texts we looked through do not speak of Brizani, but do speak of Hevelli, Stoderania and Havelberg. That the name Brizani is not attested in this period does not mean that the people did not exist. It means only that the chroniclers listed them under other names or did not name them at all. Which names those were cannot be decided, and whoever decides is interpreting.
What is secure on the Havel hangs on one place: Havelberg. By the usual reading Otto I founded the bishopric of Havelberg in 946 or 948; the year varies in the literature, and the German Wikipedia adds an "allegedly" to the foundation. On 29 June 983 Slavic groups attacked the episcopal see, the uprising of the Polabian Slavs pushed German rule back in the region, and Havelberg was lost. Until the Wendish Crusade of 1147 the place remained, according to an older reference work, the main seat of the Brizani. This attribution is a later reading; it rests on Helmold and on the link of the name with the place, not on a passage that expressly said "Havelberg, seat of the Brizani."
Archaeologically the situation is more sober. Two strongholds are described at Havelberg. The small rampart site south-east of the old town, at the Aderlanke, was originally round with a diameter of about 80 metres and is regarded as the seat of a Slavic petty ruler; it is dated from the late 9th to the 11th century and was damaged by the straightening of the Havel in the 1930s. The large rampart site lies about five kilometres east of the old town in the Havel lowland, oval, roughly 100 by 75 metres on a small sand island; according to this account it was built in the 11th century and abandoned in the 12th. On the town island a town-like settlement from the 11th century is also inferred from excavated timber houses. These details come from a local presentation (a Havelberg cycle-route portal) and are secondary; we have not seen the excavation reports.
The finding fits what is known of the Havel region: waterlogged lowlands, island strongholds, settlements on sand. It fits a settlement area with central places. It says nothing about what the people there called themselves. The same presentation names as the bearers of the settlement "the Nielitizi, later Brizani" since the 7th century, without giving a written source. This is an interpretation offered by local research. The name Neletici also occurs in the literature on the Prignitz, but there at the mouth of the Havel in the south, which is a further reason to leave the assignment open.
A side glance at older scholarship is interesting: in the notes of Tschan's translation of Helmold, Havelberg is described as a principal town of the Hevelli. Anyone who takes the assignment seriously thus sees two positions side by side, the place as seat of the Brizani and the place as a Hevellian site. The side-by-side is itself evidence of how thin the source situation is.
The Prignitz is the area one first connects with the Brizani. The name of the landscape itself is young: as its earliest documentary use the literature gives a charter of the "False Waldemar" of 1349. Whoever speaks of the "tribe of the Prignitz" transfers a late medieval land name to the early Middle Ages. The region was later divided between the March of Brandenburg and the prince-bishopric of Havelberg.
For the Slavic period the overviews name several groups in the Prignitz. The Linones on the Elbe and Löcknitz are considered the first attested in writing, namely in 808. The Dossani are named in 946; the overview refers for this to the bishopric of Havelberg. Lenzen on the Elbe is mentioned as a Slavic stronghold in 929, the year in which, according to the overviews, Henry I won a victory over Slavic forces nearby. By comparison the name of the Brizani comes late. It stands in the series of names that move to the fore with the end of the Ottonian period, when the chroniclers of the 12th century describe the structure of the land.
One can read it like this: either Brizani designates an association that emerged from earlier groups such as the Linones, Dossani or Neletici, or it is a collective name that later observers used for the people around Havelberg. Both are hypotheses. No source says how the units were related. Whoever arranges the Prignitz groups as "sub-tribes of the Brizani", as some popular accounts do, goes beyond what is documented.
The Hevelli are the better attested neighbour. The German Wikipedia gives as their earliest mention the Bavarian Geographer around 845, which lists them as "Hehfeldi"; dating and reading of that list are disputed. The episode of the Brennaburg and the Havel tribes in Widukind supplies further steps, and Thietmar knows Stoderania as the land of the Hevelli. More on this is in our articles on the Hevelli and the Stodorani.
The Liutizi confederation arose after the Slavic uprising of 983, when tribes of the Wilzi joined together to shake off German rule. Which groups belonged to it is, in the sources, a matter of counting: Redarii, Tollensians, Kessinians and Circipanians are regarded as core tribes. The land of the Hevelli and the Prignitz are mostly seen at the edge or outside. Where exactly the Brizani stood we do not know. In Thietmar the Liutizi are mentioned when fighting takes place in the vicinity of Brandenburg (995, according to the English translation); whether Brizani were also meant, the texts do not reveal. We therefore have no basis for assigning the Brizani to the Liutizi confederation. Equally, there is none for expressly excluding them.
As a working picture there remains: Helmold names the Brizani beside the Stodorani, not among them. They lie spatially between the Hevelli in the east, the Liutizi in the north and the Elbe in the west. Whether they belonged to the Liutizi in the 10th century, were part of the Hevellian sphere of power in the 11th, or always remained an association of their own, remains unresolved. Our articles on the Liutizi and the Wilzi show how fluid such boundaries are in the sources.
The Wendish Crusade of 1147 is the event in which the Brizani last appear in the overviews as actors or as those affected. At the Imperial Diet of Frankfurt in March 1147 the Second Crusade was discussed; Saxons and other princes turned instead against the Slavic pagans in the north. Margrave Albert the Bear marched in July 1147 from Magdeburg via Havelberg to Demmin. The English Wikipedia writes that he recovered Havelberg, which had been lost since the uprising of 983.
The Brizani and the Rezani, according to the German Wikipedia, Albert "apparently" subdued already during this crusade. The word "apparently" signals that this is an inference: the article names no explicit source for the subjugation, and there is no footnote. That Albert's territory later comprised the Havelland, the Zauche, the Brizani area around Havelberg and the Rezani area on the upper Havel is regarded as a deduction from later history of rule. The Rezani are not otherwise a subject of our articles; we take their location on the upper Havel from the cited account alone.
The overall result of the crusade is described as mixed. The hope of mass conversion or destruction of the Wends was not fulfilled, the siege of Demmin failed, and part of the army was diverted towards Pomerania. For the Havel region, however, 1147 meant the entry of the Ascanians. In the same decade Pribislav-Henry, the last prince of the Hevelli, died in 1150, and Albert took over the Brandenburg, which he finally kept in 1157 after an interlude with a certain Jaxa. Albert still witnessed the consecration of the Havelberg cathedral in 1170; he died in the same year.
For Pribislav-Henry the English Wikipedia rests on a single footnote; Helmold is not named there. How the Brizani stood towards this prince is not recorded. The German Wikipedia notes in its short Brizani article that their ruler had previously adopted Christianity before Albert the Bear conquered their territory. This is the only statement about a Brizani ruler that we find, and it carries no source reference that we could verify.
Brizani is the Latinised form of Brežane. Slavic names in -ane often mean "the people of …", and Brež- recalls Slavic *breg, "bank, shore". On that reading the Brežane would be "shore people" or "people on the bank", which would fit a people on the Havel and the Elbe very well. This is a common interpretation of the name which we cannot document from any source; it is a linguistic conjecture that fits the location but may just as well be a coincidence of sound. Whoever presents it as fact invents a proof.
One more warning belongs here: names such as Brizani or Hevelli arise partly in the sources, not in the villages. The chroniclers ordered the land according to what they heard from merchants, missionaries and commanders. A tribe in such reports is often a name given by outsiders, not a people that understood itself uniformly in that way. For the Brizani this means: the name shows that contemporaries of the 12th century knew a group in the Havelberg and Prignitz area and called it so. It does not show that a uniform tribe lived there.
Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt recall this period above all in the terrain. The Havelberg cathedral on the hill above the Havel, consecrated in 1170, stands on a site already settled in Slavic times. In the Prignitz many places bear Slavic names, and the lowlands of the Havel, Dosse and Stepenitz still shape the landscape. The Wendish period is not a distant footnote here but lies beneath the fields that are farmed today. Strongholds like those at Havelberg are recognisable in the terrain as low rises or rings, once one knows them.
For us, a family workshop from Alsdorf, this is a reason to stay honest. We like to engrave motifs from the history of northern Germany on dark natural slate, but we claim no more than the sources bear. Anyone who would like to put a piece of the Havelland or the Prignitz in stone will find in our laser-engraved slate plates a surface that renders maps, place names and coats of arms sharply. With custom engraving we also set names, places and dates belonging to a family story from this area.
Secure are Havelberg as a bishop's seat, the attack of 983 and the recovery in the Wendish Crusade of 1147. Secure is that there were Slavic strongholds of the 9th to 12th centuries at Havelberg. Secure is that Helmold in the 12th century names the Brizani beside the Stodorani. Not secure is that this was an old tribe with continuous identity, that it belonged to the Liutizi confederation or to the Hevelli, or that the Prignitz was its territory. The question of assignment posed in this article cannot, on the sources accessible to us, be answered at present.
The Hevelli · The Stodorans · The Liutizi · The Wilzi · The Abodrites.
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