Berlin History: Jacza and the Bear

Posted by Torben

This late 19th century monument to Albert the Bear shows him as a crusader bringing the true faith to the pagan Slavic peoples of Brandenburg. It's in the Spandau Citadel. Photo by Lienhard Schulz, distributed under CC BY-SA 3.0 license.

The Slavic prince Jacza of Köpenick had been defeated in battle and was on the run, with Albert the Bear and his Saxon German followers in hot pursuit. They drove him to the banks of the Havel River at modern-day Gatow in western Berlin. Jacza's only option was to ride out into the water or face certain slaughter. The river, however, was deep, and slowly pulled Jacza and his horse under. He prayed to Triglav, one of the gods of his people, to come to his aid. Nothing. In his desperation, he turned to the Christian God of his enemies. Immediately, as if by an invisible hand, he and his horse were drawn from the current. Jacza, safe on the opposite river bank, hung his shield on a tree and made a solemn vow to be baptized. It was the 11th of July 1157.

Thus the pulp version of the legend of the founding of the margraviate of Brandenburg, the territory of which Berlin would eventually become the capital. It neatly encapsulates the early history of this region, while sugar-coating the brutal treatment of its Slavic inhabitants at the hands of German colonizers. Nobles like Albert the Bear saw an opportunity for territorial expansion in Brandenburg, parts of which had already seen the establishment of bishoprics and been temporarily absorbed into Germany in the 10th century. The justification for war was religious; the invasion of Slavic lands was explicitly framed as a crusade. After the defeat of Jacza, the leader of one of the Slavic tribes in Brandenburg (the Sprewanen), Albert and his (German) successors were able to exert permanent political control over Brandenburg and colonize the land with farmers, craftsmen, and merchants – mainly from western Germany. The Slavic communities faced slaughter, subjugation, or assimiliation. Everyone became Christian.

Brandenburg, though a poor backwater for many centuries, became the core of a political unit that, in the guise of Prussia, would dominate the whole of Germany and much of Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1845, the Prussian king and inveterate romantic Frederick William IV commissioned the architect Friedrich August Stüler to create a monument to Jacza's conversion. After partial destruction in World War II, it again stands in Berlin's Grunewald Forest on the small Schildhorn peninsula where Jacza allegedly hung up his shield (Schild) for good.

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The 1845 Jacza monument by Friedrich August Stüler is based on a design by King Frederick William IV himself. It represents the tree on which Jacza hung his shield after being rescued from drowning by the God of his enemies. The Havel River Jacza fled across can be seen in the background.