Saxony, any of several major territories in German history. It has been applied: (1) before 1180 ce, to an extensive far-north German region including Holstein but lying mainly west and southwest of the estuary and lower course of the Elbe River; (2) between 1180 and 1423, to two much smaller and widely separated areas, one on the right (east) bank of the lower Elbe southeast of Holstein, the other on the middle Elbe; and (3) between 1423 and 1952, to a large central German region with its principal axis even farther up the Elbe and including, in the widest sense, all the country from Thuringia to Lusatia, bordering Bohemia (now in the Czech Republic).
Before 1180 the name Saxony was applied to the territory conquered between about 200 and 700 ce by the Germanic Saxon tribe. This territory included Holstein and the area west of the lower Elbe River, in what is now the German Land (state) of Lower Saxony. From there the Saxons expanded westward by sea to Britain in the 5th century. In the late 8th century the Saxons were conquered and Christianized by the Frankish ruler Charlemagne. In 843 Saxony became part of the East Frankish, or German, kingdom.
By the early 10th century Saxony had emerged as a hereditary duchy under the Liudolfing dynasty, and in 919 Duke Henry of Saxony was elected German king. He founded the Saxon, or Ottonian, dynasty, which held the German crown until 1024. (See Saxon dynasty.) Under the Ottonians, the Germans advanced eastward into Slavic territory.
In 961 the Saxon ducal title was transferred to the Billung family, which held it until 1106. The duchy thereafter passed to Henry III the Lion of the house of Welf in 1142. When Henry the Lion was outlawed by the Holy Roman emperor Frederick I Barbarossa in 1180, the duchy was broken up, and only two small and widely separated territories retained the Saxon name: Saxe-Lauenburg, southeast of Holstein, and Saxe-Wittenberg, along the middle Elbe (now north of Leipzig). Both territories were united under the Ascanian family until 1260, when two separate Ascanian dynasties emerged. From the mid-13th century, the duke of Saxony was recognized as an imperial elector (a prince with the right to participate in choosing the Holy Roman emperor); a dispute over this right between the two branches was settled in favour of the Wittenberg branch in 1356. The Lauenburg line survived until 1689, after which its lands were absorbed by Hanover.
When the Wittenberg line became extinct in 1422, the duchy and electorate of Saxony was bestowed on Frederick I the Warlike, margrave of Meissen and a member of the house of Wettin, and the name Saxony was then applied to all the Wettin possessions, including Osterland (the area around Leipzig) and large portions of Lusatia and Thuringia. Following Frederick’s death (1428) the Wettins disputed the division of the inheritance; in 1485 Albert and Ernest, the sons of Frederick II (d. 1464), by the Treaty of Leipzig, arranged what came to be a permanent division between the Albertine (eastern) and Ernestine (western) Saxon lands. Albert’s lands comprised the margravate of Meissen (with Dresden as his capital) and northern Thuringia. (For information about the western lands, see Saxon duchies.)
In the 16th century the Albertine line acquired the electorate and won territory from the Ernestines in Thuringia and Wittenberg. The electors Henry (d. 1541) and Maurice (d. 1553) adopted Lutheranism. Augustus (reigned 1553–86) codified Albertine Saxony’s laws and made the capital, Leipzig, a centre of commerce and the arts. John George I (reigned 1611–56) headed the organization of German Protestant princes during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), but from this period Albertine Saxony was increasingly overshadowed by Brandenburg-Prussia as the leading state of Protestant Germany. In 1697 Elector Frederick Augustus I (reigned 1694–1733) became king of Poland (as Augustus II), initiating an economically draining bond between Saxony and the declining Polish kingdom that lasted until 1768.
Napoleon conquered Saxony in 1806 and made it a kingdom. It was thereafter one of his most loyal allies, and, after his overthrow, its territory was greatly reduced by the victorious powers at the Congress of Vienna (1814–15). Prussia acquired Wittenberg, Torgau, northern Thuringia, and most of Lusatia, which became the Prussian province of Saxony; the truncated kingdom of Saxony became a member of the German Confederation.
As a result of uprisings in 1830, a constitution was granted in the kingdom in 1831. King Frederick Augustus II (reigned 1836–54) was deposed by a revolutionary uprising in 1848 but was restored to power by Prussian troops a week later. In 1871 the kingdom became part of the new German Empire. The Social Democrats became a potent political force in Saxony as industrialization increased in the following decades. Saxony’s monarchy was abolished after Germany’s defeat in World War I (1918), and Saxony adopted a republican constitution as a free state under the Weimar Republic (1919–33). The territory continued to exist as a Land (state) under Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich (1933–45) and the German Democratic Republic until 1952, when it was abolished as a formal territory. Saxony Land was re-created in 1990 in the process of the unification of East with West Germany.