I love his books, and I think the one is my favorite. ( )

After Charlemagne's empire was split between his three grandsons by the Treaty of Verdun in 843, East Francia and West Francia went on to a fairly well-defined existence as recognisable, long-term geopolitical entities: The Holy Roman Empire and France, respectively. But the middle bit, which went to Lothar, had a much more complicated story.

The wide stripe of northern Europe running roughly along the Rhine from Switzerland to the Low Countries has been fought over, bartered, seized, inherited, passed on by marriage, and just plain mislaid so many times and in so many different and ingenious combinations over the intervening 1100 years that poor old Lothar is now remembered only in the traditional name of a region of north-east France around Metz and Nancy that isn't even a formal administrative region any more (it has been swallowed up in something called Grand Est). And of course, that makes it a historian's dream, to the extent that Simon Winder has to keep on apologising for all the marvellous and improbable anecdotes he has had to miss out of this packed but enjoyably random and subjective account of its history from "earliest times" to 1945.

Although Winder has an impressive bibliography and is conscientious about getting things right, this isn't the first book you would go to for serious history of the region: it unashamedly misses out all the boring detail of wars and genealogies and political negotiations and focusses instead on the good stories (there's a lot more on Neutral Moresnet and Mömpelgard than on the Thirty Years War). He spends much more time than a scholar would allow on his own subjective experiences of wandering around the places where these things all happened, too, and that often produces good, if irrelevant, anecdotes. All that does make it rather fun to read, as long as you are fairly tolerant of a certain kind of schoolmasterly English flippancy (Winder isn't a schoolmaster, he's a publisher, but he's obviously spent too much time around schoolmasters at some point in his life, as most of us have...). I enjoyed it, but I'm sure some people would find it maddening. ( )

Lotharingia: reisgids langs een historische breuklijn

Na de dood van Karel de Grote viel zijn rijk uit elkaar. Zijn kleinzoons verdeelden het in drieën en vervolgens werd het middelste gedeelte nog eens een keer in stukken geknipt. Het noordelijke deel kwam in 855 in handen van hertog Lotharius II. Zijn hertogdom omvatte Noordoost Frankrijk tot aan Zwitserland, het gebied tussen Schelde en Rijn in Nederland en België en in Duitsland onder meer de steden Aken, Keulen, Koblenz en Trier.

Al snel werd het hertogdom prooi van de twee belangrijkste restanten van het rijk van Karel de Grote: Frankrijk en het Duitse rijk. Maar de titel ‘hertog van Lotharingen’ bleef prestigieus. En natuurlijk is het nog steeds een bekende streek in het noord-oosten van Frankrijk.

De grote centra van de macht in Europa bevonden zich steeds buiten het oude Lotharingen en door de eeuwen heen werden er talloze oorlogen uitgevochten.

Lotharinghia is het derde deel van de trilogie van de Britse schrijver Simon Winder. Eerder verschenen van hem Germania en Danubia. Zijn invalshoek in origineel: meestal wordt geschiedenis geschreven vanuit de centra van de macht. Het voormalige Lotharingen is juist een gebied dat verscheurd en verwoest werd door de ambities van machthebbers elders.

Hoewel, op den duur ontstonden er in het gebied twee machtsfactoren van belang. In het zuiden Zwitserland, dat eeuwenlang zijn onafhankelijkheid en neutraliteit wist te handhaven. En in het noorden Nederland, dat als de Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Nederlanden even een wereldmacht was.

Het is altijd aardig om te zien hoe een buitenlander tegen de Nederlandse geschiedenis aankijkt: zijn Britse publiek weet nu waarom het Nederlands elftal in het oranje speelt. Maar je kunt hem ook op foutjes betrappen. Per trein op weg naar Dordrecht ziet hij als hij over het Hollands Diep gaat de toren van de Grote Kerk van Dordrecht. Dat kan niet: zijn herinnering voegt die tocht waarschijnlijk samen met een treinrit over de Oude Maas. En hij heeft het over de ‘Spaanse Poort’ in Breda: het Spanjaardsgat lost in translation.

Over Breda schrijft hij verder: ’Toen ik op een dag ver buiten het centrum van Breda verdwaald raakte, maakte ik er een spoedcursus in de smaakvolle, verwrongen en gevarieerde Nederlandse architectuur van na 1918 van. In die tijd was de donkere baksteen populair en daarvan werden huizen met rare schoorstenen, karaktervol bewerkte buitenportalen en zonderlinge ramen gebouwd.’ Je vraagt je af waar hij heeft rondgedwaald. De Ginnekenweg? De Baronielaan?

Hij is hoe dan ook ongetwijfeld in Breda geweest. De grootste kwaliteit van het boek is namelijk de reislust die het etaleert. Winder is als een reisleider die in hoog tempo allerlei feiten en namen uitstrooit over zijn toehoorders die hem soms met moeite kunnen volgen. Het is dan ook goed dat de vertalers hier en daar uitleg geven.

Je merkt dat Winder het jammer vindt dat zijn boek af is. Nu heeft hij geen aanleiding meer om al die plaatsen die hij beschrijft te bezoeken. Zijn enthousiasme is zo groot dat de lezer zin krijgt om zelf eens naar plaatsen als Calais of Doornik te gaan. Om Mechelen te bekijken met zijn ogen of om in Lille te gaan zien of de schilderijen die hij noemt echt zo lelijk zijn. Winder zelf zal ongetwijfeld weer een aanleiding vinden om op reis te gaan. En het zal weer een inspirerend boek opleveren.

A look at the history of what was once the middle part of Charles the Great's great kingdom of the early medieval era, more or less being the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, eastern France, Switzerland and western Germany. The history is nicely done, but the author does have a tendency to trip over himself with a lot of alleged humour about himself and his family that gets very cutesy and boring after a time. Luckily for him, the sheer interest of what he's writing about carries it through. Were it not for that... ( )

By the time Charlemagne died in 814, he had united most of western and central Europe into a vast (for the time) political entity that became known as the Holy Roman Empire. How the Empire was to be ruled after his death was not immediately apparent. His progeny (and others) squabbled over control until coming to an agreement in the Treaty of Verdun in 843, whereby the Empire was divided into three roughly equal parts, divided along north-south axes, each to be ruled by one of the great man’s surviving grandsons.

The westernmost domaine was granted to Charles the Bald and was called West Francia; it corresponded roughly to modern day France, and became and remained pretty much united over the centuries. The easternmost domain was granted to Louis the German and was designated as East Francia. It corresponded roughly to modern day Germany and Austria, but was not effectively united until the 19th century.

The third, middle area, called Middle Francia, was granted to Charlemagne’s eldest grandson, Lothair I. It corresponded to modern Belgium, Holland, Western Germany, Eastern France, Northern Italy, and Switzerland. It proved to be exceeding difficult to govern, right from the beginning. Not only did it lack prominent physical boundaries, but it was troubled by civil war, Viking raids in the north, and Saracen raids in the south. Lothair’s son, Lothair II, took over the kingdom in 855 at his father’s death. What was left of the kingdom became known as Lotharingia. Scholars claim the kingdom was named for Lothair II, but from my coign of vantage, it could have been named after either Lothair. In any event, the name of the kingdom dropped the “i” in “Lothair” for reasons I have not bothered to ascertain.

Control of various parts of Lotharingia fluctuated between the growing French state to the west, the Holy Roman Empire (principally under the Hapsburg family) to the east, numerous counts and dukes (principally the Dukes of Burgundy) somewhere in the middle, and frequent interventions from Spain (again, from the Hapsburgs). The story is much too convoluted (with far too many men named Charles) to keep straight or to summarize, but Simon Winder has attempted to construct a coherent narrative about the complex history of this important, but never unified, stretch of territory, the map of which he describes as looking “like a jigsaw a dog had tried to swallow and then thrown up.”

Winder’s approach to writing history is a cross between that of an academician and a stand-up comic. But what a fun way to (sort of) learn history (or something resembling it) . Lotharingia is Winder’s latest romp through European history; his previous books in this vein were Danubia and Germania, each a very entertaining mix of travelogue and collection of historical anecdotes.

In this book, Winder tackles twelve centuries of European history focused on a geographical subset that never did become, but maybe could have become, a country.

Winder sprinkles his account with his own reminiscences, and impressions of the area’s art, music, and architecture. For example:

"Perhaps the only poignant feature of the halls is the way that they accidentally preserve the bottoms of various models obliged to shiver for hours pretending to be a goddess or classical heroine or one of the Arts. . . . And how startling it would be to find an elaborate sculpture of a nymph on her way to the bath, with a sensible gown on and a little basket for her shampoo, rather than being ‘surprised’ in the bath in a skittish naked pose."

Except for the occasional cultural interlude, the story of Lotharingia is a long series of shuffling of control of various areas, either through warfare or the vagaries of dynastic succession. But after describing the horrors of the two world wars of the 20th century, Winder ends on an optimistic note with the formation of the European Union. He concludes:

It will not surprise the reader that I think of this in terms of Lotharingia. The six Lotharingian or part-Lotharingian successor states—the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Germany and Italy—having been beaten to the ground by the horrors of nationalism and ideology decided to stop any further enmity by joining together. They would go on to make three core Lotharingian cities into their capitals: Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg. In addition the Charlemagne Prize was set up by the City of Aachen to be awarded to whoever its judges viewed as contributing most to the promotion of unity in Europe. And that is probably as good a place as any to end."

Discussion: While this book is informative and entertaining, I have two complaints.

My first is that it is rather difficult to keep track of the dramatis personae, especially with no chart or timeline provided by the author. Not only are there such names to keep track of as Philip the Good, Philip the Handsome, Philip the Bold, and Philip the Fair, among other Philips, but also Charles the Bold, and Charles the Bald, and Charles from I through X, with at least a couple of numerical repetitions. For example, there was a Charles III “The Fat,” and a Charles III “The Simple.” There were three Charles IVs, two Charles Vs, two Charles VIs, and so on through the numbers. Henrys and Louis’s are also well-represented. (Louis "the Child" was crowned at age six. I'm not sure how descriptive the other epithets are. One wonders in particular about "Arnulf the Bad." Googling images of "Philip the Handsome" leads one to question the whole process. At any rate, it makes the story difficult to follow.)

My second complaint is that Winder spends a lot of time analyzing famous (and not so famous) paintings, but does not include pictures of them. It can be a bit annoying to read his observations about the paintings without being able to view them. On the other hand, he does include several very good maps—and he is right about the jigsaw puzzle and the dog (see paragraph 4, above).

Evaluation: Winder’s knowledge of the history of Europe is impressive, and he is a good raconteur with a nice sense of humor. While I did not enjoy this book as much as either Danubia or Germania, this quirky book contains a lot of factual information as well as an often delightful and decidedly unique guide to the region and its history. ( )