Margrave is the English and French form (recorded since 1551) of the German title Markgraf (from Mark "march" and Graf "count") and certain equivalent nobiliary ("princely") titles in other languages. The wife of a margrave is called a margravine or in German Markgräfin.

History

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A Markgraf, or margrave, originally functioned as the military governor of a Carolingian mark, a medieval border province. A margrave had jurisdiction over a march (German Mark), which also become known, after his title, as a margraviate or margravate, strictly speaking the correct word for his office. As outlying areas tended to have great importance to the central realms of kings and princes, and they often became larger than those nearer the interior, margraves assumed quite inordinate powers over those of other counts of a realm.

Most Marks and, consequently, their margraves had their base on the Eastern border of the Carolingian and later Holy Roman Empire; the Breton Mark on the Atlantic and the border of peninsular Britanny, and the Spanish Mark on the Muslim frontier, including what is now Catalonia, are notable exceptions.

In Central Europe, the most important provinces (so-called) became the Mark Brandenburg (the nucleus of the later Kingdom of Prussia) and the original territory of Austria; located mostly in modern Lower Austria, in Latin it was called Marchia Orientalis, the "eastern borderland" as Austria formed the eastern outpost of the Holy Roman Empire, on the border with the Magyars and the Slavs. During the 19th and 20th centuries the term was sometimes translated as Ostmark by some Germanophones, but medieval documents attest only the vernacular name Ostarrîchi. Another Mark in the south-east, Styria, still appears as Steiermark in German today. Similarly the north-west featured the "Higher March" (Hohe Mark).

Later, the title of Markgraf became hereditary and as marches went out of military history, practically sinecures (without a principality), now ranks as the equivalent of a marquess (see that article) in the British peerage.

Margravial titles in various European languages

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Languages with a specific title for the Margrave (distinct from the later Marquess, for which all have a word, if different given in parenthesis) include (but often no actual marches existed there, so it only renders foreign cases) :

• Czech Markrabě
• Danish Markgreve
• Dutch Markgraaf (alongside Markies)
• Estonian Rajakrahv
• Finnish Rajakreivi (alongside Markiisi)
• German Markgraf
• Hungarian (Mayar) őrgróf (alongside Marki)
• Icelandic Markgreifi
• Italian Margravio
• Polish Margrabia
• Portuguese Margrave (alongside Marquês)
• Swedish Markgreve
• Spanish Márgrave

Furthermore

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• Several states have had quite analogous institutions, sometimes also rendered in English as margrave. For example, on England's Celtic (Welsh and Scottish) borders, Marcher Lords were vassals of the King of England in order to help him defending and expanding his realm. Such lord's demesne was called a march. Compare Count palatine.

• The late-medieval commanders, fiefholders, of Viipuri castle in Finland, the bulwark of the then Swedish realm, at the border against Novgorod/Russia, did in practice function as a margrave and having feudal privileges, keeping all the crown's incomes from the fief to use for the defense of the realm's eastern border. Its fiefholders were (almost always) descended from, or married to, the noble family of Baat from Smalandia.

• Marggrabowa is an example of a town whose name comes from a margrave. Located in the Masurian region of East Prussia, Marggrabowa was founded in 1560 by Duke Albert of Prussia, Margrave of Brandenburg. It has since been renamed to the Polish Olecko.

• The German word Mark also has other meanings than the margrave's territorial border area, often with a territorial component, which occur far more numerously then margraviates; so its occurrence in composite placenames does not imply whether it was part of a 'margraviate' as such, although 'margrave', or Markgraf, translates as the "count of the marches", originally ruling an area on the border or outlying area of a larger feudal state. Uses of Mark in German names are commonly more local, as in the context of a Markgenossenschaft, which means a partially self-governing association of agricultural users of an area; the German name-component Mark can also be a truncated form of Markt 'market', as in the small town of Marksuhl in the Eisenach area of Thuringia, meaning 'market town on the river Suhl'. The non-margavial origin even applies to the countship of Mark (near Dortmund) and the country of Denmark (meaning 'march of the Danes', in the sense of border area, and yet never under a Margrave).

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