- published: 14 Feb 2016
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Swabia (sometimes Suabia or Svebia) (German: Schwaben, colloquially also Schwabenland or Ländle) is a cultural, historic and linguistic region in southwestern Germany.
Like many cultural regions of Europe, Swabia's borders are not clearly defined. However, today it is normally thought of as comprising the former German state of Württemberg (with the Prussian Hohenzollern Province) and the administrative region of Bavarian Swabia.
In the Middle Ages, the term Swabia indicated a larger area, covering all the lands associated with the Frankish stem duchy of Alamannia stretching from the Vosges Mountains in the west to the broad Lech river in the east: This also included the region of Alsace and the later Margraviate of Baden on both sides of the Upper Rhine Valley, as well as modern German-speaking Switzerland, the Austrian state of Vorarlberg and the Principality of Liechtenstein in the south.
2,000 years ago, the Suebi or Suevi were an Elbe Germanic tribe whose origin was near the Baltic Sea, which was thus known to the Romans as the Mare Suebicum (today, the term "Swabian Sea" is applied to Lake Constance). They migrated to the southwest, becoming part of the Alamannic confederacy. The Alamanni were ruled by independent kings throughout the 4th and 5th centuries. Also, a number of Suevi (20,000-50,000) reached the Iberian Peninsula under king Hermeric and established an independent kingdom in 410 in what is now northern Portugal, Galicia, and western regions of Asturias and most of León (in northwest Spain). Their kingdom was known as Galliciense Regnum and endured until 585. Its political center was Braccara Augusta (present-day Braga, Portugal).