Margraviate of Moravia

The Margraviate of Moravia was a crown land of the Bohemian monarchy that existed from 1182 until 1918. Emperor Frederick Barbarossa created it by combining the Premyslid appanages of Brno, Olomouc and Znojmo and granting them to Conrad II Otto. Moravia lay east of Bohemia, bordered by the Sudeten mountains, the Carpathians and the Thaya river, and was usually held by a junior member of the ruling dynasty. After the Premyslids died out, the House of Luxembourg ruled both lands; Jobst of Moravia governed autonomously and was even elected King of the Romans in 1410. The margraviate was ravaged by the Hussite Wars, occupied by Matthias Corvinus in 1469, and passed with Bohemia to the Habsburgs in 1526. From 1599 to 1711 it suffered repeated Ottoman and Tatar raids. In the nineteenth century it was a Habsburg crown land with its own diet, a mixed Czech and German population and the industrial cities of Brno and Ostrava. It was transformed into Moravia Land when Czechoslovakia was founded in 1918, and its autonomy was abolished by the communist government in 1949.