Like the Saxons and the Bavarians, the Thuringians were among the original Germanic tribes. Unlike them, however, the Thuringian state collapsed in the 14th century and became part of Saxony. Over the following centuries, it would continuously split into ever smaller states, each with its own capital city and ruling family. Today, the legacy of the Saxon duchies means a landscape of castles and palaces.
There are two Thuringian regions in history. The first refers to the ethnolinguistic region associated with the Thuringian tribe. This region was once rather large, but it encompassed a much different area than today. Originally focused on the Thuringian Basin near the ancient capital of Eisenach, it also included all of Northern Hessen. Today this relationship can still be seen in the coat of arms for the two states. With the collapse of the Thuringian state in the 14th century, Hessen went its own way, and the Saxon Wettin dynasty took control.
The second region refers to the more modern but political region of Thuringia. Over the course of several centuries, the Wettin family would face various phases of unity and disunity, war, and conflict. During this period, the capital of Electoral Saxony moved to Leipzig, and the Saxon-Thuringian holdings fell to a cadet branch, which splintered multiple times. Many of these smaller dynasties added new lands to the Saxon realm, including the largely Franconian bits of southern Thuringia. This is why the city of Coburg today belongs to the state of Bavaria, which voted to rejoin Franconia in the 1920s.
