Mittelbrigidna

Mittelbrigidna, meaning Middle Brigidna, is a Geinic name for Central Brigidna. The term has acquired diverse cultural, political and historical connotations.

Mittelbrigidna also gives name to a political movement, known as Mittelbrigidnaism, which was originated in the Kingdom of Abdania and Mordvania. Mittelbrigidnaism aimed to create a geopolitical alliance between the Northern Brigidnan Lauren Sea nations and peoples. It was originated by Pan-Geinic Abdanian intellectuals in the late 15th century, and it has been often described as anti-Vostic, anti-Mordvanian, and anti-Ashkuban.

Origins

The term Mittelbrigidna was first used by Gottfried Hardenberg (1368-1433), an Abdanian philosopher and geographer. For Hardenberg, Mittelbrigidna was mostly an historical and geographical region, which comprised the lands from the Kingdom of Nerysia to the Viska Bay.

In the late 15th century, the term acquired more ethnocentric and political tones, and it was widely used by Abdanian nationalists such as Albrekt von Baldenberg, an Abdanian military officer and politician, who was Chief of the General Staff of the Royal Abdanian Army (1474-1481) and Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs (1463-1466). Baldenberg was impacted by the social revolution which caused the collapse of the Severyan Czardom and the creation of the Union of Socialist Republics. He feared the same could reproduce in the Abdanian Kingdom, specially through the Vostic majority, and he predicted that if such thing happened, it would likely cause the collapse of Western Brigidna and the Vostic domination over the Laurel Sea.

The Kingdom of Abdania and Mordvania, he argued, which was dominated and controlled by the Geinic Abdanian minority, was a geopolitical, existencial, and civilizational defensive barrier against the Vostic peoples. He considered the later inferior to the Geinic peoples, unable to build long-lasting institutions and naturally inclined to chaos, violence, and crime. Baldenberg was known for his reactionary and racist views, and he was forced to leave the military career during the short reign of Ekkehard III. In 1511, the then 79 years old Baldenberg, played a minor role in the military conspiration against Queen Brynja I, which deposed the Oslanburg-born monarch and ended the constitutional reforms started in early 16th century.

The aim of the Mittelbrigidnaist ideology, as exposed by Baldengerg and other Abdanian intellectuals, was to strengthen an anti-liberal and anti-socialist geopolitical alliance between the Abdanian Monarchy and the nearby kingdoms -often divided for their petty political and economic interests-, in order to weaken the Severyan Socialist Union, by supporting the non-Vostic states and peoples which lived around and within the borders of the former Severyan Czardom and its successor states.

The Mittelbrigidnan Union

For many decades, Mittelbrigidnaism remained as a forgotten idea and an eccentric ideology at best. However, the concept had a revival in the late 1560s and early 1570s, as consequence of the Mordvanian Revolution of 1566-1567 and the proclamation of the Republic of Mordvanian. Some Abdanian monarchists and ultra-nationalists saw in the political development of Mordvanian Republicanism, the militant foreign policy of the young republic and its confrontation with the military government in Kaljurand, and their involvement in the Kaljuran Civil War and the tensions with the Nerysian government as the demonstration to some of Baldenberg's theories.

One of the first person to embrace a revival of the idea of a Mittelbrigidnan alliance, this time openly anti-republican and anti-Mordvanian rather than anti-Severyane as during Baldenberg's time was Atharik Babenberg, an Abdanian nationalist who served briefly as diplomat in Nerysia during the civil war in Mordvania. Babenberg was a member of the Abdanian Monarchist Union, a far-right organization which advocated the restoration of the Abdanian monarchy in Mordvania. Babenberg, born in 1539, was killed in a terrorist attack in Silmeria, Adwest, on Tolven 1570.

Konrad von Schmidt, an Abdanian philosopher, published a short manifesto, titled "An Mittelbrigidnan Plan" (1571), in which he aimed to develop and bring up to date the core principles of the Mittelbrigidnan project. Two years later, Schmidt -along a group of Abdanian émigrés and Bunesgan nationalists- founded the Mittelbrigidnan Union, a political organization aimed to promote the Mittelbrigidnan ideology. This new political group, a rather small and loose circle of ultra-nationalist intellectuals, aimed to create a federation of Central Brigidnan countries such as Alstaria, Kaljurand, Bunesgan, and Abdania. Their goal was the dismemberment of the Republic of Mordvania, which could happen through a coup d'etat, a social revolt, or an invasion by foreign countries. However, they did not find official support for their organization and their plan, although they published several newspapers and opened offices in Nerysia, Kaljurand (until 1574), Adwest (until 1578), Oslanburg, and a short-lived one in Khibland (1572-1573).