Diocese of Havelberg
| Bishopric of Havelberg | ||||||||||
| Bistum Havelberg | ||||||||||
| State of the Holy Roman Empire | ||||||||||
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 Coat of arms
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Lower Saxon Prince-bishoprics of Hildesheim, Halberstadt, Magdeburg and Havelberg (violet), about 1250
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| Capital |
Havelberg (from about 1325) |
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| Languages | Brandenburgisch, Polabian | |||||||||
| Government | Prince-Bishopric | |||||||||
| Historical era | Middle Ages | |||||||||
| • | Diocese founded by King Otto I | 948 | ||||||||
| • | Prince-bishopric | 1151 | ||||||||
| • | Transformed into collegiate church | 1506 | ||||||||
| • | Secularised | 1571 | ||||||||
| • | Annexed by Brandenburg | 1598 | ||||||||
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The Bishopric of Havelberg (German: Bistum Havelberg) was a Roman Catholic diocese founded by King Otto I of Germany in 946, from 968 a suffragan to the Archbishops of Magedeburg. A Prince-bishopric (Hochstift) from 1151, Havelberg as a result of the Protestant Reformation was secularised and finally annexed by the margraves of Brandenburg in 1598.
The episcopal seat was in Havelberg near the confluence of the Elbe and Havel rivers. The bishopric roughly covered the western Prignitz region, between the Altmark in the west and the Brandenburgian core territory in the east. While the episcopal territory was supervised by nine Archdeacons (Pröpste), the bishop's—considerably smaller—secular estates were subdivided into four Ämter:
King Henry the Fowler in 929 marched against the Polabian Slavs settling east of the Elbe River and defeated them in a battle near Lenzen. Occupying the eastern riverbank, Henry had a fortification built on a hill above the Havel tributary, near its mouth into the Elbe. His son Otto I continued the expeditions and in 936/37 established the Saxon Eastern March (Marca Geronis) on the conquered territories. In 948 he founded the dioceses of Havelberg and Brandenburg, initially suffragans to the Archbishops of Mainz, from 968 to the newly established Archdiocese of Magdeburg. Part of the Northern March from 968, Havelberg diocese was occupied by revolting Lutici tribes in the Great Slav Rising of 983 and merely remained a titular see.
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