Billung March

The Billung March (German: Billunger Mark) or March of the Billungs (Mark der Billunger) is a historiographical term, derived from the name of the House of Billung, a prominent German noble family from Saxony, whose members held highest offices in the Duchy of Saxony from the first half of the 10th century up to the beginning of the 12th century. The term Billung March was coined in later historiography, as a descriptive designation for a proposed march (frontier region) that existed in the middle of the 10th century, as assumed by various scholars, in regions to the northeast of the Saxon duchy, across the lower Elbe river, encompassing various territories of Polabian Slavs, and headed by Hermann Billung (d. 973) as a margrave. Newer scholarly analyses have shown that such assumptions were lacking confirmation in reliable primary sources, since Hermann Billung was the royal governor of the Duchy of Saxony and a military commander who was entrusted with the defense of Saxon eastern regions and borders towards the neighboring Slavic tribes, but sources on his occasional endeavors in those Slavic lands do not support the claim that an effective frontier province (march) was created at that time.