Swabia (Ger. Schwaben), or SUABIA, an ancient duchy in the south-west of Germany, stretching from Franconia to Helvetia (Switzerland) and from Burgundy and Lorraine to Bavaria. It was so named from the Germanic Suevi, who drove out the Celtic inhabitants of the region in the 1st century B.C. With those conquerors the Alemanni, who invaded that part of Europe in the end of the 5th century, became amalgamated; and from that time there were dukes in Swabia, except for the period 746-919. During the reigns of the Hohenstaufen emperors, who were natives of Swabia and almost invariably conferred the ducal dignity on some relative of their own house, this duchy was the most rich, most civilised, and most powerful country of Germany, and the ducal court was the centre of art, literature, and learning. After the extinction of the imperial Swabian (Hohenstaufen) line the dignity of duke of Swabia remained in abeyance; the feudatories of the duchy asserted an immediate dependence upon the empire, and waged frequent wars one upon another. Of these minor states the most important and most powerful were the countships of Württemberg and Baden. The towns and cities, very many of which enjoyed the freedom of the empire, preserved a strong feeling for independence and a no less strong feeling of opposition to the feudal lords. In 1331 twenty-two towns (Ulm, Reutlingen, Augsburg, Heilbronn, &c.) united for purposes of mutual defence. Thirty years later many of the minor feudal lords formed a league to oppose the towns, and bloody feuds arose between the parties. The league of the feudal party was broken up by the Count of Württemberg, the ally of the Swabian league (of towns), in the last years of the 14th century. Nevertheless feuds and violent dissensions still raged rampant, and even continued to do so after the emperor summoned all the parties concerned to a conference at Esslingen (1487), where the Swabian League was formed (1488) for the maintenance of peace throughout the old Swabian duchy. This unhappy region suffered terribly during the Peasant War (q.v.) of 1525, in the Thirty Years' War (1618-48), and during the wars of the French Revolution. From the time of the Reformation the rulers of Württemberg contended with the German emperors for preponderance of power in what since the beginning of the 16th century was called the Circle of Swabia (one of the ten into which the empire was divided). The former proved the stronger in the long run, and in 1806 founded the modern kingdom of Württemberg, which embraces the greater part of the old duchy.
The Swabian School, in German literature, indicates a band of writers who were natives of Swabia (as Uhland, Schwab, Kerner, Mörike, Hauff, and others). For the Swabian Alb, see WÜRTEMBERG.