OBODRITE

member of a people of the Polab group, the northwesternmost of the Slavs in medieval Europe. The Obodrites (sometimes called the Bodryci, from bodry, brave) inhabited the lowland country between the lower Elbe River and the Baltic Sea, the area north and northeast of Hamburg in what is now Schleswig-Holstein Land (state), Germany. The Obodrites' independent principality, which had developed by the early 9th century, was conquered in the middle of the 12th century by Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony, after a long resistance directed by its last pagan prince, Niklot (d. 1160). Niklot's son Przybyslaw (Pribislav; d. 1178) accepted Christianity, acknowledged German suzerainty, and was recognized in 1170 as a prince of the Holy Roman Empire. Both his descendants, who became the dukes of Mecklenburg, and the Obodrite people eventually became Germanized.