the "old stem duchies", is not counted among the young stem duchies because it had been absorbed into Saxony in 908, before the foundation of the Holy Roman Empire. The conventional term "younger" serves to distinguish them from the (poorly documented) duchies under the Merovingian monarchs. Herwig Wolfram (1971) denied any real distinction between older and younger stem duchies, or between the stem duchies of Germany and similar territorial principalities in other parts of the Carolingian empire: I am attempting to refute the whole hallowed doctrine of the difference between the beginnings of the West-Frankish, "French", principautés territoriales, and the East-Frankish, "German," stem-duchies ... Certainly, their names had already appeared during the Migrations. Yet, their political institutional, and biological structures had more often than not thoroughly changed. I have, moreover, refuted the basic difference between the so-called älteres Stammesfürstentum [older tribal principality] and jüngeres Stammesfürstentum [younger tribal principality], since I consider the duchies before and after Charlemagne to have been basically the same Frankish institution ... There has been debate in modern German historiography over the sense in which these duchies were "tribal", as in a people sharing a common descent ("stem"), being governed as units over long periods of time, sharing a tribal sense of solidarity, shared customs, etc. In the context of modern German nationalism, Gerd Tellenbach (1939) emphasised the role of feudalism, both of the kings in the formation of the German kingdom and of the dukes in the formation of the stem duchies, against Martin Lintzel and Walter Schlesinger, who emphasised the role of the individual "stems" or "tribes" (Stämme). The existence of a "tribal" self-designation among Saxons and Bavarians can be asserted for the 10th and 12th centuries, respectively, although they may have existed much earlier. After the death of the last Carolingian, Louis the Child, in 911, the stem duchies acknowledged the unity of the kingdom. The dukes gathered and elected Conrad I to be their king. According to Tellenbach's thesis, the dukes created the duchies during Conrad's reign. No duke attempted to set up an independent kingdom. Even after the death of Conrad in 918, when the election of Henry the Fowler was disputed, his rival, Arnulf, Duke of Bavaria, did not establish a separate kingdom but claimed the whole, before being forced by Henry to submit to royal authority. Henry may even have promulgated a law stipulating that the kingdom would thereafter