Upon its subjection to German authority, the whole province was allotted to the March of Zeitz. As early as the year 1000, however, Emperor Otto III permitted the entire part lying on the eastern boundary of Thuringia, a wooded area, sparsely populated by the West Slavic people of the Sorbs, to be cleared for farmland and settled by German settlers. Emperor Henry IV appointed Henry the Pious of Gleissberg (c. 1040−1120) imperial vogt, or bailiff (advocatus imperii) of this settlement area, under the rule of the imperial Quedlinburg Abbey. He was a son of Erkenbert I of Weida, the oldest known ancestor of the family, who is mentioned in 1122 in the entourage of Count Adalbert of Everstein at the consecration of St John's church in Plauen. The name of the area Heinrich controlled derives from his office: Vogtland (Terra advocatorum, Land of the Bailiff). This designation has remained to this day a geographical summary for a region of 3,467 km2 (comparable roughly to the county of Essex) which is located in Saxony, Thuringia and, to a lesser extent, in northern Bavaria.
Upon its subjection to German authority, the whole province was allotted to the March of Zeitz. As early as the year 1000, however, Emperor Otto III permitted the entire part lying on the eastern boundary of Thuringia, a wooded area, sparsely populated by the West Slavic people of the Sorbs, to be cleared for farmland and settled by German settlers Emperor Henry IV appointed Henry the Pious of Gleissberg (c. 1040−1120) imperial vogt, or bailiff (advocatus imperii) of this settlement area, under the rule of the imperial Quedlinburg Abbey. He was a son of Erkenbert I of Weida, the oldest known ancestor of the family, who is mentioned in 1122 in the entourage of Count Adalbert of Everstein at the consecration of St John's church in Plauen. The name of the area Heinrich controlled derives from his office: Vogtland (Terra advocatorum, Land of the Bailiff). This designation has remained to this day a geographical summary for a region of 3467 km2 (comparable roughly to the county of Essex) which is located in Saxony, Thuringia and, to a lesser extent, in northern Bavaria.