Contents · 2011. 3. 8. · vii Contents Note on References ix Editors’ Preface x Preface to the...

vii

Contents

Note on References ix

Editors’ Preface x

Preface to the Second Edition xi

Map 1 The Holy Roman Empire during the Thirty Years War xii

Map 2 The Holy Roman Empire in 1745 xiv

Map 3 The Kreise xvi

1 The Holy Roman Empire Explained 1 [i] Introduction 1

[ii] Starting points 2

[iii] Views and interpretations 3

[iv] Tendencies in imperial politics 11

2 Constitutional Development 21 [i] Development to 1495 21

[ii] The era of imperial reform 25

[iii] The ‘confessional age’ 36

[iv] The imperial recovery and the internationalization

of imperial politics 50

[v] Austro-Prussian rivalry and the Empire’s collapse 54

3 Key Institutions and Trends 60 [i] The emperor 60

[ii] The Reichstag 63

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Contents

[iii] The imperial courts 70

[iv] Imperial taxation 75

[v] Imperial defence 85

[vi] The Kreise 89

[vii] The imperial church 93

[viii] Imperial Italy 97

[ix] Territorial absolutism 99

4 Nation and Identity 103 [i] Patriotism 103

[ii] The communications sphere 110

[iii] Symbolism and ritual 113

[iv] The legacy of imperial identity 117

5 Conclusions 120

Appendix: Holy Roman Emperors 1440–1806 124

Select Bibliography 125

Index 148

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1 The Holy Roman Empire

Explained

[i] Introduction

The Holy Roman Empire was once famously dismissed by Voltaire

as neither holy, Roman nor an empire. Despite covering most of

central Europe for over a millennium, the Empire is still poorly

understood in comparison with other European states, even to the

point that many scholars dispute whether it was indeed a state at

all [40; 60; 65]. Within German historiography, the Empire, or fi rst

Reich in contrast to Bismarck’s Second and Hitler’s Third, used to

be a byword for political impotency and national disunity. Recent

scholarship has done much to dispel these misconceptions, but the

very volume and scope of this newer literature has made it dif fi cult

to form a rounded picture of the Empire’s development and place

within wider European trends.

This book sets out to do this by explicitly addressing the very ques-

tions about the Empire that prove persistently diffi cult to answer: What

was it? How did it function? Why did it survive for so long? Why did

it collapse when it did? In searching for answers we will return to the

very beginning, when the Empire was founded by Charlemagne on

Christmas Day, AD 800. However, the main focus will be on the period

from 1495; an important date in the Empire’s constitutional develop-

ment, roughly marking the point when it was clear that it would not

emerge along the same lines as the great western European monar-

chies such as France or Spain. The concluding point will be 1806,

when the Empire formally disappeared in the wake of Napoleon’s

reorganization of cent ral Europe, though, as we shall see, its legacy

for German politics persisted well beyond that date.

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The Holy Roman Empire 1495–1806

2

This fi rst chapter deals with the problems of interpretation that

have emerged since the Empire’s collapse, to provide an intro duction

to the now considerable specialist literature that has appeared and

to present a new approach to its complex constitution and political

development. Chapter 2 charts the Empire’s evolution to its collapse

and identifi es key stages and trends, the most important of which are

given detailed examination in Chapter 3. The extent to which the

Empire’s inhabitants can be considered a nation and how they iden-

tifi ed with its political structure are considered in Chapter 4. A brief

conclusion then points to areas still open to further research. Though

the book is written so that it can be read from beginning to end, it can

also be approached out of sequence, particularly by using the sections

of Chapter 3 to clarify any unfamiliar institutions or terms encoun-

tered elsewhere in the text.

[ii] Starting points

At no time in its long existence did the Empire possess clearly

defi ned boundaries or encompass a single linguistic or national

group. This fact poses considerable problems for interpretation,

not least for those who have tried to write its history from an exclu-

sively German perspective. Not all its inhabitants spoke German;

many Germans lived outside its frontiers, especially to the east,

while several important German princes within the Empire ruled

land elsewhere in Europe.

The original boundaries of Charlemagne’s empire were not

clearly defi ned, and though much land was subsequently lost,

other land was colonized or conquered, extending the Empire to

the east, especially along the Baltic shore. By the late fi fteenth cen-

tury, the core area of the Empire covered that of modern Germany

and Austria, as well as Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands.

Switzerland was still formally within the Empire, though its exact

constitutional position was a matter of some controversy. The area

of the modern Czech Republic, then known as the kingdom of

Bohemia, with its dependencies of Moravia, Lusatia and Silesia (the

latter now part of Poland), were also within the Empire, as were

Lorraine, Alsace and other areas to the west which are now parts of

France. More peripheral, but still formally part of the Empire, were

the principalities and cities of northern Italy constituting a region


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The Holy Roman Empire Explained

3

known as Imperial Italy (Reichsitalien), which stretched from Savoy

in the west to the frontiers of the Venetian Republic in the east and

those of the Papal States to the south.

The emperor’s authority was far from uniform throughout this area.

He only ever ruled a proportion of the 800,000–sq-km surface area

directly as his own personal dynastic possessions which he could pass

on by inheritance to a successor, unlike the imperial title itself, which

was elective, not hereditary. The elective nature of the imperial title

is indicative of its roots in early medieval German kingship [16; 45]

and was a characteristic the Empire shared with other great European

monarchies; notably the Scandinavian kingdoms, Poland, and espe-

cially the papacy. Like the cardinals who, as princes of the Church,

chose each new pope, so the electors (Kurfürsten), as the chief princes

of the Empire, elected the emperor. These electors, along with other

princes, high feudal lords, clerics, ecclesiastical institutions, autono-

mous cities and village communes, collectively held the rest of the

land through a complex system of ownership, overlordship and cus-

tomary, dynastic and spiritual rights. Some of the more powerful of

these territorial rulers, like the Austrian Habsburgs, and the north

German Hohenzollern dynasty, ruled, or came to rule, land outside

the emperor’s formal jurisdiction. This extended the political reach

of the Empire into other European states, contributing to the general

imprecision surrounding the Empire’s own frontiers. Exacerbating

this was the emperor’s claim to represent the secular arm of a single

Christian Europe, complementing papal spiritual jurisdiction with an

assumed pre-eminence over all other European rulers.

The preceding discussion establishes fi ve characteristics which

will remain important throughout the book and are an essential

aid to understanding the nature of the Empire. Alongside the vast

extent of the Empire and the cosmopolitan and diverse composi-

tion of its inhabitants, we can identify the elective character of the

imperial title, the emperor’s pan-European pretensions, and the

fragmented nature of his sovereignty with its diffusion of political

authority and overlapping jurisdictions.

[iii] Views and interpretations

These characteristics have long been recognized in the writing on

the Empire, but have been open to widely differing interpretations.


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The view which is still dominant, at least in much Anglophone litera-

ture, was formed by German scholars in the mid-nineteenth century.

Though this view contains separate strands, all share negative value

judgements on the Empire and its institutions which are interpreted

through the lens of nationalist concerns. Fragmented sovereignty

and decentralized political power were regarded as fundamental

weaknesses which had held up national unifi cation and, for centu-

ries, condemned ‘Germany’ to a largely passive international role.

This negative assessment has some basis in evidence. Fifteenth-

century commentators already remarked on the tensions between

emperor and princes. Criticism grew with greater awareness of how

other countries were governed. Shortly after the trauma of the Thirty

Years War (1618–48), Samuel von Pufendorf wrote that the Empire

had changed from a ‘regular kingdom’ into an irregular one as the

emperor lost power to the princes. This peculiar character made it

a ‘monstrosity’ beyond the normal types of state, like monarchies

or republics [14]. The impression of decline was voiced more force-

fully in the eighteenth century by Johann Heinrich Zedler, editor of

a widely read encyclopedia which included an entry on the ‘German

state sickness, or the illness of the Holy Roman Empire’. The lack of a

strong central authority was allowing the Empire to fall apart, leaving

it open to foreign invasion [21: vol.43]. Its inability to resist the power

of centralized, unifi ed and dynamic Revolutionary and Napoleonic

France after 1792 seemed to prove this point. Writing amid the

French invasion, the philosopher Hegel declared: ‘Germany is no

longer a state’.

To most historians and many politicians after 1806, the cure was

obvious: Germany should become a Machtstaat, or centralized, author-

itarian and militarized power state. To many, Hohenzollern Prussia

seemed to exemplify the ideal German Machtstaat, possessing every-

thing that the Empire appeared to have lacked, and thus welcomed

Prussian-led unifi cation. This violent process involved two major wars.

The fi rst, in 1866, saw Prussia defeat Austria and annex many of the

north German states. The Habsburg monarchy became a separate

empire called Austria-Hungary from 1867. Then, Prussia persuaded

the remaining south German states to join it in the Second Reich by

engineering a war with France as a ‘national’ emergency in 1870–1

[35; 36].

Borussian, or Prusso-centric historiography, exemplifi ed by Hein-

rich von Treitschke (1834–96), projected the process of unifi cation


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backwards into the period before 1806, ascribing to Prussia and the

Hohenzollerns an ‘historic mission’ to defend ‘German interests’

and forge national unity. Treitschke compared the medieval Empire

with its fragmented, disunited early modern successor [37]. The con-

trast was implanted visually on generations of German schoolchil-

dren, through their atlases showing the extensive medieval Empire as

a solid bloc, until the fi fteenth century, when it was replaced by a col-

ourful mosaic of micro-territories. Treitschke blamed this ‘decline’ on

Roman Catholicism and the cosmopolitan territorial empire of the

Austrian Habsburgs: two factors that continued to trouble Bismarck’s

solution to the national question in the nineteenth century. The

nationalist rejection of the Greater German solution, which would

have encompassed not just Austrian Catholics, but the Habsburgs’

Czech, Slovak, Polish, Hungarian and Italian subjects, necessarily

entailed a historical rejection of the Empire which had once included

these elements.

The dominance of the Borussian interpretation did not exclude

other views, however. Many writers expressed regret that Prussian-

led unifi cation had created a ‘small Germany’, excluding Austria

and other areas associated with the old Empire. Others sought sol-

ace in an Austrian variant of Borussianism, arguing that the separa-

tion of Catholic Austria from the more predominantly Protestant

Germany was historically inevitable, whilst also celebrating the

Habsburgs’ longstanding association with the Empire’s imperial

tradition. Alongside these views related to the two German great

powers are a variety of more particularist perspectives, charting

the history of the various regions that were once territories of the

Empire and which often survived, like Bavaria or Württemberg, in

modifi ed form, as states within the Second Reich until 1918.

The horrors of Nazism thoroughly discredited the Machtstaat as

a desirable concept, but did little to shake the basic outline estab-

lished by the Borussian approach. German history continued to be

written largely from the perspective of the larger territorial states

like Prussia or Bavaria, with discussion of the Empire kept to a mini-

mum. The older view remained that the Empire had failed to trans-

form itself into a modern state some time in the sixteenth century,

leaving it incapable of surmounting either the religious discord

of the Reformation, or the political tensions of the Thirty Years

War. The Treaty of Westphalia, ending that confl ict in 1648, was

interpreted as fi xing German politics in a framework incapable of


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further development. The Empire then entered a period almost

invariably labelled ‘terminal decline’ until its ‘inevitable collapse’

in the struggle with the superior forces of Revolutionary France.

Those studies published after 1945 that did address the Empire

directly, generally remained within the legalistic approach of the

earlier scholarship, charting the development of individual institu-

tions largely out of the context of wider social, political or cultural

events [123; 126]. This contributed to conclusions that remained

generally negative, since the discrepancy between legal theory and

political practice within the Empire was often considerable.

One important change, however, was a shift to a broader geograph-

ical perspective, more alive to Germany’s Catholic past, yet without

attempting to revive the pseudo-historical claims to dominance of

the area that had once been within the Greater German political

sphere. A partial explanation for this can be found in the post-war

partition of Germany, which saw the traditional Protestant German

heartlands of Brandenburg and Saxony transferred to what became

the Communist German Democratic Republic. Those East German

historians who concerned themselves with pre- nineteenth-century

history retained the old focus on the German territorial state, but

now analysed its class basis in Marxist historical terms. The Empire

and its institutions remained peripheral to these investigations,

which interpreted the period after 1495 in terms of an underlying

socio- economic transition from feudalism to capitalism and concen-

trated on economic, especially industrial and agrarian, development

and the social tensions perceived as arising from this.

Thus, the revival of interest in the Empire which took hold in

German historical circles in the late 1960s was largely the work of

Catholic historians and those concerned initially with religious his-

tory who were based in the western Federal Republic. The most

important of these was Karl Otmar Freiherr von Aretin, whose two-

volume study of the last 30 years of the Empire represented a mile-

stone in what has become the revisionist interpretation [42]. Aretin

subsequently extended his study, culminating in a three-volume

history of the period 1648–1806 [43; 44]. The central tenet of the

new approach has been to see the Empire on its own terms, rather

than regarding it as a failed attempt to create a centralized nation-

state. The Empire and its institutions are seen as vibrant entities

in their own right, taking their place alongside the territorial state

as important elements of the German past. Interest in the new


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approach prompted the publication of major documentary collec-

tions [2; 3; 4; 9; 10; 13] and began to infl uence English-language

research from the mid-1970s, notably through the work of Gerhard

Benecke and Michael Hughes [25; 29; 32; 33; 35; 79].

This revisionism emerged as part of a broader trend to seek out

an alternative German past by discovering popular, democratic

and pacifi c themes that had been displaced or neglected through

the earlier glorifi cation of the Machtstaat. Though receiving some

backing from the political establishment, the results proved con-

troversial, particularly as the critical work of German emigré histo-

rians working in the United States began to fi lter over to Europe.

A major concern of this work was to fi nd some explan ation for the

Nazi era; generally by emphasizing that German historical develop-

ment deviated somehow from a European norm along a Sonderweg, or special path, leading towards militarism and political authori-

tarianism. Though focused primarily on the later nineteenth and

early twentieth centuries, this work implicitly endorsed the older

Borussian notion of the Empire’s exceptional political develop-

ment. By failing to develop into a unitary state, the Empire allegedly

delayed both nation-statehood and democracy. Attempts to ‘catch

up’ with the rest of Europe led to Bismarck’s hasty and violent solu-

tion which failed to unite the ‘cultural nation’ of German speakers

within a single ‘political nation’. This view remained very infl uen-

tial, because it allows the large body of older scholarship (much of it

written to a high technical standard) to be combined with a seduc-

tively persuasive explanation for the twentieth- century ‘German

catastrophe’. A good example is Heinrich August Winkler’s recent

survey which opens by stating: ‘everything that divides German

history from the history of the great European nations had its ori-

gins in the Holy Roman Empire’ [41: 4].

A perhaps more benefi cial result of the Sonderweg literature

and the debates it sparked was to encourage a greater emphasis on

social history. This happily coincided with a similar interest among

those historians working on the Reformation [221]. Together,

these impulses reinvigorated the earlier revisionist trend started by

Aretin, and from the late 1980s there has been a conscious effort

to locate constitutional and political history in a social and cultural

context, most notably by Volker Press and Helmut Neuhaus [55; 57;

100; 101; 104; 151]. This emphasis on institutions and legal devel-

opment as socially reproduced practice has drawn attention to the


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individual, personal dimension of the Empire’s past that was per-

haps in danger of becoming obscured by dry constitutional his-

tory. The overall effect has been to reinforce the revisionists’ point

that the Empire was far from moribund and that its institutions

and political culture were vibrant elements of the German past.

However, much of the promise of this approach remains unfulfi lled,

especially in English-language historiography, most of which either

treats the Empire as a shadowy backdrop to Luther’s Reformation,

or ignores it completely in favour of micro-studies of communities

or social groups divorced from their political context.

The fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunifi cation of the two post-

war Germanies (1989–90) were followed closely by the consolida-

tion of the European Union (1992) and its subsequent expansion

eastwards to include countries like Poland and Hungary. These

developments transformed debates about German state and nation-

hood. The growth of representative politics is now discussed in the

light of European integration, rather than Cold War arguments

over the merits of ‘bourgeois’ liberal democracy or communist

‘popular’ movements. Germany is no longer a divided state, but

part of a wider political system to which governments have surren-

dered important elements of their sovereignty; a transformation

which many citizens feel threatens their national identity.

Such concerns lie behind the current debate over which terms best

characterize the Empire. The word ‘Reich’ remains open to misunder-

standing. An exhibition on the early modern Empire in Regensburg

in 2000 deliberately avoided using it, because the organizers believed

the public would confuse it with the Third Reich, or think that ‘Old

Reich’ meant Bismarck’s empire. Rather more seriously, a minor

international incident fl ared up the same year when the French inte-

rior minister accused Germans of trying to dominate Europe through

the European Union as they had done with the Holy Roman Empire

[65: 300–1].

All comparisons with modernity are stridently rejected by a number

of senior German historians. Heinz Schilling argues that the consti-

tutional changes around 1500 known as ‘imperial reform’ (see 2.ii)

only created ‘a partially modernised imperial system’ [60]. Wolfgang

Reinhard and Axel Gotthard likewise declare the term ‘state’ an

inappropriate label for what the latter calls ‘an extremely decentral-

ised, federal structure’ acting as ‘an umbrella over the territories’

[50: 1–9; 59]. Though less critical, Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger also


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avoids the term ‘state’ in favour of ‘an association (Verband) resting

on tradition and consensus’ in which federal elements like alliances

between princes acted as a substitute for constitutional coherence

[66: 116]. For Gotthard, Schilling and Reinhard, the Empire remains

Pufendorf’s monstrosity in a most negative sense. Though they all

accept Aretin’s revised view that the Empire still functioned after

1648, their work still reads like Zedler’s list of defi cits: a lack of clear

borders, unifi ed territory, homogenous population, standing army,

strong central institutions.

Others are more positive and have extended Aretin’s revisionism

well beyond correcting Borussian distortions to stress the Empire

as a modern, even ‘post-modern’ state. Georg Schmidt is the most

infl uential exponent of this trend, arguing there were effectively

two early modern Empires [30; 63; 64]. One was the medieval feudal

hierarchy extending beyond Germany to Imperial Italy, Bohemia,

Austria and the Netherlands. This persisted beyond 1500 only as a

set of jurisdictions exploited by the Habsburg dynasty to manage

their territorial empire which included all these non-‘German’

areas. The other is what Schmidt calls the Complementary Empire-

State (Komplentärischer Reichs-Staat) covering only the German ‘core’

area, roughly corresponding to the borders of the modern Federal

Republic. The inhabitants of this area were united by the com-

mon political ideal of ‘German Freedom’ (see 4.i), making them a

Federal Nation. The complementary element was the diffusion of

different state functions to several political levels within the Empire-

State. ‘National’ institutions coordinated defence and guaranteed

justice. An intermediary level known as the Kreise (Imperial Circles;

see 3.vi) provided a regional infrastructure ensuring general com-

pliance with norms and decisions, while administration, resource

mobilization and social control were exercised at the territorial

level by the numerous principalities and cities.

While Schmidt sees the Empire as the fi rst German nation-state,

Peter Claus Hartmann offers it as a federal ‘central Europe of the

regions’, borrowing directly from the language of the European

Commission in Brussels to present the Empire as a model for the

current process of greater integration. His use of ‘the principle of

subsidiarity’, another piece of Euro-Speak, essentially means the

same as Schmidt’s concept of complementary statehood. While

he sees it as a state, Hartmann rejects Schmidt’s idea of it as a

nation, arguing that the Empire was actually European rather than


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German [51; 293]. Johannes Burkhardt also believes that Schmidt

has not gone far enough in the Empire’s positive reappraisal, claim-

ing it ‘had already, at the start of early modernity, solved the con-

stitutional issues which others are only beginning to discuss in the

twenty-fi rst century’ [65: 314].

Underlying this dispute over terms lies fundamental disagree-

ment on history’s purpose. Burkhardt demands that early mod-

ern history be ‘politically relevant’ by addressing the contemporary

world [65: 299]. This is a valid point, given the preoccupation of

the media and much of education with more recent events to the

exclusion of the rest of the human past, as well as the short mem-

ories of governments only too happy to cut funding for seemingly

unfashionable topics. However, this has been criticized for fos-

tering false continuities between past and present. Reinhard, for

instance, argues that the Federal Republic has nothing to do with

the old Empire, but is instead a Machtstaat orientated towards

‘British parliamentarianism, French etatism, and Prussian offi cial-

dom’ [59: 340, 356].

Both Schmidt’s critics and his supporters feel that his dogged

attachment to the terms ‘Empire-State’ and ‘Federal Nation’ is unfor-

tunate, and distorts his interpretation [59: 343; 65: 301]. Empire-State

hinders rather than helps understanding. The word Staat is some-

times attached to Reich in early modern texts, but generally to mean

constitutional order, rather than in the modern sense of a state.

However, this does not mean we should not see the Empire as a

state. The main problem with Schmidt’s critics is that they either

see political development proceeding along a single path of pro-

gressive centralization towards a modern unitary state, or (like

Reinhard) regard such as state as the only and fi nal outcome [288].

Their refusal to use the term ‘state’ for the Empire unwittingly per-

petuates the Sonderweg thesis, depriving German history of the com-

mon conceptual language necessary to make comparisons with

other histories. There have been many kinds of state in European

history and, as Burkhardt points out, the really interesting question

is not whether the Empire was a state, but what kind was it?

Schmidt’s other great service has been to place the question

of national identity back on the historical agenda in a way which

avoids the dangers inherent in calls for a Pan-German approach

voiced in the 1930s. The richness of the ensuing debate is dem-

onstrated by the need to devote an entirely new chapter in this


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edition to cover it. Whether Schmidt is right to restrict the

Empire’s history to a German core will be considered across the

next two chapters.

Though no consensus has been reached, it is possible to draw

three important conclusions from the work which has appeared

since the 1960s. First, the Empire’s political development must be

viewed in its wider, especially social context. Second, the Empire’s

structure resulted from the interaction of all its components, includ-

ing its own institutions, as well as international pressures, rather

than a simple dualism between emperor and princes: a point put

forcefully by Helmut Neuhaus [56]. Third, the presence of these

other factors in imperial politics suggests that the course of the

Empire’s development was far from inevitable and that various

‘alternative’ paths existed at different stages of its history.

[iv] Tendencies in imperial politics

These alternatives have been partially explored in an infl uential

collection of essays edited by Volker Press [101]. The most signifi -

cant conclusion of this volume is to reinforce the point that the

alternative to the Empire was not simply the Machtstaat, whether

it be in the singular unitary form of the entire Empire under fi rm

imperial control, or its fragmentation into smaller, independ-

ent centralized territorial states. The existence of multiple paths

of political development highlights the important fact that the

Empire contained several, often contradictory tendencies at any

one time. An examination of these goes a long way not only to

explaining the course and outcome of major events such as the

Thirty Years War, but also exactly what kind of political entity the

Empire was.

The possibility that the Empire might be brought under greater

direct imperial control can be labelled the monarchical principle

within imperial politics. This was present throughout most of the

middle ages in much the same way that kings elsewhere sought to

extend and consolidate their authority. Just how far any emperor

ever seriously contemplated achieving this after 1495 remains a

matter of historical controversy, as the many studies of individual

emperors show [107; 108; 109; 114; 121; 134]. Certainly, the fear

that the princes and lesser rulers might be deprived of all or part


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12

of their autonomy through some form of ‘imperial absolutism’

remained an issue till the end of the Empire and a major factor in

determining relations between them and the emperor.

The continued evolution of the traditional hierarchical struc-

ture formed the second trend. As we shall see, this gave the Empire

its peculiar character of a multi-layered political structure subordi-

nate to the emperor’s overall authority, but not his direct control.

Though unique to the Empire, this structure rested on ideas com-

mon throughout those parts of Europe once touched by Catholicism.

These ideas included a distinctly early modern form of political rep-

resentation based on the division of society into corporate Estates

(Stände) according to the social function of their individual mem-

bers [34: 233–58]. Though far from exact or all-encompassing in

practice, this created a broad three-way division into clergy (who

prayed for everyone’s salvation), nobility (warriors and leaders)

and commons (providing society’s material needs). Overlying and

reinforcing this social organization was the existence of the Empire

as a community of feudal ties (Lehensverband), binding its members

in complex, interwoven chains of dependency and obligation, all

ultimately subordinate to the emperor’s supreme overlordship.

Emerging through the middle ages, these two elements shaped

the hierarchical structure by the late fi fteenth century. Political rep-

resentation was determined by both social and territorial status in

a complex relationship which seemed illogical to later generations.

The horizontal division of lords according to their nominal secular

and spiritual functions was overlaid by a vertical partition of both into

superior and inferior groups [141]. Superior lay and church lords

were distinguished by their possession of imperial fi efs (Reichslehen),

or jurisdictions they held directly from the emperor. This gave them

the status of imperial immediacy (Reichsunmittelbarkeit), meaning

there was no intervening level of jurisdiction between them and the

emperor. This group encompassed around 10,000 fi ef-holders and

their families in 1500. The majority were knights (Ritter) or barons

(Freiherren) holding lesser fi efs, often only encompassing a few vil-

lages. An elite minority has entered history as the ‘imperial’, or less

accurately, ‘German princes’; a convenient shorthand for around 320

fi ef-holders who were further stratifi ed according to an increasingly

fi nely graduated hierarchy of titles, but who essentially subdivide into

two groups. The senior one comprised those with ‘full’ princely titles

ranging upwards from margrave (Markgraf, or marquis), landgrave


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13

(Landgraf), prince (Fürst), duke (Herzog), and elector (Kurfürst). All

were united by their possession of ‘crown fi efs’, entitling them to

receive their investiture directly from the emperor in person. There

were 37 secular and 53 spiritual full princes in 1521, the latter dis-

tinguished by the combination of their secular and spiritual titles, as

in ‘prince-bishop’ (Fürstbischof). The more numerous junior group

comprised 143 counts and 83 abbots, abbesses, and priors, all of

whom usually received their investiture indirectly through a repre-

sentative of the emperor.

The remaining 50,000 or so noble families in the Empire formed

the second principal group of ‘mediate’ lords, meaning their rela-

tionship to the emperor was mediated by one or more intervening

levels of lordship. This inferior group was also internally strati-

fi ed along a scale of titles ranging for lord (Herr), through knight

upwards to duke and even prince. Likewise, they subdivided accord-

ing to status, often simply (if somewhat perversely) called ‘lords’

or magnates for the senior, and knights for the junior group. The

senior group was only found in the east of the Empire, in Austria,

Bohemia and other areas that had been acquired by the Habsburg

dynasty by the early sixteenth century. Many Bohemian magnates’

possessions were far more extensive than those of some impe-

rial princes, but their lands never acquired the status of full imperial

fi efs, which would have given their owners the quality of imperial

immediacy. The lessor lords, or knights, held their fi efs either from

one of these magnates, or from the imperial prince with jurisdic-

tion over them.

The growth of towns in the twelfth century added a further

non-noble element to this pattern. Towns were not personal fi efs,

but still represented jurisdictions over dependent inhabitants.

Town governments were elected by enfranchised citizens, but all

urban inhabitants remained subordinate to their feudal overlord.

Numerous towns emancipated themselves from their immediate

lay or spiritual lord to become free cities from the mid-twelfth cen-

tury. This development was often encouraged by the emperor as a

counterweight to powerful princes. By 1500 around 80 favoured

towns had received the status of ‘imperial city’ (Reichsstadt), indicat-

ing they had no overlord but the emperor himself. The other 4000

or so urban settlements in the Empire remained ‘territorial towns’

(Landstädte), meaning they were incorporated in one of the numer-

ous lordly fi efs.


PROOF


14

Representation followed this hierarchy of lordship, with each

level claiming to represent the interests of those below it as part of its

obligation to promote the broader, ‘common good’ (Gemeinwohl). These rights became ‘territorialized’ through their customary and

legal identifi cation with specifi c areas. Over time, the crown fi efs

were increasingly regarded as distinct territories (Länder) consti-

tuting the Empire, with the more numerous mediate fi efs simply as

subordinate subdivisions of these [273].

The reciprocal nature of feudal ties reinforced the particip atory

element in decision making that lay at the heart of Estates representa-

tion. Important decisions affecting the lives of all were only held to be

binding if they had been taken with the consent of the representatives

of the key social Estates. This principle became entrenched through

the political struggles of the middle ages, obliging the emperor to

consult the holders of the chief imperial fi efs over policy. These fi efs,

together with their rulers, collectively became known as the ‘impe-

rial Estates’ (Reichsstände), whose assem blies became known as diets

(Reichstage). Lower levels of repres entation emerged in many of the

individual territories to discuss policy with the local ruler. These ter-

ritorial Estates (Landtage) varied considerably in composition, but

frequently included com moners from the leading towns, as well as

representatives of the local clergy and nobility [254: 1–22].

The exact division of these powers and responsibilities was far

from clear by the late fi fteenth century. Crucial issues remained to

be resolved. It was still not clear which imperial fi efs had, or indeed

desired, the right to participate in central decision- making, parti-

cularly as this right was increasingly associated with the obligation

to contribute men and money to common causes, like collective

defence. The desire of the imperial knights (Reichsritter), ruling

lesser imperial fi efs, to dodge these obligations contributed to

their exclusion from the full voting rights of imperial Estates in the

sixteenth century. Similarly, it was far from certain what form col-

lective bargaining between emperor and imperial Estates should

take, and likewise what powers any assembly like a Reichstag should

have. Whereas the Borussian interpretation previously condemned

this situation as a sign of weakness and decline, recent historiogra-

phy regards it as open-ended and dynamic [45; 49; 56; 58].

This uncertainty contributed to the growth of federalism as a

third political tendency alongside the monarchical principle and the

traditional hierarchy. This is perhaps the most controversial area in


PROOF


15

recent research and certainly one which is not yet fully worked out

[78]. Federalism is usually associated with modern republics like

Austria, Germany, Switzerland and the United States. Labelling ele-

ments of the Empire as ‘federal’ risks implying that either these

were already modern, or constitute the origins of contemporary

institutions. The modernity of federalism lies in its basis in rela-

tively equal interaction between members. Federal constitutions

might give one region more parliamentary seats than another, but

this will rest on common criteria, such as the size of their respec-

tive populations. Such equality was inherently alien to the Empire,

which related political rights to a status hierarchy. The Empire

could accommodate federalist tendencies which, in turn, did

strengthen it under some circumstances. However, federalism ulti-

mately contributed to its replacement by the Confederation of the

Rhine (Rheinbund) in 1806.

Three strands of federalism can be identifi ed within imperial

politics, all of which contributed to the Empire’s overall develop-

ment and historical legacy. These are, briefl y, princely-territorial,

aristocratic and proto-democratic, or radical. They need to be dis-

cussed in turn and will highlight issues that will feature throughout

the rest of the book.

The emergence of distinct territories within the Empire is a

major, long-term trend that has already been mentioned. Until

comparatively recently it was discussed solely within the terms of

what has been labelled ‘territorialization’ (Territorialisierung) [45]. In its essentials, this label encompasses what is discussed for other

European countries as ‘state-building/formation’; in other words,

the emergence of a sovereign monopoly of legitimate power over

a defi ned area, supported by a judicial, military and administra-

tive infrastructure to make rule effective and to secure and sustain

recognition of it from external agencies, such as foreign rulers.

The fundamental difference between this process in the German

territories and its equivalent in France and elsewhere is that it

was territorial rather than national. In place of a single monopoly

of power for the whole country, a multitude of smaller, localized

monopolies evolved in the numerous component territories within

the Empire [95]. As later sections of this book will show, there are

numerous debates on how and why this process took place, to what

extent it was completed and with what consequences for broader

society.


PROOF


16

One factor, however, is certain, and that is that German territor-

ialization was closely bound up with the wider fate of the Empire. This

relationship was ambiguous. The consolidation and demarcation of

distinct territories weakened the imperial structure as their growing

self-suffi ciency lessened their long-term depend ency upon it; yet this

process was only possible through their continued membership of

the Empire, which both legitimized their existence and protected

them from the encroachments of hostile, predatory neighbouring

European states. Few German territories possessed the resources to

survive as viable, independent states outside the imperial structure.

Indeed, it is highly signifi cant that even Austria and Prussia, which

achieved this, remained at least partially dependent on the Empire

until its fi nal collapse.

While these factors have long been acknowledged, they have

been studied primarily from the perspective of the individual terri-

tories, rather than for their implications for the overall structure of

the Empire. In fact, their impact embraced two of the chief political

tendencies within imperial politics. At the territorial level, the proc-

ess of political consolidation tended to undermine the hierarchical

order by subordinating previously distinct elements, like the territo-

rial Estates, to increasingly absolutist forms of princely rule. In this

respect, the princes were pursuing the monarchical principle within

their own domains. However, this process only took place with the

sanction of higher elements in the traditional structure, not least

the fact that princely power was legitimized from above by imperial

law and its immediate relation ship to the emperor. This was not

always in the emperor’s interests, since princely autonomy widened

the gap between him and the human and material resources of the

individual territories: in other words, it weakened the monarchi-

cal principle. To forestall any moves towards more direct imperial

rule, the territorial rulers tended to champion their right to repre-

sentation at national level through the Estates principle. In this way,

they contributed to the development of those institutions, like the

Reichstag and the regional subdivision of the Empire into Kreise, which strengthened hierarchical order by consolidating the inter-

mediate levels between emperor and territories.

The princes thus wore a political Janus face, pursuing absolutist

centralization within their own territories, whilst resisting it on the

part of the emperor. Both involved recourse to the institutions and

laws of the Empire, further indicating the redundancy of the older,


PROOF


17

dualist model of emperor–princely relations. Given the continued

ties to some form of overarching political structure, the long-term

implications of territorialization were to push the Empire towards a

looser federation of autonomous, consolidated states. This is indeed

what occurred in the process of its fi nal collapse which saw the sep-

aration of Austria and Prussia as viable independent states, and

the grouping together of the remaining German territories in the

Confederation of the Rhine under French protection. Similarly,

the German Confederation (Deutscher Bund), which emerged from

the post-Napoleonic settlement in 1815, also embraced this variant

of federalism, this time within a broader framework that included

the two German great powers.

Discussion of the aristocratic and radical variants of federalism

has emerged from the wider historical debate on forms of repres-

entation in the German past. This began in the West in the 1950s,

partly as a semi-offi cial attempt to legitimize the institutions of the

new Federal Republic, and partly as a general revival in the neglected

history of German liberalism. The conclusions emerging from these

studies tended to remain within the framework of the old dualist

model of imperial politics, simply substituting proto -democratic

forms of representation for the former emphasis on the Machtstaat

as the only ‘alternative’ to a decaying feudal struc ture. There was

also often a strong element of Whiggish teleology as several writ-

ers sought to trace the origins of later, parliament ary democracy to

the institutions and culture of the old Empire. This is particularly

true of studies of the Reichstag [143], work on the territorial Estates

[72; 250], and more recently an attempt to see the assemblies of

the Kreise as forerunners of the Federal Republic’s upper house

(Bundesrat) [211].

Criticism of West German parliamentary democracy in the 1960s

contributed to a revival of interest in more radical forms of repre-

sentation, something that was also given a boost by research into

popular dimension of the social and religious transformation in

the Reformation. Peter Blickle has been a leading exponent of this

approach, developing what has become known as the ‘ com munalism

thesis’ [26; 27]. Rejecting both the older, romanticized ideal of peas-

ant communities and the more rigid Marxist models favoured by the

East German historical establishment, Blickle none theless argues

that German history has an ‘alternative’ tradition to that of contin-

uous domination by feudal-aristocratic classes and the authoritarian


PROOF


18

state. In particular, peasants developed a com mon identity through

their participation in the agrarian economy with its collective tasks

and face-to-face community life. The demands of ‘outsiders’, such

as feudal and ecclesiastical lords, reinforced this sense of solidarity

which could, given favourable circumstances, extend not just across

regional boundaries, but also to embrace the lower sections of urban

communities. Com munality was given institutional form through

the relatively decentralized, autonomous nature of local government

through out much of the Empire. Most village communities enjoyed a

considerable degree of self-regulation, with property-owning peas-

ants electing their own councillors and judges. Even in those areas

where peasant rights were eroded through the develop ment of for-

mal serfdom by the seventeenth century, notably east of the River

Elbe, much of daily life was still decided collectively by the male

heads of households. Intrusion by the territorial state was minimal

and even secular, and ecclesiastical lords relied largely on co-opting

village headmen to represent their interests and ensure feudal obli-

gations were met [34]. Urban government was generally more highly

stratifi ed, but the relatively small size of many of the Empire’s towns

and cities ensured strong communal elements were also present.

While few dispute these general observations, the conclusions

drawn by Blickle have prompted considerable criticism. Blickle’s

main contention is that rural solidarity and self-government encour-

aged what he calls ‘communalism’, which is interpreted as a prelim-

inary stage to ‘democratization’. The presence of strong communal

forms is seen as a prerequisite for popular collective action, includ-

ing demands for political representation and challenges to feudal

authority and that of the authoritarian territorial state. The com-

munal basis of many popular revolts, notably the German Peasants

War (1524–6), seems to reinforce this point. However, for Blickle’s

critics, such as Volker Press and Bob Scribner [34: 291–326], the

communalism thesis is another version of the neo-Whig tradition,

attempting to trace modern popular anti-authoritarianism back

into the past.

Certainly, the weight of recent research, both on peasant com-

munities and the territorial Estates [261; 268], suggests that there

is no easy link between these early modern phenomena and later

forms of representation and political action. Nonetheless, the debate

does draw attention to alternative forms of federalism present in the

Empire alongside that based on the territorial states. The strongly


PROOF


19

corporate ethos of the German nobility, like that else where, already

provided a basis for cross-regional political co operation, most nota-

bly in the cantons of the imperial knights formed in the sixteenth

century to protect their common interests against the encroach-

ments of the more powerful territorial princes [157]. Other than

those in Württemberg and a few minor ter ritories, all Estates con-

tained powerful aristocratic representation which could domi-

nate the local assembly completely, as in Meck lenburg. Like the

knights, many Estates felt threatened by the pro cess of territoriali-

zation, as this proceeded largely along centralized, absolutist lines.

Confederations between Estates of different ter ritories facing sim-

ilar threats offered not merely the prospect of resisting encroach-

ments from above, but possibly even displacing princely rule

altogether. These aristocratic confederations found their popular

counterpart in those between cities and peasant communes that

developed in the later middle ages. Though such urban alliances

as the north German Hansa or the southern Swabian League [209]

rarely extended beyond mutual security to develop durable institu-

tions for collective action, the alliance among the Swiss cantons was

to have lasting signifi cance.

Recent work [71; 101; 254] indicates that these aristocratic and

popular forms represented real alternatives to the monarchical

and hierarchical principles in the sixteenth century. The repeated

failure of Habsburg attempts to subjugate the Swiss cantons led to

their de facto independence from the Empire by 1499. Attempts by

rural communities elsewhere to follow this route ended with their

defeat in the Peasants War of 1524–6. However, the religious and

economic ties between the recently converted Protestant Swiss cities

and those in southern Germany and the Rhineland encouraged

various aspirations among the latter to ‘turn Swiss’ during the fi rst

half of the sixteenth century [71]. These hopes remained unful-

fi lled, but similar religious and political tensions encouraged the

cities and provincial Estates of the Netherlands to unite in opposi-

tion to the Spanish Habsburgs in the Dutch Revolt of 1567–1648.

Arguably, these areas were already breaking away from the Empire,

having been assigned to the Spanish Crown by Emperor Charles

V in 1548. However, economic, religious and strategic ties between

the Dutch and northern Germany remained strong, and were rein-

forced by prolonged Dutch military occupation of key towns follow-

ing the Thirty Years War. The Estates of Rhenish principalities like


PROOF


20

Jülich, Cleves and Berg, as well as those in Westphalia such as East

Frisia, continued to seek Dutch political and military support, even

after such action on the part of territorial Estates was formally pro-

hibited by the Peace of Westphalia [28; 250]. Elsewhere, the desire

to strengthen aristo cratic autonomy was also fuelled by the confes-

sional divide left by the Reformation. The situation was particularly

acute in the Habsburg lands by the late 1590s, as the dynasty shifted

to more aggressive Counter-Reformation Catholicism in an attempt

to impose greater direct rule on its disparate provinces. The Estates

of Hungary, Bohemia and Austria, dominated by a largely Protestant

nobility, cooperated in a series of alliances to preserve what they

regarded as their traditional liberties. These extended to contacts

with areas outside the Empire, including the Estates of Transylvania

and the Ottoman Sultan.

None of these efforts succeeded in establishing a stable alternative to

the princely territorial state, not least because this was not the nobles’

principal intention. Though the Peace of Westphalia con fi rmed Dutch

independence, it also consolidated princely power through the con-

cept of territorial sovereignty (Landeshoheit). Con trary to popular

belief, this did not make the princes virtually in dependent, but it did

confi rm that the initiative within territorial affairs lay with them and

not the Estates or any other corporate group. Despite its subsequent

consolidation under princely abso lutism, the territorial state did not

become all-pervasive, nor did it entirely displace the other tendencies

present within imperial politics. The relative importance of these cur-

rents can best be appreciated by charting the Empire’s constitutional

development; the task of the next chapter.


PROOF

148

Index

Aachen, imperial city, 114Abbt, Thomas (1738–66), 107, 118absolutism, 16, 19, 20, 51, 85,

99–100, 114, 120, 123defi ned, 99enlightened, 102, 107see also imperial absolutism

Albertine Wettins, 40, 42–3Albrecht II (1397–1439, king from

1438), 27Alsace, 2, 50, 70Ansbach, margraviate, 91archchancellor, 33, 64Aretin, Karl Otmar Freiherr von,

6–7, 9, 97armies, 47, 51, 53, 79–81, 85, 87–9,

96Asch, Ronald G., 36, 46associations, see Kreis associationsAugsburg, imperial city, 48–9, 66,

77, 89, 113Augsburg, Religious Peace of

(1555), 41–3, 48Austerlitz, battle (1805), 59Austria-Hungary, empire

1867–1918, 4Austrian Kreis, 92Austrian monarchy, 9, 16, 17, 51–2

army, 80–1, 88–9Estates, 20, 45–6, 101fi nances, 45–6, 75, 77–82, 97–8government, 32–3, 36, 45–6, 50,

55, 73, 101, 108, 116population, 56rivalry with Prussia, 4, 37, 54–8,

84, 89, 102, 106–7, 117, 122

size, 55, 104society, 13, 48, 101see also Habsburg dynasty

(Austrian)Austrian Succession, war

(1740–48), 55, 89, 98

Baden, margraviate, 32, 64, 108Bamberg, bishopric, 96Basel, treaty (1795), 58Bavaria, duchy, later electorate, 5,

44, 46, 74, 108exchange plans, 57fi nances, 55, 80, 89infl uence, 56, 58, 93, 102size, 55, 104

Bavarian Kreis, 88, 92Bavarian Succession, war (1778–9),

57Bayreuth, margraviate, 91Behringer, Wolfgang, 110Belgium, 2, 27Benecke, Gerhard, 7Berg, duchy, 20Berlin, 114 Bismarck, Otto von (1815–98), 1, 5,

7, 104Black Death, 26Blickle, Peter, 17–18, 26, 28Bohemia, kingdom

Estates, 20, 101relationship to Empire, 2, 9, 13,

24, 27, 30, 40, 64, 73, 92, 105, 108, 116

revolt of (1419–34), 28, 92, 108revolt of (1618–20), 46–8, 80, 101

9780230239784_09_ind.indd 1489780230239784_09_ind.indd 148 3/5/2011 11:18:37 AM3/5/2011 11:18:37 AM

PROOF

Index

149

Bologna, 114Borussian interpretation, 4–5, 9,

14, 35, 57, 61–2, 87, 100Brady, Thomas, 29, 38Brandenburg-Prussia, 50

fi nances, 57, 82 great power status, 56, 89, 102,

106–7, 122 interpretations of, 4–6, 100, 101–2, 123

military power, 85, 89, 117relationship to Empire, 16, 17,

30, 49, 52, 56–7, 64, 69, 72, 79, 82, 84, 92, 94, 101–2, 118

size, 54–5, 56, 104see also Hohenzollern dynasty;

PrussiaBremen, archbishopric, 95Brothers’ Quarrel (1606–12), 46Brunswick, duchy, 40Burgundian Kreis, 92Burgundy, duchy, 21, 26, 27, 40, 64,

73, 108Burkhardt, Johannes, 10, 36Byzantium, 22, 26

Calenberg, see HanoverCalvinism, 43–4, 48cameralism, 102Campo Formio, treaty (1797), 58, 99capitalism, 6, 110Carolina law code (1532), 34Castile, 36Catholic League (1609), 40, 46censorship, 63, 111, 114Charlemagne (742–814), emperor

from 800, 1, 2, 21, 22, 114, 116Charles IV (1316–78), emperor

from 1355, 35, 76Charles V (1500–58), emperor

from 1519, 19, 39–40, 47, 63, 78, 79, 105, 106, 111, 114

abdication, 34, 41, 42, 97election, 27, 30, 61interpretations, 27, 35

Charles VI (1685–1740), emperor from 1711, 51, 55, 76, 123

Charles VII (1697–1745), emperor from 1742, 55

Charles (1433–77), duke of Burgundy from 1467, 21, 26

Clement VII (1478–1534), pope from 1523, 114

Cleves, duchy, 20, 46Cologne, electorate, 30, 41, 52, 64,

75, 91Cologne, imperial city, 110‘common good’, 14, 100Common Penny (Gemeiner Pfennig),

76–8communalism, 17–19, 26, 28–9community, 18, 28, 38, 48, 122Confederation of the Rhine

(1806–13), 15, 17, 59, 75, 117–18

confessionalization, 36–50, 101, 104, 106–7, 110, 112, 122

defi ned, 37–8Constantinople, 26corpora (confessional blocs), 44, 48,

49, 67Counter-Reformation, 20, 44–5, 95Courland, duchy, 94courts, princely, 51, 101, 107, 110,

114–15see also imperial courts

culturepersonal presence, 23, 33, 45,

69, 113, 122representational, 110written, 26, 31, 32, 34, 35, 39, 90,

111–12currency regulation, 34, 42, 67,

83–4, 90customs union, 83, 85

Dalberg, Karl Theodor von (1744–1817), elector of Mainz (1802–3) and prince primate (1803–14), 117–18

Defenestration of Prague (1618), 46Denmark, 29, 54, 69, 94despotism, 75Diestelkamp, Bernd, 70Ditmarschen, 29Donauwörth, imperial city (until

1607), 41, 46


PROOF

Index

150

dualism, see imperial politicsDuchhardt, Heinz, 54, 100Dutch Republic, 20, 95, 103, 105,

108–9, 121Dutch Revolt (1567–1648), 19, 41,

108–9Dutch War (1672–79), 53, 87

East Frisia, principality, 20, 74ecclesiastical reservation, 43economic change, 6, 26, 66economic regulation, 34, 67, 82–5education, 35, 71, 96, 107electoral capitulation

(Wahlkapitulation), 31, 44, 61–2, 86

electoral college (Kurfürstenrat), 64, 66, 67

Electoral Rhenish Kreis, 88, 91electors (Kurfürsten), 3, 13, 30–1,

41, 42, 49, 52, 54, 60–2, 68, 72, 79, 80, 93, 115, 116

emigration, 42emperor

authority, 3, 11, 12, 16, 31, 44, 47–8, 51–4, 60–3, 66, 71, 86, 93, 101, 120–1

coronation, 21, 30, 78, 114election, 3, 30–1, 60, 93, 114, 116fi nancial position, 23, 29, 47,

75–82, 98–9international position, 3, 22, 36,

37, 51–2prayers for, 108, 111regional infl uence, 24–5, 36, 97–9title, 3, 21, 59, 63, 107, 114, 116,

121emperor’s suites (Kaisersäle),

113–14Empire

collapse, 1, 5, 15, 89, 102, 117–19, 122

collective security, 9, 14, 32, 34, 44, 51–3, 57–8, 66, 76–82, 85–9, 105, 115, 122

complimentary character, 9, 36, 121

conservative character, 57, 75,

82, 102, 118, 122economic policy, 34, 67, 82–5, 90feudal element, 12–14, 22, 51,

66, 97–8formal title, 21–2, 104, 109international position, 16, 26,

37, 46, 50–60, 69–70, 86–8, 102, 105–6, 118

‘modernity’, 8–10, 36, 37, 101, 121personnel, 35, 71political representation within,

11–14, 16–20, 30–2, 63–70, 90, 120

population, 26, 47, 56reorganized (1801–3), 58, 64–6,

68, 72, 96, 117–18size, 3, 56, 78as a state, 4, 6, 8–10, 35–6, 85,

97, 117, 121symbols, 64, 108–9, 113–16

England, 26, 36, 54, 56, 69, 111, 121Enlightenment, 96, 107, 118Erthal, Friedrich Carl von

(1719–1802), elector of Mainz from 1774, 96

Estates (Stände)armed, 53, 87–8, 96social, 12, 14territorial, 14, 16–20, 30, 34, 47,

64, 74, 76, 101, 114, 120see also imperial Estates

European Union, 8, 9, 84

federalismaristocratic, 15, 17, 19–20, 121interpretations, 8–9, 14–15,

122–3 princely, 15–17, 52, 65, 87–8, 121radical, 15, 17–20, 37, 121

Feine, Erich, 51Ferdinand I (1503–64), emperor

1556, 27, 28, 32–3, 40–1, 42, 43, 45, 67, 79

Ferdinand II (1578–1637), emperor 1619, 46–7, 67, 80, 101, 123

Ferdinand III (1608–57), emperor 1637, 47–8, 52, 53


PROOF

Index

151

feudal ties, 3, 9, 12, 33, 34, 51, 97–8feudalism, 6, 17–18feuding, 26, 85fl ags, 115–16France, 2, 8, 41, 49, 53, 61, 85, 87,

97–8, 111, 112German view of, 106infl uence in the Empire, 17, 21,

50, 52, 55–9, 60, 70, 84, 91, 95, 105, 114, 117–18

monarchy, 15, 26, 36Francis I Stephen (1708–65),

emperor from 1745, 55Francis II (1768–1835), Holy

Roman emperor 1792–1806, Austrian emperor from 1804, 59, 69, 117

François, Etienne, 48Franconian Kreis, 25, 88, 91Frankfurt am Main, imperial city,

77, 84, 112, 114, 115Frederick III (1415–93), emperor

from 1440, 27, 29, 61, 71, 116Frederick III/I (1657–1713),

elector of Brandenburg (1688), king ‘in’ Prussia from 1700, 114

Frederick II ‘the Great’ (1712–86), king of Prussia from 1740, 55, 57, 106–7, 111

French Revolution (1789), 57, 110, 118

French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802), 4, 57–8, 81–2, 86, 89, 93, 99, 109, 122

Galen, Christoph Bernhard von (1606–78), prince-bishop of Münster from 1650, 96

Gandersheim, imperial abbey, 95Geizkofl er, Zacharias (1560–1617),

imperial treasurer, 77–8‘General Crisis’ of the seventeenth

century, 46Genoa, 97, 109German Confederation (Deutscher

Bund, 1815–66), 17, 75, 93, 99, 118

German Democratic Republic (1949–90), 6, 17

‘German freedom’, 9, 41, 44, 105German kings, see Romans, king

of theGerman language, 2, 104–5, 107,

109, 112German Peasants War (1524–26),

18, 19, 28–9, 39, 74, 87Germany, Federal Republic of, 2, 6,

8–10, 17, 115, 122Gernrode, imperial abbey, 95Golden Bull (1356), 30–1, 33,

60–2, 64, 67, 73, 115, 116Golden Fleece, heraldic order, 108Gotthard, Axel, 8–9, 37, 121Göttingen, 106Graz, 113Great Northern War (1700–21), 89Guelph dynasty, 92, 95guilds, 110

Habermas, Jürgen, 110Habsburg dynasty (Austrian), 3–5,

19, 21, 26, 44, 98, 107, 113dynastic ambitions, 24, 27, 32,

61, 88–9, 96, 97, 99and imperial title, 27, 42, 55, 59,

86, 116see also Austrian monarchy

Habsburg dynasty (Spanish), 19, 92

Hamburg, imperial city, 107Hanover, duchy, later electorate,

54, 64, 70, 88, 95, 115Hansa, 19, 115Hartmann, Peter Claus, 9Haug-Moritz, Gabrielle, 49Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich

(1770–1831), 4, 117, 118Henneberg, Berthold von

(1441–1504), elector of Mainz from 1484, 25, 32, 33

Henshall, Nicholas, 100Hessen-Kassel, landgraviate, 32, 39,

40, 64, 101Hildesheim, bishopric, 95Hitler, Adolf (1889–1945), 1


PROOF

Index

152

Hohenzollern dynasty, see also Brandenburg-Prussia

Hughes, Michael, 7, 51Huguenots, 41, 49Humanism, 26, 31, 35, 104–8Hungary, 8, 20, 22, 24, 26–7, 40,

43, 52, 59, 116relationship to the Empire 28

Hussites, 28, 30, 92, 108

imperial absolutism, 12, 51, 120–1imperial ban (Reichsacht), 44, 56, 63imperial chancellory, 33, 64Imperial Church (Reichskirche)

composition, 13, 93, 95dissolution, 50, 58, 94–5infl uence, 23, 39–40, 65, 113, 122politics, 22, 44–5, 62, 94–7women in, 43, 65, 95

imperial cities (Reichsstädte), 13, 29, 35, 37, 40, 41, 42, 64, 68, 71, 83, 91, 104

Reichstag representation, 66imperial counts (Reichsgrafen), 58,

64, 65–6, 68, 91, 94 imperial courts, 50, 70–5, 86, 102,

111–12, 123case load, 72–3fi nances, 71, 72, 76, 78, 82location, 71, 113–14personnel, 35, 71see also Reichshofrat,

Reichskammergerichtimperial currency regulations, 34,

42, 83–4imperial deputation

(Reichsdeputation), 67–8, 72, 114Final Decision (1803), 58, 64, 66,

68, 96imperial estates (Reichsstände), 14,

16, 30–6, 39, 41–2, 44, 47, 52–3, 59, 68, 70–1, 76, 78, 94, 109

numbers, 12–13, 58, 65, 93status, 30, 102

Imperial Executive Ordinance (1555), 34, 68, 86, 90

imperial fi efs (Reichslehen), 12–13, 29, 62–3, 76

imperial immediacy (Reichsunmittelbarkeit), 12

Imperial Italy (Reichsitalien), 2–3, 9, 22, 51, 61, 97–9

imperial knights (Reichsritter), 12, 14, 19, 29–30, 93, 117, 118

revolt (1521–23), 29, 87imperial law (Reichsrecht), 16, 26,

34, 71, 74, 102, 106, 115imperial patriotism, 103imperial police ordinances, 34imperial politics

alleged dualism in, 4, 11, 16–17, 24, 25, 32, 36, 68, 102, 120

internationalization of, 50–9, 74, 87

religion in, 35, 36–50, 52, 71, 106, 122

imperial postal service, 110–11imperial prelates, 13, 64, 65–6, 68,

91, 93–5imperial publicists, 103imperial recovery, 51–4, 74imperial reform, 8, 25, 29–38, 57,

66, 71, 76, 82, 88, 89–90, 107imperial register (Reichsmatrikel),

31, 76–7, 82, 94imperial taxation, 30–1, 42, 52–3,

67, 71, 75–82, 90, 98–9, 111imperial translation, 22, 105, 115,

122imperial vicar (Reichsvikar), 60–1Innsbruck, 113Interim (1548), 40, 42interregna, 60–1, 65investiture, feudal, 45, 75–6Investiture Contest (1075–1122),

22, 24Italian Wars (1494–1559), 26, 97Italy, 52, 99, 115 see also Imperial

Italyitio in partes, 48–9

Jacobins, 57Jena, battle (1806), 117Jesuit order, 45Jewish communities, 72, 75, 108Joseph I (1678–1711), emperor


PROOF

Index

153

from 1705, 51Joseph II (1741–90), emperor from

1765, 55, 57, 99Jülich, duchy, 20, 46, 92juridifi cation, 73–4

Karlsruhe, 114Kehl, fortress, 81Konstanz, bishopric, 90Kreise (Circles), 9, 16, 36, 57, 64,

73, 83–4, 87, 89–93, 97, 108, 115, 123

assemblies, 30, 32, 35, 67–8, 69, 81, 90

associations, 88, 91, 121convenors, 90–1

Kunisch, Johannes, 100

Landeshoheit, see sovereigntyLatvia, 94League of Princes (Fürstenbund,

1785), 57Legstädte, 77Leipzig, 77, 84, 112Leopold I (1640–1705), emperor

from 1658, 51, 53–4, 63, 86, 87, 98, 123

Letter of Majesty (1609), 47liberalism, 17, 100Liberation, Wars of (1813–15),

103, 118literacy, 111Lithuania, 22Long Turkish War (1593–1606),

43, 46, 77, 79, 98lordship, see feudal tiesLorraine, duchy, 2, 21, 55Louis XIV (1638–1715), king of

France from 1643, 49, 91Lower Rhenish Kreis, see

Westphalian KreisLower Saxon Kreis, 25, 114Lübeck, bishopric, 95Lucca, 97Ludwigsburg, 114Luh, Jürgen, 49Lunéville, treaty (1801), 58, 99Lusatia, 2, 92

Luther, Martin (1483–1546), 27, 38–40, 43, 105, 111

Luxembourg, 2, 27dynasty, 24, 27, 28, 108, 116

Machtstaat (power state), 4–5, 7, 10, 11, 17, 85, 100

Magdeburg, archbishopric, 95Mainz, city, 81Mainz, electorate, 25, 33, 52, 58,

64, 66, 91, 96, 117Mantua, duchy, 97maps, 5, 35Maria Theresa (1717–80), empress,

55–6Marxist interpretations, 6, 8, 17matricular system, 31, 76–82, 90Matthias (1557–1619), emperor

from 1612, 46, 61Maximillian I (1459–1519),

emperor from 1493, 27, 32, 35, 61, 63, 71, 78, 86, 97, 116

Maximillian II (1527–76), emperor 1564, 43

Mechelen, 73Mecklenburg, duchy, 19, 74, 95, 106mediatization, 31, 58

defi ned, 29Medici, dynasty, 98Milan, duchy, 97–8‘military revolution’, 26, 85Mirandola, duchy, 97‘modernity’, 10, 25monarchical principle, 11, 14, 19,

60–1, 120–1monarchization, 54monarchy

composite, 28, 121elective, 3, 24itinerant, 23, 27mixed, 25, 121universal, 22, 36, 105–6

Moravia, 2, 92Moraw, Peter, 24, 36, 64Moritz (1521–55), elector of

Saxony from 1547, 40Moser, Friedrich Carl (1723–98),

112


PROOF

Index

154

Moser, Johann Jacob (1701–85), 105–6, 112, 121

Mühlberg, battle (1547), 40, 111Münster, bishopric, 92, 96

Naples, kingdom, 97–8Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821),

1, 58–9, 99, 103, 107, 117–18Nassau, dynasty, 24Nassau-Siegen, Wilhelm Hyacinth

(1666–1742), prince of 1699–1708, 75

nationalism, 7, 103–19, 122defi ned, 103–4federal, 9–10, 104

nationalist historiography, 4–5, 104, 107, 118, 123

Nazism, 5, 7negotia remissa (unfi nished

business), 52Netherlands, 2, 9, 19, 27, 43, 52,

57, 78 see also Dutch RepublicNeuhaus, Helmut, 7, 11, 85neutrality, 38, 61, 69, 117newspapers, 111–12Nine Years War (1688–97), 49nobles

numbers, 12–13, 26, 29politics, 15, 17, 19–20, 23, 29, 31,

40, 93, 101titles, 12–13

normative year, 42, 43, 48–9Nuremberg, imperial city, 77, 114,

117

Osnabrück, bishopric, 95Otto I (912–73), emperor from

936, 22Ottoman empire, 20, 26, 43, 45, 46,

52, 53, 80, 105–6, 122Ottonian dynasty, 22

Paderborn, bishopric, 95Palatinate, electorate, 30, 43–7, 49,

61, 64, 79, 91Palm, Johann Philipp (d. 1806), 117papacy, 3, 22, 27, 30, 37, 79, 80, 95,

98–9, 105–6, 114

Paragraph 180 (1654), 53, 77Parma, duchy, 97Passau, treaty (1552), 41, 42patriotism, 103patronage, 51, 62, 63, 65, 101–2peasants, 113

protest, 18, 28–9, 74–5Philippsburg, fortress, 81Piacenza, duchy, 97Poland, 2, 3, 8, 22, 40, 54, 55–6

partitions, 56Polish Succession, war (1733–35),

52, 98Prague, 27, 35, 45, 113Press, Volker, 7, 11, 18, 51 Pressburg, treaty (1805), 59princes, college of (Fürstenrat), 65–6Princes Revolt (1552), 41, 42priviligium de non appellando, 73priviligium majus, 116privy councils, 32, 101Protestant Union (1608), 40, 46Prussia, duchy, later kingdom, 54

royal title, 54–5, 98, 116see also Brandenburg-Prussia

public order, 34, 42, 120public peace (Landfrieden), 40, 66,

68, 72, 85, 89defi ned, 86

public sphere, 110publishing, 63, 111–12Pufendorf, Samuel von (1632–94),

4, 9, 121Pütter, Johann Stephan

(1725–1807), 106

Quedlinburg, imperial abbey, 95

Ranieri, Filippo, 70Recess, 39, 53Reformation, 35, 38–40, 43,

105–6, 111interpretations, 5, 7–8, 25, 36–8right of, 41–2, 48

regalia, 114, 116Regensburg, imperial city, 8, 58,

66, 70, 77, 113, 117Reich


PROOF

Index

155

Second, 1, 4–5, 8Third, 1, 8, 123

see also EmpireReichscamerale, 75Reichshofrat (Imperial Aulic

Council), 33, 42, 45, 70–3, 75, 78, 99, 113

Reichskammergericht (Imperial Cameral Court), 32, 34, 35, 42, 68, 70–4, 76, 78, 82, 90, 114, 118

Reichskammerzieler, 76, 78Reichsregiment, 32–3, 61, 68, 90Reichstag (imperial diet),

alternatives to, 67–8, 120envoys, 35, 69–70, 97, 113, 118interpretations, 14, 17, 63–4, 69,

123legislation, 34, 42, 57–8, 69, 76,

79, 82–3, 86, 89–90location, 66, 113–14meetings, (1495) 21, 25; (1500)

89; (1521) 38, 66; (1526) 39; (1529) 39; (1555) 41; (1570) 68, 86; (1576) 83; (1608) 79; (1613) 47, 79; (1640–1) 47, 80; (1654) 52–3, 62, 77

news about, 112origins, 14, 16, 30, 32, 36, 64permanence, 63, 66, 68voting arrangements, 14, 33,

39–40, 43–4, 48, 49, 65–7, 91, 94–5, 97, 117

Reinhard, Wolfgang, 8–10Renaissance, 26Rijswijk, treaty (1697), 49Roman law, 26, 35Roman Months (Römer Monate),

78–81Romans, king of the (Römischer

König), 30, 60, 62Romanticism, 107–8, 118Rome, 21, 30, 78Rossbach, battle (1757), 56, 85Rudolf I (1218–91), emperor from

1273, 90Rudolf II (1552–1612), emperor

from 1576, 45–6, 61, 79, 108, 110, 113, 116, 123

Russia, 54, 56–9, 70

St Bartholomew Massacre (1572), 41Salian dynasty, 22Salzburg, archbishopric, 50, 64,

80, 94San Remo, 97Sardinia, 97–8Savoy, 3, 61, 76, 97–8, 105Saxon duchies, 74Saxony, electorate, 6, 79, 106

electoral title, 30, 40, 43infl uence, 47, 61, 80, 89, 92, 102and Poland, 54, 55–6religion in, 39, 49, 54, 94

Schilling, Heinz, 8–9, 35–6, 37, 85Schindling, Anton, 95Schmalkaldic League (1531–47),

40, 105, 111Schmidt, Georg, 9–11, 36, 104, 121 Schulze, Winfried, 73Scribner, Robert, 18secularization, 42, 43, 48, 54, 55,

65, 72, 96–7defi ned, 94–5

Sellert, Wolfgang, 70Seven Years War (1756–63), 56,

84–5, 89, 106–7, 112Sicily, 97–8Sickingen, Franz von (1481–1523),

29Sigismund (1368–1437), emperor

from 1433, 27, 28Silesia, 2, 55–6, 89, 92, 105social disciplining, 37social structure, 12Sollberg-Rilinger, Barbara, 8, 23Sonderweg (special path), 7, 10sovereignty, 37, 62–3, 100

territorial (Landeshoheit), 20, 47, 48, 54, 100–1

Spain, 26, 27, 32, 36, 52, 61relationship to the Empire, 40,

42, 47, 79, 92, 97–8, 108–9Spanish Succession, war (1701–14),

52, 54, 88, 89, 98


PROOF

Index

156

Speyer, imperial city, 39, 86, 114state formation, 15, 87, 100Staufer, dynasty, 22, 24Strasbourg, bishopric, 41subsidies, 79, 87Swabian Kreis, 25, 88, 91, 92Swabian League (1488–1534), 19,

90Sweden, 50–1, 52, 54, 55, 69, 73,

95, 106Switzerland, 2

attempts to join, 19, 29, 37, 40, 94

emergence, 19, 29, 103, 121identity, 109

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius (AD 55–116), 105

territorializationcauses, 22, 76–7, 86–7consequences, 17, 33–4, 36, 65,

91, 111–12process, 14, 16, 34–5, 95, 99–102,

114Teutonic Order, 92Thirty Years War (1618–48), 11

causes, 37, 41–6impact, 4, 5–6, 19, 47–9, 53,

79–81, 83, 100, 106Thurn und Taxis, family, 110toleration, 38, 48–50tolls, 83–5towns, 13, 18–19, 25, 26, 110trade fairs, 84, 112Transylvania, 20Treitschke, Heinrich von

(1834–96), 4–5, 107Tridentine decrees (1563), 42, 45Trier, electorate, 30, 64, 91Tunis, 111Turkish wars, 43, 52, 68, 77, 79,

81, 99see also Long Turkish War

Tuscany, grand duchy, 97–8

Überlingen, imperial city, 35Ulm, imperial city, 35, 59United States of America, 7, 15universities, 35, 71, 106, 115Upper Rhenish Kreis, 88, 91, 97Upper Saxon Kreis, 25, 92, 114Utrecht, treaty (1713), 54

Venice, 3Vienna, 27, 51, 71, 104, 113, 114

Congress (1814–15), 17, 92, 118

occupations of, 59siege (1683), 52

Visitation (judicial review), 72Voltaire, François Marie Arouet de

(1694–1778), 1, 122

Wallenstein, Albrecht Wenzel von (1583–1634), general, 67, 80

war, see under individual confl icts Weimar Republic, 122Westphalia, Treaty of (1648)

guarantors, 50–1interpretations, 5–6, 21, 47, 49,

51terms, 20, 47–8, 60, 80, 83, 92,

95Westphalian Kreis, 20, 25, 88, 91–3Wettins, dynasty, 40, 42–3Wetzlar, imperial city, 114Whig interpretation, 17, 18Winkler, Heinrich August, 7witchcraft, 74Wittelsbachs, dynasty, 24, 44, 61Worms, imperial city, 38Württemberg, duchy, 5, 19, 30, 64,

90, 91, 102, 115ruler-Estate dispute in, 74, 101

Würzburg, bishopric, 82, 91, 96

Zedler, Johann Heinrich (1706–63), 4, 9

Zeeden, Ernst, 37


PROOF

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