GERMANY’S LEGACY OF POLITICAL FRAGMENTATION

Germans developed the strongest kingdom in Europe around the year 1000 A.D., but by 1350 their rulers were compelled to recognize the autonomy of over 200 principalities and 50 Free Cities. What caused this fragmentation, and how could it be overcome?

The following images are chosen to convey a sense of what 19th-century German schoolchildren learned about their country’s history.

The first-century Germanic tribes as described by Tacitus

The “Wandering of the Peoples”

Charlemagne revived the Roman Empire around AD 800

But it soon broke into “French” and “German” halves.

The German King Otto the Great

conquered Rome in 961 and had himself

crowned Emperor by the Pope.This Empire

endured until 1806.Legal documents began to label it

“Holy” in 1157, and “Holy Roman” in

1254.In 1512 its legal

name became “The Holy Roman Empire

of the German Nation.”

Otto’s Empire also expanded into Czech and Polish lands

The “Roman” Emperor Otto III (reigned 980-1002) receives tribute from all of Europe

But Otto and his heirs

only controlled a

small portion of

their realm directly….

Civil war erupted when Emperor Henry IV quarreled with Pope Gregory VII over the appointment of

bishops. In 1077 Henry was humiliated at the papal palace of Canossa. The Imperial throne became

elective

Imperial power revived under the Hohenstaufen Emperors Frederick I & II (1180-1250), but they

both became bogged down in losing wars in Italy.(“The Court of Frederick II in Palermo,” painted in

1865)

Before the development of artillery, every knight in his castle was

virtually a law unto himself

(Burg Eltz, built around 1200 on

a cliff overlooking the

Mosel River)

EMPEROR CHARLES IV RECOGNIZED THE FOLLOWING GOVERNMENTS IN THE “GOLDEN

BULL” OF 1356

7 “Electors” with kingly rights in their principalities and a vote in the choice of a new emperor. Over 200 autonomous princes with a seat in the Reichstag, or Imperial Diet. Over 50 Free Cities with seats in the Reichstag.

Many Imperial Knights (sometimes called “robber barons”) and abbeys not named in the Golden Bull also recognized no authority but the distant Emperor.

Thereafter the head of the Habsburg dynasty of Austria almost always won election as Emperor but enjoyed little authority outside the Habsburg lands.

Luther faces Charles V at the Reichstag of Worms, April 1521:

“The verses of Holy Scripture that I cite have overcome my conscience and trapped me in the word

of God. Therefore I cannot and will not recant, because acting against one’s conscience does not

bring safety or salvation. God help me!”

Luther’s new doctrines plunged Germany into turmoil:1.Salvation through faith alone!2.Only the Bible!3.The priesthood of all believers!

After Luther was outlawed, Saxony’s ElectorFrederick the Wise sheltered him in the Wartburg

Lucas Cranach, “The Supper of the Evangelicals and the Damnation of the Papists” (ca. 1530)

“Seven-Headed Martin Luther”

(Catholic caricature,

1529).Charles V conquered Saxony and

Hessen in 1547 but found

himself unable to stamp out

Protestantism.

TERMS OF THE PEACE OF AUGSBURG, 1555,between Emperor Ferdinand and the League of

Schmalkalden

“In order to bring peace to the Holy Roman Empire of the Germanic Nation, let neither his Imperial Majesty nor the Electors, Princes, etc., do any violence or harm to any estate of the empire on the account of the Augsburg Confession…”“Likewise the Estates espousing the Augsburg Confession shall let all the Estates and Princes who cling to the old religion live in absolute peace…”“However, all such as do not belong to the two above named religions shall not be included in the present peace but be totally excluded from it.”[If any ruler of an ecclesiastical territory becomes a Protestant, he must renounce that territory.][Any subject who disagrees with the government’s choice of confession has the right to move elsewhere.]

Catholic, Lutheran, and

Calvinist powers on the eve of

the Thirty Years War in 1618:

The Dutch War of

Independence against Spain

caused an arms race in Germany

The Defenestration of Prague, May 23, 1618, when Czech Protestants defied the Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand II

Peasants bore the brunt of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48), in which Spain, Denmark, Sweden, and France intervened.

Estimated population

loss in Germany

from 1618 to

1648

Europe in 1648

Frontispiece to Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651):“Upon earth there is not his like…”

After 1648 most German lands embraced “absolutism”,i.e., rule by a strong prince who could act without approval by any parliamentary body…

Political fragmentation did promote a rich cultural life, as

when Duke Karl August of Saxe-Weimar made Goethe his prime minister and secured a

professorship for Friedrich Schiller at Jena

But Germany was experiencing a crisis of over-population by the 1790s

• Serfdom still prevailed east of the Elbe River.

• In artisan guilds, more and more journeymen never became masters.

• Pauperism spread in the countryside.