Introduction

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helmut Walser Smith
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
German Society ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
German History ◽  
Modern Germany ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
German Nation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact

This book departs in significant ways from previous histories of modern Germany. The book also represents a novel attempt to place German history in a deeper international and transnational setting than has hitherto been the case. This is the second important departure, and is, in this sense, that national histories and ‘area studies’ need to take fuller account of changes occurring in the wider world. There have also been a number of attempts to emphasize the history of the everyday, or to underscore the impact of war on German society. The book makes nation-state sovereignty into a decisive marker as well as a problem of modern German history. A concept of the German nation reaches at least to the early sixteenth century, when the Holy Roman Empire officially added the appellation ‘of the German Nation’. This article chronicles the history of Germany from the eighteenth century to the twentieth century.

“Mohr und Trompeter”: Blackness and Social Status in Early Modern Germany

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 613-663 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arne Spohr
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Physical Violence ◽  
German Society ◽  
Social Position ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Fully Integrated ◽  
Modern Germany ◽  
History Of

By the end of the seventeenth century, black trumpeters and kettledrummers were employed at many courts of the Holy Roman Empire as symbols of princely magnificence. Their legal and social position within the court hierarchy, and within German society as a whole, has been debated among historians. According to a commonly held view, black performers who had been bought on the international slave market were considered legally free and fully integrated into German society once they had completed a two-year apprenticeship and entered court service. Membership in the Imperial Trumpeters' and Kettledrummers' Guild (requiring proof of free birth) is usually cited as evidence of their free legal status, social integration into German society, and privileged position at court. Drawing on insights from social, religious, and legal history, history of race, and music sociology, my article reevaluates the notion of the frictionless integration of black trumpeters and drummers into Germany's estate-based society by focusing on two case studies: Christian Real (fl. 1643–74) and Christian Gottlieb (fl. 1675–90). As my study of their little-known yet well-documented careers demonstrates, the social position of these black trumpeters was far more fragile than that of their white colleagues. The tension between their blackness, associated with their previous slave status, and their visible roles as court trumpeters associated with princely power sometimes led to conflict and even physical violence. Both case studies suggest that black trumpeters and drummers were more susceptible to discrimination and violence whenever they moved out of the courtly sphere in which they were privileged and protected.

scholarly journals VISUALIZING GERMANNESS THROUGH COSTUMES IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
FREDERICK G. CROFTS
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Production Networks ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scholarly Discourse ◽  
Material Exchange

ABSTRACT Examining the understudied collection of costume images from Heidelberg Calvinist, lawyer, and church councillor Marcus zum Lamm's (1544–1606) ‘treasury’ of images, the Thesaurus Picturarum, this article intervenes in the historiography on sixteenth-century German national imaginaries, emphasizing the import of costume books and manuscript alba for national self-fashioning. By bringing late sixteenth-century ethnographic costume image collections into scholarly discourse on the variegated ways of conceiving and visualizing Germany and Germanness over the century, this article sheds new light on a complex narrative of continuity and change in the history of German nationhood and identity. Using zum Lamm's images as a case-study, this article stresses the importance of incorporating costume image collections into a nexus of patriotic genres, including works of topographical-historical, natural philosophical, ethnographic, cartographic, cosmographic, and genealogical interest. Furthermore, it calls for historians working on sixteenth-century costume books and alba to look deeper into the meanings of such images and collections in the specific contexts of their production; networks of knowledge and material exchange; and – in the German context – the political landscape of territorialization, confessionalization, and dynastic ambition in the Holy Roman Empire between the Peace of Augsburg and the Thirty Years War (1555–1618).

Monasticism in Early Modern Germany

2020 ◽  
pp. 461-470
Author(s):  
Edeltraud Klueting
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Left Bank ◽  
Modern Germany ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Right

The chapter addresses the history of monasticism in the German-speaking territories of the Holy Roman Empire from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. Whether the Reformation movement unleashed by Martin Luther represented a continuation of late medieval monastic reforms or, rather, an abrupt departure from them, is a contentious issue. In the Catholic parts of Germany, after the Council of Trent, monasteries became significant agents in the renewal of the Church, especially in the areas of education and social and charitable activity. On the other hand, the Enlightenment, with its narrow conception of utility, called into question the very basis of monastic life, and hence the right of monasteries to exist. The fallout of the French Revolution and the French occupation of the left bank of the Rhine led to a great wave of monastic dissolutions. It was only under the influence of German Romanticism that monasticism experienced another revival.

Central European Jewry during the Thirty Years' War

1983 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan I. Israel
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
German Society ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Central European ◽  
European Jewish ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
German Jewry ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Systematic Explanation

Despite the wealth of published studies on individual German, Austrian, and Czech Jewish communities of the early modern era, it is remarkable how rare have been the attempts to synthesize the material and reach an overall assessment of the impact of the Thirty Years' War on Central European Jewish life. This gaping lacuna was noted some years ago by S. W. Baron, whose own general discussion of this subject is virtually unique. Immensely erudite, Baron's piece not only reveals the vast scope of the relevant material but tentatively suggests that the great European conflict was a key formative episode in the development of German Jewry, reversing earlier trends and preparing the way for the “Court Jews” of the later seventeenth century. This it undoubtedly was. Even so, Baron's evaluation is open to criticism on several counts. In particular, he fails to bring out, or make clear, just how crucial and how favorable a phase the Thirty Years' War was for the Jews of the Holy Roman Empire. Furthermore, while some effort is made in his essay to identify the key shifts of the period, such as an alleged drift of Jews from the countryside to the towns, it is arguable that this is not handled very convincingly or with sufficient precision. In any case, it is evident that a fuller, more systematic explanation is needed if we are to account for the singular fact that during this period of almost unparalleled disruption, turmoil, and suffering Christendom's perennial scapegoat fared considerably better than most of the rest of German society.

Reformed Irenicism and the Leipzig Colloquy of 1631

1976 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bodo Nischan
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
German Nation ◽  
Religious Problems ◽  
Religious War

Europe in the second half of the sixteenth century was a continent divided along confessional lines. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. While other countries, in particular France and the Netherlands, drifted toward religious war, the Empire seemed to have settled its religious problems with the Treaty of Augsburg in 1555. The treaty, which Emperor Ferdinand I had negotiated with the German princes, permitted Catholic rulers to impose Catholicism upon all their subjects and Lutheran princes to impose Lutheranism. This was a religiopolitical compromise that worked temporarily but became increasingly difficult to preserve as Germany's confessional picture continued to change in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

scholarly journals COUNTER-REFORMATION IN GERMANY

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 28-37
Author(s):  
Svetlana Vasileva
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Previous Article ◽  
German History ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
German Nation ◽  
Religious Problems

The article studies the Counter-Reformation process in Germany and the neighboring European ter-ritories in a wider context as a complex of geopolitical, social and religious problems growing in Europe in the 15th and the 16th centuries. The study aims at finding connections between the Reformation processes launched by Martin Luther and the subsequent course of German history during the Counter-Reformation. The article focuses on the situation in Germany against a wider background of the developments in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. This paper con-tinues the author’s previous article on the German Reformation and Martin Luther’s role in it. It ex-amines the consequences of the Reformation that brought Germany on the edge of a humanitarian disaster in the Thirty Years’ War. The course of the war, as well as its geopolitical causes and con-sequences for Germany and for the whole of Europe are also investigated. The author describes and analyzes a broad historical and political context which determined the circumstances and reasons for many European states’ participation in the Thirty Years’ War, as well as the consequences of the Peace of Westphalia.

STILL A MONSTROSITY? SOME REFLECTIONS ON EARLY MODERN GERMAN STATEHOOD

2006 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 565-576 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER H. WILSON
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
The Political ◽  
German History ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Nation State ◽  
History Of

The German political scientist and philosopher, Samuel von Pufendorf, described the Holy Roman Empire in 1667 as a ‘monstrosity’, because it did not fit any of the recognized definitions of a state. The issue of the Empire's statehood has been the most important consideration in its historiography in recent decades: was it a state? If so, what kind? This review addresses these questions by examining how the debate on the Empire is related to wider controversies surrounding German history, the contemporary process of European integration, and about political organization in general. It explains how these debates are rooted in the political and religious disputes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that still influence how the history of the Empire is written today. The four principal modern interpretations are identified and assessed: the Empire as a ‘failed nation state’, as a federation, and, more recently, as an ‘Empire-State’ or a ‘Central Europe of the Regions’. The piece concludes by offering a new explanatory framework to assess the Empire's political development.

Introduction

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Hingley
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
Roman History ◽  
British History ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
Empire Building ◽  
Physical Evidence ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact

This book examines the impact of the discovery of physical evidence for Roman Britain between the late sixteenth and the early twentieth centuries. My earlier work, Roman Officers and English Gentlemen, explored how the Roman past of Britain was articulated as an aspect of ‘imperial discourse’ in British late Victorian and Edwardian society, how the Roman history and monuments of Britain were used to construct an imperial ancestry for contemporary Britain. The Roman empire, and Roman Britain in particular, were drawn upon to provide powerful contrasts and comparisons between the superpowers of their respective ages, drawing out morals and lessons for the contemporary imperial age. This book seeks to address the value of ideas derived from Roman Britain in the construction of British nationhood and in the context of empire-building, but with a far longer chronological perspective. Before the later sixteenth century, people in Britain had thought and written about the Roman past, but conventional wisdom suggests that it is only from this time that a self-critical and conscious appreciation of the classical writings that addressed Britain emerged. It is also from this time that the value of past objects and sites started to be recognized. In studying the ways that objects and remains from the pre-Roman and Roman past were received, we shall see that the increasing comprehension of the significance of ancient objects was itself a result of the gradual acceptance of the authority of the classical texts that referred to pre-Roman and Roman Britain. Knowledge of the culture and history of ancient Britain prior to this time was communicated through a series of mythical tales that presented a heroic picture of the ancient past. For the English, this ‘old British history’ presented what Philip Schwyzer has called a ‘grand and sprawling narrative’, derived mainly from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae (The History of the Kings of Britain, c.1136). These powerful ideas related the initial peopling of these islands to Brutus and his followers who had fled the sack of Troy. During medieval times, various associated stories had been elaborated around mythical and semi-mythical ancient rulers of Britain, including Cymbeline and Lear.

The Role of the Burgenland in the History of the Habsburg Monarchy

1972 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 7-38
Author(s):  
Fritz Zimmermann
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Political History ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Habsburg Monarchy ◽  
The West ◽  
German Nation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Carolingian Empire

Viewed from the perspective of thousands of years, political history reveals a pattern of continuous alternation between decay and re-formation. Thus, after the fall of the Roman empire, the first political entity that emerged in the West was the Carolingian empire, which, through the coronation of the emperor in 800, assumed the form of a revived western Roman empire. Although it soon became limited to the part of the old empire inhabited by the “German nation,” it continued to exist, at least in outward form, under the name of the Holy Roman Empire until 1806. As early as 1804, though, Francis II had adopted the title of emperor of Austria for his position as ruler of the “hereditary Austrian lands.”

scholarly journals Theologians and Their Bellies

2021 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-229
Author(s):  
Maciej Ptaszyński
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
History Of

Abstract An analysis of the role and meaning of the epithet “theologaster,” coined by Erasmus of Rotterdam in his letter from Paris in 1497, can reward us with insights into the interplay of Reformation, scholastic, and humanist forces in the sixteenth century. Although Erasmus rarely used the term in his later correspondence or in his works, the epithet gained some popularity among the humanists and the reformers. During the confessional debates, both sides, the Catholics and the Protestants in the Holy Roman Empire and in France, reached for this same epithet as an argument and a weapon with which to demonstrate the incompetence of their opponents. The term, however, can rarely be found in the confessional polemics in Poland, despite the enormous popularity of Erasmus in the region. The history of the epithet sheds light on the importance of the humanist legacy for the confessional era.

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