Reformierte Eliten im Preußenland: Religion, Politik und Loyalitäten in der Familie Dohna (1560–1660)

2004 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 210-239
Author(s):  
Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Close Contact ◽  
Religious History ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Religious Symbolism ◽  
Religious Influences ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Establishment

ABSTRACT The archives of the Dohna family contain materials on the efforts at creating a “Second Reformation” in the Duchy of Prussia, where the early establishment of a Lutheran confessional foundation (the Corpus doctrinae pruthenicum| of 1567/68) and a solid ecclesiastical constitution prevented Calvinism from gaining a foothold. The Reformed creed found followers among the nobility through connections with the Reformed territories in the Holy Roman Empire, by close contact with Reformed theologians in royal Prussia, and by connections with the Calvinist church of the nobility in Poland and Lithuania. This network radiated into ducal Prussia, where the Dohnas became Calvinists. During the first three decades of the seventeenth century this led to a conflict between the Reformed party and the Lutheran majority among the theologians and the lower nobility. Drawing on the support of the Polish king, the Lutheran party succeeded between 1610 and 1620 in shutting out the Reformed officeholders by means of lawsuits and unequivocal oath formulas. The Reformed nobility were not helped by the connection they forged in 1613 with the equally Reformed territorial ruler because he had to take into account the Polish crown as well as ecclesiastical legal determinations in ducal Prussia.The Dohnas, who stood close to the Calvinist “party of movement,” tried nevertheless to introduce elements of the Reformed faith or to engage men who were inclined toward the Reformed creed into the churches within their patronage. In this context, the Dohnas argued with the noble concepts of patronage held by the Lithuanian Radziwiłłs, who used their rights of patronage to introduce Calvinist pastors. Repeated conflicts arose with the Ko¨ nigsberg consistory and neighboring Lutheran pastors, in the course of which both sides adhered to their positions. On the level of religious symbolism, the Dohnas removed images of saints and programmatically transformed older works of art to conform to Calvinism.The confessional disputes in the Duchy of Prussia are typologically similar to those in the Prussian cities (Elbing, Danzig, Thorn), except that in the former noble patronage and in the latter bourgeois patronage was contested. It is evident that in eastern Prussia, too, along with Lutheran confessionalization, numerous other religious influences were felt. Therefore, the region can be included more definitely than previously thought in the religious history of eastern central Europe.

scholarly journals Ottoman Language Learning in Early Modern Germany

2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Stefan Hanß
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Modern Germany ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Field Of Inquiry

AbstractThis article presents new evidence on the authorship and readership of the earliest printed Ottoman language materials that details the extent to which sixteenth- and seventeenth-century inhabitants of the Holy Roman Empire actively engaged in learning Ottoman. Such findings open up a new field of inquiry evaluating the Ottoman impact on the German-speaking lands reaching beyond the so-called “Turkish menace.” Presenting the variety of Ottoman language students, teachers, and materials in central Europe, as well as their connections with the oral world(s) of linguistic fieldwork in the Habsburg-Ottoman contact zone, this article argues that Ottoman language learning is an important but thus far neglected element in understanding the cultural and intellectual landscape of early modern central Europe. What may appear to be experiments with linguistic riddles on first glimpse was in fact grounded in deep enthusiasm and fascination for Ottoman language learning shared among a community of Protestant semi-scholarly aficionados.

scholarly journals Literary Culture in the Holy Roman Empire, 1555-1720

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Early Modern Literature ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
The Social ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Century Literature

These essays discuss approaches to early modern literature in central Europe, focusing on four pivotal areas: connections between humanism and the new scientific thought the relationship of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century literature to ancient and Renaissance European traditions the social and political context of early modern writing and the poets' self-consciousness about their work. As a whole, the volume argues that early modern writing in central Europe should not be viewed solely as literature but as the textual product of specific social, political, educational, religious, and economic circumstances. The contributors are Judith P. Aikin, Barbara Becker-Cantarino, Thomas W. Best, Dieter Breuer, Barton W. Browning, Gerald Gillespie, Anthony Grafton, Gerhart Hoffmeister, Uwe-K. Ketelsen, Joseph Leighton, Ulrich Maché, Michael M. Metzger, James A. Parente, Jr., Richard Erich Schade, George C. Schoolfield, Peter Skrine, and Ferdinand van Ingen.

Austria as a Region of German Culture: 1900–1938

1992 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 135-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
David S. Luft
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
German Culture ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
History Of ◽  
Austrian Studies ◽  
The Relationship

This Essay Attempts to contribute to our understanding of the intellectual and cultural history of Central Europe by making explicit a variety of themes that haunt discourse about Austrian culture and by making some suggestions about periodizing the relationship between Austria and German culture. I originally developed these thoughts on Austria as a region of German culture for a conference in 1983 at the Center for Austrian Studies on regions and regionalism in Austria. Although the political institutions of Central Europe have undergone a revolution since then, the question of Austria's relationship to German culture still holds its importance for the historian-and for contemporary Austrians as well. The German culture I have in mind here is not thekleindeutschnational culture of Bismarck's Reich, but rather the realm that was once constituted by the German-speaking lands of the Holy Roman Empire. This geographical space in Central Europe suggests a more ideal realm of the spirit, for which language is our best point of reference and which corresponds to no merely temporal state.

scholarly journals THE CONSTITUTION OF THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE AFTER 1648: SAMUEL PUFENDORF'S ASSESSMENT IN HIS MONZAMBANO

1999 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 961-983 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER SCHRÖDER
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political System ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Considerable Degree ◽  
Philosophical Discussion ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
New Approach ◽  
History Of

The examination of Pufendorf's Monzambano shows that he was strongly interested in the question of sovereignty, and that the complex reality of the Holy Roman Empire demanded a completely new approach to the question of where sovereignty within the Empire lay. Pufendorf developed his account of the Empire as an irregular political system by using essential aspects of Hobbes's theory and thus departed from all previous writers on the forma imperii. But Pufendorf's writing on the Empire has not only to be linked with political and philosophical discussion about sovereignty within the Empire but also with his own main writings where he developed a more detailed theory regarding the issue of sovereignty in general. The peace of Westphalia was not only an international settlement but it also shaped the constitution of the Empire to a considerable degree, and this is of crucial significance for the history of political thought during the seventeenth century.

scholarly journals Brittany: Pay d’États and Don Gratuit (1648–1652)

2021 ◽  
pp. 159-187
Author(s):  
Christel Annemieke Romein
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
History Of

AbstractI start this chapter by introducing the history of Brittany which was independent until 1492 when it became linked to France, and 1532 it became a French pays d’état. Brittany itself did not have any direct experiences with warfare during the mid-seventeenth century, and hence this chapter shows how a particularist province reacted to tax-requests, without the immediate threat of warfare. Nonetheless, taxation had to be paid in order to finance warfare with Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. Central to this chapter is how the nobility responded to these requests. The noblemen strove to uphold their legal status, and heavy taxations could jeopardise their income. Hence, the records of the Breton assemblies do give much information about the tax-negotiations that went on and the underlying noble privileges and conflicts. Especially between 1648 and 1652, when Brittany found itself close to bankruptcy and needed to curtail their expenditure. The used terminology does give away information about the threatened autonomy and means to protect privileges.

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).

Baron Alexander Stroganov’s Mission to Vienna (1761): Dynastic Policy and Symbolic Communication

2021 ◽  
pp. 117
Author(s):  
Olga Khavanova
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Symbolic Communication ◽  
Bilateral Relations ◽  
History Of ◽  
Personal Qualities ◽  
European Education ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Francis I

The article is based on the materials from Russian and Austrian archives and devoted to lesser-known circumstances of the preparation and course of the 1761 diplomatic mission of Baron A.S. Stroganov to Vienna on the occasion of the wedding of the heir to the throne, Archduke Joseph, with Isabella of Parma. The embassy is considered in the context of symbolic communication through ceremonial gestures between St. Petersburg and Vienna. It emphasised the particularly friendly nature of the relationship between the two dynasties and two courts, not only united by a bilateral treaty and membership in the anti-Prussian alliance during the Seven Years War but also symbolically related as godparents. A.S. Stroganov was a young aristocrat without proper experience in the field of diplomacy and of the modest court rank of Kammer-Junker. The appointment was explained by his kinship with Chancellor M.I. Vorontsov whose daughter Anna officially accompanied her husband on the trip. The imperial ambassador to St. Petersburg Count Nicolaus Esterházy spared no effort to smooth over the awkwardness and find benevolent patrons for the young couple in Vienna. European education and the exceptional personal qualities of the ambassador allowed A. Stroganov to fulfil the commission with honour and receive the title of a Count of the Holy Roman Empire from Emperor Francis I as a reward. The embassy became the last page in the history of relations between St. Petersburg and Vienna on the eve of the break of bilateral relations and Russia’s withdrawal from the Seven Years War in 1762.

scholarly journals Grafen von Krabaten

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 203-228
Author(s):  
Robert Kurelić
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
German Language ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of

The counts of Krk were one of the most prestigious and most powerful noble families in late medieval Croatia, with a dominant role attained under Nicholas IV who received the last name Frankapani from Pope Martin V in 1430. Soon after his death German language sources began to refer to the family as Grafen von Krabaten or Counts of Croatia, a somewhat peculiar designation considering that there were other prominent families such as the counts of Krbava who also maintained contacts within the Holy Roman Empire. This paper traces the development of the term von Krabaten from 1440 until the election of Ferdinand I Habsburg as king of Croatia, showing how it was used throughout the century and may have been an indication of the respect and status achieved by the Frankapani under Nicholas IV and his sons. The term is also explored as a helping tool for further research into the history of the family using sources that have hitherto been overlooked or neglected.

Central Europe

2021 ◽  
pp. 600-616
Author(s):  
Árpád von Klimó
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Religious History ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
State Socialism ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Religious Landscape

Central Europe is still imagined as an area dominated by Christianity, for the most part the Catholic Church, in close alliance with Christian rulers who minimized the impact of both the Protestant Reformation and minorities such as Judaism. This idea rests, however, on an oversimplified picture of the religious history of the region. Recent research has shown that the reality was more complex, and that historians still know very little about what the overwhelming majority of people believed or how they practised their religion. Christianity has never completely monopolized the religious landscape of Central Europe and has itself been constantly changing. The history of Christianization, Reformation, empires, and nationalism present in Central Europe as well as state socialism, the Cold War and today’s relative pluralism give an idea of this complexity.

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