scholarly journals Germany and the French Revolution

1916 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 51-76
Author(s):  
G. P. Gooch
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
General Level ◽  
Wars Of Religion ◽  
The World ◽  
Joseph Ii ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

During the years immediately preceding the French Revolution Germany presented a curious spectacle of political decrepitude and intellectual rejuvenescence. The Holy Roman Empire, of which Voltaire caustically remarked that it was neither holy nor Roman nor an Empire, was afflicted with creeping paralysis. Its wheels continued to revolve; but the machinery was rusty and the output was small. ‘No Curtius,’ remarked Justus Möser, ‘leaps into the abyss for the preservation of the Imperial system.’ The prolonged duel between Frederick the Great and Maria Theresa destroyed whatever shadowy sentiment of unity had survived the wars of religion, and the short but stormy reign of Joseph II revealed to the world that the Imperial dignity had sunk into the tool and plaything of the house of Hapsburg. The Fürstenbund formally registered the emergence of a rival claimant for the hegemony of central Europe. But the springtime of Prussian greatness was merely the reflection of her ruler's dazzling personality. Mirabeau, who knew them both, described Frederick as all mind and his nephew all body. His death left Germany without a leader or a hero. Among the countless rulers who owed a nominal allegiance to the Emperor a few men of capacity and conscience, such as Ferdinand of Brunswick, Karl August of Weimar and Karl Friedrich of Baden, could be found; but the general level of character and intellect was low, and the scandals of courts and courtiers provoked disgust and indignation. The most docile people in Europe watched with impotent despair the orgies of the last Elector of Bavaria, the capricious tyranny of Karl Eugen of Württemberg, the insanity of Duke Karl of Zweibrücken, and the Byzantine decadence of the ecclesiastical Electors on the Rhine. On the eve of the Revolution the larger part of Germany was poor, ignorant, ill-governed and discontented.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
Paul Rusnock ◽  
Jan Šebestík
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Public Forum ◽  
The World ◽  
Joseph Ii ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

Bolzano’s life coincides almost exactly with what has been called the Age of Revolutions. Born in 1781, he lived through the revolution from above launched by Joseph II in 1780, the French Revolution, the triumphs and defeats of Napoleon, the conservative reaction embodied in the Metternich System, the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, the July revolution of 1830, and finally the uprisings of 1848, the last year of his life. It was a time of exaggerations, of great hopes and fears, sudden reversals, and crushing disappointments, a time of vast enthusiasms and general confusion, as unprecedented forces were let loose upon a world almost completely unprepared for them. The world of letters was not spared, as authors strove to make their voices count in an ever more crowded and noisy public forum. Novelty was everywhere sought, overreach and passion common on all sides....

The Glory and the Sorrow

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Tackett
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Small Time ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
Ordinary Citizen ◽  
Best Friend ◽  
The World ◽  
Cultural Intermediary ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

The book describes the life and the world of a small-time lawyer, Adrien-Joseph Colson, who lived in central Paris from the end of the Old Regime through the first eight years of the French Revolution. It is based on over a thousand letters written by Colson about twice a week to his best friend living in the French province of Berry. By means of this correspondence, and of a variety of other sources, the book examines what it was like for an “ordinary citizen” to live through extraordinary times, and how Colson, in his position as a “social and cultural intermediary,” can provide insight into the life of a whole neighborhood on the central Right Bank, both before and during the Revolution. It explores the day-to-day experience of the Revolution: not only the thrill, the joy, and the enthusiasm, but also the uncertainty, the confusion, the anxiety, the disappointments—often all mixed together. It also throws light on some of the questions long debated by historians concerning the origins, the radicalization, the growth of violence, and the end of that Revolution.

scholarly journals NEOCLACISISM'S VIEW OF ART AND DAVID

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (49) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

Although neoclassicism seems to be a continuation of classicism, the content that neoclassicism possesses, philosophical thought, is completely different. But this difference does not create a huge gap between classicism and neoclassicism. Neoclassicism reflects the ideals of the Roman empire rather than the Greek antiquity. These ideals and concepts are presented with enrichment with the concepts brought by the French revolution. Neoclassicism, a child of enlightenment, brings itself into existence with its belief in rationalism and science. Besides, concepts that have not been heard until that time have gained meaning with neoclassicism. The concepts which were brought up with a philosopher rigor by David, the most important artist of neoclassicism, such as virtue, patriotism, freedom, equality and fraternity have been intensely treated. In addition to this, the concept of the republic and the concept of justice created by the revolution after the great struggle, tears, and labor took its place in the art together with neoclassicism. The extreme belief in science has formed the most important pillars of neoclassicism. The unbending understanding of the academy, which has been going on for centuries, together with neoclassicism that has changed mentally and many concepts have entered into art as a subject. Keywords: neoclassicism, art, idealism

The Old Reich

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter H. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
French History ◽  
Ancien Regime ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
National Unity ◽  
German Development ◽  
Ancien Régime ◽  
The French Revolution

Over the last thirty years it has become common to refer to the Holy Roman Empire as the “Old Reich” to distinguish it from Bismarck's Second Reich and Hitler's Third. The extent to which the Reich might be categorized as an Ancien Régime depends, of course, on how that term is defined. The concept of an old regime postdates the Reich, since it derives from the controversy surrounding the legacy of the French Revolution. Just as that Revolution has been central to debates on modern French history, so the problematic issues of statehood and national unity have dominated discussions about German development after the Reich was dissolved in 1806. These discussions have been shaped by the characteristics associated with an old regime.

Controversial Terminology

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Jones ◽  
Christoph Mauntel ◽  
Klaus Oschema
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
General Level ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Introductory Essay ◽  
Latin West ◽  
The World

In recent years, research on the concept of ‘empire’ has seen an upswing of interest in both Political Science and History. Definitions of ‘empire’ abound, as they do for words such as ‘discourse’, ‘performance’ and ‘culture’. Countless books and edited volumes concerning questions of ‘empire’ have been published since the turn of the century. On the most general level, however, the majority of studies on questions of ‘empire’ tend to neglect the European Middle Ages. Medievalists continue to associate the Latin terms imperium and imperator primarily with the (Holy) Roman Empire. A closer examination of the existing material in Latin and the vernacular languages reveals that many late medieval authors were far from limited in their use of imperial terminology. This introductory essay establishes the historiographical context for an exploration of this terminology as it was employed in the Latin West in two instances. The first is imperial self-designation, cases where rulers explicitly adopted or avoided the language of empire in referring to themselves or their realms. The second is the use of imperial terminology by authors from Latin Europe to describe and characterise distant and foreign regions of the world.

The Revolutionizing of the Revolution

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. R. Palmer
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Strict Sense ◽  
French Government ◽  
Thing In Itself ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

In 1792, the French Revolution became a thing in itself, an uncontrollable force that might eventually spend itself but which no one could direct or guide. The governments set up in Paris in the following years all faced the problem of holding together against forces more revolutionary than themselves. This chapter distinguishes two such forces for analytical purposes. There was a popular upheaval, an upsurge from below, sans-culottisme, which occurred only in France. Second, there was the “international” revolutionary agitation, which was not international in any strict sense, but only concurrent within the boundaries of various states as then organized. From the French point of view these were the “foreign” revolutionaries or sympathizers. The most radical of the “foreign” revolutionaries were seldom more than advanced political democrats. Repeatedly, however, from 1792 to 1799, these two forces tended to converge into one force in opposition to the French government of the moment.

‘The greatest irregular’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Scurr
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Thomas Carlyle ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dramatic Narrative ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

Thomas Carlyle claimed that his history of the French Revolution was ‘a wild savage book, itself a kind of French Revolution …’. This chapter considers his stylistic approaches to creating the illusion of immediacy: his presentation of seemingly unmediated fact through the transformation of memoir and other kinds of historical record into a compelling dramatic narrative. Closely examining the ways in which he worked biographical anecdote into the fabric of his text raises questions about Carlyle’s wider historical purposes. Pressing the question of what it means to think through style, or to distinguish expressive emotive writing from abstract understanding, is an opportunity to reconsider Carlyle’s relation to his predecessors and contemporaries writing on the Revolution in English.

Contemporary visions of France: the Revolution, Women and History: A Summary of the 1989 Fall Colloquia, New York University’s Institute of French Studies

1990 ◽  
Vol 10 (x) ◽  
pp. 287-307
Author(s):  
Richard Cicchillo
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
French Society ◽  
French Studies ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

The seven colloquia held at New York University’s Institute of French Studies during the Fall 1989 semester offered some new perspectives on the French Revolution, and took stock of various elements of French Society and history two hundred years after the taking of the Bastille.

Sovereignty, Politics, and Reason in the Post-Revolution

2020 ◽  
pp. 146-162
Author(s):  
James Livesey
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
International Order ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Direct Effects ◽  
History Of ◽  
Legal Structures ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

This chapter focuses on the French Revolution as one of the most important moments in the entangled history of local cosmopolitanisms. Such ideas as rights, property, and democracy were consciously articulated during the Revolution as universals with cosmopolitan spheres of application, and those ideas had profound global consequences over the following two centuries. Alongside this impact on states and legal structures, the Revolution also had direct effects in every community in France and touched communities outside the hexagon, from India to Ireland. The Revolution transformed the most general contexts, putting the nation-state rather than empire as the organizing principle at the heart of the international order, but it also put the most intimate experiences, such as family and emotion, under new light. The drama of the Revolution exemplified the power of ideas and the ambition to create a rational political order.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document