Central Europe (Holy Roman Empire), 1400–1806

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Gnehm
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Holy Roman Empire

Heidelberg, Dresden, Berlin, Vienna

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis F. Mahoney
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
German Romanticism ◽  
Creative Collaboration ◽  
Intellectual Discourse ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Literary Innovation

In the various permutations of German Romanticism from its beginnings in the 1790s, two factors remain constant: a penchant for collaborative, transdisciplinary work, and the formation of small circles—often in university towns—whose particular character often depended upon and contributed to the prevailing intellectual discourse of that locale. For the four cities highlighted in the chapter heading, one further factor needs to be considered: the impact of the Napoleonic reorganization of central Europe. The breakup and dispersal of the Jena Romantics coincided with the collapse of the moribund Holy Roman Empire, which officially ended in 1806 but whose final dissolution began with the Treaty of Lunéville in 1801. This chapter looks at the interplay between history and creative collaboration, literary innovation and political aspiration or restraint, as the main energies of German Romanticism relocate themselves in these different cities at different times.

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 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.

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.

Juridical Equality

2019 ◽  
pp. 42-52
Author(s):  
David Sorkin
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Ethnic Differences ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Central European ◽  
Political Status ◽  
Central European Region ◽  
East And West

This chapter details how the Jews of the Holy Roman Empire constituted the central European region of emancipation. Some historians would contend that the Holy Roman Empire's “archaic, traditionalist constitution created a society that tolerated religious and ethnic differences to a far greater degree than the more centralized states of Western Europe”; in other words, “early modern central Europe was a pluralistic, complex society more tolerant of differences than England, France or Spain.” Whether this observation is accurate or not, it concerns toleration, not parity. Jews in the Holy Roman Empire fell behind Jews to the east and west in their political status. They gained neither collective corporate privileges nor the civic rights of emerging civil societies. To be sure, their juridical equality in the courts of the Holy Roman Empire marked a significant elevation in status. The Court Jews' extensive individual privileges were also an elevation in status, yet only for a miniscule elite. In sum, Jews in the Holy Roman Empire did not keep pace with their brethren east and west, thus making the transition to emancipation, when it came, a painful rupture.

scholarly journals Taxes, Wagenburgs and a Nightingale: The Imperial Abbey of Ellwangen and the Hussite Wars, 1427–1435

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
MARK WHELAN
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Political Environment ◽  
Holy War ◽  
Southern Germany

Drawing upon unpublished financial accounts, this article sheds new light on how an ecclesiastical institution in southern Germany navigated the tense military and political environment of the Holy Roman Empire during the Hussite wars. The accounts of Ellwangen Abbey offer a compelling window into how its community dealt with a series of military, economic and diplomatic challenges – from raising extraordinary war taxes and hosting the visiting emperor-elect, to equipping its own military contingent – encouraging a reassessment of the burdens borne by ecclesiastical foundations during the Hussite era and offering new perspectives on how holy war impacted on daily life in smaller communities in Central Europe.

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.

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