Journalartikel

Jahr der Veröffentlichung: 2007

Seiten: 623-652

Zeitschrift: Revue historique

Heftnummer: 643

ISSN: 0035-3264

eISSN: 2104-3825

Verlag: Presses Universitaires de France

Abstract: 
After the crisis of the Thirty Years' War, beginning in the 1670s, the Holy Roman Empire could consolidate itself despite its internal tensions and heterogeneity as a political system. This consolidation was encouraged and supported by a strong wave of a German patriotism, focussing on the Empire, and the German nation. The empire had to face three enemies, the Turks, France, and Sweden, and these conflicts turned out to be decisive for this newly developed or invigorated national consciousness. The military menace which the Empire's enemies posed as well as the victories eventually achieved reinforced the identification of princes, estates, and subjects with the empire and with the emperor as its political leader, and helped to create a German nation as a community marked by mutual assistance and a collective memory at the same time. Empire and nation defined themselves in opposition mainly to France and to the Turks, both described by propaganda as hereditary ennemies. The wars with Sweden were not of the same importance, the Elector of Brandenburg did not succeed in creating a similar image of evil for this power, soon considered as feeble and marginal. But even in this conflict the office and the person of the Emperor were focal points of a federal and multi-confessional national identity. After these decades of relative success in wars and internal reforms the empire, however, had exhausted its potential for modernization. In a time, when there was no longer any direct and serious menace from its external enemies, the internal cohesion of the empire declined The new confessionalisation and the europeanization of politics within theempire created a number of new internal conflicts which could not be settled due to the dynastic crisis of the house of Habsburg in 1740. Without common enemies and without common images of potential enemies, emperor, empire and nation decayed more and more in this second half of the eighteenth century.

Harvard-Zitierstil: Wrede, M. (2007) Between emperor, empire and nation: rapid development of "political spirit" in modern Germany (17th-18th centuries), Revue historique(643), pp. 623-652

APA-Zitierstil: Wrede, M. (2007). Between emperor, empire and nation: rapid development of "political spirit" in modern Germany (17th-18th centuries). Revue historique(643), 623-652.