The first recorded use of the word Teutschem in reference to German land or nation dates back to 1409.(13) The rediscovery of Tacitus’s Germania in 1451 at a monastery in Hersfeld and its subsequent printing and publication in the 1470s did much to strengthen the sense of German identity. As one contemporary put it, ‘For the first time the ancient Germans could step out of the shadow of Rome and it was all the more satisfying that they should be introduced to the full light of European history by a Roman author of the highest repute.’ It was shortly after this, in 1474, that the empire is first recorded as the ‘Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation’.(14) Only after the turn of the century in the early 1500s, however, did the word ‘Germany’ come into use in the singular, replacing what had hitherto been referred to as the ‘German lands’ in plural.(15) During the same period, the ideas, writing and teachings of Martin Luther would also have a profound influence on the evolution of the consciousness of a shared German heritage among elements of the German nobility. Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible into his own Saxon Meissen German dialect had a profound impact upon the standardisation of the German language, as did his appeal to the ‘Christian nobility of the German nation’ to bring about greater cultural unity, as well as spiritual and political change.
From 1500 onwards there were ever more references to all things Teutsch (German): the cartographer, watch and compass maker, Erhard Etzlaub, produced a detailed map of ‘das Heilige Roemische Reich Teuscher Nation’ and by 1512 a geography book appears entitled Brevis Germanie Descripto (A Short Description of Germany — the history and customs of the people as well as geographical location). The humanist and theologian, Johannes Cochlaeus described how: ‘No territory in Europe has a greater extent than that of Germany.’(16) While on his travels in 1507, Niccolo Machiavelli, a representative of his home city of Florence to the Holy Roman Empire at the imperial court of Maximillian I in Vienna, wrote of the ‘might of Germany’ and of the ‘abundance of population, wealth and weapons’. He witnessed the enormous financial potential at the disposal of the Emperor for foreign adventures, as well as the reluctance of the estates and the imperial cities to give it freely, as, ‘Neither one nor the other wanted to enhance the power of the Kaiser [the German word for Emperor, derived from the Roman word ‘Caesar’], nor that he be able to bend them to his will, nor to receive from them what he demanded, and not what they wanted to give.’ The might and potential of the empire was there for all to see, as were its structural divisions and internal weaknesses, in the form of the particular interests ranged against the power of the Emperor.
Emperor Maximillian I (the same Emperor Machiavelli saw in Vienna) introduced reforms to the empire that modernised and rebalanced the power between the Electors, the Estates and their Emperor. Starting in 1495, he ushered in the reforms that established the institutions of the empire, which would endure for the next three centuries. In 1512, at the Reichstag of Cologne, the empire formally ratified its new title of Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, recognising the overwhelming German character of its dominions, the language used at its royal court, institutions and by the princes and electors of the empire. The Holy Roman Empire now entered the era of the Renaissance; a period marked by new ideas, reforms and an explosion of architectural, artistic and scientific creativity that had not been seen since the great empires of antiquity. The era witnessed the blossoming of the late medieval architectural splendour of German towns and city centres with their grand town halls and market squares filled with exquisite patrician merchant houses. Gothic architecture, as used in the building of Germany’s great cathedrals, was viewed as being uniquely German in style. New centres of learning were established, with the foundation of universities such as Tübingen (1477), Wittenberg (1502), Breslau (1505), Marburg (1527) and Königsberg (1544).
The empire’s cultural prosperity gave rise to the art of Hans Holbein the Elder, Peter Paul Rubens and the watercolours, etchings and woodcuts of Albrecht Dürer, the haunting religious art of Hieronymus Bosch, and the sculptures of Tilman Riemenschneider, which are regarded as being among the greatest works of art of the northern Renaissance. For an empire with such limited access to the sea, via its Baltic and North Sea coastlines, it nevertheless produced many of the world’s finest cartographers including the aforementioned Erhard Etzlaub who also produced the great Romweg (‘Way to Rome’) pilgrimage map, Martin Behaim, whose Erdapfel (‘earth apple’) is claimed to be the world’s first globe and certainly the first to include meridians and an equatorial line, Mattheus Greuter who worked with Galileo and continued to refine new globes, and Johannes Schreck, a cartographer, astronomer and adviser to the last Chinese Ming Emperor on calendar reform. In addition, the theological literature and ideas of Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon sowed the seeds for the Enlightenment, while the revolutionary mathematics and science of Johannes Kepler provided the foundation for Isaac Newton’s work on gravity. The humanism of Konrad Celtis related secular views on European and world history and set the religious events of the Bible into a historical context. And a revolution in communications began, with Gutenberg’s development of modern printing techniques and the establishing of the first Europe-wide postal service, a monopoly granted by the Emperor to the Thurn und Taxis family. Together, these achievements made the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation one of the great centres of the European Renaissance.
As it passed through the transition of the late Middle Ages into the Renaissance, the Holy Roman Empire, under Habsburg Emperor Maximillian I,xv was the largest state in Europe, with the greatest resources at its disposal. When led by a strong-willed emperor, it was a force to be reckoned with. The Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, trounced the Valois King Francis I in his attempt to expand French influence into northern Italy, taking the King prisoner at the Battle of Pavia. He also imprisoned the Pope. Charles V supported his cousin, Catherine of Aragon, against the King of England, Henry VIII, and he repeatedly beat back the Ottoman Turkish advance into Europe, also crushing their navy at the battle/conquest of Tunis. The empire may have been structurally flawed but it was certainly not weak or ineffectual.
WHAT KIND OF STATE WAS THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE?
The history of the Holy Roman Empire fell out of favour with the more nationalistic historiography of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Its supranationalism and universalism were out of step with the demands of the modern era. German historians described it as a Pflichtenteppich (a fragmented patchwork quilt), a mere union of complex personal allegiances. But the collective European disaster of the first half of the twentieth century has led to a revival of interest in the more fluid structures of the Holy Roman Empire; structures that allowed a panoply of large and small states to be bound together in a loose decentralised federation, in a consensual-corporate structure, which broke down the tendency towards aggressive resolutions to internal conflicts. Some even go so far as to view it as a prototype of the European Union.(18) If however one were to compare the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation to the modern concept of nationhood it would, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, remain an ‘enigma wrapped in a mystery’. The empire was unique in electing its own head of state from 1197 onwards, which meant that emperors(19) not only had to buy and bribe their nobility to achieve their election, but increasingly they also had to make concessions to guarantee the hard-won rights and privileges of the nobility within the empire. These concessions were eventually formalised in the Wahlkapitualtion (electoral capitulation) from the early sixteenth century onwards. The increasing level of particularism and power vested in the hands of the German princes in their own dominions meant they actively attempted to keep the centralising and autocratic ambitions of the emperors in check. What distinguished the Holy Roman Empire was the level of its decentralisation, its loose federal structure and the fact that it did not possess a proper capital city. The lack of a capital and a permanent administrative centre which proceeded to accumulate all the cultural, trade and higher learning re
sources of the empire should, however, not be seen solely in the narrow negative context of the arrested development of the German nation state. It allowed German Europe to have the greatest proliferation of rival cultural capitals north of the Alps. Unlike Paris and London, both of which continued to grow exponentially at the expense of the rest of their respective nations, in contrast the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation would have more theatres, opera houses and universities by the end of the sixteenth century than any other European state.xvi
The Holy Roman Empire was also far from devoid of formal structures posessing a strict hierarchy that was both symbolic and actual. After the emperor, the Kurfürsten or electors (kings in all but name) were the most powerful, composed of the strongest regional dynasties of the day, including the House of Habsburg, Saxony, Brandenburg, Bohemia, Rhineland-Palatinate, Swabia and Bavaria, as well as the three most important bishoprics of the Church and their cardinals in Mainz, Aachen and Trier. Then came the Fürsten (princes), the Grafen (counts), the Prelaets (high religious ranks), the Ritter (knights) and finally the Reichsstädte (the imperial towns), each of which had weighted voting rights in the Reichstag (Imperial Parliament) and representation at the Imperial Court. The key institutions created by Emperor Maximillian I included:
Reichstag (Imperial Parliament)
From the late fifteenth century onwards this became the legislative organ of the empire. Meeting in a variety of cities, it was convened irregularly, generally once a year at the request of the emperor, then from 1663–1806 it became a permanent assembly based in the imperial city of Regensburg. Regensburg was also where the crown jewels and most of the symbols of the Holy Roman Empire were kept; today they are in Vienna. The parliament was unique at this juncture in European history in allowing women to exercise power; in the Reichstag of 1521, of the eighty-three Prelaets with voting rights, fourteen were women.(20) The parliament was divided into three main classes and one sub category, namely:
The Council of Electors — made up of the most powerful rulers in Germany.
The Council of Princes — made up of both laymen and clergy, essentially the second tier rulers in Germany, who could have more than one vote each if they ruled over more than a single territory.
The Ecclesiastical Bench — bishops, some abbots, two Grandmasters of the Teutonic Order and one Grandmaster from the Order of St John.
The Council of Imperial Cities — who were not fully equal to the others in terms of their power or votes, but their rule was fully and formally acknowledged after 1648.
Reichsstand (The Imperial States)
These territories were governed by the Electors, princes, and dukes of the empire although (with the exception of the King of Bohemia) they were not allowed to term themselves kings of any territories they held within the boundaries of the empire, but they could be crowned kings of territories they controlled outside the empire. The first to do so were the Brandenburg Hohenzollerns who ruled Prussia.
Reichskreise and Kreistage (Imperial Circles and Local Diets)
These regions were created and delineated from the territories inherited by the Electors. The imperial circles (regions) established in 1510 each had their own Kreistag (Circle Diet or kind of local parliament) and from 1520 onwards these circles supervised things such as coinage, imperial taxation, peacekeeping, security and mutual defence. Princes retained the right to mint their own coins, which generally had the head of the imperial eagle on one side and the local prince’s coat of arms on the other. The multiplicity of coinage was generally pegged to the larger currency units in use in the empire, which in the northern part was the Taler and Gulden in the south. Meetings of the Kreise attempted to police the devaluation of coinage by princes who were in debt and watered down the silver and gold content of their coins, with coins being weighed at regular Kreistage. A complex system of pegs and conversion charts were evolved that mirrored the emergence of the Euro through its precursor the ERM (European Exchange Rate Mechanism).
Ständestaat
These were territorial assemblies at which local rulers met with ‘representatives of the privileged classes in a cooperative form of joint rulership’. These territorial diets (Landtage) were particularly important in gaining the cooperation of influential groups in assenting to the setting and raising of taxes. Government in the towns was generally led by an oligarchic town council.(21)
Reichskammergericht (Imperial Court)
Established in the late fifteenth century, originally in the imperial town of Speyer, then later in Wetzlar, this court largely represented the interests of the estates: overseeing the rule of imperial law over the empire’s subjects and between the regions, but more importantly administering the Ewiger Landfrieden, the legal requirement for a permanent end to all and any violent resolution of conflicts between feuding regional overlords in favour of the courts of arbitration. The Kaiser (Emperor) appointed the judges of the Reichskammergericht who oversaw a significant professionalisation of the legal system within the empire, as their court created laws which set standards in diverse areas, such as governing trade and industry, including the craft guilds such as bakers, leather makers, potters, metal works etc, as well as expanding laws on coinage and credit. The court also set standards for the criminal code, which were followed by many of the regional courts. The main problem faced by the court was the increasing divisions over confessional issues, which often bogged down its decision-making process.
Reichshofrat
Effectively the Supreme Court in Vienna held at the court of the Emperor, this was the final arbiter of justice, to whom any burgher could bring a case, which often reached decisions faster and more efficiently than the lower court.
Reichskanzler
The influential position of Chancellor-de-facto lay in the hands of the leading figure in the German Church, the Archbishop and Elector of Mainz. Not unlike Cardinal Wolsey in Tudor England, he wielded considerable political, as well as spiritual power, and had access to enormous wealth.
Reichssteuer (Reichstax)
Der Gemeine Pfennig (the Common Penny) was a collective tax that had to be paid by every subject of the empire aged fifteen or over, male or female. Initially approved for four years, this tax was initiated to cover the cost of running the institutions (and to repay the money already given to the Kaiser to assist in the war against the Turks) and was very modern for its time, as the level of the tax was graduated on the person’s wealth and ability to pay. Administered by a central authority, over and above the head of the local and regional rulers, this was the reason why the Estates increasingly opposed it. In the latter part of the sixteenth century, it was replaced with a more ad hoc system based on payment by the regional Estates. This made it significantly more difficult for the Emperor to rely on. In practice taxes were only raised in significant measure when the common interests of the empire were threatened, and in most cases that meant whenever the Turkish threat re-emerged, which occurred with significant regularity during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.xvii (22)
This complex array of institutions gave the inhabitants of the empire a degree of liberty and rights to property (uniquely also for its womenfolk) that was far greater than in any neighbouring states. In addition to its institutions the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation possessed a number of important symbols. The imperial flag, with the double-headed eagle, symbolically represented the dualism of the powers of the Estates within the Reich and those of the Emperor.(23) For the Habsburg dynasty it also came to represent an empire that faced both east and west, with the Holy Roman Empire as the geographic and spiritual centre of power at the heart of Europe. Yet the Kaiser remained the strongest iconic symbol of the empire, as demonstrated by the pomp and circumstance that surrounded his election and inauguration. The most famous writer in the German language, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, watching the spectacle of the election and coronation procession in the Reichsstadt (imperial city) of Frankfurt, described how ‘the Medieval splendour of t
he Empire came alive before his eyes’ whilst he witnessed the coronation of Joseph II as King of the Germans and Holy Roman Emperor.xviii (24)
The empire’s historic religious mission changed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries from carving out new Christian settlements in the east, to holding back and becoming the bulwark against Ottoman Turkish Muslim expansion, thrice holding off its conquest of Europe in 1529, 1566 and 1683, when the Ottoman legions stood at the gates of Vienna. The Holy Roman Empire gave birth to both the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. Arguably its failure to impose the universalism of the Catholic faith and a supranational monarchy gave rise to both greater undercurrents of secularism and nationalism. Today the history of the Holy Roman Empire has a stronger connection to Austria than to Germany, largely because from 1440–1806 (with the exception of a three-year interlude) all the Kaisers were of the Austrian Royal House of Habsburg. The historical linkage between Germany and the Holy Roman Empire was undermined first during the late nineteenth century, when German nationalist historians co-opted its history, imbuing the Brandenburg-Prussian Royal House of Hohenzollern with a thousand-year history it did not possess, not least because a large part of their possessions had been outside the borders of the Holy Roman Empire. The Nazis then polluted the symbolism of the First Reichxix even further by terming their state the successor to both the Holy Roman Empire and the Second Reich created by Bismarck, calling their incarnation the ‘Third Reich’. The Nazis were also not averse to borrowing the heroic symbols of the First Reich, with Hitler naming his invasion of the Soviet Union ‘Operation Barbarossa’. Nevertheless, whatever the convolutions and fashions of history may have been, the Reich and its Kaisers reigned for longer than the French kings of the Ancien Régime. And the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation eventually came to be toppled not by an internal revolution, but by the invasion of a foreign power.(26)
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