GERMANY’S LEGACY OF
POLITICAL FRAGMENTATION
Germans developed the strongest kingdom in Europe
around the year 1000 A.D., but by 1350 their rulers were
compelled to recognize the autonomy of over 200
principalities and 50 Free Cities. What caused this
fragmentation, and how could it be overcome?
The following images are chosen to convey a sense of
what 19th-century German schoolchildren learned about
their country’s history.
The first-century Germanic tribes as described by Tacitus
The “Wandering of the Peoples”
Charlemagne revived the Roman Empire around AD 800
But it
soon
broke
into
“French”
and
“German”
halves.
The German King Otto
the Great conquered
Rome in 961 and had
himself crowned
Emperor by the Pope.
This Empire endured
until 1806.
Legal documents
began to label it “Holy”
in 1157, and “Holy
Roman” in 1254.
In 1512 its legal name
became “The Holy
Roman Empire of the
German Nation.”
Otto’s Empire also expanded into Czech and Polish lands
The “Roman” Emperor Otto III (reigned 980-1002)
receives tribute from all of Europe
But Otto and
his heirs
only
controlled a
small
portion of
their realm
directly….
Civil war erupted when Emperor Henry IV quarreled with
Pope Gregory VII over the appointment of bishops. In 1077
Henry was humiliated at the papal palace of Canossa. The
Imperial throne became elective
Imperial power revived under the Hohenstaufen
Emperors Frederick I & II (1180-1250), but they both
became bogged down in losing wars in Italy.
(“The Court of Frederick II in Palermo,” painted in 1865)
Before the
development of
artillery, every
knight in his
castle was
virtually a law
unto himself
(Burg Eltz, built
around 1200 on
a cliff
overlooking the
Mosel River)
EMPEROR CHARLES IV RECOGNIZED THE FOLLOWING
GOVERNMENTS IN THE “GOLDEN BULL” OF 1356
 7 “Electors” with kingly rights in their principalities and a
vote in the choice of a new emperor.
 Over 200 autonomous princes with a seat in the
Reichstag, or Imperial Diet.
 Over 50 Free Cities with seats in the Reichstag.
Many Imperial Knights (sometimes called “robber barons”)
and abbeys not named in the Golden Bull also recognized
no authority but the distant Emperor.
Thereafter the head of the Habsburg dynasty of Austria
almost always won election as Emperor but enjoyed little
authority outside the Habsburg lands.
Luther faces Charles V at the Reichstag of Worms, April 1521:
“The verses of Holy Scripture that I cite have overcome my
conscience and trapped me in the word of God. Therefore I
cannot and will not recant, because acting against one’s
conscience does not bring safety or salvation. God help me!”
Luther’s new
doctrines plunged
Germany into
turmoil:
1. Salvation
through faith
alone!
2. Only the Bible!
3. The priesthood
of all believers!
After Luther was outlawed, Saxony’s Elector
Frederick the Wise sheltered him in the Wartburg
Lucas Cranach, “The Supper of the Evangelicals and the
Damnation of the Papists” (ca. 1530)
“Seven-Headed
Martin Luther”
(Catholic
caricature, 1529).
Charles V
conquered Saxony
and Hessen in
1547 but found
himself unable to
stamp out
Protestantism.
TERMS OF THE PEACE OF AUGSBURG, 1555,
between Emperor Ferdinand and the League of Schmalkalden
“In order to bring peace to the Holy Roman Empire of the
Germanic Nation, let neither his Imperial Majesty nor the
Electors, Princes, etc., do any violence or harm to any estate
of the empire on the account of the Augsburg Confession…”
“Likewise the Estates espousing the Augsburg Confession
shall let all the Estates and Princes who cling to the old
religion live in absolute peace…”
“However, all such as do not belong to the two above named
religions shall not be included in the present peace but be
totally excluded from it.”
[If any ruler of an ecclesiastical territory becomes a
Protestant, he must renounce that territory.]
[Any subject who disagrees with the government’s choice of
confession has the right to move elsewhere.]
Catholic,
Lutheran, and
Calvinist powers
on the eve of
the Thirty Years
War in 1618:
The Dutch War
of
Independence
against Spain
caused an arms
race in Germany
The Defenestration of Prague, May 23, 1618, when Czech
Protestants defied the Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand II
Peasants bore the brunt of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48),
in which Spain, Denmark, Sweden, and France intervened.
Estimated
population loss
in Germany
from
1618 to 1648
Europe in 1648
Frontispiece to Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651):
“Upon earth there is not his like…”
After 1648
most German
lands
embraced
“absolutism”,
i.e., rule by a
strong prince
who could act
without
approval by
any
parliamentary
body…
Political fragmentation did promote
a rich cultural life, as when Duke
Karl August of Saxe-Weimar made
Goethe his prime minister and
secured a professorship for
Friedrich Schiller at Jena
But Germany was experiencing a crisis of
over-population by the 1790s
• Serfdom still
prevailed
east of the
Elbe River.
• In artisan
guilds, more
and more
journeymen
never
became
masters.
• Pauperism
spread in
the
countryside.