[This is the first in a series of responses to our first discussion
thread.  We encourage all list members to respond to or comment on the
post, and so to add their own expertise to the discussion. -Eds.]


WHAT WAS THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE?

As this is a webgroup dedicated to the history and culture of the
Holy Roman Empire, we felt it appropriate for our first discussion
thread to investigate what, exactly, scholars mean by 'the Holy
Roman Empire'. What was it? Was it, as Voltaire once argued, an
'agglomeration' which 'was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire'?
Or, as Samuel Pufendorf claimed, 'an Irregular Body and like some
mis-shapen Monster, if it be measured by the common Rules of
Politicks and Civil Prudence'?


Peter H. Wilson (University of Sunderland, UK)

Introduction

The opening question risks raising further questions rather than
definitive answers.  Responses are likely to differ depending on
which part of the Holy Roman Empire's long existence is under
review.  For the following, I would like to restrict my comments
to the era broadly defined as 'early modern', which for the Empire,
I take to be from the late fifteenth century to 1806.  Viewed from
this time frame it is possible to respond from the social and
cultural approach advocated by Volker Press and Peter Moraw in the
mid 1970s; an approach that has much to offer and one which has not
yet been developed to its full potential.  This concentrates on the
human aspect of the Empire as a feudal network (Lehensverband), and
suggests examining not only formal structures, but the people who
gave them life.  From this perspective, the Reich becomes a series
of interlocking institutions and corporate social groups, held
together by a complex web of recognised legal and customary rights
and practices.

The advantage of such an approach is that it focuses attention on
how people interacted and how they perceived their relationships,
rather than on how others, often living a considerable time later,
tried to categorise and label such interaction.  The drawback is
that it does not lend itself to simple explanations.  It also
raises the question of how to compare the Empire to other polities.

This difficulty is pinpointed in the two famous quotations cited by
Tryntje Helfferich in her opening remarks.  These identify the
central question of the Empire's Staatlichkeit; whether it was
indeed a state at all.  This question is important because of the
Empire's historical significance.  It stretched across much of
Europe for over a millennium, claimed direct descent from ancient
Rome and embodied the political expression of the ideal of a single
Christendom.  For most of this time it constituted the largest
single polity on the European mainland.  Second, it provided the
political framework for German development, and is thus fundamental
to the 'German question': the struggle to define the nature and
scope of the political organisation of the German-speaking peoples
and their relationship to their European neighbours.  Third, the
Empire is a widely cited example in broader debates, not only about
the future shape of Europe, but also the definition of forms of
political organisation.  Finally, all those engaged in researching
and teaching the Empire's past need an explanatory framework to make
sense of it and to convey that understanding to others.  In
particular, there is a desire to fit the Empire into recognised
categories that enable comparisons with other parts of Europe, or
indeed the world.


The State
Attempts to pin the Empire down encounter the problems of
terminology. The most difficult is the word 'state' that has had
multiple meanings.  In the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries it
tended to be used to denote an 'establishment', as in the court
(Hofstaat), or army (Militärstaat), or a contract of employment.
Later German historiography has thrown up a whole range of compound
uses:
•	territorial state (Territorialstaat) related to the process of the
'territorialisation' of political power at the level of the component
lands of the Empire
•	princely state (Fürstenstaat) to denote the principal form of rule in
the majority of these territories in the early modern period.
•	'domain state' (Domänenstaat) and 'tax state' (Steuerstaat) that are
used to describe stages in fiscal development at territorial level.
•	'military state' (Militärstaat) that is not used in its contemporary
sense, but as a label for those territories that developed large armies in
the eighteenth century, notably Prussia and Hessen-Kassel.  It is usually
related to models of 'military-bureaucratic absolutism' (e.g. Brian
Downing) and to Otto Büsch' influential 'social militarisation' thesis.
•	'united state' (Gesamtstaat) and 'unitary state' (Einheitsstaat) are
terms that featured prominently in discussions prior to the 1950s and were
used to describe the process by which Brandenburg-Prussia evolved from a
collection of disparate provinces into a more centralised entity.  More
recent historiography has coined the terms 'composite state' and 'dynastic
state' as labels for pre-modern, decentralised polities.
•	national or nation state (Nationalstaat) is another older term that is
still with us and is defined by the nineteenth-century ideal of a unified
state with a clear territory inhabited by a single, homogenous nation.
This is, for many, still the definition of a 'modern state'.
•	'state of the rule of law' (Rechtsstaat) also has its origins in
nineteenth-century European liberalism, but has resurfaced in the
post-1970s portrayal of the early modern Empire as a non-aligned,
pacific framework for resolving the internal problems of its member
territories.


Early Modern Interpretation
Most of these terms are modern constructs and few relate to the Empire as
a whole.  Most have been developed through attempts to explain the
political emergence of the different German territories, chiefly
Brandenburg-Prussia.  By contrast, sixteenth-century Central Europeans
discussed politics as various forms of rule (dominium) over people or land
(terra, territorium), or the government (regimen) of kingdoms (regia),
including that of the Germans and of the Empire (imperium) itself.  Debate
focused on who could exercise these powers and what actions could be
considered just according to theology and law.  The application of more
modern concepts of the state followed the controversy over the relative
balance between spiritual and secular authority after the Reformation.
This in turn took place within the context of Aristotelian philosophy that
required phenomena to fit recognised categories.  Matters received a
decisive shift with the reception of Jean Bodin's (1529-96) concept of
indivisible sovereignty which shifted discussion onto three key areas:
•	authority
where did ultimate authority lie?  What were its limits?

•	infrastructure
what institutions were required to make it effective?

•	legitimacy
the extent to which authority and infrastructure were accepted.  This
became more difficult as the Reformation destroyed the medieval unity of
law and theology.


These issues were particularly problematic in the Empire because it
was still in the process of defining and regulating the relationship
between the emperor and his principal subjects, the imperial estates
(Reichsstände).  This process has been labelled 'imperial reform'
and began around 1480 but was still incomplete when the Empire
 experienced major upheavals with the Reformation, prolonged warfare
against France and the Ottomans, and the social and economic
consequences of the fourteenth-century demographic and economic
crisis, followed by the onset of population growth around 1530.

These pressures sharpened the debate on imperial politics and prompted two
divergent interpretations of what the Empire was:

1) 	Reich as aristocracy
Some influential writers (e.g. Bogislaw Philipp von Chemnitz
[1605-78]) followed Bodin in defining the Empire as an aristocracy
in which the emperor was merely primus inter pares amongst the
Reichsstände.  Sovereignty was exercised collectively by the emperor
and Reichsstände through common institutions, notably the Reichstag.

2) 	Reich as monarchy
This was hotly disputed by Dietrich Reinkingk (1590-1664) and others
who borrowed Bodin's concept of indivisible sovereignty, but applied
it exclusively to the emperor.

3) 	Reich as mixed monarchy
Most realised that actual conditions diverged considerably from
Reinkingk's model and sought a middle path between these two
interpretations by presenting the Empire as a mixed monarchy: Veit Ludwig
von Seckendorff (1626-92), Johannes Limnaeus (1592-1663).  The emperor
remained sovereign, but shared the actual exercise of many key powers with
at least some of the Reichsstände. This, essentially, was also the view of
Samuel von Pufendorf (1623-94), the most famous of these commentators.
Unable to fit the Empire into any of the recognised Aristotelian
categories, Pufendorf described it as a 'monster' in 1667.  This has
frequently been misinterpreted as criticism.  The word was actually
deleted from later editions of Pufendorf's work and what he meant was an
irregular political body since the Empire lacked a single head.



Modern Interpretations
The issue of the Empire's Staatlichkeit emerged more prominently in
the wake of the Napoleonic reorganisation of Germany.  Four distinct
perspectives have emerged that are still with us today.

1) 	Failed Nation State
The earliest and most influential is the view that the Empire
represented a failed nation state.   This 'failure' is generally
blamed on the Habsburgs, forcing Prussia to take up the mantle of
German unity and forge a nation state.  Because this was done
comparatively late and rapidly, it is has been seen as the source of
later problems.  In its more positive (and generally older) version,
the state is a progressive force and the historiographical focus is on
staatsbildende Kräfte (state building forces) that are generally
associated with rulers, rather than the ruled, imparting a top-down
approach to the past.


2) 	(Con-)Federal State
The idea that the Empire represented some sort of federation has long
roots, back at least to Montesquieu and others who presented it as a
composite state composed of other states.  This interpretation has also
been influenced by the writing on early forms of association
(Genossenschaft), most notably that of Otto von Gierkes.  Recently, this
interpretation has undergone a positive re-evaluation
transforming the idea of a weak 'loose confederation' into a flexible,
even modern-looking state.


3) Complementary Empire-State
The only writer to combine the terms 'empire' and 'state' in a single (yet
still hyphenated) compound is Georg Schmidt who made a deliberate attempt
in his 1999 survey to reclaim the Gesamtstaatlich or national perspective
for the early modern period and to present the Empire as the first German
nation state.  The key points are
•	the Empire was a state defined, not so much by its formal
institutions, as by nationally accepted common norms.
•	these are related to the contemporary ideal of 'German Freedom'
(teutsche Freiheit), which Schmidt expands to embrace the rights and
'liberties' enjoyed by all individuals and groups within the Empire, as
well as all forms of communal and popular participation in public life.
•	He rejects Peter Blickle's contention that the popular,
proto-democratic communal tradition was inherently at odds with the
process of political territorialisation more narrowly associated with the
princes.  German Freedom was anchored in the constitutional
reforms enacted by the 1495 Reichstag in Worms that established a
political balance between the Empire's component elements.
•	To Schmidt, these changes represent the Verstaatung of the
Empire, or its transformation from a medieval polity into a state.
•	The new Empire-State (Reichs-Staat) was consolidated by the
Religious Peace of Augsburg in 1555 that Schmidt regards as a process of
unification rather than division, since the settlement integrated the
largely Protestant northern Germany with the Empire's
predominantly Catholic southern core by regulating religion within a
common legal framework.
•	The Peace of Westphalia provided further constitutional
safeguards for German Freedom, and extended the range of rights to
include important individual liberties.  This curbed the drive towards a
more federal structure inherent in the process of territorialisation and
ensured the Empire-State remained what Schmidt terms a Komplementärer
Reichs-Staat.
•	Complementary statehood was manifest through the trinity of
Empire-Kreise-territories, each with separate, but complementary
functions.
i) 	The overarching imperial framework provided for defence and
 justice.
ii) 	The Kreise ensured common decisions were implemented and offered
regional coordination.
iii) 	The territories supplied the administrative support needed to
mobilise resources and moulded society through social discipline.

The great service of this modern counter-blast to the failed
nation-state model is that it reintroduces legitimate questions about
national identity into the historical debate without resurrecting any of
the ghosts of Germany's chauvinistic past.  However, it is not clear
whether the new terminology of the 'complementary Empire-State' actually
clarifies the complex imperial structure, and there is definitely a
tendency to overemphasise the modernity of some aspects of German
Freedom.


4) 	Central Europe of the Regions
The final alternative is that developed by Peter-Claus Hartmann who
borrows directly from the language of the European Commission to
present the Empire as the 'Central Europe of the Regions', promoting
progress through cultural exchange and cross-fertilisation, whilst
leaving niches in which minority cultures could preserve their
distinctiveness.  Whilst as positive as Schmidt in tone, the national
perspective is rejected in favour of stressing a benign pan-Central
Europeanism.  There are also elements of the Federalist interpretation in
Hartmann's comparisons between the Empire's representative institutions
and those of the modern Federal Republic of Germany.  For all the novelty
of language, there is an echo of Pufendorf, the Abbé St Pierre, Rousseau
and others who saw the Empire as a model for future European harmony.


Where are we now?
The more recent interpretations have done much to enhance our
understanding of aspects of the early modern Empire, but none offer a
satisfactory all-embracing definition of what it was.  They do
underline that the Empire could do things commonly associated with
other early modern states.   The Empire could act as a sovereign body in
the international arena.  It was capable of defending itself, including
raising the necessary resources from its subjects.  The fact that not all
territories met their imperial quotas of men and money in wartime can be
compared with provincial rebellions and tax evasion in other states.  Such
action required contemporaries to address the three key elements of
political power highlighted above.  They developed an infrastructure to
put decisions into effect.  This aspect has been studied, the best most
recently, as we now know a lot more about the regional subdivisions (the
Imperial Circles, or Kreise), the two imperial supreme courts, the system
of collective defence and so forth.  Central Europeans chose to resolve
the question of executive authority by retaining the Empire's fragmented
sovereignty, whereby the emperor was nominally overall sovereign with
certain ill-defined reserve powers, while the numerous princes and other
authorities enjoyed lesser 'territorial sovereignty' (Landeshoheit).  Most
of the confusion in defining the Empire stems from the fact that this
complex fragmented sovereignty was in a state of constant evolution.
Moreover, its development was not linear: the Empire was not moving in a
specific direction, e.g. towards or away from a certain type of state.  It
was certainly not in 'decline'.  The shifting balance between these
elements of sovereignty was related to contemporary disputes over
legitimacy, the third element of political power. This was the very stuff
of imperial politics and there was never firm agreement on it.  Again,
later historiography suffers from over-reliance on a few noted opinions,
such as those by the prolific Protestant imperial lawyer, Johann Jakob
Moser, who interpreted key parts of the imperial constitution in specific
ways.  Other views (usually those of the Catholics) have been
overshadowed.

We can conclude by returning to our original question: what was the Holy
Roman Empire.  It is perfectly proper that this question deserves a simple
and straightforward answer.  I have no difficulty with using the term
'state' in analysing the Empire, provided that term is defined carefully.
In some sense, however, this is the wrong question to ask since it
encourages us to fit the Empire into a single category.  It brings with it
the attendant problem that the Empire appears somehow defective, or
'inferior' to other European countries, because it does not really fit any
of the recognised forms.  For the
early modern period at least, I would suggest that the Empire's
political development be analysed by identifying and tracing the
predominant trends.

One of these was monarchy, both at the level of the territories in
what is commonly labelled 'absolutism', but also through the position of
the emperor.  While no early modern emperor really sought to impose
'imperial absolutism', the title nonetheless embodied much monarchical
symbolism as well as some centralising tendencies.

The second trend was federalism on a variety of levels.  There was the
more obvious 'macro-federalism' of the larger princely states, pushing the
Empire in the direction of a confederation composed of equally sovereign
members.  This is of course what happened in 1806 and 1815. Then there is
the less obvious 'micro-federalism' of the lesser territories working
through the Kreise for inter-regional collaboration.  In addition,
however, there are various other neglected forms of associational
collaboration that could have produced states from below.  One is the
popular 'communal' form identified by Peter Blickle, especially for the
Swiss Confederation.  As Tom Brady has argued, the possibility of 'turning
Swiss' remained an option for the imperial cities into the sixteenth
century.  Collaboration between the cantons of imperial knights
constitutes another 'federal' element, as does that between the different
provincial Estates of the Habsburg lands, especially c.1600-1620.  If
these examples are included, 'federalism' loses some of its anachronistic
overly modern connotations.

Finally, the Empire retained its hierarchical feudal structure to the very
end.  This was apparent in the separation of the Reichsstände as a
privileged elite above other lords, towns and corporations.  It was also
present in the tripartite division of the Reichsstag into three curia, or
colleges.  Perhaps most importantly, it was deeply embedded in the
corporate structure of Central European society with its complex web of
rights and privileges.  The rule of law and the concept of 'German
Liberty' were both expressions of this, and so their modernity should not
be overestimated.

Monarchy, federalism and hierarchy were not mutually exclusive and could
reinforce each other under certain circumstances.  However, none of them
was timeless and unchanging and nor were the wider circumstances affecting
the Empire's development, such as social and economic activity and the
structure of European international relations.

Humanities & Social
Sciences Online

Copyright © 1995-2006 - Contact Us
RSS | Validate: XHTML | CSS