The Holy Roman Empire (1648-1815)

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Introduction

When the devastating Thirty Years’ War finally drew to a close, the survivors faced the difficult task of rebuilding and restoring order. As they recovered from this crisis, they gradually remade German society. During the long eighteenth century, the period 1648–1815, the German-speaking people experienced myriad changes, changes that eventually brought about the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, the rise of ambitious dynastic states ruled by absolutist monarchs vying for dominance, and the transformation of the German economy and society with the appearance of proto-industry in the region. The period also witnessed dramatic intellectual and cultural changes, with the exuberance of the late Baroque, the religious revival of Pietism, the spread of the Enlightenment’s reforming rationality, and the potent emotional resonance of the Romantic movement. By 1815, the German-speaking lands had undergone a startling transformation, but traditional forms of understanding the world and confronting hardship—through Christian faith, deference to royal authority, and magical belief—also proved durable.Historians of the German-speaking lands have long portrayed the long eighteenth century as a time of progress. Employing historical hindsight and relying on the teleological perspective inherent in notions of modernization, they have focused their attentions on the origins of the modern German nation-state, the development of enlightened reason, and the cultural efflorescence of the age. Recent scholarship, however, has complicated this picture in several respects. In the area of politics, scholars have questioned the inevitability of the Holy Roman Empire’s dissolution, arguing that its demise was caused by the disruption of the Napoleonic Wars rather than some inherent flaw in the imperial system or the dynamism of Prussia. Instead, they emphasize the role the Holy Roman Empire played in fostering cooperation and mediating disputes among its constituent polities throughout the long eighteenth century. In the realm of ideas, the traditional picture of the Enlightenment as a largely conservative intellectual movement that transformed Germany through the application of reason has been revised by scholars who have explored the radical dimensions of these intellectual changes as well as the conservative backlash they prompted. Finally, in the cultural arena, recent scholarship has explored how the Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) movement embodied by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller unleashed powerful nationalist impulses and liberal political aspirations during the period of the Napoleonic Wars, forces that shaped Germany later in the nineteenth century.

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