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3 - The Holy Roman Empire

from Part i - The Politics of Ethnicity, Nationhood, and Belonging in the Settings of Classical Civilizations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 October 2023

Cathie Carmichael
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
Matthew D'Auria
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
Aviel Roshwald
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
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Summary

Since the nineteenth century, the Holy Roman Empire has occupied a central but often negative place in accounts of German nationhood. “In the beginning was the Reich,” declared Heinrich August Winkler in his monumental German history, which took as its starting point the empire’s abolition in 1806.1 It was with the empire that, in Winkler’s view fatally, “that which distinguishes German history from the history of the great western-European nations has … its origin.” Winkler’s judgment reflects a viewpoint which has been tenacious and highly influential: that at the heart of the problem of German nation-making lay the peculiar and deficient character of Germany’s premodern “state,” the empire itself. Whereas other European nations had developed within the framework of governments exercising sovereign power over firmly bounded populations, the Reich, after a promising start, had fallen prey to universalist fantasies, fragmentation, institutional atrophy, and the interference of foreign powers.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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References

Further Reading

Borchardt, Frank L., German Antiquity in Renaissance Myth (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971).Google Scholar
Brühl, Carlrichard, Deutschland – Frankreich: Die Geburt zweier Völker (Cologne: Böhlau, 1990).Google Scholar
Ehlers, Joachim (ed.), Ansätze und Diskontinuität deutscher Nationsbildung im Mittelalter (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1989).Google Scholar
Ehlers, Joachim, Die Entstehung des deutschen Reiches (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1994).Google Scholar
Hirschi, Caspar, The Origins of Nationalism: An Alternative History from Ancient Rome to Early Modern Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).Google Scholar
Kneupper, Frances Courtney, The Empire at the End of Time: Identity and Reform in Late Medieval German Prophecy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scales, Len, “Late Medieval Germany: An Under-Stated Nation?” in Scales, Len and Zimmer, Oliver (eds.), Power and the Nation in European History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 166191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scales, Len, The Shaping of German Identity: Authority and Crisis, 1245–1414 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whaley, Joachim, Germany and the Holy Roman Empire, vol. i: From Maximilian I to the Peace of Westphalia 1493–1648 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).Google Scholar
Wilson, Peter, The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe’s History (London: Allen Lane, 2016).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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