G. Benecke - Society and Politics in Germany: 1500-1750

G. BENECKE

First published in 1974

This edition published in 2007 by

Routledge

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Transferred to Digital Printing 2010

1974 G. Benecke

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Society and Politics in Germany 15001750

ISBN10: 0-415-41308-7 (volume)

ISBN10: 0-415-40266-2 (set)

ISBN13: 978-0-415-41308-4 (volume)

ISBN13: 978-0-415-40266-8 (set)

Routledge Library Editions: Studies in Social History

G. Benecke

Department of History, University of Kent

LONDON: Routledge & Kegan Paul

TORONTO: University of Toronto Press

First published in 1974

in Great Britain

by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd

and in Canada and the United States of America by

University of Toronto Press

Toronto and Buffalo

Set in Monotype Bell

and printed in Great Britain by

Western Printing Services Ltd, Bristol

G. Benecke 1974

No part of this book may be reproduced in

any form without permission from the

publisher, except for the quotation of brief

passages in criticism

RKP ISBN 0 7100 7842 0

UTP ISBN 0 8020 2174 3

THIS book attempts a new interpretation of the Holy Roman Empire in Germany from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. It makes use of regional printed materials and of unpublished state archives from north-west Germany, a large and important region of which no thorough study has yet been published in English. These materials tell us how the early modern Holy Roman Empire actually worked. The book shows how politics were conducted on a loose basis, wherein the federal Empire could only ever be as strong as its component territorial states wished. This strength was not dependent on any national myth or propaganda which would show the origins of a nineteenth-century kleindeutsch-Prussian or grossdeutsch-Austrian cause. Nor is the Empire an example of a chaotic system of society and politics, which it would be the destiny of nineteenth-century German national liberals to overcome by rationalization and centralization. Instead, the strength of the early modern German system of society and politics lay in the way in which the mass of small states co-operated in mundane day-to-day affairs, and the way in which matters were co-ordinated in bodies set up for that specific purpose at federal/Reich/imperial level.

The way in which the records survive dictates that, in order to arrive at a true assessment of the whole, the parts have first and foremost to be studied in their own right. This technical difficulty goes a long way towards explaining why historians have not yet made their long-overdue revision of the real nature of early modern German society and politics. This book is a first study in depth from those specific state archives that show how essential were federal bodiessuch as the Reichstag and its committees, the Reichskammergericht and Reichshofrat, Kreisdirektorien and Kreistage, plus their system of Rmermonate, Trkensteuer and Kammerzielerto German society and politics at state and federal level. The question that this mass of new material above all poses is, how effective and mature was this early modern German system of government?

concludes by summarizing these findings and seeks to point the way to further studies in order to verify the picture obtained from one set of state archives, namely that the Holy Roman Empire provided an effective and mature system of government for early modern Germany that was attuned both to its own needs and to the wider needs of early modern Europe.

I wish to thank Staatsarchivdirektor a.D. Dr Kittel, Staats-archivdirektor Dr Engelbert, their staff at Staatsarchiv Detmold, and Stadtarchivar Dr Hoppe in Lemgo for their interest and generous help, and especially to thank Staatsarchivrat Dr Sagebiel for introducing me to the palaeography, and for his willingness to discuss my work at all times. The views and any remaining errors in the work are my own responsibility.

I acknowledge research grants from St Andrews University and from the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland in the years 19669. The work presented here is a revised and extended 1970 Ph.D. thesis of St Andrews University, completed under the supervision of Mr. A. F. Upton, to whose guidance and friendship this study owes its existence. Original quotations in German are in the thesis, along with much more expansive footnotes to which attention is drawn.

The thesis also includes a volume in German of selected documents, most of them transcribed from archive originals for the first time. These documents have not been published, but they can be consulted in my thesis, Northwest Germany, Lippe, and the Empire in Early Modern Times, in St Andrews University Library, Scotland.

I also acknowledge with gratitude private assistance from Mrs W. L. H. Butchard, Detmold; Professor ke Nilzn and Fru Britta Nilzn, Stockholm; Frulein Rosa Steinbuch, Berlin; Herr K.-G. Brackemann, Detmold; the Misses Butchard, Cobham, Kent; and encouragement from my contemporaries, Dr Gran Nilzn, Stockholm; Dr Kurt Schuster, Wolfsburg; jur. kand. Anders Lindqvist, Uppsala. Dr David Turley generously saved me from many a pitfall with the text.

I am also indebted to my students at Kent, Jayne Elsmore, Laraine Rynham and Harry Robins, whose critical approach to a crisis in early modern Germany has helped my work immeasurably.