Chapter IV: Of Provincial and Communal Institutions (5)

GERMANY: 13th-15th Centuries.
The rise of the Free Cities and their Leagues.

"Under cities we are to understand fortified places in the
enjoyment of market-jurisdiction (marktrecht), immunity and
corporate self-government. The German as well as the French
cities are a creation of the Middle Ages. They were unknown to
the Frankish as well as to the old Germanic public law; there
was no organic connection with the Roman town-system. … All
cities were in the first place markets; only in
market-jurisdiction are we to seek the starting point for
civic jurisdiction. The market-cross, the same emblem which
already in the Frankish period signified the market-peace
imposed under penalty of the king's ban, became in the Middle
Ages the emblem of the cities. … After the 12th century we
find it to be the custom in most German and many French cities
to erect a monumental town-cross in the market-place or at
different points on the city boundary. Since the 14th century
the place of this was often taken in North-German cities by
the so-called Roland-images. … All those market-places
gradually became cities in which, in addition to yearly
markets, weekly markets and finally daily markets were held.
Here there was need of coins and of scales, of permanent
fortifications for the protection of the market-peace and the
objects of value which were collected together; here merchants
settled permanently in growing numbers, the Jews among them
especially forming an important element. Corporative
associations of the merchants resulted, and especially were
civic and market tribunals established. … From the beginning
such a thing as free cities, which were entirely their own
masters, had not existed. Each city had its lord; who he was
depended on to whom the land belonged on which they stood. If
it belonged to the empire or was under the administration
(vogtei) of the empire the city was a royal or imperial one.
The oldest of these were the Pfalz-cities (Pfalzstädte) which
had developed from the king's places of residence
(Königspfälze). … Beginning with the 12th century and in
course of the 13th century all cities came to have such an
organ [i. e. a body of representatives] called the Stadtrath
(consilium, consules) with one or more burgomasters (magistri
civium) at their head. Herewith did the city first become a
public corporation, a city in the legal sense. … Of the royal
cities many since the time of Frederick II had lost their
direct dependence on the empire (Reichsunmittelbarkeit) and
had become territorial or provincial cities, through having
been sold or pledged by the imperial government. As soon as
the view had gained ground that the king had no right to make
such dispositions and thus to disregard the privileges that
had been granted to the cities, people spoke no longer of
royal cities but of cities of the empire. These had, all of
them, in course of time, even where the chief jurisdiction
remained in the hand of an imperial official, attained a
degree of independence approximating to the territorial
supremacy of the princes. They had their special courts as
corporations before the king. Since the second half of the
13th century they rejoiced in an autonomy modified only by the
laws of the realm; they had the disposal of their own armed
contingents and the sole right of placing garrisons in their
fortresses. They had accordingly also the right of making
leagues and carrying on feuds, the right to lordless lands
(Heimfallsrecht) … and other prerogatives. The cities of the
empire often ruled at the same time over extensive
territories. …
{3763}
Among the cities of the empire were comprised after the 14th
century also various cities of bishoprics which had been able
to protect themselves from subjection to the territorial power
of the bishop, and which only stood to it in a more or less
loose degree of subordination. … For the majority of the
cities of bishoprics which later became cities of the empire
the denomination 'Free Cities' came up in the 14th century
(not till later 'Free Cities of the Empire'). … Among the
leagues of cities, which especially contributed to raise their
prestige and paved the way to their becoming Estates of the
Empire or of the principalities, the great Rhenish civic
confederation (1254-1256) lasted too short a time to have an
enduring effect. The Swabian civic league was for purely
political purposes—the maintenance of the direct dependence on
the empire (Reichsunmittelbarkeit) against the claims of
territorial sovereignty of the princes, and its unfortunate
ending served rather to deteriorate than to improve the
condition of the cities. It was different with the Hansa. This
name, which signified nothing else than gild or brotherhood,
was first applied to the gild of the German merchants in the
'stahlhof' in London. This gild, having originated from the
amalgamation of various national Houses of German merchants in
England, had finally, under the name of 'Hansa of Germany' or
'Gildhall of the Germans in England,' come to comprise all
Germans who carried on trade with England. Similar
associations of the German merchants were the 'German House'
in Venice, the 'German Counting-house' in Bruges and the
German Hansas in Wisby on Gotland, in Schonen, Bergen, Riga
and Novgorod. The chief purpose of these Hansas was the
procuring of a 'House' as a shelter for persons and for wares,
the maintaining of peace among, the Hansa brothers, legal
protection, the acquisition of commercial privileges, etc. The
Hansas were gilds with several elected aldermen at their heads
who represented them in external matters and who administered
the property. … Quarrels among the brothers might not, under
penalty, be brought before external tribunals; they were to be
brought before the Hansa committee as a gild-tribunal. This
committee had also an extended penal jurisdiction over the
members; under certain circumstances they had even the power
of life and death in their hands. An especially effective
punishment was the Hansa Bann, which occasioned, besides
expulsion from the Hansa, a complete boycott on the part of
the Hansa brothers. … The community of interests thus founded
among these cities led repeatedly, already as early as the
second half of the 13th century, to common steps on their
part; so that in Hansa affairs a tacit league existed, even
although it had not been expressly sanctioned. After this had
become more clearly apparent in the troubles with Flanders
(1356-1358) the name Hansa was also applied to this
league-relationship, so that henceforward besides the Hansa of
the German merchants there existed a Hansa of the German
cities. The Hanseatic League received a firm organization
through the Greifswald and Cologne confederations of 1361 and
1367, both of which were at first only entered into for a
single warlike undertaking (against Waldemar of Denmark), but
which were then repeatedly renewed and finally looked upon as
a permanent league. The Hanseatic League … came forward in
external matters, even in international relationships, as an
independent legal entity. It carried on war and entered into
treaties with foreign nations; it had a league army at its
disposal and a league fleet; it acquired whole territorial
districts and saw to the building of fortresses. In itself it
was not a defensive and offensive league; it did not concern
itself with the feuds of single cities with outsiders. The
sphere of activity of the league was essentially confined to
the province of commerce: protection of commerce, … the
closing of commercial treaties, etc. … The head of the League
was and continued to be Lubeck. Its kernel, as it were, was
formed by the Wendish (i. e. Mecklenburg and Pomeranian)
cities which were united under Lubeck. Originally any city of
Lower Germany which asked to be taken in was received into the
League. … Hansa cities which did not fulfil their federal
obligations came under the penalty of the Hansa bann and the
general commercial ostracism consequent upon it. … The federal
power was exercised by civic diets, which were assemblies of
delegates from the members of the council [Rath] of the
individual cities. The summons was sent by Lubeck. The decrees
were passed in the form of 'recesses.' … Within the League
again were narrower leagues with their own common affairs and
their own civic diets. After numerous changes the four
'quarters' were recognized as such: the Wendish under Lubeck
as its head, the Saxon under Brunswick, the Cologne under
Cologne, the Prussian-Livonian under Danzig.

_R. Schröder,
Lehrbuch der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte
(translated from the German),
pages 588-609._

See, also, HANSA TOWNS (page 1624),
and CITIES, IMPERIAL AND FREE (page 473).

GERMANY: 15th-17th Centuries.
The decay of the Hansa.

"The complete ruin of the empire in the course of the 15th
century necessarily entailed at last the ruin also of its
members. Nowhere did this elementary truth make itself felt in
a more terrible manner than in northeastern Germany, in those
colonial districts which in consequence of the extraordinary
development of the Hansa had risen in importance to the extent
of having an influence on the whole east and northeast of
Europe. Here the year 1370 had denoted for the Hansa a climax
without a parallel. After a glorious war it had closed with
the Danish king, Waldemar Atterdag, a peace which seemed about
to keep the northern kingdoms, for a long time to come, under
the power of its will. But, soon after, the Lubeck-Hanseatic
policy began to degenerate. … The Hansa had looked on without
interfering at the struggle which began between the Teutonic
Order and Poland. This freed it from the threatening maritime
supremacy of the Order; besides this it had just become
involved, itself, in conflicts in the North. … A long and
tedious war ensued … which ended to the disadvantage of the
Hansa. … Within the Hansa, during the struggle, the divergency
of interests between the Wendish, Prussian and Livonian cities
had for the first time become so pronounced as to amount to
complete disunion, and already in 1431 in Hanseatic circles
the fear could be expressed … 'that the noble confederation of
our Hansa will be dissolved and destroyed.' Such being the
case it soon became evident that the struggle with King Erich
had actually cost the Hansa the 'Dominium maris Baltici.'
{3764}
For one thing the English and the Dutch, more and more
unopposed, began to carry on in the East a commerce which was
hostile to the Hansa. … While the Western enemies of the Hansa
thus appeared in districts on the Baltic, which had hitherto
been reserved for the Hanseatic merchant, the influence on the
North Sea of the Baltic Hansa cities diminished also more and
more. It was possible indeed, for some time to come, still to
hold on to Norway. But further to the southwest the Hansa
ships, in the war which England in union with Burgundy had
been waging with France since the year 1415, saw themselves
attacked on all sides in spite of the neutral flag. It was
well-known that the empire would not protect the German flag.
It was worse still that in England a more and more violent
opposition arose against the Hanseatic privileges, for the
progress of this movement laid bare once and for all the
fundamental contrast between the commercial interests in
England of the Rhenish Hansa cities and those of the
'Osterlings' [Eastern cities]. If the English were prepared
perhaps to further extend the rights of the Hansa in their
land in return for the simultaneous free entry of their flag
in the Baltic, that was a condition which pleased the German
western cities as much as it seemed unacceptable to the
Osterlings, Lubeck at their head. The English had succeeded in
carrying discord into the enemy's camp. Affairs in Flanders
were on a footing equally dangerous to the continued existence
of the Hansa as a whole. … Lubeck, in a diet of the year 1466,
recommended the members of the Hansa to consider the merchants
of Cologne as not belonging to the Hansa when in the lands of
the Duke of Burgundy. A complete breach could not now fail to
come. It occurred, very unfortunately for Cologne and the
western cities, on English territory. In 1468 English ships
were plundered in the 'Sund,' at the bidding, as was claimed,
of the Hansa. The result was that King Edward IV took prisoner
all German merchants who happened to be in England and forbade
commercial intercourse with Germany. From this restriction,
however, the Cologners were able to free themselves through
separate negotiations with the king. It was an inconsiderate
step thus to separate themselves from the rest of the Hansa,
and that, too, in such a question as this. Cologne stood there
fully isolated now even from the western cities. Lubeck at
once profited by the occasion to have Cologne placed under the
Hansa bann and soon after the Hansa, almost entirely united
now except for Cologne, began the war against England. In the
year 1472 a great fleet sailed out against the island-kingdom;
it had complete success. The peace of Utrecht of February 18th
1474 restored once more the old Hanseatic privileges in
England and opened up the prospect of damages amounting to
£10,000. Cologne had to submit; in 1478 it returned to the
Hansa. But all the same there was no complete restoration of
the old unity. The mercantile differences between the west and
the east cities not only continued but increased, and a
dominion over the Baltic, not to mention the North Sea, was,
in spite of the momentary success in England, no longer to be
thought of. … After about 1490 the interests also of the
Wendish cities including, say, Bremen, Hamburg and Lüneburg,
became divided. … Thus towards the end of the 15th century the
Hansa bore the stamp of decline in all directions, … the
political-mercantile preponderance on land, as well as the
'Dominium maris Baltici,' was broken and the league itself was
torn by internal dissensions. In the years from 1476 to 1494
only one common Hansa diet was held; complete ruin was now
only a question of time. The 16th century and a part still of
the 17th century comprise the period of the slow wasting away
of the Hansa. While at the beginning of this period the South
German merchant-princes developed a German world-commerce, the
satiated mercantile houses of the North showed themselves
incapable of progressing even on purely commercial paths. They
remained in the ruts of old-fashioned commerce." In England
"less and less regard was paid to the warnings and plaints of
this antiquated piece of retrogression, until Queen Elisabeth
made use of the incautious promulgation of an imperial edict
forbidding English merchants to settle in the Hansa cities to
simply abrogate the Hanseatic privileges in England. It was
the key-stone on the tomb of the Hanseatic relations with
England, once so close and full of import."

_K. Lamprecht,
Deutsche Geschichte
(translated from the German),
volume 4, pages 468-484._

"The unmerciful fate which had overtaken the German nation
[the 30 years war], like a storm wind descending upon the
land, gave also the death-blow to that proud communal system
which when in its prime showed better than any other
institution the greatness of the German power in the Middle
Ages. He who does not know the history of the Hansa does not
know how to estimate the true significance of our people. He
does not know that no goal was too distant for it, no task too
great; that at the same time it could belong to the first
commercial nations of the world and intellectually absorb and
work over the idea of humanism, could offer defiance to the
kings of the Danes and challenge the pope for usurping the
rule of the world. How did things still look on the Thames
when in Dantzig, day after day, four or five hundred ships
were running in and out, when the merchants of Soest, Dortmund
and Osnabrück were opening their counting-houses in the
Warangian city of Novgorod? It is in truth nothing new if the
German nation today again begins to reckon itself among the
naval powers. … In those days it was also the baneful
religious schism which hindered the great commercial centres
on the German northern coast from making use of the favoring
constellations which presented themselves. The evangelical
burghers of Lubeck and Rostock could not make up their minds
for the sake of advantageous trade connections with Spain to
become bailiffs of their brothers of the faith in Holland;
they could put no trust in the brilliant promises with which
the emperor's Jesuits tried to turn them away from the cause
of Denmark and Sweden, and herewith probably the last
opportunity was missed of breathing new life in the already
aging commercial league. The attempt made in 1641 to renew the
league by ten cities remained ineffectual. Lubeck which
already in 1629 had lost 96 ships could no longer keep itself
from ruin; its great commercial houses became bankrupt and
drew down the smaller ones with them in their fall; Dantzig,
which still in 1619 had been able to show an export of grain
to the amount of 102,981 tons, exported in 1655 only 11,361,
and in 1659 not more than 542 tons."

_Zwideneck-Sü-denhorst,
Deutsche Geschichte, 1648-1740
(translated from the German),
volume 1, page 50._

{3765}

GERMANY: 16th Century.
At the beginning of the Reformation Movement.

"An increase in pilgrimages first begins to mark a new phase
of religious life which was encouraged by the admonitions of
preachers of repentance like Capistrano. Like an avalanche did
the numbers grow of the pilgrims who streamed together from
all parts of Upper and Central Germany, from the foot of the
Alps to the Harz Mountains. Thirty, even seventy thousand
might have been counted of those who assembled at Niklashausen
to hear the words of the prophet (Boeheim) who was already
reverenced as a saint. … This 'saint' was burned with an Ave
Maria upon his lips. … It might have been supposed that the
sad outcome of these movements would have frightened men away,
but no; one can boldly maintain on the contrary that never,
save during the crusades, were so many pilgrimages made as in
the last 60 or 70 years before the reformation. … If that way
of striving after righteousness before God, vain and mistaken
as it seems to us, may be looked upon as religion, then the
last fifty or sixty years before the reformation show an
exceptionally high degree of religious feeling, or at least of
religions need; a feeling ever increasing through lack of
means to satisfy it. With regard to the clergy, indeed, things
looked dark enough, especially in North and Central Germany.
One does not know which was greater, their lack of knowledge
or their lack of morality. … The most incredible facts were
brought to light by the later visitations. … The result might
have been a complete return to heathenism had such a clergy,
which could show, especially in the larger South German
cities, but few redeeming exceptions, had the whole spiritual
guidance of the people in its hands. But it did not; and the
doings of the secular clergy by no means affected the
religious life of the community as they would have done
to-day. The exponents and fosterers of this religious life at
that time in Germany were the mendicant friars: Franciscans,
Dominicans, Augustinian friars. … Many things in the outer
world, especially at the end of the century, came to aid the
church's efforts: the needs of an age in which so much was
unstable; the anger of Heaven which, as the monks so
drastically preached and the multitude piously believed, so
evidently threatened to vent itself. That period of history,
indeed, might be called a prosperous one by anyone regarding
merely superficially the condition of social and political
affairs. It is well known how German commerce prospered at
that time, extending to all parts of the world and ever having
new paths opened up for it by the new discoveries. Frenchmen
and Italians, astounded at the riches and princely splendor
which the commercial magnates in the South German
trade-centres were able to display, sang the praises of the
prosperity and culture of the land. Industry and commerce were
on the increase and art, realizing its highest aims, found an
abiding-place and self-sacrificing patrons in the houses of
the citizens. With every year the number of high and low-grade
schools on the Rhine and in South Germany increased in number,
and were still scarcely able to do justice to the pressing
educational needs. An undercurrent of fresh and joyous
creative impulse, full of promise for the future, can be
traced among the burghers. But if one regards the age as a
whole one sees everywhere not only a threatening, but actually
a present decline. The abundant popular literature, more even
than the writings of scholars, gives a clear insight into
these matters. … Since the days of antiquity, on the eve of
the French Revolution alone do we find the opposing principles
so sharply contrasted with each other as they were at the end
of the Middle Ages. In the rich commercial cities themselves
there was already an immense proletariat as opposed to the
excessive wealth; and there is reason to believe that never,
even counting the present day, have there been so many beggars
as in those decades. It must be borne in mind that, both
practically and theoretically, beggary was furthered by the
church. Much from her rich table fell into the lap of the poor
man, and actually not only was it no shame to beg but beggary
was a vocation like any other. The man who ate the bread of
beggary stood morally higher than he who toiled to gain a
living. … Men did, on the other hand, have the consciousness
that the great accumulation of capital in the hands of
individuals furthered poverty as it always does. The
complaints are general against 'selfishness'; the pauper, the
town artisan, the noble and the scholar are remarkably in
accord on this one point, that deception, usury and cheating
are the only explanation of the prosperity of the merchant.
When the knight attacked the goods-waggons of the traders he
believed that he was only taking what rightfully belonged to
himself. The merchants and the rich prelates were responsible
to his mind for the deterioration of his own class or estate
which can no longer hold its own against the rich civilians.
All the more does he oppress his own serfs. Only seldom among
the higher classes do we hear a word of pity for the poor man,
a word of blame against the fleecing and harrassing of the
peasants; much oftener bitter scorn and mockery, which
nevertheless is founded on fear; for men know well enough in
their inmost souls that the peasant is only waiting for a
suitable moment in which to strike out and take bloody
vengeance, and anxiously do they await the future. Even among
the citizens themselves those who were without possessions
were filled with hatred against the rich and against those of
high degree. The introduction of Roman law, unintelligible to
the burgher and peasant, made the feeling of being without law
a common one. The more firmly did men pin their faith on that
future in which the Last Judgment of God was to come and
annihilate priests and lords. Such impressions, which were
kept vivid by an ever spreading popular literature, by word of
mouth and by pictorial representations, could only be
heightened by the state of political affairs in the last
decades of the 15th century and the first years of the 16th.
Well known are the many struggles for the firmer organization
of the empire, for the carrying through of the reform-plans of
a Berthold of Mainz. The publicists of the time, and to no
small degree the Emperor Maximilian himself, who, if he wanted
to carry through any measure addressed himself directly to the
people, cast broadside among the populace numerous pamphlets
containing the most unintelligible ideas and promises.
{3766}
And what a host of plans and ideas did this much loved,
knightly emperor not have! How beautifully could he talk of
old German might and glory and draw pictures of a rosy future.
With intense interest did men follow the transactions of the
diets which promised to better affairs. One plan of taxation
followed on the heels of another. What project was left
undiscussed for the better carrying out of the Peace of the
Land! In the end everything remained as it had been save the
want and general discomfort which increased from year to year.
Bad harvests and consequent rise in prices, famine, severe
sicknesses and plagues are once more the stock chapters in the
chronicles. Frightful indeed were the ravages caused by the
first, almost epidemic, appearance of the Syphilis; with
regard to which, during the whole period of the reformation,
the moral judgment wavered. … It is a wondrous, gloomy time,
torn by contradictions, a time in which all is in a ferment,
everything seems to totter. Everything but one institution,
the firmly welded edifice of the Roman church. To Germany also
came the news of the horrible vices with which the popes just
at this time disgraced the Holy See: people knew that no deed
was too black for them when it was a question of satisfying
their greed of power and their lust. But nevertheless they
remained the successors of Peter and the representatives of
Christ, and so little can one speak of a process of
dissolution in the church, that the latter appears on the
contrary the only stable power and the
religious-ecclesiastical idea is rather the one that rules all
things. Although men to a great extent scorn and mock her
servants and long often with burning hatred for their
annihilation, yet it continues always to be the church that
holds the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven and that can avert the
wrath of God; the church, to which the anxious soul turns as
the last anchor of hope and tries to outdo itself in her
service. It is not indeed pious reverence for a God who is
holy and yet gracious that draws the sinners to their knees,
but the dread of the tortures of purgatory and of the wrath of
Him who sits above the world to judge it. This causes the
soul, restless, dissatisfied, to be ceaseless in its endeavors
to conciliate the Angry One through sacrificial service—the
whole religious activity being one half-despairing 'Miserere'
called forth by fear. Such was the spirit of the age in which
Martin Luther was born and in which he passed his youth."

_Kolde,
Martin Luther
(translated from the German),
volume 1, pages 5-27._

See, also, PAPACY: A. D. 1471-1513, to 1517-1521
(pages 2441-2450).

GERMANY: 16th Century.
The Catholic Reaction.

"Altogether about the year 1570 the spread of protestantism in
Germany and the lands under its influence had reached its
zenith. It had been accepted by the great majority of the
nation—already in 1558 about seven tenths; the gaining over of
the rest also seemed only a question of the near future. Yet
beyond a doubt its lasting success was only legally assured in
places where it had won over the governing power and could
stand on the generally recognized basis of the religious
peace. This was the case in the secular principalities of the
protestant dynasties, but not in the Wittelsbach and Hapsburgh
lands, where its lawful existence depended only on the
personal concessions of the existing ruler, and still less in
the ecclesiastical territories. … To give it here the secure
legal basis which it lacked was the most important problem, as
regarded internal German affairs, of the protestant policy. …
The only way to attain this was to secure the recognition on
the part of the empire of the free right of choosing a
confession in the bishoprics; in other words the renunciation
of the 'Ecclesiastical reservation.' … This goal could only be
attained if the protestants advanced in a solid phalanx. This
is, however, just what they could not do. For they themselves
were torn by bitter contentions with regard to the faith. …
From this point of view it was no boon that Calvinism, the
specifically French form of protestantism, found entrance also
into Germany. … Under its influence, to begin with, the
Saxon-Thuringian church became divided in its interpretation
of the teachings concerning justification and the Lord's
Supper. … The complications were still further increased when
Frederick III of the Palatinate, elector since 1559, disgusted
at the quarrelsomeness of the Lutheran theologians, dismissed
the zealot Tilemann in August 1560, and in 1563 gave over the
recognized church of the Palatinate to Calvinism. Herewith he
completely estranged the Lutherans who did not regard the
Calvinists as holding the same faith. … Germany could no
longer count itself among the great powers and at home the
discord was ever increasing. The motion of the Palatinate in
the electoral diet of October 1575 to incorporate in the
religious peace the so-called 'Declaration of King Ferdinand'
with regard to it, and thus to secure the local option with
regard to a creed in the bishoprics, was opposed not only by
the ecclesiastical members of the electoral college but also
by the electorate of Saxony. In consequence of the same party
strife a similar motion of the Palatinate, made in the diet of
Regensburg, was lost. … On the one hand hostilities grew more
bitter among the German protestants, on the other the Roman
church, supported by the power of the Spanish world-monarchy,
advanced everywhere, within and without the German empire, to
a well-planned attack. … She had won her first victory in the
empire with the refusal in 1576 to grant the local option of
creed, for this was almost equivalent to a recognition on the
protestant side of the 'Ecclesiastical Reservation.' The more
eagerly did Rome, by demanding the oath drawn up in the
council of Trent, strive to chain fast her bishops to her, to
remove those who made opposition even if it had to happen by
disregarding the law of the land and the religious treaties,
to bring zealous catholic men into the episcopal
sees—everywhere to set the reaction in motion. The manner of
proceeding was always the same: the protestant pastors and
teachers were banished; the catholic liturgy, in which the
utmost splendor was unfolded, was reintroduced into the
churches, and competent catholic clergy were put in office.
The members of the community, left without a leader, had now
only the choice allowed to them of joining the catholic church
or of emigrating; the protestant officials were replaced by
catholic ones; new institutions of learning, conducted by
Jesuits, were founded for the purpose of winning the rising
generation, inwardly also, for Catholicism.
{3767}
Beyond a doubt this whole work of restoration put an end in
many cases to a confused and untenable state of affairs, but
at least as often it crushed down by force a healthy, natural
development and wrought havoc in the moral life of the people.
Thus did the reaction gain the ascendancy in most of the
ecclesiastical principalities of the South; in the North the
scale still hung in the balance. … And in this condition of
affairs the discord among the protestants grew worse year by
year! 'Their war is our peace' was the exultant cry of the
Catholics when they looked upon this schism. In order to
preserve pure Lutheranism from any deviation, the electoral
court of Saxony caused the 'Formula of Concord' to be drawn up
by three prominent theologians in the monastery of Bergen near
Madgeburg (20 May 1577), and compelled all pastors and
teachers of the land to accept them under pain of dismissal
from office. As this necessarily accentuated the differences
with the Calvinists, John Casimir of the Palatinate
endeavored, in the Convention of Frankfort on the Main in
1577, to unite the protestants of all denominations and all
lands … in a common effort at defence; but his appeal and the
embassy which he sent to the evangelical princes met with no
very favorable reception. On the contrary in course of time 86
estates of the empire accepted the Formula of Concord which
was now published in Dresden, together with the names of those
who had signed it, on the 25th of June 1580, the 50th
anniversary of handing in the Augsburg Confession. What a pass
had matters come to since that great epoch! … At any rate the
unity of the German protestants was completely at an end, and
especially any joint action between Saxony and the Palatinate
had been rendered impossible. … In 1582 the Roman party opened
a well-planned campaign for the purpose of putting itself in
full possession of the power in the empire. The emperor
belonged as it was to their confession, so all depended on the
manner in which the diet should be made up; and this again
depended on who should be members of the college of princes:
for in the college of electors the votes of the protestants
and catholics were equal inasmuch as the Bohemian vote was
'dormant,' and of the imperial cities only a few were still
catholic. In the electoral college, then, the protestants
possessed the majority so long as the 'administrators' [of the
bishoprics] maintained as hitherto their seat and their vote.
In the first place the catholics succeeded in the diet of 1582
in persuading Magdeburg for the nonce to renounce in favor of
Salzburg its presidency in the assembly of the princes;
herewith, however, a precedent was given, not only for this
ecclesiastical foundation but for all the evangelical
administrators, that permitted of the most fateful conclusions
being drawn to the disadvantage of the protestants. Scarcely
had this happened when the Roman party gave a decisive turn to
affairs on the Lower Rhine. Archbishop Gebhard of Cologne
prepared to follow the example of his predecessor Hermann of
Wied, chiefly induced, it must be said, by the wish to gain
the hand of the fair countess Agnes of Mansfeld. Relying on
the Cologne protestants and the Counts of the Wetterau and
reckoning on help from the Netherlands he formally went over
to the protestant church on the 19th of December 1582,
proclaimed the local option of a creed for his diocese on the
16th of January 1583, and married the Countess Agnes a few
weeks later in Bonn. While on the one hand, now, the diet of
the duchy of Westphalia declared for him and the local option
was here put through, the Cologne diet, on the other, called
together by the cathedral chapter, declared against him, under
pressure as it was from both Spain and Rome. Pope Gregory XIII
deposed him … and on the 23rd of May the pupil of the Jesuits,
Ernest of Bavaria, who already since 1566 had been bishop of
Freisingen, since 1573 of Hildesheim, since 1581 also of
Liege, was placed in the see of Cologne. The war began. On the
one side Spanish and Bavarian troops marched into the land, on
the other forces from the Netherlands and the Palatinate, led
by John Casimir in person under the approval of Louis VI. …
The fortunes of war soon turned completely against him
[Gebhard], … he himself was beaten and compelled to flee to
the Netherlands, and Westphalia was then conquered. This
victory was decisive not only for Northern Germany, but for
the fate of the bishoprics altogether—indeed for the whole
form which the administration of the empire was to take. Had
Gebhard held his own, the majority in the electoral college
would have become protestant; the bishoprics in the northwest
which had not yet taken a decisive stand, and probably others
also, would have followed the example of Cologne and would
never have allowed their seats in the assembly of princes to
be taken from them; the Lower Rhenish-Westphalian provinces
would then have been gained for protestantism. The opposite of
all this now happened. In the first place Archbishop Ernest
restored the Roman church by the most oppressive means in
Westphalia; he called the Jesuits to Bonn, Neuss, Emmerich and
Hildesheim. His election as bishop of Munster (May 1585)
decided the victory in that bishopric also. … The Roman party
succeeded now, actually, in driving the administrators from
the diet. In order not to cause the violent dissolution of the
diet which met in April 1594 for the purpose of granting a tax
which was pressingly needed for the Turkish war, Magdeburg
renounced once more Its presidency in the college of princes;
and when, in December 1597, the diet was again called for the
same purpose, the catholic estates, in spite of all protests
to the contrary, regarded the matter as having been settled by
the precedents of the last two diets. Herewith the
administrators lost their seats in the diet, and in the
college of princes the majority was in the hands of the
catholics. Inasmuch also as the evangelical members of the
college of electors did not hold together, the total majority
of the diet was at the disposal of the catholics. … On the
27th of April 1608 the Palatinate, together with Brandenburg
and nine lesser protestant estates, but without the electorate
of Saxony [Luther's state!], declared to Duke Ferdinand of
Styria, the emperor's representative, that they would leave
the diet but would maintain the possession of the
ecclesiastical estates by force if necessary. The schism with
the church had already paralyzed the judicial system of the
empire; it now paralyzed also its highest political
corporation."

_Käemmel,
Deutsche Geschichte
(translated from the German),
pages 701-715._

See, also, PAPACY: A. D. 1537-1563 (page 2458).

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GERMANY: A. D. 1615.
First newspaper publications.

See PRINTING AND PRESS: A. D. 1612-1650 (page 2592).

GERMANY: A. D. 1618-1700.
The rise of Prussia.

"King Frederick [the Great] has good reason for it when he
says in his memoirs: 'Just as a river first becomes valuable
when it gets to be navigable, so the history of Brandenburg
first gains more serious importance towards the beginning of
the 17th century.' It was under the elector John Sigismund
that three decisive occurrences took place which opened up a
great future for the Marks—a totally different development
from the growth of the other lands of the empire. These were
the joining to Brandenburg of the secularized provinces of the
Teutonic Order, the going over of the ruling house itself to
the reformed church, finally the acquisition of the Lower
Rhenish border lands. Other princes of the empire also,
catholics as well as protestants, had enlarged their power by
means of the lands of the old church. But in the matter of the
territory of the Order the policy of the German protestants
ventured its boldest move; by Luther's advice the Hohenzollern
Albrecht snatched away from the Roman church the largest of
all its clerical belongings. The whole territory of the new
duchy of Prussia was alienated ecclesiastical land; the pope's
anathema and the emperor's ban fell on the head of the
renegade prince. Never was the Roman See willing to recognize
such robbery. In uniting the ducal crown of their Prussian
cousins with their own electoral hat the Hohenzollerns of the
Mark broke forever with the Roman church. Their state stood
and fell henceforward with the fortunes of Protestantism. At
the same time John Sigismund adopted the reformed creed. … At
the same time of thus gaining a firm footing on the Baltic
John Sigismund acquired the duchy of Cleve together with the
counties of Mark and Ravensberg,—a territory narrow in
circumference but highly important for the internal
development as well as for the European policy of the state.
They were lands which were strongholds of old and proven
peasant and civic freedom, richer and of higher capacities for
culture than the needy colonies of the East, outposts of
incalculable value on Germany's weakest frontier. In Vienna
and Madrid it was felt as a severe defeat that a new
evangelical power should establish itself there on the Lower
Rhine where Spaniards and Netherlanders were struggling for
the existence or non-existence of protestantism—right before
the gates of Cologne which was the citadel of Romanism in the
empire. … A power so situated could no longer have its horizon
bounded by the narrow circle of purely territorial policy; it
was a necessity for it to seek to round off its widely
scattered provinces into a consistent whole; it was compelled
to act for the empire and to strike for it, for every attack
of strangers on German ground cut into its own flesh. … For
the House of Brandenburg, too, tempting calls often sounded
from afar, … but a blessed providence, which earnest thinkers
should not regard as a mere chance, compelled the
Hohenzollerns to remain in Germany. They did not need the
foreign crowns, for they owed their independent position among
other states to the possession of Prussia, a land that was
German to the core, a land the very being of which was rooted
in the mother-country, and yet at the same time one that did
not belong to the political organization of the empire. Thus
with one foot in the empire, the other planted outside of it,
the Prussian state won for itself the right to carry on a
European policy which could strive for none but German ends.
It was able to care for Germany without troubling itself about
the empire and its superannuated forms. … The state of the
Hohenzollerns plunged once again headlong from the position of
power which it had so recently attained; it was on the sure
road to ruin so long as John Sigismund's successor looked
sleepily into the world out of his languid eyes. This new
attempt, too, at forming a German state seemed again about to
end in the misery of petty-stateism as had been the case
formerly with the political constellations of the Guelphs, the
Wettiners, the Counts Palatine, which had arisen under
immeasurably more favorable auspices. It was at this juncture
that the elector Frederick William, the greatest German man of
his day, entered the chaos of German life as a prince without
land, armed only with club and sling, and put a new soul into
the slumbering forces of his state by the power of his will.
From that time on the impulse of the royal will, conscious of
its goal, was never lost to the growing chief state of the
Germans. One can imagine English history without William III,
the history of France without Richelieu; the Prussian state is
the work of its princes. … Already in the first years of the
rule of the Great Elector the peculiar character of the new
political creation shows out sharply and clearly. The nephew
of Gustavus Adolphus who leads his army to battle with the old
protestant cry of 'with God' resumes the church policy of his
uncle. He it is who first among the strife of churches cries
out the saving word and demands general and unconditional
amnesty for all three creeds. This was the program of the
Westphalian peace. And far beyond the provisions of this
treaty of peace went the tolerance which the Hohenzollerns
allowed to be exercised within their lands. … While Austria
drives out its best Germans by force, the confines of
Brandenburg are thrown open with unequalled hospitality to
sufferers of every creed. How many thousand times has the song
of praise of the Bohemian exiles sounded forth in the Marks! …
When Louis XIV revokes the Edict of Nantes the little
Brandenburg lord steps forth boldly against him as the
spokesman of the protestant world, and offers through his
Potsdam Edict shelter and protection to the sons of the
martyred church. … Thus year after year an abundance of young
life streamed over into the depopulated East Marks; the German
blood that the Hapsburghs thrust from them fructified the land
of their rivals, and at the death of Frederick II about a
third of the inhabitants of the state consisted of the
descendants of immigrants who had come there since the days of
the Great Elector. … The particularism of all estates and of
all territorial districts heard with horror how the Great
Elector forced his subjects to live as 'members under one
head,' how he subjected the multiplicity of rule in the diets
to the commands of his own territorial jurisdiction and
supported his throne on the two columns of monarchical
absolutism: the miles perpetuus and permanent taxation.
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In the minds of the people troops and taxes still passed for
an extraordinary state burden to be borne in days of need. But
Frederick William raised the army into a permanent institution
and weakened the power of the territorial estates by
introducing two general taxes in all his provinces. On the
country at large he imposed the general hide-tax
(general-hufenschoss), on the cities the accise, which was a
multiform system of low direct and indirect imposts calculated
with full regard for the impoverished condition of agriculture
and yet attacking the taxable resources at as many points as
possible. In the empire there was but one voice of execration
against these first beginnings of the modern army and finance
system. Prussia remained from the beginning of its history the
most hated of the German states; those imperial lands that
fell to this princely dynasty entered, almost all of them,
with loud complaints and violent opposition into this new
political combination. All of them soon afterwards blessed
their fate. … Frederick William's successor by acquiring the
royal crown gained for his house a worthy place in the society
of the European powers and for his people the common name of
Prussians. Only dire need, only the hope of Prussia's military
aid, induced the imperial court to grant its rival the new
dignity. A spasm of terror went through the theocratic world:
the electorate of Mainz entered a protest; the Teutonic Order
demanded back again its old possession, which now gave the
name to the heretical monarchy while the papal calendar of
states, for nearly a hundred years to come, was to know only a
'margrave of Brandenburg.'"

_H. von Treitschke,
Deutsche Geschichte im 19ten Jahrhundert
(translated from the German),
volume 1, pages 26-36._

See, also, GERMANY: A. D. 1608-1618 (page 1466),
and PRUSSIA: A. D. 1700 (page 2613).

GERMANY: A. D. 1648.
The effects of the Thirty Years War.

"The national recollection holds fast to the great German war
as a thirty years continuance of universal warlike ravagings.
As a matter of fact, however, the separate parts of the empire
were directly affected by it in very different degrees; some
parts only seldom and to a small extent, many at frequent
intervals or through long-enduring periods: no part however to
such an extent that during the whole three decades it stood
always under the immediate pressure of military events and of
military burdens. Devastation and exhaustion worked their
immediate results in all directions, but we must not leave out
of consideration that the local differences were naturally
very great. An incalculable number of details concerning the
horrors of the war and concerning its destructive effects lies
before us. … So undoubtedly well-founded as on the whole the
majority of these details may be said to be, impressively as
they are apt to be brought forward, they are none the less not
such as to suffice to enable us to gain from them an
exhaustive representation of the condition of things. We have
hundreds who give testimony to all the ravagings and the
misery of the time, and the voices of such witnesses are
almost the only ones that are heard. It is natural that there
are no equally eloquent reports concerning those periods of
time and those places in which people found themselves in
medium and comparatively bearable circumstances. For the most
part only what was exceptional—although, indeed, that happened
only too often—is depicted in the complaining reports. … It
cannot be denied too that amid the fearful needs of that time
the German language succumbed to a certain propensity for what
is monstrous. In all the writings which speak of war and the
ravages of war one sees an exuberance, which comes to be a
fixed mannerism, of almost whiny tones of complaint. … The
superlative of horror predominates almost exclusively; and
with an exceedingly fertile faculty of invention men surpass
themselves in ever new, ever more blood-curdling variations of
the one theme of blood and arson, of wretchedness and famine.
… The most severe of all evils, indeed, as a matter of fact,
were those to which the peasant element was subjected. … The
profits of all agricultural labor were most perceptibly
diminished on account of the extraordinary highness of wages,
which, a natural result of the lack of workmen, formed the
subject for the chief complaints after the war, especially of
those classes which possessed land. Everywhere we meet with
the fact that those entirely without property, such as serving
men and maids are really better off than the peasant who has
land. They draw the highest wages in money and in natural
products, they must be treated with the greatest consideration
by their employers to prevent them from quitting their
service, for everywhere they are sought after and easily do
they find work. … If the evils hitherto touched upon concerned
chiefly the peasant holdings, there was another and no less
important one which concerned all property holders and
especially the nobles, whether feudatory or directly under the
empire. This was the general burden of debt on landed
property. … The noble as well as the peasant had, from of old,
mortgages resting upon his property; those who made the loans
were chiefly the large and the small capitalists in the
cities. … As a matter of fact, already during the war itself
in large parts of the empire the landed property had been in a
condition of insolvency."

_B. Erdmannsdörffer,
Deutsche Geschichte, 1648-1740
(translated from the German),
volume 1, pages 100-109._