The Holy roman empire on the Threshold to the early modern period

I typed “What does a typical German town look like” into Perplexity.ai and it came up with half-timbered houses, cobbled streets and alleys, medieval architecture, greenery and decorations and regional variations. And that is not half bad, unless you come to Berlin, Hamburg, Munich or Cologne in search of any of the above. But at some point in time even Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Cologne were full of half-timbered houses on cobbled streets and alleys overlooked by medieval churches and town halls. And some of the smaller cities, like Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Nördlingen, Idstein, Miltenberg, Lübeck, Esslingen and literally hundreds more do indeed have all of the above features.

But these are very rarely medieval. In fact most of these half-timbered houses and even the city walls date from the 15^th  and 16^th century, not from the  High Middle Ages in the 12^th and 13^th century.

Many German histories skip over this period in order to get to the Reformation, which is a shame. Because the 15^th century did not just shape the physical appearance of the country, but much of its geographical and mental make-up.

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans – Season 10 – The Empire in the 15^th Century.

I typed “What does a typical German town look like” into Perplexity.ai and it came up with half-timbered houses, cobbled streets and alleys, medieval architecture, greenery and decorations and regional variations. And that is not half bad, unless you come to Berlin, Hamburg, Munich or Cologne in search of any of the above. But at some point in time even Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Cologne were full of half-timbered houses on cobbled streets and alleys overlooked by medieval churches and town halls. And some of the smaller cities, like Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Nördlingen, Idstein, Miltenberg, Lübeck, Esslingen and literally hundreds more do indeed have all of the above features.

But these are very rarely medieval. In fact most of these half-timbered houses and even the city walls date from the 15^th  and 16^th century, not from the  High Middle Ages in the 12^th and 13^th century.

Many German histories skip over this period in order to get to the Reformation, which is a shame. Because the 15^th century did not just shape the physical appearance of the country, but much of its geographical and mental make-up.

This is the time when the empire reaches its most challenging phase. This is not the difficult second album, this is more Tina Turner in 1982 when her cover of shame, shame, shame reached #47 in the Netherlands charts. The emperors Sigismund and Frederick III may have been blessed with extremely long reigns, but did not bless the empire much with their presence. They spent their time mostly abroad, in Hungary and Bohemia, or in their personal territories, though with good reason.

For the first time since Otto the Great, the empire is subjected to a sustained threat from outside forces. The last invasion, the one by the Mongols, had been terrifying but mercifully brief. Now a more patient and more persistent conqueror was slowly advancing up the Balkans, the Ottomans. They were still 800km from Vienna, but 40 years earlier they had been 1,200km away.

Meanwhile the empire’s Christian neighbors, the Poles, the emerging dukes of Burgundy, the kings of France, the Venetians, the Milanese and the Scandinavian kingdoms were nibbling away at the territory of the empire, whilst the Swiss were wondering off into the Alpine Glow. The great 14^th century emperor Karl IV had already given away much of the old kingdom of the Arelat, and his son Sigismund was in no position to halt the erosion in what is today’s Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg.

On the positive side, the great western schism that had burdened the catholic church first with two and then three competing popes had ended at the council of Constance thanks in no small part to the efforts of emperor Sigismund. But this great gathering of all of Christendom and its successor council at Basel had failed to deliver on its second task, the reform of the church. This inability to stamp out at least the worst excesses of ecclesiastical greed and debauchery had tipped the Bohemian reformers into a revolution, a revolution that not only lasted 16 years, but one that prove impossible to defeat militarily. It is unclear how much resonance the radical reform ideas of the Hussites had outside Czechia, but they were a sign of things to come.

With the emperors absent and the church still in deep disarray, the ball was firmly in the court of the territorial princes.

This is where we see the beginnings of actual states and state bureaucracies developing in Germany. But in a very different way to similar trends occurring in the more consolidated kingdoms of France and England. These territorial states were a whole lot smaller and a lot more fragile, which posed some unique challenges.

First up. If you are small, the question is how do you get bigger. We will look at some key players, the archbishop of Mainz, the landgraves of Hesse, the margraves of Baden and the dukes of Württemberg to see how that can and had been done. And within this sits the question of what happened to the cities. We will look at how Würzburg tried to achieve its ambition to become a free city. Then there are the imperial knights, their military role changing and their independence threatened, trying to find new ways to remain relevant and in the process develop some seriously cool outfits.

If you were a successful territorial ruler, the next challenge was to produce a male heir or more precisely the right number of male heirs. You needed at least one growing up to manhood and survive the wars and diseases to make sure your principality would continue to exist, but you did not want too many spares so that you had to divide it up into ever smaller entities. We will look at the duchy of Brunswick to understand the inherent problems and the coping mechanisms the princely families developed. And then we will look at the Wittelsbachs who provide a great example of “how not to do it” as well as a lovely story about what happens when the precious heir falls for the wrong woman.

Growing your territory in the empire was one way to glory. But there were alternative options, options that became almost a standing feature. The princely families of the empire turned into a near inexhaustible reservoir from where to pluck a king, should you happen to have mislaid the previous monarch or are in need of a new one. Over the centuries, German princes would ascend the thrones of Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, Poland, of course my homeland of Blighty, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria and probably some more I have forgotten. Basically everywhere except for France and Italy. That process was established then and we will look into it in more detail when we discuss Pomerania and Oldenburg.

We will also touch on the great wars of the period, wars between alliances of princes, cities and knight’s associations. And these were the Bavarian war, the Mainzer Stiftsfehde, the war of the Princes and the Soester Stiftsfehde. Never heard of them? Do not worry, you are not alone. Some were straightforward wars over who owns what territory, but one, the largest of them, was over the system of appeals in the imperial law courts – go figure. We will hear all about of these wars, about a victorious Count Palatinate on the Rhine and a fellow elector they dubbed the German Achilles.

All that sounds somewhat depressing and another festival of blood and gore. But despite all this strife and feuding, this is also a time of great discovery. Gutenberg invented the printing press, a technology that would undermine the authority of the Catholic church, fan the flames which led to the Reformation, create the communications infrastructure needed for the rise of modern science and even – if Neil Postman is to be believed – lead to the invention of childhood as an extended, protected phase in the lives of young people.

Like the internet and social media, the printing press demanded new types of content: maps, encyclopedias, fiction, political pamphlets and engravings, opening the world up to the world. More universities are founded in this period than at any other time before the 1960s, churning out not just priests, but lawyers, writers and intellectuals. All these territorial princes, bishops, abbots, city councils and rich merchants demand art and architecture to celebrate their achievements and pieces made from silver and gold to amaze their guests, whilst alchemists worked deep in the bowels of castles trying to turn base metal into gold and inventing chemistry in the process.

And funding all this, the tournaments, the universities, the art and the wars were the peasants, whose conditions may be subject to debate, but whose anger becomes ever more palpable.

And all that might finally get us to  a point where these people speaking a similar language and participating in a similar culture developed a notion of being German.. you know I am skeptical about these things, but maybe it is now time to discuss it…

I am still working on the details of the schedule, but the idea is to alternate between political history and cultural, social and economic history, whilst the link from episode to episode will be geographical. We will see whether we can pull that off, but given the wealth of material, it should definitely be interesting.

If you are craving a more linear storyline to complement what is going on here, I would like to direct you to what is rapidly becoming one of my favourite history podcasts, the History of Venice. It is well thought through and beautifully presented. Simon and Jess are deeply involved with their subject and will walk you through the fascinating story of the city on the lagoon. And the good news is, they are only on episode 18, so very easy to catch up with and join what is promising to be a great ride.

As for us here, the new season “The Empire in the 15^th Century” kicks off next Thursday with an episode about the appearance of the landgraviate of Hesse and why this mad ethe archbishop of Mainz very disappointed, and the archbishop of Mainz did not like to be disappointed.

See you next week.

And in case you are wondering about the delay in today’s episode, I had a serious audio software issue that distorted the first version so badly I had to delete it before it got distributed too widely. Apologies for that.

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