Create a new account

It's simple, and free.

The German National Experience

The National Experience of its Neighbors

I. Introduction: The German National Experience

It is a peculiarity of history that while the German people have existed with a distinct historical identity since Western civilization began to emerge out of the Dark Ages over a thousand years ago, a unified German nation-state came into being only in the last century. Through most of the preceding centuries, "Germany" had meaning in terms of language and culture, but was politically a pure abstraction, the purely nominal Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation consisting in fact of several hundred independent ministates.

An even stranger peculiarity of history is that in the early Middle Ages, Germany was markedly precocious in what might be called proto-state formation. After the breakup of Charlemagne's empire, its western reaches--France--remained weak and effectively fragmented for several centuries. In Germany, in contrast, a line of Saxon emperors appeared within about a century of the fading of the Carolingians. From the tenth to the thirteenth century, the German Emperors were the greatest sovereigns in Europe, at a time when the Kings of France controlled little more than the region around Paris. In seeking to secure their "Roman" claim to rule Italy, however, the Emperors gradually ceded effective control over Germany itself. In early modern times, foreign adventures like those of France strengthened the monarchy; in medieval times, the Emperors' foreign wars eventually reduced their power to a shadow.

Germany did not suffer for its disunity in this period, however; the north and west were as prosperous as any part of Europe (Seton-Watson, n.d., p. 92). The first great disaster to be visited upon Germany due to its lack of unity was the Thirty Years' War of 1618-48. The warring armies, living off the land, devastated wide swaths of the country, and Germany's population overall was reduced by perhaps a third. B...

Page 1 of 11 Next >

More on The German National Experience...

Loading...
APA     MLA     Chicago
The German National Experience. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 02:29, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1691090.html