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Das Heilige Römische Reich Deutscher Nation: Vom Ende des Mittelalters bis 1806 (Beck'sche Reihe 2399)
Dieses Buch bietet eine fundierte und faktenreiche Darstellung des Heiligen Römischen Reiches Deutscher Nation – seiner Geschichte, Institutionen und Strukturen – vom Ende des Mittelalters bis 1806.
166 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2006
28 people are currently reading
195 people want to read
About the author
Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger
31 books8 followersBarbara Stollberg-Rilinger FBA is a German historian. She studied German language and literature, history and history of art at the University of Cologne, graduating in 1980 and earning a doctorate in 1985.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
August 1, 2021
It’s been said, perhaps in jest, that the Holy Roman Empire is neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire. Despite having existed for an entire millennium, it remains infamously opaque and obscure, with a past even most history lovers know little of. At just about 160 pages, this little book by Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger (originally published in German in 2006 as “Das Heilige Romische Reich Deutscher Nation: Vom Ende des Mittelalters bis 1806”) hits a sweet spot in providing just enough political and institutional history of the Empire to understand its functions and dysfunctions during its last three centuries (c. 1495-1806). The English translation was published by Princeton University Press in 2018.
Stating what the Empire was is just as difficult as stating what it wasn’t. It was not a “state or confederation of states,” because it lacked many of the qualities of early modern statehood. It could variously be seen as a loose political body tied together by feudal bonds of fealty to an overlord (the Emperor), a legal association under a common juridical authority with shared legislative powers aimed at establishing a community of diplomacy and peace, or a complex political association of states and corporations brought together based largely based on the shared principles of both tradition and consensus. In short, it’s not the easiest political body to characterize.
The time period stated above (c. 1495-1806) bookends the events from the Diet of Worms to the dissolution of the Empire under Napoleonic pressures. (And no, not the 1521 Diet of Worms where Martin Luther was called to apologize for his doctrine in response to a papal bull from Leo X. This Diet of Worms occurred a generation earlier and consisted of a series of complicated institutional reforms.) These centuries were critical because of the ways they structurally changed the Empire socially, culturally, and religiously, with the biggest of these changes being the events that followed directly from the Reformation. This book is more for the interested generalist, but she still has her pet topics of interest: most notably the roles and importance of tradition versus innovation and public ritual.
Many of the territories that continued to be affiliated with the Empire but remained connected in older, feudal ways more associated with the Middle Ages than with modernity, including Savoy, northern Italy, and the Swiss Confederation, take a backseat to the larger territories that went on to build stronger diplomatic and political relationships with one another. Stollberg-Rilinger emphasizes the Empire as one that ran on consensus and cooperation. The electors of individual territories and the Emperor himself were both elected, a practice that dated back to old Germanic tribes. It was only later that hereditary succession was introduced across a variety of European states.
Stollberg-Rilinger offers up a great revisionist history of the Peace of Westphalia, suggesting that instead of making the Empire weaker and more unstable, that it was buoyed by the strength of its own institutions and rituals. This goes on to backfire as some of the more well-established territories, like Brandenburg-Prussia and Austria, used the legal rights and liberties codified into the Peace of Westphalia as political cudgels against their neighbor territories. Thus it wasn’t the great political and social forces of the time that tore the Empire apart, she argues, but rather the venality of its members and its own decreasing political utility. Her analysis of the Peace of Augsburg is just as compelling.
One could be forgiven for thinking that a book with the Holy Roman Empire for its subject would be stuffily academic, but it’s not. She even manages to make the occasionally mentioned historiographical quibble – the fact that nineteenth-century historians had a tendency to see the late Empire as a gigantic, lumbering failure, for example - about her topic interesting to the layperson. It’s well-written, clear, and has the increasingly rare virtue of concision. For all intents and purposes, for a cursory introductory to the last third of the Empire, it’s a great place to start - and end, unless your interests just aren’t sated by a 160 pages of sharp, elegantly written history. The only negative I can see is that the first 700 years of the Empire don’t even get a passing mention, which means that you’ll ultimately have to go elsewhere if you want a historical picture of the Empire’s entire past.
Stating what the Empire was is just as difficult as stating what it wasn’t. It was not a “state or confederation of states,” because it lacked many of the qualities of early modern statehood. It could variously be seen as a loose political body tied together by feudal bonds of fealty to an overlord (the Emperor), a legal association under a common juridical authority with shared legislative powers aimed at establishing a community of diplomacy and peace, or a complex political association of states and corporations brought together based largely based on the shared principles of both tradition and consensus. In short, it’s not the easiest political body to characterize.
The time period stated above (c. 1495-1806) bookends the events from the Diet of Worms to the dissolution of the Empire under Napoleonic pressures. (And no, not the 1521 Diet of Worms where Martin Luther was called to apologize for his doctrine in response to a papal bull from Leo X. This Diet of Worms occurred a generation earlier and consisted of a series of complicated institutional reforms.) These centuries were critical because of the ways they structurally changed the Empire socially, culturally, and religiously, with the biggest of these changes being the events that followed directly from the Reformation. This book is more for the interested generalist, but she still has her pet topics of interest: most notably the roles and importance of tradition versus innovation and public ritual.
Many of the territories that continued to be affiliated with the Empire but remained connected in older, feudal ways more associated with the Middle Ages than with modernity, including Savoy, northern Italy, and the Swiss Confederation, take a backseat to the larger territories that went on to build stronger diplomatic and political relationships with one another. Stollberg-Rilinger emphasizes the Empire as one that ran on consensus and cooperation. The electors of individual territories and the Emperor himself were both elected, a practice that dated back to old Germanic tribes. It was only later that hereditary succession was introduced across a variety of European states.
Stollberg-Rilinger offers up a great revisionist history of the Peace of Westphalia, suggesting that instead of making the Empire weaker and more unstable, that it was buoyed by the strength of its own institutions and rituals. This goes on to backfire as some of the more well-established territories, like Brandenburg-Prussia and Austria, used the legal rights and liberties codified into the Peace of Westphalia as political cudgels against their neighbor territories. Thus it wasn’t the great political and social forces of the time that tore the Empire apart, she argues, but rather the venality of its members and its own decreasing political utility. Her analysis of the Peace of Augsburg is just as compelling.
One could be forgiven for thinking that a book with the Holy Roman Empire for its subject would be stuffily academic, but it’s not. She even manages to make the occasionally mentioned historiographical quibble – the fact that nineteenth-century historians had a tendency to see the late Empire as a gigantic, lumbering failure, for example - about her topic interesting to the layperson. It’s well-written, clear, and has the increasingly rare virtue of concision. For all intents and purposes, for a cursory introductory to the last third of the Empire, it’s a great place to start - and end, unless your interests just aren’t sated by a 160 pages of sharp, elegantly written history. The only negative I can see is that the first 700 years of the Empire don’t even get a passing mention, which means that you’ll ultimately have to go elsewhere if you want a historical picture of the Empire’s entire past.
March 7, 2025
Kutsal Roma Germen İmparatorluğu ile ilgili müstakil bir kitap bulmak zor. Hatta arka kapakta yazana göre Türkçedeki ilk çeviri eser. Benim de başka bildiğim yok, son zamanlarda basılan varsa da haberim yoktur. Kitap KRG İmparatorluğu'nun siyasi olaylarından ziyade geçirdiği dönüşümlerle daha çok alakadar olmuş, bu durum da okuyucuda kitabı okumadan önce bir tarihsel temel gerektiriyor. Sadece Alman devletlerinin değil, komşularının da tarihini az çok bilmeniz gerekiyor kitabı kafanızda tam olarak oturtabilmek adına. Avrupa tarihi okumaları yaptığım günlerdeyim ve bu kitap bana İmparatorluk yapısını ve geçirdiği dönüşümleri anlaşılır bir şekilde verdi. Ama okumayı düşünüyorsanız bu kitabın bir başlangıç kitabı olmadığını da tekrar söylemek isterim.
April 11, 2023
Great overview of the HRE from beginning to end.
August 24, 2025
Nach dem Jung und Naiv Interview der Autorin, habe ich mich entschlossen mir mal ihre Werke anzuschauen. Dieser kurze Band dient super dazu das Schulwissen zum HRRDN wieder aufzufrischen.
June 16, 2022
This is a dry book that became more interesting the further you got into it. I more or less enjoyed it, but never found it an inspiring read, nor was I ever really looking forward to picking it back up again. I spent £15 on this and wish I'd bought it second hand, instead.
August 22, 2024
Es un tratado político farragoso más que una historia breve. No es un acercamiento paulatino, sino la exposición de los entresijos administrativos más tediosos. Desconozco si es un fallo en la traducción del título o si el propósito de la autora es espantar a cualquier curioso del tema. Mi interés por el Sacro Imperio fue decreciendo con el paso de las páginas. Espero no tener que acudir a este libro nunca. Acabarlo ha sido un suplicio.
December 27, 2023
Impresiona la capacidad técnica de la autora y como a través de esta le puede dar al lector una visión bastante clara de lo q es el imperio. Se entiende la dificultad de definir tal amorfidad política, pero se logra tener una visión.
August 31, 2022
An informative short overview that nonetheless only covers the latter half of the Empire's thousand-year history and is very dry, dealing as it does primarily with the dizzyingly complicated Imperial institutions and their repeated overhauls, reforms, and rejiggering over about 400 years.
That I expected a history from Charlemagne on when the book only begins in the 15th century I blame on the US publisher; here, it's subtitled A Short History, but the original German subtitle is more specific: Vom Ende des Mittelalters bis 1806. So caveat lector, I guess.
But again, it is a very good short history of its subject, and concludes with an exceptionally insightful and helpful chapter summarizing the eleven main conclusions the author draws from this history in answer to the question "What was the Holy Roman Empire?"
That I expected a history from Charlemagne on when the book only begins in the 15th century I blame on the US publisher; here, it's subtitled A Short History, but the original German subtitle is more specific: Vom Ende des Mittelalters bis 1806. So caveat lector, I guess.
But again, it is a very good short history of its subject, and concludes with an exceptionally insightful and helpful chapter summarizing the eleven main conclusions the author draws from this history in answer to the question "What was the Holy Roman Empire?"
March 15, 2016
Für gänzlich Ungeschlagene ein lohnender erster Ausflug.
September 23, 2020
I read mostly non fiction books. History, essays and I am used to "hard" readings but I found this book incredible dense with no engaging at all.
A short book that took me a lot of effort to read.
A short book that took me a lot of effort to read.
February 21, 2021
Yönetimleri birbirleriyle benzeşmeyen yüzlerce devletçiğin 1000 yıl süren tarihi. Yazar tarihi olaylardan çok yönetim yapısındaki değişikliklere odaklanmış. Kısa ama bilgilendirici bir kitap.
September 18, 2022
Belki biraz da utanç verici bir açıklama modeli ama yazın başında bir bağımlı gibi saatlerce, günlerce oynadığım EU4 adlı oyunda önemli aktörlerden biri olan Kutsal Roma İmparatorluğu'nun parçalı yapısı, elektör prensler ve yine 15. Yüzyıldan itibaren imparatorluk içinde gerçekleşmiş tarihsel olayların görünürlüğü beni üzerinde okumaya teşvik etti. Her ne kadar lisede görülen tarih dersleri dolayısıyla özellikle Avusturya-Osmanlı çatışması üzerinden kimi bilgiler sunulsa da son derece yetersiz ve güçsüz oldukları açık imparatorluğun yapısını anlamak için ancak müfredatın aksine neredeyse 1000 sene boyunca varlığını Avrupa'nın ortasında korumuş, sayısız küçük devletten ve özgür şehirlerden oluşan, bugünün Avrupa siyasal haritasında mevcut devletlerden birçoğunu kapsayan bir büyüklükten bahsediliyor ki yine imparatorluğun dağılmasından sonra dünya tarihine etki etmeyi sürdürmüş Avusturya-Macaristan, Prusya gibi devletlerin de modern zamanlara gelmeden önceki işleyişini, bir anlamda yeni çağa nasıl girdiklerini ve değiştiklerini anlamak için de elzem. Tuhaf bir şey, düşününce, bunca önemli olan bir devletin ve siyasal yapının nasıl olup da liselerde ve sonrasında (sosyoloji mezunu olduğum için yine tarihle ilişkili dersler almayı sürdürdüm lisans hayatımda) çok az konu haline getirilmesi.
Kitaba gelirsek benim okumaya henüz başlarken beklediğimin tam tersine uluslar-arası politik düzlemden ya da savaşlardan oluşan bir tarih okumasının ötesinde daha çok imparatorluğun iç işleyişiyle alakalı bir metin, bu bakımdan okuyucu açısından sıkıcı hale gelme potansiyeline sahip (yabancı dilde yazılmış diğer incelemelerde de benzer bir yakınma var). Ancak tam aksine benim gibi keyif almanız da olası kitaptan, sonuçta gündelik hayatta ve eğitim sürecinde çok karşılaşılmayan gizli ve büyülü bir alana giriş gibi de adlandırılabilir. Kitabı okurken ve umuyorum ki bitirdikten sonra da jstor gibi makale depolarında yine bu konu hakkında keyfi okumalar yapacağım.
Vakıfbank Kültür Yayınları'nın editör ve çevirmen ekibine de teşekkürü borç bilirim zira onların sayesinde Schmitt başta olmak üzere alternatif düşünüş tiplerine, Avrupa'daki ana-akımın zıddına yazan kimi yazarlarla tanışma fırsatı doğuyor.
Kitaba gelirsek benim okumaya henüz başlarken beklediğimin tam tersine uluslar-arası politik düzlemden ya da savaşlardan oluşan bir tarih okumasının ötesinde daha çok imparatorluğun iç işleyişiyle alakalı bir metin, bu bakımdan okuyucu açısından sıkıcı hale gelme potansiyeline sahip (yabancı dilde yazılmış diğer incelemelerde de benzer bir yakınma var). Ancak tam aksine benim gibi keyif almanız da olası kitaptan, sonuçta gündelik hayatta ve eğitim sürecinde çok karşılaşılmayan gizli ve büyülü bir alana giriş gibi de adlandırılabilir. Kitabı okurken ve umuyorum ki bitirdikten sonra da jstor gibi makale depolarında yine bu konu hakkında keyfi okumalar yapacağım.
Vakıfbank Kültür Yayınları'nın editör ve çevirmen ekibine de teşekkürü borç bilirim zira onların sayesinde Schmitt başta olmak üzere alternatif düşünüş tiplerine, Avrupa'daki ana-akımın zıddına yazan kimi yazarlarla tanışma fırsatı doğuyor.
April 4, 2023
Not an easy read but informative albeit that it is (probably deliberately) mistitled. It is a study of the Empire NOT an history of it - noticeably the original German title does not include the word 'History'. It would also have been more 'honest' if the publisher had retained that part of the German book's title which states that the book covers only from the end of the Middle Ages to the Empire's dissolution in 1806!
My other problem with this book is the translation itself. Whilst the words are precisely translated the nuances aren't, which makes the text very hard going, and a better translator would have produced far better book. For example, and this is one of many, I KNOW that the German actually says "the Roman King" but the English equivalent usage is 'King of the Romans' - in English the two terms have completely different meanings and ignoring this makes the text begin to be inaccurate. Similarly whilst the German text does say that the Electors voted 'one by one', its English equivalent is actually 'one at a time'. Such poor translation is repeated throughout, which is a good part of the difficult of reading the book
A book very well worth having on your shelf for anyone interested but it could have been titled, translated and produced better - shame on you Princeton!
My other problem with this book is the translation itself. Whilst the words are precisely translated the nuances aren't, which makes the text very hard going, and a better translator would have produced far better book. For example, and this is one of many, I KNOW that the German actually says "the Roman King" but the English equivalent usage is 'King of the Romans' - in English the two terms have completely different meanings and ignoring this makes the text begin to be inaccurate. Similarly whilst the German text does say that the Electors voted 'one by one', its English equivalent is actually 'one at a time'. Such poor translation is repeated throughout, which is a good part of the difficult of reading the book
A book very well worth having on your shelf for anyone interested but it could have been titled, translated and produced better - shame on you Princeton!
July 17, 2023
Due to my readings on the Reformation, I am quite familiar with the Empire but I still learned a good deal from reading this book. Stollberg-Rilinger does an excellent job of looking at the political machinery that I was not familiar with from my studies.
February 11, 2024
A quite amazingly compact yet thorough history of the Empire and its development and features.
July 12, 2024
Kort kompakt gjennomgang av stort tema, som eg visste veldig lite om frå før.
Du vil aldri finna ei historiebok der historikaren konkluderer at "dette teamet er eigentleg ikkje så viktig": Eg hadde inntrykk av at det tyske keisarriket var nesten berre pro forma frå iallfall slutten av mellomalderen, men her lærer eg at det hadde viktige funksjonar heilt ut til 1700-talet. Mykje nytt, grei innføring for ein begynnar.
Du vil aldri finna ei historiebok der historikaren konkluderer at "dette teamet er eigentleg ikkje så viktig": Eg hadde inntrykk av at det tyske keisarriket var nesten berre pro forma frå iallfall slutten av mellomalderen, men her lærer eg at det hadde viktige funksjonar heilt ut til 1700-talet. Mykje nytt, grei innføring for ein begynnar.
February 15, 2025
Did the job. Quick explanation of the Holy Roman Empire. It is dry, but does an efficient job of explaining a complicated topic.
June 21, 2013
guter chronologischer Überblick
August 22, 2022
Fantastic ‘short history’ from well-regarded German historian. Great as a reference when wading through other histories of The Holy Roman Empire.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews