Abstract

Protestant Federalism and Imperial Power. Confessional Plurality in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (16th to 18th Centuries)

The article deals with the phenomenon of Protestant federalism (Schmalkaldic League, Union, Corpus Evangelicorum) in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. It takes as a starting point an observation made by the Counsellor Peter Anton von Frank in 1814, who represented Emperor Franz I of Austria in the “German committee” of the Vienna Congress. Frank argued that the decomposition of the Empire and its dissolution in 1806 were closely linked to the opposition of the Protestant authorities to the Emperor's authority since the age of reformation. The article aims to show that Frank was correct on the one hand, but that his statement neglected the fundamental changes in the Empire's multiconfessional structure and accordingly its political implications on the other hand.

Therefore it examines systematically, in a diachronic perspective, those aspects which are important in order to understand the increasing significance of the confessional plurality for the political order of the Empire in the Early Modern Period: The first part deals with the participants and the emergence of the protestant associations as well as with their concepts of governance (I). The substance of these associations, and how they realized their common goals, is discussed in the second part (II). The way their basis for legitimacy changed is examined in part three (III). The final summarizing paragraph argues that the knowledge of this topic is essential for understanding why and how the former members of the Holy Roman Empire decided in Vienna in 1814/15 to organize themselves in the German Confederation as a “federative Nation” (“föderative Nation”) (IV).