Iron Kingdom

by Clark, Christopher

  6. See especially (with literature) Manfred Schlenke, ‘Von der Schwierigkeit, Preussen auszustellen. Rückschau auf die Preussen-Ausstellung, Berlin 1981’, in id. (ed.), Preussen. Politik, Kultur, Gesellschaft (2 vols., Hamburg, 1986), vol. 1, pp. 12–34. On the debate triggered by the exhibition, see BarbaraVogel, ‘Bemerkungen zur Aktualität der preussischen Geschichte’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, 25 (1985), pp. 467–507; T. C. W. Blanning, ‘The Death and Transfiguration of Prussia’, Historical Journal, 29 (1986), pp. 433–59.

  7. The organizational hub of the present-day conservative Prussophiles is the Preussische Gesellschaft. The society publishes a journal (Preussische Nachrichten von Staats-und Gelehrten-Sachen), for which it claims a readership of 10,000; its website can be consulted at http://www.preussen.org/page/frame.html. The society’s following spans a wide range of right-of-centre positions, from authoritarian neo-liberals to Prussian federal autonomists, ultra-conservative monarchists and right-wing extremists.

  8. The remains of Frederick the Great had been transferred to Hohenzollern-Hechingen towards the end of the Second World War to prevent their disinterment by the approaching Russians. They were repatriated in 1991 in conformity with the king’s testament, which had stipulated that he should be buried with his greyhounds on one of the terraces of Sans Souci. The presence of the then Chancellor Helmut Kohl at the re-interment ceremony was particularly controversial. On the city palace initiatives, see ‘Wir brauchen zentrale Akteure’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 10 January 2002, p. 17; Peter Conradi, ‘Das Neue darf nicht verboten werden’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 8 March 2002, p. 13; Joseph Paul Kleihues, ‘Respekt vor dem Kollegen Schlüter’, Die Welt, 30 January 2002, p. 20. For details of the campaign to restore the palace, see http://www.berliner-stadtschloss.de/index1.htm and http://www.stadtschloss-berlin.del.

  9. Hans-Ulrich Wehler, ‘Preussen vergiftet uns. Ein Glück, dass es vorbei ist!’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 23 February 2002, p. 41; cf. Tilman Mayer, ‘Ja zur Renaissance’. Was Preussen aus sich machen kann’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 27 February 2002, p. 49; see also Florian Giese, ‘Preussens Sendung und Gysis Mission’ in Die Zeit, September 2002, accessed online at http://www.zeit.de/archiv/2002/09/200209 preussen.xml.

  10. See, for example, Linda Colley, Britons. Forging the Nation (New Haven, CT, 1992) and, more generally, James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State. How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, CT, 1998), esp. pp. 11, 76–83, 183. On the debate over the ‘constructed’ character of nationalism, see Oliver Zimmer and Len Scales (eds.), Power and the Nation in European History (Cambridge, 2005).

  11. Voltaire to Nicolas Claude Theriot, au Chêne, 26 October [1757], in Theodor Bestermann (ed.), Voltaire’s Correspondence, trans. Julius R. Ruff (51 vols., Geneva, 1958), vol. 32, p. 135.

  1 The Hohenzollerns of Brandenburg

  1. ‘Regio est plana, nemorosa tamen, & ut plurimus paludosa…’, Nicolaus Leuthinger, Topographia prior Marchiae regionumque vicinarum… (Frankfurt/Oder, 1598), reprinted in J. G. Kraus (ed.), Scriptorum de rebus marchiae brandenburgensis maxime celebrium… (Frankfurt, 1729), p. 117. For other examples, see Zacharias Garcaeus, Successiones familiarum et Res gestae illustrissimum praesidium Marchiae Brandenburgensis ab anno DCCCCXXVII ad annum MDLXXXII, reprinted in ibid., pp. 6–7.

  2. William Howitt, The Rural and Domestic Life of Germany (London, 1842), p. 429.

  3. Tom Scott, Society and Economy in Germany, 1300–1600 (London, 2002), pp. 24, 119.

  4. Dirk Redies, ‘Zur Geschichte des Eisenhüttenwerkes Peitz’, in Museumsverband des Landes Brandenburg (ed.), Ortstermine. Stationen Brandenburg-Preussens auf dem Weg in die moderne Welt (Berlin, 2001), Part 2, pp. 4–16.

  5. F. W. A. Bratring, Statistisch-Topographische Beschreibung der gesamten Mark Brandenburg (Berlin, 1804), repr. edn by Otto Büsch and Gerd Heinrich (2 vols., Berlin, 1968), vol. 1, pp. 28, 30, vol. 2, p. 1108. Bratring gives figures, but these derive from a later period when improvements had been made to many parts of the Mark and are in any case of dubious accuracy.

  6. William W. Hagen, Ordinary Prussians. Brandenburg Junkers and Villagers, 1500–1840 (Cambridge, 2002), p. 44.

  7. On the ‘holiness’ of the ‘Reich’, see Hans Hattenhauer, ‘Über die Heiligkeit des Heiligen Römischen Reiches’, in Wilhelm Brauneder (ed.), Heiliges Römisches Reich und moderne Staatlichkeit (Frankfurt/Main, 1993), pp. 125–46. On the multivalence of the term, see Georg Schmidt, Geschichte des alten Reiches, Staat und Nation in der frühen Neuzeit 1495–1806 (Munich, 1999), p. 10.

  8. Only in the years 1742–5, under exceptional circumstances, did the imperial title pass to a member of the Bavarian Wittelsbach dynasty.

  9. On dynastic partitions, see Paula Sutter Fichtner, Protestantism and Primogeniture in Early Modern Germany (New Haven, CT, 1989), esp. pp. 4–21; Geoffrey Parker, The Thirty Years’ War (London, 1984), p. 15.

  10. Elizabeth’s dramatic departure had less to do with the fear of religious persecution than with the extramarital liaisons for which Luther had reproached Joachim I in a series of published open letters. Manfred Rudersdorf and Anton Schindling, ‘Kurbrandenburg’, in Anton Schindling and Walter Ziegler (eds.), Die Territorien des Reiches im Zeitalter der Reformation und Konfessionalisierung. Land und Konfession 1500–1650 (6 vols., Münster, 1990), vol. 2, Der Nordosten, pp. 34–67, here p. 40.

  11. Axel Gotthard, ‘Zwischen Luthertum und Calvinismus (1598–1640)’, in Frank-Lothar Kroll (ed.), Preussens Herrscher. Von den ersten Hohenzollern bis Wilhelm II (Munich, 2000), pp. 74–94, here p. 75; Otto Hintze, Die Hohenzollern und ihr Werk. Fünfhundert Jahre Vaterländischer Geschichte (7th edn, Berlin, 1916), p. 153.

  12. Walter Mehring, Die Geschichte Preussens (Berlin, 1981), p. 37.

  13. For a discussion of the inheritance law involved in this claim, see Heinz Ollmann-Kösling, Der Erbfolgestreit um Jülich-Kleve (1609–1614). Ein Vorspiel zum Dreissigjährigen Krieg (Regensburg, 1996), pp. 52–4.

  14. For an overview with literature, see Rudolf Endres, Adel in der frühen Neuzeit (Munich, 1993), esp. pp. 23–30, 83–92.

  15. Peter-Michael Hahn, ‘Landesstaat und Ständetum im Kurfürstentum Brandenburg während des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts’, in Peter Baumgart (ed.), Ständetum und Staatsbildung in Brandenburg-Preussen. Ergebnisse einer international Fachtagung (Berlin, 1983), pp. 41–79, here p. 42.

  16. This account is based on the text of the Geheimratsordnung of 13 December 1604, transcribed in Siegfried Isaacsohn, Geschichte des preussischen Beamtenthums vom Anfang des 15. Jahrhunderts bis auf die Gegenwart (3 vols., Berlin, 1874–84), vol. 2, pp. 24–8.

  17. Ibid., p. 28; Johannes Schultze, Die Mark Brandenburg (4 vols., Berlin, 1961–69), vol. 4, p. 188; Hintze, Die Hohenzollern, pp. 154–5.

  18. Gotthard, ‘Zwischen Luthertum und Calvinismus’, in Kroll (ed.), Preussens Herrscher, pp. 85–7; Schultze, Die Mark Brandenburg, vol. 4, pp. 176–9.

  19. Hintze, Die Hohenzollern, p. 162. Alison D. Anderson, On the Verge of War. International Relations and the Jülich-Kleve Succession Crisis (1609–1614) (Boston, 1999), pp. 18–40.

  20. Parker, Thirty Years’ War, pp. 28–37; Schultze, Die Mark Brandenburg, vol. 4, p. 185.

  21. Gotthard, ‘Zwischen Luthertum und Calvinismus’, p. 84.

  22. Friedrich Schiller, The History of the Thirty Years War in Germany, trans. Capt. Blacquiere (2 vols., London, 1799), vol. 1, p. 93.

  23. Cited in Gotthard, ‘Zwischen Luthertum und Calvinismus’, p. 84.

  2 Devastation

  1. There is a vast literature in English on the genesis and course of the Thirty Years War. Geoffrey Parker, The Thirty Years’ War (London, 1988) remains the standard general account; Ronald G. Asch, The Thirty Years War: The Holy Roman Empire and Europe, 1618–1648 (London, 1997) provides a useful recent introduction to the issues; a general history is currently in preparation by Peter H. Wilson. Sigfrid Henry Steinberg, The ‘Thirty Years War’ and the Conflict for Europea
n Hegemony, 1600–1660 (London, 1966) and Georges Pagès, The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648, trans. David Maland and John Hooper (London, 1970) are older works that stress the primacy of European over infra-German confessional issues.

  2. Frederick II, Mémoires pour servir à l’Histoire de la Maison de Brandebourg (2 vols., London, 1767), vol. 1, p. 51.

  3. From notes recorded by Count Adam von Schwarzenberg and summarised for the Elector by Chancellor Pruckmann, cited in J. W. C. Cosmar, Beiträge zur Untersuchung der gegen den Kurbrandenburgischen Geheimen Rath Grafen Adam zu Schwarzenberg erhobenen Beschuldigungen. Zur Berichtigung der Geschichte unserer Kurfürsten Georg Wilhelm und Friedrich Wilhelm (Berlin, 1828), p. 48.

  4. Count Schwarzenberg to Chancellor Pruckmann, 22 July 1626, reporting remarks by the Elector, cited in Johann Gustav Droysen, Geschichte der preussischen Politik (14 vols., Berlin, 1855–6), vol. 3, part I, Der Staat des Grossen Kurfürsten, p. 41; Cosmar, Beiträge, p. 50.

  5. Catholic possessions were calculated according to the status quo at the time of the Peace of Passau (1552). For an English translation of the Edict of Restitution, see E. Reich (ed.), Select Documents (London, 1905), pp. 234–5.

  6. On Swedish objectives and involvement in the war, see Michael Roberts, Gustavus Adolphus: A History of Sweden 1611–1632 (2 vols., London, 1953–8), vol. 1, pp. 220–28, vol. 2, pp. 619–73.

  7. Cited in L. Hüttl, Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg, der Grosse Kurfürst (Munich, 1981), p. 39.

  8. Frederick II, Mémoires, p. 73.

  9. W. Lahne, Magdeburgs Zerstörung in der zeitgenössischen Publizistik (Magdeburg, 1931), esp. pp. 7–24; 110–47.

  10. Roberts, Gustavus Adolphus, vol. 2, pp. 508–13.

  11. Hintze, Die Hohenzollern, p. 176.

  12. Frederick II, Mémoires, p. 51; J. A. R. Marriott and C. Grant Robertson, The Evolution of Prussia. The Making of an Empire (Oxford, 1917), p. 74; Gotthard, ‘Zwischen Luthertum und Calvinismus’, pp. 87–94.

  13. Droysen, Der Staat des Grossen Kurfürsten, p. 38.

  14. Roberts, Gustavus Adolphus, vol. 1, pp. 174–81.

  15. Droysen, Der Staat des Grossen Kurfürsten, p. 39.

  16. Christoph Fürbringer, Necessitas und Libertas. Staatsbildung und Landstände im 17. Jahrhundert in Brandenburg (Frankfurt/Main, 1985), p. 34.

  17. Hahn, ‘Landesstaat und Ständetum’, p. 59.

  18. Droysen, Der Staat des Grossen Kurfürsten, p. 118.

  19. Fürbringer, Necessitas und Libertas, p. 54.

  20. Ibid., pp. 54–7.

  21. Otto Meinardus (ed.), Protokolle und Relationen des Brandenburgischen Geheimen Rates aus der Zeit des Kurfürsten Friedrich Wilhelm (4 vols., Leipzig, 1889–1919), vol. 1 (= vol. 41 of the series Publicationen aus den K. Preussischen Staatsarchiven), p. xxxiv.

  22. Ibid., p. xxxv; August von Haeften (ed.), Ständische Verhandlungen, vol. 1: Kleve-Mark (Berlin, 1869) (= vol. 5 of the series Urkunden und Acktenstücke zur Geschichte des Kurfürsten Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg; henceforth UuA), pp. 58–82.

  23. Fritz Schröer, Das Havelland im dreissigjährigen Krieg. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Mark Brandenburg (Cologne, 1966), p. 32.

  24. Ibid., p. 37.

  25. Geoff Mortimer, Eyewitness Accounts of the Thirty Years’ War 1618–1648 (Houndmills, 2002), p. 12.

  26. On contributions, see ibid., pp. 47–50, 89–92; Parker, Thirty Years’ War, pp. 197, 204.

  27. Schröer, Havelland, p. 48.

  28. Ibid., p. 34.

  29. B. Seiffert (ed.), ‘Zum dreissigjährigen Krieg: Eigenhändige Aufzeichnungen von Stadtschreibern und Ratsherren der Stadt Strausberg’, Jahresbericht des Königlichen Wilhelm-Gymnasiums zu Krotoschin, 48 (1902), Supplement, pp. 1–47, cited in Mortimer, Eyewitness Accounts, p. 91.

  30. Herman von Petersdorff, ‘Beiträge zur Wirtschafts-Steuer-und Heeresgeschichte der Mark im dreissig-Jährigen Kriege’, Forschungen zur Brandenburgischen und Preussischen Geschichte (henceforth FBPG), 2 (1889), pp. 1–73, here pp. 70–73.

  31. Robert Ergang, The Myth of the All-Destructive Fury of the Thirty Years’ War (Pocono Pines, Pa, 1956); Steinberg, The Thirty Years’ War, pp. 2–3, 91. Revisionist analysis: Ronald G. Asch, ‘ “Wo der Soldat hinkömbt, da ist alles sein”: Military Violence and Atrocities in the Thirty Years War Re-examined’, German History, 18 (2000), pp. 291–309.

  32. Philip Vincent, The Lamentations of Germany (London, 1638).

  33. On the relationship between narrative and experienced trauma in the Thirty Years War, see Bernd Roeck, ‘Der dreissigjährige Krieg und die Menschen im Reich. überlegungen zu den Formen psychischer Krisenbewältigung in der ersten Hälfte des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts’, in Bernhard R. Kroener and Ralf Pröve (eds.), Krieg und Frieden. Militär und Gesellschaft in der frühen Neuzeit (Paderborn, 1996), pp. 265–79; Geoffrey Mortimer, ‘Individual Experience and Perception of the Thirty Years War in Eyewitness Personal Accounts’, German History, 20 (2002), pp. 141–60.

  34. Report of the outdwellers (Kiezer) of Plaue, 12 January 1639, cited in Schröer, Havelland, p. 94.

  35. B. Elsler (ed.), Peter Thiele’s Aufzeichnung von den Schicksalen der Stadt Beelitz im Dreissigjährigen Kriege (Beelitz, 1931), p. 12.

  36. Ibid., p. 13.

  37. Ibid., pp. 12, 15.

  38. Georg Grüneberg, Die Prignitz und ihre städtische Bevölkerung im 17. Jahrhundert (Lenzen, 1999), pp. 75–6.

  39. Meinardus (ed.), Protokolle und Relationen, vol. 1, p. 13.

  40. Address by Schwarzenberg to various commanders of the Brandenburg regiments, Cölln, 22 February/1 March 1639, cited in Otto Meinardus, ‘Schwarzenberg und die brandenburgische Kriegführung in den Jahren 1638–1640’, FBPG, 12/2 (1899), pp. 87–139, here pp. 127–8.

  41. Meinardus (ed.), Protokolle und Relationen, vol. 1, p. 181, doc. no. 203, 12 March 1641.

  42. Mortimer, Eyewitness Accounts, pp. 45–58, 174–8.

  43. M. S. Anderson, War and Society in Europe of the Old Regime 1618–1789 (Phoenix Mill, 1998), pp. 64–6.

  44. Werner Vogel (ed.), Prignitz-Kataster 1686–1687 (Cologne, Vienna, 1985), p. 1. The standard work on mortalities is still Günther Franz, Der dreissigjährige Krieg und das deutsche Volk (3rd edn, Stuttgart, 1961), pp. 17–21. Franz occupies a complex position in the historiography, mainly because of his outspoken adherence to the National Socialist regime. The traces of this commitment can still be discerned – despite some careful editing of the more egregious passages – in the post-war editions of his work. In the 1960s, Franz’s calculations were vehemently rejected by Saul Steinberg, who argued that they were based on reports that exaggerated mortalities or vacancies in order to evade taxation. Steinberg came to the provocative – and bizarre – conclusion that ‘in 1648, Germany was neither better nor worse off than in 1609’ (Steinberg, The Thirty Years War, p. 3); this view was taken up by Hans-Ulrich Wehler in p. 54 of the first volume of his Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte (5 vols., Munich, 1987–2003). However, recent studies have tended to endorse Franz’s findings. The sources are especially full and reliable for Brandenburg. See J. C. Thiebault, ‘The Demography of the Thirty Years War Revisited: Günther Franz and his Critics’, German History, 15 (1997), pp. 1–21.

  45. Lieselott Enders, Die Uckermark. Geschichte einer kurmärkischen Landschaft vom 12. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert (Weimar, 1992), p. 527.

  46. See, for example, A. Kuhn, ‘Über das Verhältniss Märkischer Sagen und Gebräuche zur altdeutschen Mythologie’, Märkische Forschungen, 1 (1841), pp. 115–46.

  47. Samuel Pufendorf, Elements of Universal Jurisprudence in Two Books (1660), Book 2, Observation 5, in Craig L. Carr (ed.), The Political Writings of Samuel Pufendorf, trans. Michael J. Seidler (New York, 1994), p. 87.

  48. Samuel Pufendorf, On the Law of Nature and Nations in Eight Books (1672), Book 7, ch. 4, in ibid., p. 220.

  49. Ibid., p. 221.

  50. Samuel Pufendorf, De rebus gestis Friderici Wilhelmi Magni Electoris Brandenburgici commentatiorum, b
ook XIX (Berlin, 1695).

  51. Johann Gustav Droysen, ‘Zur Kritik Pufendorfs’, in id., Abhandlungen zur neueren Geschichte (Leipzig, 1876), pp. 309–86, here p. 314.

  3 An Extraordinary Light in Germany

  1. Ferdinand Hirsch, ‘Die Armee des Grossen Kürfürsten und ihre Unterhaltung während der Jahre 1660–1666’, Historische Zeitschrift, 17 (1885), pp. 229–75.

  2. Helmut Börsch-Supan, ‘Zeitgenössische Bildnisse des Grossen Kurfürsten’, in Gerd Heinrich (ed.), Ein Sonderbares Licht in Teutschland. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Grossen Kurfürsten von Brandenburg (1640–1688) (Berlin, 1990), pp. 151–66.