I just met the claim again that Germany as a unity was created by Bismarck and Hohenzollern monarchs in 1871.
One such noteworthy name, or political entity, that laid claim to the land was the Holy Roman Empire (800-1806). The empire was not very organized or stable, as you can see by the hundreds of dukedoms, baronets, and states that made it up.
Traveler Door : 40+ Perspective-Changing And Unusual Maps That Portray The World In A New Way
By Giovanni DS July 6, 2022
https://travelerdoor.com/2022/07/06/mapped/
Don't get me wrong, the page as such has it's really nice points, like "Europe seen by Americans" involving a country named "Old Mexico" (hint at Mexico at a time being "New Spain") and so on (though it annoyed me there was a Hakenkreutz on the territory where Germany should be).
I will not give the map they showed to illustrate the point, but rather another map which is a bit older and also involves a wikipedia licence:
CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
- You are free to:
- Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format for any purpose, even commercially.
- Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
- The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.
- Under the following terms:
- Attribution — You must give appropriate credit , provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made . You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
- ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.
- No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
I take this as meaning the map must be provided with a link to the original so they can apply it, not that my essay here is supposed to constitute any such "remix" ... so, here is the map, followed by the attribution:
Map of the Holy Roman Empire in 1356, Original creation
Created: 5 June 2019, Cameron Pauley - Own work
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire#/media/File:Golden_Bull_of_1356.png
Feel free to share and possibly modify the map as you see fit, if you share alike, that is, allow the public to share and modify as they see fit.
However, do not apply your modifications within this essay of mine.
Before uploading, I checked that the list of abbreviations, within three columns, had 49 abbreviations in the first column, also in the second presumably, and then one less in the third, equals 146 abbreviations. The bigger states are of course given unabbreviated, but are fewer. The Holy Roman Empire back then had perhaps 200 states.
To put this into perspective, parts of these states are North Italian, Flemish, one of them is Provence, some are in what's now Czech Republic or Poland.
It is perfectly true, this was not a nation state with one official language, that being German. Each state had its chancery, each chancery wrote its language, aligning or not with the language of other chanceries. Enghien or Edingen would more probably have used French or Flemish (the Medieval version of Dutch) than German, perhaps both. Provence, Monaco, Ventimilglia, Piedmont would pretty certainly have used some Occitan, probably Classic Provençal in all of these. Hamburg and Lüneburg and Brandenburg would have used Low German, not High German. North Germany only adopted High German through the Bible of Luther. Before which the Catholic Church had made 14 translations in High German and 4 in Low German. The North could have kept its original language, if they hadn't become Lutherans.
So, is having more than one language a problem?
To a certain way of thinking back in the 19th C. the answer was a very emphatic yes. A bit problematic for the Irish who by that time were really declining in the numbers of fluent native speakers of Gaelic, and it made Switzerland kind of an anomaly. The one language that was official all over the Holy Roman Empire since Ottonian times was the kind of Latin that Alcuin of York had been teaching in Tours in the even earlier Carolingian times, when France too was part of this Empire. Or this Empire too was part of France. Or ... I think you get the point. Other languages were however locally and regionally official, and after the Carolingian Empire got divided, and French was mostly spoken outside this Empire, the largest regional language within the Empire was High German. A bit like the largest language in Switzerland is German / Swiss German (by the way, Swiss German back then was certainly written by the chancery of Bishopric of Basel or County of Fribourg, or perhaps even the outlier from Austria where later you find the Urkantone—besides, High German from parts now not considered Swiss German may still have been closer to it than now. I am not sure when Vienna and Munich started writing Zeit instead of Zît, and the article on "Mittelhochdeutsche Sprache" lists 1250–1350 (just before the Golden Bull) as Spätmittelhochdeutsch.
I would argue, no, it is not a problem. The USA actually as a Union doesn't have English legally defined as the official language, or so I have heard. It's de facto used as official language by the union and by all states, but not exclusively by all states, there are either states or counties that have Spanish or French as second official language. The reasoning behind not recognising German Unity prior to 1871 due to HRE not having High German as the everywhere official status would preclude Medieval France from having been a unity as well. Who claims that France was founded in Francis I in 1539?
But what about the many states?
I think you may agree, the middle is the most state rich part. The Electorates of Trier and of Cologne are probably bigger than Washington DC. The medium size of a state might have been perhaps half the size of a state in New England, let's say half New Jersey, though admittedly, some of the smallest ones would be more like Counties than States.
The multiplicity of states and counties, somehow, is not used to argue that the US is only a very loose confederacy. Arguing that Germany was founded in 1871 rather than in 843 (when Carolingian Empire was split into three and the parts now Germany would typically have been East Francia) or 962 (when the dignity of Emperor was demoted from a North Italian locality in Mid Francia / Lotharingia to East Francia) is like arguing that the US was founded by Abraham Lincoln in 1865 through Conquest of the South Confederacy, rather than in 1776 by George Washington by secession from the United Kingdom.
So, why the claim that Germany was only a latecomer among states?
We can dismiss the dissing of HRE as so much spin, as shown, and go to what I suppose are the real motives. There are two, nearly opposite, motives.
- the admirers of Bismarck held to 19th C. Nationalist and Revolutionary (partly Totalitarian) ideals of what a state is supposed to be;
- the victors in 1918 and 1945, through some annoyance at Germany (where at least in the 1945 case, Austria as a state had not contributed, having been eclipsed since 1938)
There is however a real problem with the reunification of 1990. I think it can be subsumed in the name of Lothar de Maizière, though he personally may not be a very problematic figure. As I left Austria at age 11 and a half, and hadn't resided in Germany since age 5, I am too unfamiliar with current trends in Germany to really know. The problem is that Ossis, having received the education in East Germany, came into citizenship and sometimes leadership in reunited Germany. Unavoidable if one wanted a reunification? Yes. But problematic? Also yes. I think the Clintons, Obamas, and Bidens may have unduly profited from ideals and thoughts that before 1990 would have been promptly denounced as Commie views suddenly no longer being identified with the East Block. Because there was no such thing. When Dol Guldur was fallen, there were things that Saruman could do which he could not do before. Which allowed Sauron to rebuild Mordor. I am not on the side that Kirill Eskov's narrator voice purports to be on, whether he thought so really, or told so tongue in cheek, but very firmly on Tolkien's.
But either way, the problem is not that Germany as such is a recent thing. If Germans have trouble discerning the due limits of state power, as the Wunderlich family may agree they have, on a collective level, it may actually be because they have listened to bad ideologues, after pretty much experience. Which means that other peoples with comparably long experience may also have troubles to discern such limits by also listening to bad ideologues. I consider a big country to the East has been listening to worse ones lately, and it may have had a stake in dissing HRE too.
- 1356, Berlin and Vienna (the latter city being by far more important) were part of a flourishing European Medieval culture, which, like Dante, considered freedom the highest gift God had given man (man as such, every man, including those that refuse the higher gift of redemption, and that redemption not being a redemption from freedom)
- 1356, Moscow was paying homage and tribute to the Khan of the Golden Horde, and Gregory Palamas was elucidating as part of hesychasm (I do not mind the prayer technique) the idea that every man needs to have a Starets, and that freedom, since the fall, means temptation and sin. I may have gotten him wrong, but the "Tale of the Russian pilgrim" seems to argue sth like that. On the Camino in 2004, I picked up the book, read some, concluded it was not for me, and left it at the next hostal de peregrinos.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Octave of the Immaculate Conception
15.XII.2023
Octava Conceptionis Immaculatae beatae Mariae Virginis.
PS, it can be added that Germany in 843 arguably was less racist than US in 1776, certainly less racist than US (yes, including some North soldiers with a programme to liberate slaves and then send them to Africa), 1865. It has, except for a brief era when ruled by a man unduly impressed by a French Anthropologist, by English medical doctors and by US Margaret Sanger held sway./HGL
PPS. 550 / 2 = 275. 225 * 2 = 450. 77 + 33 = 110. To get 100, use 77 + 23 or 73 + 27 instead. 3 X 3 X 3 = 27. And it's not racist to focus on sth you are traditionally good at. It may be racist to require all children to pass Mathematics, but teaching it correctly isn't./HGL
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