New Books

Please find a list of new books (in German and English) for August 2015 provided through H-Net:

https://networks.h-net.org/node/35008/discussions/77212/new-books-german-history-german-studies-august-2015

Articles Online!

Please use this link to view an article by Dr. Oliver Volckart regarding the economics of feuding in late medieval Germany that was published through the journal "Explorations in Economic History." It was an article that I stumbled across looking for something else, but has become an article that I have seen quoted by other people and I think it is exceptionally good, available for free online, and relevant to a discussion about how digital media can help in the dissemination of, and access to, scholarship. Please look here for more information about the work of Dr. Volckart.

Today in German History

October 15th, 1529 Suleiman the Magnificent's first siege of Vienna fails after the defenders of the city, directed by Nicholas, Count of Salm successfully fend off attempts by sappers to undermine the walls and a fierce, last-ditch attack by the Ottoman forces. The failure at Vienna marked the end of a century of Ottoman victories against various Balkan and other European forces, including those of Hapsburg lands.

"Ordering Medieval Society"

I am current reading selections from Ordering Medieval Society, edited by Bernhard Jussen and translated by Pamela Selwyn. The "Introduction" by Prof. Dr. Jussen is well worth the time for anyone interested in either the German medieval period or the application of approaches to past societies that are derived from sociology and anthropology. One section in particular, which summarizes the questions posed in the article by Prof. Dr. Otto Gerhard Oexle reads "In short, research on groups serves as a corrective to our image of a hierarchical, "feudal" Middle Ages, confronting it with the powerful presence of organization forms such as the ritual friendship, the conspiracy, and the guild. These social forms were precisely not hierarchical, and individuals were not "born into" them. Instead, they rested on the idea of a free contract and were-at least formally-structured along egalitarian lines." Jussen, "Introduction," 6. One of the subject-areas that attracted me to German studies in the first place was the way in which urban development and urban cultures in Germany contrasted to a model or urban life based on, say, northern Italian cities or cities in the Low Countries. Germans cities were never as large in terms of population and they were not able to extricate themselves from a cultural landscape dominated by a landed aristocracy, as least in the way that the northern Italian cities had. Yet, for all that, they were aggressive in maintaining their collective independence and emphasizing their collective rights against other vertical institutions. At the same time, their goals were different, and different among themselves as they might be from cities in other contexts. For instance, while wealth was often a tool leveraged by burghers against the power of the aristocracy, some cities, like Ulm were very conservative and avoided fostering trading companies, in large part because such wealth in the hands of merchants (a guild) was viewed as a resource that could be leveraged against the patricians, who jealously guarded their rank in society. So, although Ulm was an important source of textile manufacturing, it never developing financial institutions like the Fuggers of Augsburg or the Ravensberger Trading Company. The goal of the patricians was to keep order, and part of achieving that goal was outlawing conspiracies and placating the guilds to a certain extent. In "Urkundenbuck" for the city, there are certain laws that prohibit any type of "public" gathering, but that came to include things like limiting the number of people who might visit a woman who has just given birth and is recovering, or in the "Kindbett." Even such a small gathered represented the potential to disrupt the legitimate power of the guild council and emphasizes the notion that social power might be represented hierarchically but it was based on vertical associations who granted legitimacy to those hierarchical institutions.

Today in German History, Oct. 5th

Henry IV becomes emperor after the unexpected death of his father, Henry III. Henry IV is famous for his conflict with the papacy over the right of the emperor to invest churchmen with their symbols of office, generally called "the Investiture Crisis." His reign also coincides with the further demise of the stamm duchies and the development of the more feudal (a term with endless complications) lordship of those aristocrats whose names are derived from their castes, such as the Hohenstaufen and Hapsburg.

Arnold, Benjamin. Medieval Germany, 500-1300: A Political Interpretation. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997. 

Blumenthal, Uta-Renate. The Investiture Controversy: Church and Monarchy from the Ninth to the twelfth Century, trans by the author. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988.

Prof. Scales' English Bibliography

While it is true that Anglophone historiography of the Holy Roman Empire, especially for the later medieval period, can be sparse and sometimes lag behind other areas of medieval scholarship in terms of volume of English publications, it is not true that there is nothing to read and some of what there is is pretty excellent history whatever the field. Just look here for Professor Len Scales "Gothic Germany 1250-1520: Extended Bibliography of Works in English.

Today in German History

Today is the 515th anniversary of the Peace of Basel, in which King Maximilian I and the Swabian League ended their conflict with the Old Swiss Confederacy. While this was not the first military victory of the Swiss over their Hapsburg overlords (as overlords of Further Austria), Maximilian was forced to acknowledge the independence of the Swiss.  The military and political history of the Swabian War is covered in detail in Thomas Brady, Jr.'s book Turning Swiss: Cities and Empire, 1450-1550 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Although nearly thirty years old, it is still the best treatment of the subject in English.