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Vincenzo Galilei and the ducal court in Munich

On the 100th anniversary of Andreas Kraus’ birth (1922–2012)

translated by David Lederer

2026-05-17

You can cite this article e.g.
Alois Schmid, “Vincenzo Galilei and the ducal court in Munich: On the 100th anniversary of Andreas Kraus’ birth (1922–2012)” in Bavarian Studies in History and Culture (2026) [originally published in German as “Vincenzo Galilei und der Münchner Herzogshof, in: Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte 85 (2022), S. 361-384”], last modified 2026-05-17, https://www.bavarian-studies.org/schmid-2026/.

This text is open access and licensed under the terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Alois Schmid

Vincenzo Galilei and the ducal court in Munich

On the 100th anniversary of Andreas Kraus’ birth (1922–2012)

translated by David Lederer

2026-05-17

This text is open access and licensed under terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Nuremberg violin clavicymbal by Hans Haiden (Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nuremberg)

German research on the Galileo family focuses entirely on its most prominent representative: the natural scientist, astronomer, mathematician and polymath Galileo (1564-1642). The second important member, his father Vincenzo (c. 1520-1591), a renowned and pioneering composer, lutenist and music theorist, receives far less attention in Germany than he does in other countries.¹ This became quickly apparent when international researchers recently met to commemorate the 500th anniversary of his birth in the medieval mountain village of Santa Maria a Monte in the province of Pisa in the region of Tuscany on an unknown day in the early 1520s. To mark the occasion, the Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at Harvard University and the Museo Galileo organised a scientific congress with broad international participation in Florence, the centre of his artistic production.² German researchers could hardly contribute, having thus far added little of substance to the life’s work of the important musician Vincenzo. He has been recognised above all in his native Italy as part of the wide-ranging Renaissance research conducted since the 19th century, and subsequently in the USA, France and England.³

This study offers an instructive addition to the biography of Vincenzo Galilei by shedding light on the musician’s relationships at the court of the Wittelsbach dukes in Bavaria.⁴ They are limited to a decade in the later part of his life and did not yield any immediate results. For this reason, it is only a tangential of a largely personal nature. It had little impact on contemporary musical matters and hardly touched the political sphere. Galileo scholars have thus far hardly taken notice of these relationships, because they haven’t been able to make much sense of these unusual references. In an informative biographical study, Chiara Orsini merely intimated that Vincenzo had unknown connections in the lands north of the Alps.⁵ For Bavarian history, these contacts represent a nearly unknown circumstance.⁶ This article aims to clarify these events and place them in the appropriate context. It is subsequently broken down into four sections.

The dedication of the “Fronimo” by Vincenzo Galilei

By 1568, Vincenzo Galilei had already passed the mid-point of his life. Nearly fifty years old, he now prepared for the latter stage of his life. After a prior search for direction, his attention finally fixed on music. With that in mind, he travelled to Venice, contemporary centre of the cultural scene in Europe. He sought to break new ground through the publication of his pioneering second book “Fronimo dialogo”. He introduced his instructions for high-level lute playing to the European book market in two parts, in 1568 and 1569, published by the prestigious house of Girolamo Scotto (1505-1572).⁷

Fig. 1: Vincenzo Galilei, Fronimo dialogo, Venice 1584, with ex libris by Federico Airaghi Appiani, choirmaster of the Royal Ducal and Imperial Collegiate of Santa Maria della Scala, where the famous opera house of the same name is located today (Bischöfliche Zentral-Bibliothek Regensburg, Sign. D-Rp Mus.th. 467).

Vincenzo prefaced his second publication with the following one-page dedication to the Wittelsbach prince Wilhelm (later Duke Wilhelm V,1548-1626; reigned 1579-1597):

All’Illustriss[imo] et Eccellentiss[imo] S[ignor] Principe il S[ignor] Gvlielmo Conte Palatino del Reno et Dvca dell’vna et l’altera Bauiera, signor mio sempre osseruandiss[imo].
Il degno et raro nome (Illustriss[imo] et Eccelentiss[imo] S[ignor] Principe) che l’Illustrissimo et Eccelentissimo signor Duca vostro padre s’ha con tanta sua lode acquistato d’honorare et essaltare generalmente tutte le virtù, et in particolar la Musica, ha reso chiara testimonianza della nobilità et generosità dell’animo di tanti famosi dell’Illustriss[ima] et Serenissima casa di Bauiera; et la mente sua esser eleuata alle alte et supreme cose, quanto la Musica è conforme all’armonia celeste; cagione certissimamente, che molti gentili spiriti, suegliati da si dolce suono, si sono ardentissimamente a quelle applicati, et con tanta maggior affettione e studio, quanto hanno visto V. S. Illustrissima non meno pronta e liberale d’un tanto padre in fauorirli et remunerarli. Although I am of the same mind, and in spite of the example of many and many others, who, since they are part of the audience, are aware of the continuation of the corralling of the virtuosic fatalities, I must write the present dialogue, according to FRONIMO, of the method of introducing music into the song; et hor volendolo mandar in luce, hò deliberatò consecrarlo al suo glorioso nome; accioche tutta via succedendoli per heredità l`Oceano delle virtù, habbia dal mio picciolo ruscello la parte delle feudatarie acque. Accettilo adunque come tributo à lei douuto con l’innata sua singolar benignità, si come con prontissimo animo glielo dono et sacro. Et non mi essendo concesso al presente, secondo il mio buon desiderio, farle riuerenza personalmente, con quella vera humilità, che ad un fedelissimo et obedientissimo seruitor si richiede, et un tanto Principe merita, glielo faccio di lontano con sincerissimo animo.
Di Venetia il di 20. Ottobre 1568.
Di V[estra] Illustriss[ima] et Eccellentiss[ima] signoria
Humiliss[imo] et devotiss[imo] servitor
Vincentio Galilei.

In his detailed dedication, Vincenzo Galilei eloquently and skilfully praised the stalwart and sophisticated cultivation of culture and art at the territorial court in Munich under the patronage of Duke Albrecht V (1528-1579, reigned 1550-1579)⁸ in a particularly bright testimony to the noble and magnanimous spirit of the widely famous House of Bavaria; through its endeavors to support the cultivation of music, it touched contemporary cultural life at the very core. The phrase armonia celeste refers to the central theme of “harmonia mundi” or “harmonia universale”. The unusual commitment was passed on from father to son, so that the dedication of the book to the latter is fully justified.

The dedication was an unusual step. Until then, Vincenzo had no connections with the House of Wittelsbach or the Duchy of Bavaria. Tensions over questions of rank and ceremonial precedence dating back to the time of the Council of Basel (1431-1449) characterised sporadic political relations between the two distant territories. Contacts were few and not free from mutual mistrust.⁹ Over the course of the following century, only very isolated, cautious and reserved contacts occurred at the subordinate diplomatic level. On the occasion of the marriage of the Medici Prince Francesco I (1541-1587) to the Habsburg Princess Joan (1548-1578) on 18 December 1565, Munich initially sent deliberately subordinate representation to Florence in the person of the Duke’s brother Ferdinand (1550-1608). This prompted the Medici to participate only reservedly with a small delegation in the subsequent Munich wedding festivities of 1568. Why did Vincenzo nevertheless decide to offer up this unusual dedication from such a remarkable spatial and unmistakable mental distance?

The answer is clearly found on the side of Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria. He was the first sovereign to rule the reunited duchy in its entirety; only now did Munich begin to rise as its capital city. As a great patron of culture, he wanted to develop the city into a glamorous residence. However, only after suppressing the threat of an aristocratic uprising in 1563/64, could he bring these endeavours to fruition. He began to transform his territory into an important cultural state. As a generous sponsor, he promoted art, science and culture with unusual dedication. In doing so, he pursued two objectives: Internally, he wanted to emphasise his pre-eminence as a glorious Renaissance prince of Italian stature. Externally, he sought to lead the Catholic party in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation at a time when the Habsburg dynasty was weak. The most visible sign of this reorientation was the magnificent celebration of the wedding of his son, Prince William, to Renata of Lorraine (1544-1602) in February/March 1568. The first major court celebration in the Munich Residence, it attracted the attention of the whole of Europe.¹⁰

These circumstances explain the dedication in Vincenzo’s ‘Fronimo’. The renowned musician intended to partake in the festivities from afar and capitalise on them. He undoubtedly set his sights on a position at the art-loving court of Albrecht V, considered the leading in Europe.¹¹ There were no personal connections. Three like-minded people encouraged the respected lutist in this endeavour. Orlando di Lasso (1532-1594) had been the key cultural organiser at the Munich court for more than a decade.¹² Familiar with the musical world in Italy, he worked there for many years. He already contributed to Vincenzo’s first works in 1563 and 1568/69;¹³ he also published with Scotto. He was joined by the Neapolitan Massimo Troiano († after 1570), who actively participated in the Munich wedding celebrations and, after their conclusion, sought to promote continued employment at the Wittelsbach court from Venice alongside his private business.¹⁴ The third, the Florentine Alessandro Striggio the Elder (1536/37-1592), made significant contributions to Munich’s musical life in 1567 and 1568 by performing several compositions there.¹⁵ His spectacular “Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno”, also performed in the Munich Neuveste, featured 40 and 60 voices and attracted much particular attention. Although he was unable to take part in the festivities himself, two of his compositions were included in the programme. He also personally engaged in its publication in Venice.

Thus, the activities of three key players in contemporary musical life, who had all played a significant role in the Munich wedding celebrations, came together in the cultural capital of Venice. Together they encouraged Vincenzo Galilei, not involved in the celebrations, to dedicate his new book currently in production to Munich’s heir apparent, Prince Wilhelm, and to promote an appointment at court.

The plan did not work out. The publication with a dedication dated 20 October 1568 did not appear until 1569. By then, the Munich celebrations were long over. There is no indication that the Wittelsbach court even took note of the new publication and its dedication. A very rare book, it cannot be traced in the Munich court library (Fig. 1).¹⁶ Vincenzo’s attempt to contact di lontano went completely unnoticed. One thing is decisive: the attempts at establishing contact originated with Vincenzo. The Italian sought to exploit uniquely favourable conditions at the court of Albrecht V for himself and therefore took the first step.

Recruitment by Duke Albrecht V.

Despite the failure, efforts to establish a connection did not come to a standstill. However, the initiative subsequently passed to the other side. Precisely through the festivities of 1568, Duke Albrecht V distinctly experienced the effectiveness of his cultural policies and decided to continue with them. Generously, he made further funding available to bring artists from Italy into his service.¹⁷ He commissioned Orlando di Lasso to undertake three journeys to Italy in the seventies (1573, 1574, 1578) to advertise locally.¹⁸ One after the other, he personally visited major cultural centres and engaged Italian musicians, actors, comedians, artists, jugglers and entertainers. An extraordinary number of Italian cultural personnel came to Munich as a result. His activities as an artistic agent can be traced to Florence, where he had already established relations with controversial Archbishop Antonio Altoviti (1521-1573, Archbishop from 1548) in the 1550s. Without doubt, the offer to Vincenzo Galilei arose in this context. Orlando, more than anyone else, ensured his recruitment through his continuation of earlier initiatives of 1563 and 1568.

At that time, for example, the Florentine lutenist Cosimo Bottegari (1554-1620) was recruited for the Wittelsbach court. In the summer of 1573, he came to Munich for several years and was received with honour. On 11 September of that same year, the Duke promoted him to the rank of chamberlain. In 1577, he was even knighted.¹⁹ During his time in Munich, he composed his main work “Il libro di canto e liuto” (1574).²⁰ However, Bottegari soon became embroiled in a bitter dispute with his former patron Orlando. The affair is described in his confidential letters to Prince Wilhelm, though the background and details remain unclear.²¹ Under the circumstances, the musician soon turned his back on Bavaria and returned to the Medici circle in Italy after a few years.

Another musician appointed by Orlando to the Munich court at that time was Gioseffo Guami (1542-1611), who came as organist to the court chapel from Venice. After a brief stint in 1568, he returned to Munich for several years from 1574.²² Other instrumentalists of Italian origin who were engaged are found in Rainer’s recent and instructive catalogue of staff in the court choir, documenting a visible increase from 1572.²³

In Vincenzo’s case, however, recruitment efforts remained unsuccessful. The main reason was that his personal situation changed fundamentally for the better in the 1570s. Since 1572, he consolidated his position in Florence, generously patronised by local magnates. He found a musical home in an association of art and music lovers known locally as the “Camerata Fiorentina”, where he engaged as a theorist and established a profile as one of its spokespersons. He gained recognition and prestige, making a name for himself. His ties to Florence thereby solidified. His increasing age and growing family had a similar effect; under the circumstances, the city on the Arno assumed central importance in his life. Vincenzo had created a personal and artistic environment which he was no longer prepared to give up. Relocation would only have jeopardised the security he had fought so hard to achieve.

However, let us consider the Duke’s position, which had undergone a volte face. The estates in Bavaria increasingly criticised Albrecht’s excessive penchant for patronage. At every Diet from 1557 onwards, they reproached the Duke for unbridled spending on residence buildings, court festivals, musical events and cultural events. They particularly resented the outflow of monies abroad. Some undesirables also numbered among those receiving support.²⁴ They quite literally affected a negative stance against such ‘new comers’.²⁵ At first, the Duke shrugged off the criticism. However, he too eventually recognised the critiques as justified within the limits of a responsible fiscal policy.

Foremost, the Giovanni Ciurletta affair provided a just cause.²⁶ In 1571, Duke Albrecht V called the native of Trient to his court as an expert in matters Italian, and entrusting him with a fiduciary appointment as chamberlain. This left him in charge of the delicate negotiations of a financial loan from the Grand Duchy of Florence, intended to alleviate his financial difficulties and thereby weaken the position of the estates. Ciurletta did indeed obtain a promise from the Grand Duke. However, he suddenly disappeared with a considerable sum of the loan and went into hiding. The Court accused him of embezzling several thousand scudi. The Ciurletta affair led the Duke, already deeply annoyed to the extent that he ordered a manhunt for the negotiator, to alter his decision about recruiting artists from Italy. He adopted a distanced stance from 1575 onwards. When financial difficulties simultaneously came to a boil, his previous relationship of trust with Orlando cooled considerably.

Vincenzo naturally also had to take this change of mood into consideration. Internal Bavaria affairs seemed to offer little favourable possibility to accept Orlando’s offer. He would have had to give up an excellent situation in Florence to move to an unsure foreign circumstance. As a level-headed artist and responsible family man, he was no longer prepared to do so. He changed his attitude towards the court in Munich court and reached a decision dictated by common sense. He now declined the offers he had previously sought. Despite initiatives from both sides, therefore, the two parties would not reach an agreement for many years due to the changing circumstances.

The journey to Munich in 1578

After a decade of discussion, the project could only be realised in 1578. Vincenzo Galilei finally set off on the long-anticipated journey to Munich. Admittedly, events took a completely different turn than anticipated. Taking into account the biographical accounts of all concerned, the journey can likely be dated to the summer/early autumn of 1578. According to the information in the dedication (consegnatoli l’Ottobre), the manuscript of the volume printed in 1581 with the two references had been completed in autumn of the previous year; i.e. due anni sono che io fui à quella corte refers to this very year. The birth of their daughter Livia on 7 October 1578 marked a milestone in the life of the Galilei family, soon followed by another joyful event, the birth of their daughter Lena in 1580. As the winter months precluded travel, the journey to Munich most likely took place in the months before Livia’s birth. In June of that year, Orlando’s presence is verified by legal documents noting a property deal in the Munich area of Maisach (in the county of Fürstenfeldbruck). Other facts favour the suggested timing of the journey as well.

The journey was certainly of short duration. Vincenzo was neither active in Munich as a practising or composing musician, nor did he take on any teaching duties, as had been his initial intent. Neither did he enter into a direct relationship with the Duke at court as previously envisaged. Indeed Vincenzo journeyed to Munich almost as a tourist on a targeted sightseeing programme. His main interests included unusual musical instruments and instrument making. And in this regard, the northern foothills of the Alps, and Munich in particular, had much to offer.

Firstly, the diocesan musicians at the Church of our Lady in Munich had a unique collection of small organs, which Vincenzo inspected. In retrospect, a short note in the third book of his “Dialogo della musica antica e della musica moderna” enthusiastically reports: l’Organo. fu in vso questo strumento primamente nella Grecia, et d’iui per l’Vngheria si trasferì nella Germania tra i Bauari; et ciò dico per auerne veduto vno tra li altri nella Chiesa Cattedrale di Monaco, Città principalissima di quella prouincia, con canne di bossolo tutte d’vn prezzo, grande e tonde all’ordinario delle nostre fatte di metallo; il quale nel suo genere et di quella grandezza è il più antico d’alcun’altro che si troui non solo in tutta Germania, ma forse in qual si voglia altra parte del mondo, et perciò tenuto in ueneratione da quei populi.²⁷

Futhermore, Vincenzo Galilei gained knowledge of a completely new, spectacular musical instrument at court, which combined the possibilities of keyboard and string music in an extraordinary way. The so-called ‘Nuremberg violin clavicymbel’ (“Nürnbergische Geigen-Clavicymbel”), a work of the famous Nuremberg instrument maker Hans Haiden (1536-1613) and, in expert opinion, considered the most remarkable new development on the music scene and attracted widespread attention (Fig. 2). It first came to Munich as a gift from the Elector Augustus of Saxony (1526-1586, reigned 1553-1586), received during a visit by the Wittelsbach court to Dresden in June 1576.²⁸ Only Orlando could have told Vincenzo about it, thereby arousing the latter’s intense curiosity. In fact, it was probably this discovery which prompted him to head north, since Orlando also obtained travel permission for him at that time. This unusual instrument drew him above all else and he wanted to see and test it.²⁹ And indeed, the guest obtained permission to play it. His expectations of the journey were thus crowned with success. This event is actually described in detail in the same publication with the following words: Strumento di tasti molto artifitioso et bello. After two years, the author still remembered Vn’altro essempio d’vno Strumento di tasti, che già l’Elettore Augusto Duca di Sassonia donò alla felice memoria del Grande Alberto di Bauiera, mi souuiene in questo proposito, piu di ciascuno altro efficace. il quale Strumento ha le corde secondo l`vso di quelle del Liuto, et vengano secate à guisa di quelle della Viola da vn’accomodata matassa artifitiosamente fatta delle medesime setole di che si fanno le corde à gli archi delle Viole: la qual matassa con assai facilità, viene menata in giro con vn piede da quello istesso che lo suona, et ne seca continuamente col mezzo d’vna ruota sopra la quale passa, quella quantità che vogliano le dita di lui. il quale Strumento, due anni sono che io fui à quella corte, temperai secondo l’vso del Liuto, e faceua di poi ben sonato, non altramente che vn corpo di Viole, dolcissimo vdire.³⁰

Fig. 2: Nuremberg violin clavicymbal by Hans Haiden (Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nuremberg).

According to the account, the short stay in Munich actually brought the visitor from Florence in close proximity to the court. However, neither the duke nor the state administration took any notice of the guest. The visit was in no way an official and ultimately a private one. The trip was initiated, arranged, organised and supervised by Orlando. It had little to do with the court. One might even say that the visit was mainly instigated by a gift from the Elector of Saxony. Above all, it served to satisfy his artistic curiosity by allowing him an opportunity to play and examine the instrument and to inquire about its construction. That exceptional artist hoped to learn first-hand about the foothills of the Alps as an important production center, as well as the artistic riches of Munich.³¹ It was for this reason that he decided to make his only journey north of the Alps at an advanced age. His curiosity was later reinterpreted as instrumental espionage, but there is no credible evidence for this.³² This ulterior motive, subsequently foisted upon him during the agitated mood in the early weeks of the Thirty Years’ War in Germany, was typical of a time when confessional and national emotions fostered such suspicions.

Therefore, it should come as no surprise that he never met Duke Albrecht V, so idolised in the dedication of 1568. After all, the Wittelsbach Duke struggled with a severe stomach and kidney ailment since 1575 and frequently sought relief in travel to therapeutic baths.³³ However, the treatments did not bring the desired cure. Disappointment led the Duke to regret his cultural endeavours. In his will of 1578, he distanced himself from his previous ostentation and love of display. Instead, he now advocated the pious values of modesty, simplicity, renunciation and asceticism.³⁴ In the final months of his life, Albrecht V altered both his lifestyle and his cultural policies. Under those changed circumstances, the idea of a personal meeting with the Duke or artistic engagement at court were no longer viable options. Therefore, the short duration of Vincenzo’s visit had little to do with Albrecht V’s death. The Duke died on 24 October 1579 due to his longstanding illness. His death prompted Vincenzo’s compatriots Bottegari and Guami to return to their Italian homeland and take up new positions there. They feared that working conditions would deteriorate considerably under Albrecht’s successor.

Thus, there was never any personal contact between Duke Albrecht V and Vincenzo Galilei. Nevertheless, there is undoubtedly a logical connection between the dedication of the “Fronimo dialogo” of 1568 and the journey of 1578.³⁵ During that decade, a visit to explore the musical aspects of Munich represented a real aspiration for Vincenzo, one he briefly achieved after many years of hesitation and waiting. Many circumstances compromised the realisation of that journey, envisaged for a decade but postponed for some time and was only realised in truncated form.

Most of the events described above are essentially based on a single source. It has been cited here from the two tangential comments taken from Vincenzo Galileo’s primary work “Dialogo della musica antica et della moderna” (1581).³⁶ The description of notable musical instruments explicitly refers to the visit to Munich. In the first instance, it describes the noteworthy keyboard instrument, with reference made to the highly regarded “Nürnbergische Geigen-Clavicymbel” by Georg Haiden, which came to the Wittelsbach court as a gift from Elector Augustus of Saxony: … due anni sono che io fui a quella corte.³⁷ In that regard, reference is also made to the remarkable collection of organs at the Liebfrauenkirche in Munich, which was visited on the same occasion and held up for scrutiny: … et ciò dico per auerne veduto.³⁸ In other words, any suggestion of Vincenzo’s personal stay in Munich is based upon a nearly contemporaneous ego document, with very high source value.

However, it must be emphasised that one serious difficulty stands in the way of this interpretation. The documentary transmission of the second passage cited here attributes the decisive statements not to Vincenzo, but in fact to Giovanni de’Bardi (1534-1612), the shining star of the “Camerata Fiorentina” and Vincenzo’s influential mentor.³⁹ No independent corroboration has yet been discovered in the otherwise rich and informative Bavarian source materials. What does this individual discovery actually mean? How can the problem of source criticism be solved? This requires some discussion, since the passages cited are actually interpreted differently. It is unclear whether it was really Vincenzo who travelled to Munich, as stated in the interpretation presented, or whether it was the Conte de’Bardi, as referred to in the “Dialogo”.

In order to clarify the question, we must first consider the source genre. The literary formula of the “Dialogo”, popular at the time, derives from the seminal “Phaidros” by Greek philosopher Plato (428/27-348/47 BC). Researchers agree that this major work by the Athenian philosopher, like his other dialogues, is not meant as a truthful reproduction of conversation, but rather takes the form of an argument between two or more discussants.⁴⁰ In doing so, the author takes generous poetic license. Therefore, the statements cannot be taken at face value; a literary fictionality needs always be taken into account. The author is not the speaker himself but rather puts his own words into the mouths of others. He communicates only indirectly with the reader. The author hides behind a perhaps newly imagined character in the foreground and transfers his ideas on to this character. In this way, the reality of the actual events become secondary. The only question remaining is: To what extent?⁴¹ The answer can only be: “Historical reality and the resultant artistic creation are … indistinguishable.”⁴² The author is not present in the text; researchers characterise the result as “Platonic anonymity”. In these distinct roles, the spokesperson reports and represents the views of the author. It is up to one or more partners to the dialogue to offer up and discuss the conceivable objections, increasing the breadth and depth of argumentation. The task of justifying ideas presented falls to the insertion of ‘considerations’ (“considerationes”), strengthening the intellectual foundation of the proposition. In short, these are “staged conversations” whose poetics need not to be considered in any evaluation.⁴³ Statements must be interrogated within their role-bound nature and perspective: The “Dialogo” does not offer historiography, but poetry. Plato’s authority continued to influence the poetry of the genre during the early modern period in a most enduring fashion.

Like other contemporaries, the late humanist Vincenzo Galilei also engaged with this poetic model, adopted from antiquity and redefined in Renaissance literature. In keeping with this genre theory, he hid behind the dialogue. He assigned the role of spokesman to the esteemed Giovanni de’Bardi, whose trustworthiness and authoritative competence are explicitly and unmistakably placed at centre stage from the start. The entire “Dialogo” is dedicated to him: All’Illustrissimo Signore, et mio padrone osservandissimo, il Signor Giovanni Bardi de’Conti di Vernio.⁴⁴ In the poetic reworking of real events, the noble Conte takes on the role of spokesperson, allowing the author to express his views through him. In this manner, the Conte Bardi stands for Vincenzo; Bardi is Vincenzo’s mouthpiece. Against this backdrop, the knowledgeable interpreter correctly identifies the Conte as a “reliable pilot”, through whose mouth Vincenzo expresses his own lofty thoughts in skilful literary form.⁴⁵ A rebuttal offered by his discursive opponent, Piero Strozzi, serves to grant the discussion greater depth and room for further exploration. Therefore, the statements of the “Dialogo” are not intended as factual descriptions of the interlocutores, but instead should be interpreted in consideration of the poetic alienation. In accord with genre theory, we need to evaluate the dialogue from a literary point of view. In this interpretation, the two references to the visit to Munich attributed to Bardi can certainly be interpreted as a self-referential statement by Vincenzo.

The statements attributed to the Florentine cultural magnate Giovanni de’Bardi actually make little sense, since he had no verifiable connection to the Bavarian ducal court. Any Florentine delegation which might have visited the court in the case of such a journey by Bardi, would surely have been mentioned in the sources; however, there is no such mention.⁴⁶ For that reason, the contacts attributed to Bardi in the “Dialogo” should be interpreted as literary coding in reference to the literary genre of Plato. Here, everything indicates that the author Vincenzo expresses his own personal experiences, skilfully manipulating the narrator’s roles; in this interpretation, Vincenzo surely made the journey himself.

A knowledgeable contemporary, Michael Praetorius (1571-1621), already understood these two references from the “Dialogo” in exactly this sense;⁴⁷ they are interpreted this way consistently up to the present day.⁴⁸ An authoritative handbook, for example, formulates with appropriate caution that: “Between 1578 and 1579, Galileo visited the court of Albrecht V, Duke of Bavaria.”⁴⁹ The “Bayerische Musiker-Lexikon Online” also includes Munich among the list of places where Vincenzo was active.⁵⁰ However, the latter suggestion is not entirely true; the short stay was unproductive and never intended to be. Nonetheless, it represents a meaningful conclusion to the intentions and endeavours of the preceding decade. This interpretation, based on a literary analysis of the few available references conforms with the sequence of events in Vincenzo’s biography. By interpreting the passages in question as a factual report is to make speculative assumptions for which no evidence can be provided.

The literary interlocutor Conte de’Bardi functions to allow the author to make first-person formulations emphasising and substantiating his own testimony about his personal encounters with art. He calls upon his own personal endeavours and relevant experiences. Through these two bits of evidence, he provides empirical support for discussions otherwise based on philology and logic: personal observation is intended to reinforce his arguments. This extension of the argumentative strategy provides an additional element for Vincenzo’s characteristic return to the realities of empirical knowledge.

The aftermath

Upon his return from Munich, Vincenzo Galilei entered into the fruitful last decade of his life in Florence. With the generous support of local patrons, he produced major works in rapid succession. They pioneered new directions in musical discourse introducing the “stile nuovo” of monody and novel combinations of musical art and knowledge. Significantly, we can see that in a new edition of the “Fronimo dialogo” from 1584, the earlier dedication to the Wittelsbach heir apparent Wilhelm, now the reigning duke, was replaced by a dedication to the Florentine entrepreneur and composer Jacopo Corsi (1561-1602).⁵¹ The ageing Vincenzo had completely lost sight of Munich, his focus for a decade. His gaze completely shifted to Florence. This remained so until his death on 2 July 1591.

Nevertheless, contacts initiated by Vincenzo with the Bavarian ducal court continued at a discreet level. Somewhat less conspicuously, Stefano Rossetto (also Rossetti) († 1584) continued cultural relations.⁵² That musician, briefly succeeded Gioseffo Guami as court organist in Munich in 1580, though he is primarily documented in Florence. Although there is no evidence for a direct connection with Vincenzo’s journey, it can certainly be surmised. The synchronicity of his stay is hardly coincidental. His work in Munich is convincingly documented by a witness to his mass “Consolamini popule meus”.⁵³ However, his stay was brief. He and several other instrumentalists resigned from their posts in Munich when prospects deteriorated following the Duke’s death . However, court connections continued to have an effect. They re-surfaced during the brief visit of the Archbishop of Florence, Cardinal Alessandro Ottaviano de’ Medici (1535-1605), to Munich in mid-September, 1604: ist ihme grosse Ehr erzaigt worden.⁵⁴ Francesco Maria Cardinal del Monte (1549-1627), a high-ranking church prince and clerical diplomat with close ties to Florence and the Medici family and a notable supporter of Galileo Galilei, also engaged with the Wittelsbach court circle.⁵⁵

The relations between Florence and Munich, intensified by Vincenzo Galilei, witnessed a revival, indeed a first real blossoming, one-and-a half decades after his death and now reached their first heyday. Galileo began a search for a position for his brother Michelangelo (1575-1631). He recalled the earlier associations in Munich,⁵⁶ and endeavoured to revive them. In 1607, having achieved the status of a European scholar, he secured the appointment of his brother Michelangelo as an instrumentalist in the ducal court chapel.⁵⁷ For the rest of his life, he played the lute at the Munich Residence, helping to elevate it to European standing. He dedicated his only composition to the sovereign, a fundamental piece of early lute art acknowledged throughout Europe.⁵⁸ Munich became the unexpected life-long residence for his large family, blessed as they were with many children. In this manner, the prolific side-branch of the great natural scientist Galileo Galilei came to reside in the electoral Bavarian residence and capital city. Michelangelo’s son, Albrecht Caesar (1615-1692), inherited his position as lutenist and held it for more than half a century after his father’s death in 1631.⁵⁹ He established a respectable family home in the traditional complex in Fürstenfeldergasse no. 15.⁶⁰ The relationship can be traced back over three generations and only ended with the death of Vincenzo’s great-grandson Franz Nestor (1640-1694).⁶¹ With the death of Franz, a deaf-mute said to have worked as a local painter, the family line came to an end after a very eventful run. Vincenzo’s initiative was thus followed by more than a century of turbulent times, characterised above all by the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War. Indeed, the cultivation of the high art of the lute in Munich is inextricably linked to the name of the Galilei family. In this field, they earned lasting merits in Bavaria. Their importance – following the example of Vincenzo and in contrast to the natural scientist Galileo – lies exclusively in the field of music. The little-noted status of the Galilei family as one of the most renowned European families of musicians is therefore also inextricably linked to Munich in that later phase.

The latest research on Galileo interprets the close personal and artistically fruitful relationship between father Vincenzo and son Galileo as a unique interaction between music and science.⁶² In this regard, the Munich line also made a remarkable contribution. The lutenist Michelangelo Galilei played a pioneering role in bringing the world-changing research of the natural scientist Galileo to the northern Alpine region as the mediator of the decisive tool, Galileo’s telescope, so coveted in Europe since the publication of the book “Sidereus nuncius” (Venice 1610).⁶³ Vincenzo can therefore be described as a pioneer and Michelangelo as the founder of the Munich Galilei line. Overall, a remarkable lineage of tradition emerges.

Today, these Munich Galilei are commemorated by a very inconspicuous memorial plaque on the southern outer-wall of the Church of Our Lady.⁶⁴ Eleven members of the Galilei family of artists were buried in the prominent cemetery there. The weathered epitaph is the only monument to remind us of the Munich line. Otherwise, it left no visible trace. For that reason, its members have receded from public awareness in Bavaria.

Munich is well-aware of the protagonist Galileo Galilei, although he never crossed the Alps himself; nevertheless, the city dedicated a square to him in 1906 as well as a memorial sculpted by Matthias Rodach in 2009. The memorial in the astronomy quarter of Bogenhausen, as well as several research institutions bearing his name in and around Munich, solely honours the pioneering scientific achievements of the universal genius. As such, it is relatively recent, not dating beyond the beginning of the 20th century and in connection with the founding of the Deutsches Museum in 1903. There is no connection with the Munich Galilei family of artists. After their demise, they were completely forgotten by the city government as well as the culturally interested citizenry. That has not changed to the present.⁶⁵ Even endeavours to proclaim Munich with the attribute “Isarflorenz” ignored this possible – and worthwhile – possibility. The secondary strand of the family of the universal genius represents a novel link between Italy and Bavaria, adding a highlight to the already shining string of transalpine relations. The Galilei family too made a pioneering contribution to the broad cultural transfer from Italy to the northern foothills of the Alps in the age of humanism and the Baroque. It remains a worthwhile task to return the Munich Galilei family into public memory. This applies equally to Bavaria and Italy.

Notes

Chiara Orsini, Vincenzo Galilei, in: Il Fronimo. Rivista di chitarra e liuto 62 (1988), 7-28. Summarising with literature: Raoul Meloncelli, Galilei, Vincenzo, in: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani LI (1998), 486-489; Claude V. Palisca, Galilei, Vincenzo, in: Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart VII (²2002), 434-439; Bayerisches Musiker-Lexikon Online, s.v. Galilei, Vincenzo.↩︎

Vincenzo Galilei - The Renaissance Dialogue between Music and Science. An International Conference (6-7 October 2022; Villa I Tatti, Florence). This contribution was prepared in this context.↩︎

Lina Bolzoni/Alina Payne (eds.), The Italian Renaissance in the 19^thCentury. Revision, Revival, and Return (I Tatti Research Series 1), Milano 2018.↩︎

An overview of the topic: Alois Schmid, The Munich Galilei. Eine italienische Künstlerfamilie am Wittelsbacherhof im 17. Jahrhundert, Munich 2022, on Vincenzo Galilei 23-53.↩︎

Orsini, Vincenzo Galilei (see note 1), p. 12: "dovette comunque avere dei rapporti con la corte di Baviera". No mention of the Galilei family in: Karl Bosl, Italienisch-deutsche Kulturbeziehungen im 17. Jahrhundert, vornehmlich in dessen zweite Hälfte, in: ZBLG 30 (1967), 507-525.↩︎

For brief references to the Galilei family in Munich in the next generation, see: Cornelia Baumann, Die Münchner Verwandtschaft Galileo Galileis, in: Charivari 15 (1989), 69-72; Dies., Der andere Galilei. The brother of the great mathematician was a court musician in Munich, in: Unser Bayern. Heimatbeilage der Bayerischen Staatszeitung 46 (1997), 37-38; this, Galileo Galilei's Munich relatives. The instrumentalist Michelangelo Galilei, in: Bayern - Land und Leute. Broadcast 7 May 2006 (typescript). I would like to thank Dr Cornelia Oelwein (Ilmmünster) and Dr Frank Legl (Krailling) for a helpful exchange of ideas.↩︎

Fronimo dialogo di Vincentio Galilei Nobile Fiorentino nel quale si contengono le vere e necessarie regole dell'intavolare la musica nel liuto, Venice 1568/69. In particular: Philippe Canguilhem, "Fronimo" de Vincenzo Galilei (Centre des études supériores de la Renaissance), Paris/Tours 2001.↩︎

Still fundamental, but urgently recommended for a contemporary revision: Sigmund Riezler, Geschichte Baierns IV (Geschichte der europäischen Staaten 20/4), Gotha 1899, 433-625.↩︎

Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv München, Kasten schwarz 1321: Des florentinischen Gesandten am Kaiserhof gesuchte Präzedenz. Cf. [Wiguläus Xaver Aloys] Frhr. von Kreittmayr, Grundriss des allgemeinen, deutsch- und bayrischen Staatsrechtes, Munich/Leipzig 1769, 239 § 127; Dietmar Heil, Die Reichspolitik Bayerns unter der Regierung Herzog Albrechts V. (1550-1579) (Schriftenreihe der Historischen Kommission 61), Göttingen 1998, 418, note 128: "eine gewisse Mißgunst".↩︎

Eberhard Straub, Repraesentatio maiestatis oder churbayerische Freudenfeste. Die höfischen Feste in der Münchner Residenz vom 16. bis zum Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts (Miscellanea Bavarica Monacensia 14), Munich 1969, 147-158; Horst Leuchtmann, Die Münchner Fürstenhochzeit von 1568, Munich 1980.↩︎

Alois Schmid, Das Mäzenatentum Herzog Albrechts V. von Bayern, in: Kunst-Kontexte. Festschrift für Heidrun Stein-Kecks, ed. by Hans-Christoph Dittscheid, Doris Gerstl and Simone Hespers, Petersberg 2016, 226-239 (lit.); most recently comprehensive: Andrea Gottdang/Bernhold Schmid (eds.), Andacht - Repräsentation - Gelehrsamkeit. The Codex of Penitential Psalms of Albrecht V of Bavaria (BSB Munich, Mus.ms. A), (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Schriftenreihe 8), Wiesbaden 2020.↩︎

Wolfgang Boetticher, Orlando di Lasso and his time (1532-1594). Repertoire-Untersuchungen zur Musik der Spätrenaissance, 2 vols, Wilhelmshaven 1958 [ND Wilhelmshaven 1999]; Orlando di Lasso. Musik der Renaissance am Münchner Fürstenhof (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Ausstellungskataloge 26), Wiesbaden 1982; Horst Leuchtmann, Orlando di Lasso, 3 vols., Kassel 2001.↩︎

Intavolature de lavto di Vincenzo Galilei Fiorentino mandrigali e ricercate, Rome 1563; Fronimo dialogo di Vincentio Galilei (see note 7). Cf. Orsini, Vincenzo Galilei (see note 1), pp. 21f.↩︎

Christl Karnehm (Bearb.), Die Korrespondenz Hans Fuggers von 1566 bis 1591. Regesten der Kopierbücher aus dem Fuggerarchiv, 3 vols. (Quellen zur neueren Geschichte Bayerns 3), Munich 2003, here I, 172 no. 395, 180 no. 414, 181 no. 417, 182 no. 419. Cf. Berndt Philipp Baader, Der bayerische Renaissancehof Herzog Wilhelms V. (1568-1579). Ein Beitrag zur bayerischen und deutschen Kulturgeschichte des 16. Jahrhunderts, Leipzig/Straßburg 1943, 75-78; Harriet Rudolph, Die "Dialoghi" des Massimo Troiano zur Münchner Fürstenhochzeit von 1568, in: Musikleben in der Renaissance - Zwischen Alltag und Fest, ed. by Wolfgang Fuhrmann, vol. I: Orte der Musik (Handbuch der Musik der Renaissance 4/1), Laaber 2019, 396-424.↩︎

David S. Butchart, A Musical Journey of 1567: Alessandro Striggio in Vienna, Munich, Paris and London, in: Music and Letters 63 (1982), 1-16, here 14 f. on a visit to Munich.↩︎

Only the second edition of 1584 is available in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich. Cf. Orsini, Vincenzo Galilei (see note 1), 20-22.↩︎

Bernhard Rainer, Instrumentalists and Instrumental Practice at the Court of Albrecht V of Bavaria (1550-1579) (Musikkontext. Studien zur Kultur, Geschichte und Theorie der Musik 16), Vienna 2021, 31-39, 69-74, 183-192 and others.↩︎

Sigmund Riezler, Geschichte Baierns, vol. VI (Geschichte der europäischen Staaten 20/6), Gotha 1903, 516; Baader, Der bayerische Renaissancehof (see note 14), 227-229.↩︎

Warren Kirkendale, The Court Musicians in Florence during the Principate of the Medici with a Reconstruction of the Artistic Establishment, Florence 1993, 251-253; Michael Silies, Bottegari, Cosimo (Cosmo), in: Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart III, Kassel u.a. ²2000, 509-510; Bayerisches Musiker-Lexikon Online, s.v. Bottegari Cosimo; Douglas Alton Smith, A History of Lute from Antiquity to the Renaissance, Fort Worth/Texas 2002, 137. On ennoblement: Lodovico Araldi, L'Italia nobile nelle sue città e ne'cavaglieri delle medeme, Venice 1722 [ND Bologna 1972], 113 (a. a. 1577).↩︎

Cosimo Bottegari, Il libro di canto e liuto (Biblioteca Musica Bononiensis V/17), Bologna 1978 (cf. 167 f.); Musik der Bayerischen Hofkapelle zur Zeit Orlando di Lasso, Bd. I: Madrigali a cinque voci de floridi virtuosi del Serenissimo Duca di Baviera, Wiesbaden 1981; Rainer, Albrecht V. (see note 17), 45, 48.↩︎

Horst Leuchtmann, Orlando di Lasso, vol. II: Briefe, Wiesbaden 1977, 19 f., 183-193.↩︎

Marco della Sciucca, Guami, in: Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart VIII (²2002), 142-145; Horst Leuchtmann, Organisten und Orgelbauer in ihrer Beziehung zum bayerischen Herzogshof 1550-1600, in: Acta Organologica 6 (1972), 99-122, here 101, 107 f.; Rainer, Albrecht V. (see note 17), 39, 42, 44.↩︎

Rainer, Albrecht V. (see note 17), 44 f.↩︎

Hermann-Joseph Busley, Zur Finanz- und Kulturpolitik Albrechts V. von Bayern. Studie zum herzoglichen Ratsgutachten von 1557, in: Reformata reformanda. Festgabe für Hubert Jedin zum 17. Juni 1965, Vol. II, ed. by Erwin Iserloh and Konrad Repgen (Reformationsgeschichtliche Studien und Texte, Supplementband 1), Münster i. W. 1965, 209-235, esp. 227 f.↩︎

Riezler, Geschichte Baierns, vol. IV (see note 8), 486.↩︎

Baader, Der bayerische Renaissancehof (see note 14), 168-172, 344-349; Regina Dauser, Informationskultur und Beziehungswissen. Das Korrespondenznetz Hans Fuggers (1531-1598) (Studia Augustana 16), Tübingen 2008, 392-396; Schmid, Die Münchner Galilei (see note 4), 41-44.↩︎

Vincenzo Galilei, Dialogo della musica antica e della musica moderna, Venice 1581 [ND Monuments in Music and Music Literature in Facsimile 20, New York 1967], 144.↩︎

The transport is noted in the account books of the court payment office: Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv München, HZR 1576, 356r. Cf. Adolf Sandberger, Beiträge zur Geschichte der bayerischen Hofkapelle unter Orlando di Lasso, vol. III, Leipzig 1895, 92.↩︎

A description: Michael Praetorius, Syntagma musicum ex veterum et recentiorum ecclesiasticorum autorum lectione I, Wittenberg 1614, 15, no. 4; vol. II: De organographia, Wolfenbüttel 1619 [ND Kassel 1958], 67-72.↩︎

Galilei, Dialogo (see note 27), 48.↩︎

Erich Tremmel, Musikinstrumentenbau und Musikinstrumentenhandel in Baiern während des 16. Jahrhunderts. Ein Überblick, in: Die Münchner Hofkapelle des 16. Jahrhunderts im europäischen Kontext, ed. by Theodor Göllner, Munich 2006, 102-104.↩︎

Praetorius, Syntagma musicum, vol. II (see note 29), 70: der Galilaeus ... solche Art Geigenwerk ... außspeculieret.↩︎

Hermann Schöppler, Über den Tod Herzog Albrechts V. von Bayern (1579), in: Archiv für Medizin 4 (1910), 158-160.↩︎

Walter Ziegler, Das Testament Herzog Albrechts V. von Bayern (1578), in: Aus Bayerns Geschichte. Forschungen als Festgabe zum 70. Geburtstag von Andreas Kraus, ed. by Egon Johannes Greipl, Alois Schmid and Walter Ziegler, St. Ottilien 1992, 259-309, here 286. Cf. Baader, Der bayerische Renaissancehof (see note 14), 177-215 (chapter "Die Wandlung").↩︎

This is rightly emphasised: Canguilhem, "Fronimo" de Vincenzo Galilei (see note 7), 17-44.↩︎

See note 27, 30.↩︎

Galilei, Dialogo (see note 27), 48.↩︎

Ibid., 144.↩︎

Orsini, Vincenzo Galilei (see note 1), 8: "protagonista dei suoi primi anni fiorentini".↩︎

Ernst Heitsch, Platon über die rechte Art zu reden und zu schreiben (Akademie der Wissenschaften und Literatur Mainz, Abhandlungen 4), Mainz/Stuttgart 1987; Rolf Geiger, Dialektische Tugenden. Untersuchungen zur Gesprächsform in den platonischen Dialogen, Paderborn 2006.↩︎

David Bohm, The Dialogue, Stuttgart 1998.↩︎

Joachim Dalfen, Gedanken zur Lektüre platonischer Dialoge, in: Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 29 (1975), 169-194, here 194.↩︎

Hans Honnacker, Der literarische Dialog des´ primo Cinquecento´ . Inszenierungsstrategien und Spielraum (Saecula Spiritalia 40), Baden-Baden 2002; Matthias Hausmann/Marita Liebermann (eds.), Inszenierte Gespräche. Zum Dialog als Gattung und Argumentationsmodus in der Romania vom Mittelalter bis zur Aufklärung (Internationale Forschungen zur allgemeinen und vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft 173), Berlin 2014.↩︎

Galilei, Dialogo (see note 27), III-IV.↩︎

Robert H. Herman, Dialogo della musica antica et della musica moderna of Vincenzo Galilei. Translation and Commentary, Diss. phil. masch. North Texas State University 1973, 22: "The 'lofty principles' which Galilei gleefully and glibly expounded through the mouth of Bardi"; "Galilei ... enjoied the role of guide through the maze of clever, complex entanglements ... through Bardi"; 23: "faithfull pilot".↩︎

The ongoing correspondence with Florence: Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv München, Kasten schwarz 5561, 7517, 13 412; Geheimes Hausarchiv München, Korr. 607 and 609 (Italian correspondence of Dukes Albrecht V and Wilhelm V).↩︎

Praetorius, Syntagma musicum, vol. II (see note 29, also 32), 70 assumes that Vincenzo travelled to Munich for a very specific purpose.↩︎

Cf. for example Meloncelli, Galilei, Vincenzo (see note 1), who assumes a two-year stay in Munich.↩︎

Palisca, Galileo, Vincenzo, in: Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart VII (see note 1), 435.↩︎

Bayerisches Musiker-Lexikon Online, s.v. Galilei, Vincenzo.↩︎

Fronimo dialogo di Vincentio Galilei nobile Fiorentino sopra l'arte del bene intavolare et rettamente sonare la musica, Venice 1584, dedication.↩︎

Alberto Mammarella, Rossetti (Rossetto), Stefano, in: Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart XIV (²2005), 441-442; Leuchtmann, Organisten (see note 22), 101, 116; Bayerisches Musiker-Lexikon Online, s.v. Roseto, Stefano. Cf. Hans-Joachim Nösselt, Ein ältest Orchester 1530-1980. 450 Jahre Bayerisches Hof- und Staatsorchester, Munich 1980, 219.↩︎

Bavarian State Library Munich, Mus.ms. 1536. The dating is unclear.↩︎

Horst Leuchtmann, Zeitgeschichtliche Aufzeichnungen des Bayerischen Hofkapellaltisten Johannes Hellgemayr aus den Jahren 1596-1633, in: Oberbayerisches Archiv 100 (1975), 142-229, here 161. Cf. Helmuth Stahleder, Chronik der Stadt München, Bd. II - Belastungen und Bedrückungen: Die Jahre 1506-1705, Ebenhausen/Hamburg 2005, 281. The Cardinal Prince of Medici became Pope for 27 days as Leo XI a little later in April 1605. Pope.↩︎

Le opere di Galileo Galilei, ed. by Antonio Favaro (Edizione Nazionale X), Florence 1968, 298, no. 277: Galileo Galilei to Belisario Vinta, 19 March 1610. On Francesco Maria Bourbon del Monte Santa Maria: Clovis Whitfield, The "Camerino" of Cardinal del Monte, in: Paragone 59 (2008), 3-38.↩︎

This is explicitly mentioned in a letter: Le opere di Galileo Galilei, vol. X (see note 55), 313 no. 290: Michelangelo Galilei to Galileo Galilei, 14 April 1610: già circa 30 anni fa.↩︎

Schmid, Die Münchner Galilei (see note 4), 59-66, 171 no. 4.↩︎

Il primo libro d'intavolatvra di livto di Michelagnolo Galilei nobile Fiorentino, livtista del Ser.^moSig.^reDvca Massimiliano di Baviera, nel quale si contengono varie sonate come toccate, gagliarde, correnti, volte, passemezzi et salterelli nuouamente composto e dato in luce in Monaco di Baviera MDCXX. Only two copies of this printed work are known; one is in the British Library, London (Sign. GB-Lbl.K.3.m. 21), the other as a result of the Second World War in the Biblioteka Jagiellońska, Kraków (Sign.: Mus.ant.pract. G 140).↩︎

Schmid, Die Münchner Galilei (see note 4), 105-122.↩︎

Häuserbuch der Stadt München, vol. III: Hackenviertel, published by Stadtarchiv München, Munich 1962, 137 f.; Helmuth Stahleder, Älteres Häuserbuch der Stadt München: Hausbesitz und Steuerleistung der Münchner Bürger 1368-1571, vol. I, Neustadt a. d. Aisch 2006, 241-245.↩︎

Schmid, Die Münchner Galilei (see note 4), 123-128.↩︎

This was the major topic of the scientific congress mentioned in note 2. Fundamental: Victor Coelho (ed.), Music and Science in the Age of Galilei, Dordrecht 1992; Claude V. Palisca, Studies in the History of Italian Music and Music Theory, Oxford 1994; Natacha Fabbri, Cosmologia e armonia in Keplero e Mersenne: Contrapunto a due voci dell'Harmonice mundi (Biblioteca di Nuncius: Studi e testi 50), Florence 2003; Dies, `De l'utilité de l'harmonie`. Filosofia, scienza e musica in Mersenne, Descartes e Galileo (Studi 12), Pisa 2008.↩︎

On this in detail: Schmid, Die Münchner Galilei (see note 4), 76-87.↩︎

Die Epitaphien an der Frauenkirche zu München, ed. by the Messerschmitt Foundation, with contributions by Cornelia Baumann, Michael Petzet and Hans Heinrich von Srbik (Berichte zur Denkmalpflege 1), Munich 1986, 200, no. 84.↩︎

Brief mention of individual names in: Werner Ebnet, Persönlichkeiten in München von 1275 bis heute, Munich 2005, 90.↩︎

The “Aryanization” of the Republic of the Scholars

Albert Einstein, Richard Willstätter, and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Spring 1933

by Stephan Deutinger

translated by Sarah Swift and Ellen Yutzy Glebe

2025-01-06

You can cite this article e.g. Stephan Deutinger, “The “Aryanization” of the Republic of the Scholars: Albert Einstein, Richard Willstätter, and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Spring 1933” in Bavarian Studies in History and Culture (2025) [originally published in German as “Die Arisierung der Gelehrtenrepublik. Albert Einstein, Richard Willstätter und die Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften im Frühjahr 1933, in: ZBLG 85 (2022), S. 475–506”], last modified 2025-01-06, https://www.bavarian-studies.org/2025-deutinger/.

This article is a translation and was originally published in German as:

Die Arisierung der Gelehrtenrepublik. Albert Einstein, Richard Willstätter und die Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften im Frühjahr 1933, in: ZBLG 85 (2022), S. 475–506.

This text is open access and licensed under the terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Stephan Deutinger

The “Aryanization” of the Republic of the Scholars

Albert Einstein, Richard Willstätter, and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Spring 1933

translated by Sarah Swift and Ellen Yutzy Glebe

2025-01-06

This text is open access and licensed under terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Image: CC-BY-SA 3.0

NS-Boykott gegen jüdische Geschäfte (Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-14468 / Georg Pahl)

The systematic exclusion of Jewish scholars and scientists from teaching and research arguably had graver and longer-lasting consequences than any of the Nazi regime’s other political interventions into research and higher education in Germany.¹ Its quantitative and qualitative dimensions have only come into clear view as a result of in-depth studies, undertaken in the last two decades, that have reliably established that around a fifth of the teaching staff at German universities and other research institutions were dismissed or compelled to resign from 1933 onwards and that 80 percent of these dismissals were racially motivated.² It can be assumed that 1,200 lecturers were affected.³ The unfolding of these developments in the non-university sector is particularly well charted. The dismissal of around ninety “non-Aryans” from the Kaiser Wilhelm Society has been described in detail, drilling down to the level of individual fates,⁴ and the same is true for the approximately thirty committee members of the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft (Emergency Association of German Science) who were hit by these measures.⁵

The state of knowledge regarding the academies of sciences and humanities is not quite as satisfactory. Because the institutional ties binding these scholarly communities are comparatively loose, they have generally shown limited interest in tracing their own histories. Nevertheless, at least all the relevant names have been compiled for the academies, as well. The Leopoldina deleted around ninety names from its long list of members.⁶ The considerably more exclusive academies in Berlin, Vienna, Leipzig, Munich, Heidelberg, and Göttingen each shed on average one to two dozen full and corresponding members.⁷ In total, the German academies lost around 10 percent of their full members and 5 percent of their corresponding members.⁸

The fact that most of these deletions of names took place in or after 1938 could give one the impression that the Gleichschaltung of the academies—their “synchronization” with Nazi ideology—took place at a relatively late stage.⁹ The most spectacular case of all, the resignation of Albert Einstein, the genius of the century, from the Prussian Academy of Sciences and Humanities on March 28, 1933, and from the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities on April 21, 1933, has come be routinely regarded as something of a chronological outlier despite both its clear connection to that context and its significance—in the words of one authoritative expert—“as a portent of the initially voluntary and then forced exodus of Jewish scholars that would soon commence.”¹⁰

Astonishingly enough, the events surrounding Einstein’s decision have never been precisely described and analyzed, even though they harbor significant potential for highlighting the stances both academies adopted on the Nazi seizure of power. That explains why considerable space is devoted to Einstein’s resignation from the Prussian Academy of Sciences and Humanities in the documentation prepared by that association’s successor in East Berlin to mark the centenary of Einstein’s birth in 1979—naturally with the foregrounding of class struggle aspects that was de rigueur at the time. This documentation drew on both archival records relating to Einstein’s resignation and the personal memories of those involved, which Max von Laue recorded for posterity in 1947.¹¹

While this made it possible to form an impression from the sources of what took place at the Prussian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the state of knowledge about Einstein’s resignation from the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, with its thematic and chronological links to the developments in Berlin, seemed entirely hopeless. The events were shrouded in obscurity. The problem was not that resigning from the Bavarian Academy had been an event of no great significance in Einstein’s life: Afterall, he had only been a corresponding member of the academy in Munich since 1927 and his affliation with it had been fairly loose, whereas the Prussian Academy had granted him a regular full-time salary since 1914 and exempted him from obligations outside of research. The obscurity was rather a product of the desolate state of the sources. Only the two documents Einstein himself published in 1934 were known. One of these was a letter dated April 8, 1933, from the presiding committee of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, in which Einstein was asked “how you understand your relationship with our academy after what has taken place between yourself and the Prussian Academy,” and the other was his reply, dated April 21, 1933, requesting that his name be “removed from the list of members.”¹²

No further information was available, for the academy’s building in downtown Munich was destroyed during the Second World War. Furthermore, it seems highly likely that records were also intentionally purged at some unidentifiable point, because the volumes missing from the rescued proceedings of the mathematics and natural sciences section at the academy and its presiding committee would cover exactly the span of time that is relevant here. At any rate, the academy no longer has any records of its own on the case.

In the absence of substantiated information, an oral tradition outlining these events was able to thrive. It suggested that Leopold Wenger, the academy’s president in 1933, had acted unilaterally “without the knowledge of members of the academy.” This account, which can still be found in recent publications,¹³ was first committed to writing by Walther Meißner for the academy’s bicentennial celebrations in 1959,¹⁴ although Meißner himself had only been elected to the academy in 1938. As Wenger had left Munich as early as 1935 and died in 1953, he was unable to pass comment on Meißner’s version.

Most recently, however, new source material has fortunately come to light that makes it possible to subject the traditional account to historical scrutiny for the first time. At the same time, these sources shed a little light on attitudes within the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities toward the Nazi ascent to power, an issue that has proven somewhat elusive up to now. The freshly discovered material also reveals a second major case of antisemitic discrimination at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences that had previously been entirely overlooked: the ousting of Richard Willstätter, winner of a Nobel Prize in Chemistry, from the academy’s presiding committee in early May 1933.

Several documents with academy provenance that relate to the above-mentioned events have survived despite the near total loss of records. They are found in the personal literary estate of Georg Leidinger (1870–1945), who was a member of the academy’s presiding committee in 1933. His primary role was at the Bavarian State Library, where he headed the manuscripts section. He had been an extraordinary member of the Bavarian Academy since 1909 and a full member since 1916. He was elected secretary of the section for history on December 3, 1932, and took part in every meeting of the academy’s presiding committee until 1941 in this capacity. After his retirement in 1936, he lived in Marquartstein in the mountains of Upper Bavaria, where he died shortly before the end of the war.¹⁵

Leidinger had deposited some of the files and correspondence that he had accumulated in various academic roles in the Bavarian State Library, where they escaped destruction during the war because they had been removed for external storage. The larger portion of his files, which he had kept in his country house, were handed over to the State Library by his widow in 1946. Leidinger’s former colleague and intimate, Albert Hartmann—who, together with two librarian colleagues, had once been “the spearhead of National Socialism in the Bavarian State Library”¹⁶—merged the two parts of the estate to form the “Leidingeriana” collection as had been agreed upon with Leidinger many years previously.¹⁷

A handful of pages within this very extensive estate deal with Einstein’s exit from the academy. For reasons hardly attributable to coincidence, they were filed in a location (cataloged under “Monumenta Boica”) that made them unlikely to be discovered.¹⁸ Nobody ever looked for them there, nestled among documents about an obsolete series of primary sources (discontinued in 1956) for which Leidinger was responsible as the chairperson of the Commission for Bavarian Regional History at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities. But three of the five folders labeled as “Monumenta Boica” actually contain documents on other academy matters in which Leidinger was involved. Folder 2 contains Leidinger’s papers on the “Einstein case,” which he describes as such on the first sheet.

Nor does the wealth of source material supplied by Leidinger end there. As a civil servant accustomed to documenting his actions in detail, he also kept a diary in which he conscientiously recorded day-to-day events from 1906 until his death. As Leidinger expressly bequeathed this diary to Albert Hartmann personally,¹⁹ it only reached the Bavarian State Library after Hartmann’s death in 1973, when it was placed with the rest of his estate.²⁰ “Acta bibliothecaria,”²¹ the curious label adopted by the author, was undoubtedly a factor that contributed to historians overlooking this rich source for a long time; it was only evaluated selectively for the appraisal of questions relating to library history.²²

Naturally enough, the diary mainly reports on developments in the library, Leidinger’s main sphere of activity. In addition, however, Leidinger served on a broad range of academic committees, and he made little distinction between official and non-official matters in his diary. His notes cover all the letters he wrote or received; discussions, meetings, conferences, and exhibitions in which he was involved; and purely personal matters—conversations in corridors or trams, interesting encounters in the city, vacation experiences, and a wealth of other details. They provide a remarkably detailed description of the daily life of a man who played a central role in Munich’s cultural and academic life.

Hartmann, who claimed to have been aware of the existence of the diary volumes since 1936, described the purpose of these notes as he prepared to bequeath them to the library. He noted that Leidinger kept these notes “mainly for himself, as an aid to memory, but also to record certain events, circumstances, and relationships for posterity.”²³ Both of these aspects are indeed important and need to be considered when evaluating the material. Keeping track of his extensive and varied correspondence and meetings was certainly a key motive for Leidinger. The “Acta” are a dull, dry read with their notes in a staccato telegram style detailing who had written to Leidinger when and about what, how and when he had replied, what offprints he had received, and which ones he had dispatched to specific recipients.

Interspersed between these terse notes, however, Leidinger sometimes commented with great clarity and feeling on the matters reported. His intention of leaving a record for posterity shines through quite clearly in these passages. Leidinger, who was always of a very confident bearing—at least outwardly—saw his views and judgments as important enough to be communicated to future generations. He deliberately stylized his notes with this purpose in mind. Readers should not be deceived: As the steady handwriting and the occasional use of very slight flashbacks and foreshadowing show, the diary notes are not a direct and immediate record of events. Leidinger probably made notes in an appointment calendar and wrote them up as diary entries a little later. This explains why especially striking events, such as the Hitler putsch or the Nazi Party’s seizure of power, are described in dramatic terms, presumably to demonstrate—and not without pride—the author’s proximity to them.

I

Albert Einstein’s resignation from the Prussian Academy of Sciences and Humanities was a direct consequence of the Nazi takeover of power in Germany. Einstein was a visiting researcher at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena at the beginning of this episode, and he had already resolved to relocate his professional life to the United States. By the time of the Reichstag fire (in the night of February 27/28, 1933), it had also become clear to him that he had no intention of setting foot on German soil again in the near future. He announced this decision in a public statement on March 10 in which he explained that political freedom, tolerance, and the equality of all citizens before the law did not currently exist in Germany, where people who had contributed substantially to the prospering of international relations were threatened with persecution.²⁴ On March 18, the Prussian Academy of Sciences asked Einstein to inform them “of what had actually happened” as newspaper reports indicated that he had “made public statements opposing the current government in Germany.”²⁵

This letter cannot have reached Einstein. Unaware of its existence, he wrote a letter to the Prussian Academy on March 28, during his passage back to Europe by ship, that only briefly alluded to the “current state of affairs in Germany” to explain that “dependence upon the Prussian government” had become “intolerable” for him and that he would thus “resign from my position at the Prussian Academy of Sciences and Humanities.” The academy received this letter on March 30.²⁶ Einstein had left the academy only a few days before he would have been expelled from it. On April 1, 1933, the day of the nationwide boycott of Jewish businesses, doctors, and lawyers, the academy published a press release in which it expressed “outrage” at Albert Einstein’s “participation in atrocity agitation in America and France” and emphasized its support for the “national idea,” a position from which it saw itself as having “no cause to regret Einstein’s resignation.”²⁷ This press release was picked up by all the major German daily newspapers.²⁸

At this point in time, the National Socialists were going to great lengths to inflame public sentiments in Germany.²⁹ They told the German public that international press reports detailing the mistreatment of Jewish citizens public since the Reichstag fire were “atrocity agitation” and obviously the result of Jewish manipulation of the press. Julius Streicher founded a “Central Committee to Repulse Jewish Atrocity and Boycott Agitation.” As its leader, he spoke in Munich’s Königsplatz Square on March 31 to an audience of (according to a report in the Völkischer Beobachter) an estimated one hundred thousand people who had gathered to demonstrate “against the Jewish atrocity agitation.”³⁰ Two days later, the paper proudly announced that Nazis had attacked Jewish judges and public prosecutors in Munich and that the courthouse known as the Justizpalast (Palace of Justice) had been “swept clear” of Jews.³¹

These developments can hardly have failed to impress themselves on the consciousness of those in charge of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities. The Justizpalast was only a short walk away from the academy building in Neuhauser Straße. Leopold Wenger, a scholar of ancient law, had only been elected to the presidency of the academy on November 12, just a few months earlier.³² In accordance with the academy’s statutes, he had advisers in the form of his predecessor, the classical philologist Eduard Schwartz,³³ and four section secretaries, two from the academy’s historical-philosophical section and two from its mathematical-scientific section. The archaeologist Paul Wolters³⁴ and the mathematician Walther von Dyck had extensive experience with academy business,³⁵ while Georg Leidinger was, as mentioned above, a relative newcomer. The presiding committee also had a Jewish member, Richard Willstätter,³⁶ a Nobel laureate in chemistry who had joined the committee in 1930.

The controversy over alleged atrocity propaganda took place a mere three weeks after a Nazi regime had been installed in Bavaria.³⁷ How political events would continue to unfold was not remotely foreseeable at this point. The presiding committee at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities could not yet have developed a firm stance of its own. It therefore resorted to “lying low” and keeping quiet as long as no actions were directly demanded of it, with the calm self-confidence of an institution that had existed since 1759. The principle of Quieta non movere [Do not move settled things] was the order of the day,³⁸ and it worked for a few years—the new regime did not initially meddle in the academy’s affairs.³⁹

But in the “Einstein case,” a policy of non movere was seemingly deemed infeasible after the events at the Prussian Academy had become publicly known. On April 4, 1933, the day after the Jews had been “swept” from Munich’s Justizpalast, President Leopold Wenger wrote to the Prussian Academy of Sciences and Humanities to request that he be provided with a copy of the current correspondence with Einstein and with Einstein’s current postal address and saying that “the greatest possible expediting” was indicated “given the urgency of the matter.”⁴⁰ The documents were accordingly dispatched to Munich by airmail on April 5.⁴¹ Leidinger’s diary notes on the “Einstein case” begin three days later, on April 7: “Committee meeting at the academy: Einstein case. The Berlin documents have arrived. No result yet after two hours of discussion. The committee members should each try to draft a letter to Einstein by tomorrow.”⁴²

These few sentences alone suffice to demonstrate that Wenger was not acting unilaterally but had raised the matter in the presiding committee of the academy. It is also clear that the presiding committee struggled with its deliberations. The fact that one of its members, Willstätter, was himself Jewish had to be considered. In addition, the composition of the presiding committee was diverse not only in terms of the disciplines represented but also in its age range. Wenger, Leidinger, and Willstätter were all aged around sixty. Schwartz, Wolters, and von Dyck were already in their midseventies. Presumably with these latter three members in mind, Leidinger had noted “Business transacted with an awful impression of the worst kind of senility” in his diary regarding his very first meeting as a member of the presiding committee on December 21, 1932.⁴³

Leidinger’s diary skips the following two days, a rare occurrence, and says nothing about the fresh meeting of the presiding committee scheduled for April 8. But—as noted at the beginning of this article—his literary estate also contains several pages of notes relating to the “Einstein case.” On their cover page, he wrote: “A discussion of this is presumably unnecessary.” The first page bears a pencil draft in Leidinger’s hand, dated April 8, for the letter to be addressed to Einstein.⁴⁴ It is not clear whether these are Leidinger’s notes taken during the meeting or a draft he had formulated before the meeting. As the text contains only a few deletions and rewordings, it seems likely that Leidinger brought a finished draft to the meeting, as had been agreed the previous day; multiple people struggling to formulate a draft together would have presumably engaged in more intensive rewording. Be that as it may, the text as recorded here is identical with the text of the letter that was sent to Einstein.⁴⁵

A second page in the file bears the heading: “Resolution of the Committee of the B. Academy of Sciences and Humanities 8. IV. 33.” Containing just one succinct sentence and penned by an as yet unidentified hand, this memorandum urges the mathematics and natural sciences section at the Bavarian Academy to consider “whether it does not wish to apply for Einstein’s exclusion with regard to Section 11, Subsection 3 of the statutes of the academy.”⁴⁶ It is easy to see that this is the key document in the entire case, for it reveals that the presiding committee had no intention of waiting for Einstein’s reply but was determined to pursue his expulsion even before its own letter to him had been drawn up. This cited passage from the Ordinance on the Organization of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities in the version of July 18, 1923, states: “The Academy may decide to expel a member at the request of a department with a three-fourths majority of the full members.”⁴⁷

Leidinger did not document which presiding committee members were present at the meeting on April 8, but it seems highly likely that the committee was complete. Leidinger was generally thorough in such matters and would presumably have made a note of any absences.⁴⁸ The letter that the academy sent to Einstein on April 8—which became public only because Einstein published it—was signed collectively by “The Presiding Committee of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities.”⁴⁹ It was decidedly brief, containing just one sentence of true significance: “We must therefore ask you how you understand your relationship with our academy after what has taken place between yourself and the Prussian Academy.”

There was no reply from Einstein for quite some time. This was in part perhaps because the Prussian Academy of Sciences and Humanities had forwarded an address (“c/o Prof. P. Ehrenfest, Leiden, Witte Rosenstraat”) to its counterpart in Munich that proved to be inaccurate.⁵⁰ On April 18, the syndic of the Bavarian Academy, Eugen von Frauenholz⁵¹ inquired again in Berlin about the progress of correspondence with Einstein and asked for copies.⁵² On April 22, the section for mathematics and natural sciences, which was responsible for the case according to the academy’s statutes, dealt with it without knowing Einstein’s stance on the letter the presiding committee had sent to him. As the minutes of the section for this period have been lost, Leidinger’s diary provides the only known documentation of this meeting. On April 24, a Monday, Leidinger noted: “Telephone call to the academy to ascertain the result of the meeting of the natural sciences section on Saturday. Huwig⁵³ says: it should first be asked whether the letter has reached Einstein’s hands. Oh, these Schwachmatici [feeble people]!”⁵⁴

The members of the section or department, which naturally also included Willstätter—who, as a member of the presiding committee, may even have chaired this meeting—clearly could not bring themselves to move for Einstein’s expulsion, at least not yet.

Einstein, on the other hand, had already decided to resign from the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He had remained in Belgium after disembarking in Antwerp and taken up residence in the seaside resort of Le Coq-sur-Mer near Ostend.⁵⁵ In a letter dated April 21, 1933, he expressed his “wish to have my name removed from the members’ list” and explained this step with clear criticism of the stances taken by “German learned societies.”⁵⁶

This letter must have reached the academy after April 24, 1933. Leopold Wenger, its president, had not awaited the outcome of the matter and had used the days toward the end of the semester break for a brief vacation. It was thus Wenger’s deputy, Eduard Schwartz who informed the section secretaries in writing on April 27 that “Professor Dr. Einstein has declared his resignation from the number of our academy’s corresponding members.”⁵⁷ According to the entries of Leidinger’s diary, the presiding committee discussed the “Einstein case” one final time at its meeting at 11 a.m. on May 3 to determine whether to respond to Einstein’s resignation. They decided to issue “only a short note acknowledging receipt.”⁵⁸

A handwritten page in Leidinger’s estate bearing this date contains a note in his hand that Schwartz had chaired the meeting in his role as deputy. This is followed by the information that it had at least “been decided to write: the acad. has taken note of your letter of resignation.”⁵⁹ At the meeting of the philosophical–historical section on May 6, 1933, mention was made in passing of Einstein’s “resignation without [further] discussion.”⁶⁰

II

Leidinger’s notes on the “Einstein case” end there. For all their laconic brevity, they represent a meaningful source of information about how the academy treated its prominent member. But they also shed light on their author, naturally enough, and illuminate his role as a significant representative of the academy and a person active on many of its commissions. Leidinger’s personal attitude regarding the events was conveyed in just a few scant words that were in keeping with his general diary style: “O diese Schwachmatici!”—“Oh, these feeble people!”

Expressions from student slang like Schwachmatikus belonged to his standard repertoire. Leidinger maintained close ties to his Munich student fraternity, the influential Akademischer Gesangverein, as one of its “old men.” He had even become its historiographer, although he generally preferred compiling editions and shied away from producing major historical accounts.⁶¹ Among the librarians at the Bavarian State Library, this choral society—generally referred to simply as der Verein, “the association”—enjoyed a dominant and unchallenged position. Fraternity lingo was cultivated in everyday life in these circles. People did not confront each other, for instance, but engaged in coramage (a fraternity term for a formal interrogation carried out by a man who felt his honor had been offended, or his chosen representative, of a person deemed to have caused offense).⁶²

A Schwachmatikus was simply a weakling or a feeble person.⁶³ Leidinger regarded the academy members who could not bring themselves to petition for Einstein’s expulsion as such weaklings. Turning this around, the inconspicuous diary note underscores that Leidinger was an adament advocate for Einstein’s removal from the academy—and regarded any discussion of the matter as superfluous and unnecessary.⁶⁴

This raises the question of what motivated his stance. Leidinger’s and Einstein’s fields of disciplinary expertise were in no way adjacent, and Leidinger was certainly not personally acquainted with Einstein—he could not have known more about him than what could be gleaned from newspapers. As a regular reader of the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten and the Völkischer Beobachter, Leidinger would not have read anything about Einstein during the days that are relevant here, but he would have seen many general allegations about the alleged Jewish world conspiracy. That said, some broader consideration of his political views is necessary here.

Leidinger, a Protestant Franconian of lower middle-class origins, was strictly deutschnational—an adherent of a conservative and Protestant brand of German nationalism—before 1933. He was resolutely opposed to the political Catholicism that dominated Bavaria and convinced that it was to blame for the fact that he was never appointed to the role he believed himself destined for, the general directorship of the Bavarian State Library. This explains the satisfaction he derived from the changeover of power in Munich and Bavaria on March 9, 1933. He recorded the prevailing mood as general jubilation and “strong hope” (which may have been predominantly his own).⁶⁵ He would have liked to see the “seizure of power” taken even further; Franz von Epp’s appointment as Reichs-Polizeikommissar (Reich Police Commissioner), which he read about in the newspaper the next day,⁶⁶ was, in his words, only a “half-measure! What a shame that they didn’t get a firm grip on things right away, as will hopefully still happen.”⁶⁷ Whether Leidinger only wanted to see the back of the conservative Catholic government or whether he wanted to see democracy liquidated altogether need not concern us here. At any rate, he was highly satisfied with these unfolding political developments.

Leidinger held national honor, or what he understood as such, in high esteem, and sins against it were unpardonable. He regarded Ludwig Quidde, a fellow academy member and colleague, as an elendiger Volksverräter—a “wretched traitor of the people”—because Quidde was a pacifist.⁶⁸ Einstein, however, was not merely a pacifist but had even publicly distanced himself from Germany and thus, in the Nazi interpretation, likewise become a traitor of the people. That alone would presumably have been enough to turn Leidinger against him.

Furthermore, Einstein was Jewish. Leidinger’s publications are not known to contain antisemitic statements, but his aversion to Jewishness in general and to certain Jews in particular shines through all the more extensively in his diaries. Antisemitic rhetoric features pervasively in his notes from 1918 onwards. This point in time is not coincidental; like so many of his contemporaries, Leidinger blamed Jews for the Bavarian Revolution of 1918/19 and the events that occurred in its aftermath.⁶⁹ Beginning with the crises of the early 1930s, antisemitic comments in his diary become increasingly frequent. After the Nazi seizure of power, Leidinger shed all inhibitions about displaying this aversion openly.

The fact that Jewish citizens were physically attacked and faced mortal threats in March 1933 did not bother him in the slightest, not even when he was personally acquainted with the victims. Leidinger had previously willingly engaged the legal services⁷⁰ of the Munich lawyer Dr. Joseph Weil (1886–1940),⁷¹ who was in turn an avid user of the Bavarian State Library.⁷² When Leidinger had a consultation with Weil on March 14, Weil told him that he had been abused by Nazi thugs on the night of March 10–11. At that point, Leidinger refrained from passing any comment on this in his diary.⁷³ But when he saw Weil again two weeks later—by which time Weil’s mental distress had probably become severe—he could only think of one word for him: “disgusting.”⁷⁴

Dr. Michael Strich (1881–1941),⁷⁵ a private scholar of Jewish origin in Munich, was not physically attacked at this point. He had known Leidinger since the First World War, in which he had fought for Germany on the western front.⁷⁶ Strich offered the Commission for Bavarian Regional History an extensive book manuscript in 1928 that entered a production process supervised by Leidinger in 1930.⁷⁷ This required numerous personal meetings, and Leidinger rarely neglected to put his personal dislike of Strich into words when documenting these conversations. September 5, 1930: “The Jew Strich … stinks terribly of sweat and tobacco”;⁷⁸ July 25, 1932: “this impertinent Jew”; August 18, 1932: “the insolent Jew, Strich”⁷⁹ etc. From the spring of 1933, Leidinger no longer made himself available to Strich as a contact person, although numerous details about the delivery of the book remained to be discussed.⁸⁰ He evaded all attempts at contact for months and put Strich’s letters aside as “whining.”⁸¹

To fully grasp the import of Leidinger’s behavior toward both of these men, it must be borne in mind that both of them were completely “assimilated.” Weil had a Catholic father. Strich was a keen researcher into seventeenth-century Bavarian history and accepted Catholic baptism in 1935. Leidinger’s antisemitism was therefore obviously grounded in racism.

In other words, the head of one of the most outstanding cultural collections in the world, the manuscript section of the Bavarian State Library—a man who interacted with scholars from all over the world in that context—put up no resistance whatsoever to adopting vulgar antisemitic tropes. While the biographical context to this cannot be explored here, it bears noting that Leidinger harbored a great many other grudges against collectives and individuals in addition to his antisemitism: These included women in academic professions (“geese”⁸²), Catholics (“dishonest”⁸³), the ministerial bureaucracy (“idiots”⁸⁴), his own superiors (“useless!”⁸⁵), and even the Bavarian Minister of Education (a “country bumpkin”⁸⁶)—the self-confidence of the brushmaker’s son who had reached the highest echelons of academia must have been threatened from all quarters. It bears recalling once again that that this rhetorical belligerence did not arise situationally during temporary losses of composure, but was well considered by Leidinger: These were formulations that he did not wish to see committed to fire after his death but, on the contrary, preserved for posterity.

The source situation does not allow the attitudes of the remaining members of the presiding committee to be discerned with the same clarity. President Wenger notably chose to avoid having his name directly attached to the academy’s decision. The letter to Einstein was signed by “the Presidium” although the statutes of the academy made it plain that the president was responsible for conducting its correspondence as part of his duties.⁸⁷ When Einstein’s reply arrived, Wenger was not in Munich and had left the task of dealing with the matter to his deputy, Schwartz.

Some parallels in habitus between the two privy councillors Schwartz and Leidinger probably existed. Schwartz also thought along deutschnational national-conservative lines⁸⁸ and had welcomed the Nazi seizure of power, but he was not an avowed supporter of the regime. From the Nazi point of view, however, he was simply too old and too conservative and rapidly found himself relegated to the margins of academia.⁸⁹ Schwartz was also, rumor had it, “no friend of the Jews.”⁹⁰ Leidinger reports that his re-election as president of the academy was prevented by the mathematics and natural sciences section in 1930, “fiendishlyly, due to Jewish intervention!”⁹¹ Schwartz’s son reports that a certain emotional block around this issue existed in the family. He says that his father considered “the Jewish, invariably left-wing influence on the press and parties” disastrous and “counseled restraint in matters connected to [academic] appointments.”⁹²

The roles of Wolters and von Dyck are not visible at all in the few surviving documents. Whether Wolters could have exerted any great influence on the course of developments seems decidedly doubtful. He had probably become prematurely senile. Leidinger considered Wolters no longer capable of conducting academy business and repeatedly attested “senility of the worst kind” to him in his diary.⁹³ Although the known sources shed no light on Willstätter’s position, antisemitism can definitely be ruled out in his case.

That still leaves the role of Walther von Dyck to consider. Although von Dyck expressed a fundamental lack of understanding for the tumultuous course of the “national revolution,”⁹⁴ his letters contain very clear negative statements about the “Jewish question.” He proclaimed himself “no admirer of the Semites” as early as 1894.⁹⁵ In 1921, he attributed “the ruin … of our German being” to “appalling cronyism in Berlin”—behind which he suspected Jewish intrigues.⁹⁶ Von Dyck’s personal dislike of Fritz Haber, a colleague in the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft who was that association’s vice president and a “non-Aryan,” was well known. When Haber resigned⁹⁷, von Dyck remarked expressly in a latter dated May 14, 1933, “that I never considered the election …, especially of Haber, to be good.”⁹⁸

The state of hearts and minds among the presiding committee’s membership is clear enough from this overview to allow the conclusion to be drawn that it was unlikely, in this context, that the “Einstein case” could have taken a different turn. On any committee, a tiny handful of people who were “zealotss, possessed, or obsessed” sufficed to make “any opposition impossible.”⁹⁹ Those who were not among their number might try to tell themselves that it was “more sensible” to sacrifice an individual member than to expose the entire academy to political attacks. The exact distribution of responsibility is probably beyond clarification at this stage. Eduard Schwartz was ultimately the person who formally acknowledged Einstein’s departure. It is one of the ironies of history that he, of all people, is himself now counted among the scholars “driven out” by the Nazi regime because he was frozen out of the academy—likely mainly for age-related reasons.¹⁰⁰

III

Apart from the Einstein case, the page that Leidinger prepared for the meeting of the presiding committee on May 3 also contains two further lines of text that may initially seem puzzling. One reads “Angelegenheit der Betriebszelle” [the active cell affair] and the other contains only the name “Willstätter.” This cryptic note can be decoded by drawing on Leidinger’s diary entries. Among other notes committed to his diary on May 3, he remarks: “The active cell at the academy: The busybody v. Frauenholz paid a visit to Willstätter and tried to persuade him to resign as section secretary. How outrageous! It is not clear to me whether Schwartz was behind this as well. The president, who has just returned from vacation, knew nothing about it, and now he has to smooth out the matter and explain that it was based on a mistake.”¹⁰¹

The events described here had previously been completely hidden from historical research. No one had even registered that Willstätter’s name had simply disappeared from the list of secretaries in the yearbook issued by the academy in 1933.¹⁰² This is odd for reasons of timing alone, since the terms of office of section secretaries lasted for two years and it is known that Willstätter became a section secretary in 1930.¹⁰³ Heinrich Wieland’s belated obituary of Willstätter, who died in 1942, had, moreover, made an admittedly oblique reference to Willstätter already having had “to bid farewell to our body eight years before his death [i.e., in 1933] as a victim of political vandals.”¹⁰⁴

Willstätter was one of the academy’s most prominent members. In 1915, he had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his groundbreaking research into the chemical structure of chlorophyll, among other topics. That same year, he was appointed to a professorship at the University of Munich, and his corresponding membership (1914) in the academy was subsequently upgraded to a full membership (1916). In 1930, the natural sciences section elected him as their secretary, which made him a member of the presiding committee—together with the remaining section secretaries, the president, and the previous president.

The attack on Willstätter that Leidinger reports is confirmed and commented on in detail in another hitherto unnoticed document relating to academy history, the memoirs of the “busybody” Eugen von Frauenholz, who was the academy’s syndic at the time. Frauenholz had been a career officer in the Bavarian army until 1918. He had then undertaken university studies, obtained a doctorate and later a habilitation degree, and established himself as a military historian. From 1928 onwards, he acted as the academy’s syndic, which essentially meant that he was its managing director—the role did not necessarily demand extensive legal knowledge. He was ousted together with President Karl Alexander von Müller¹⁰⁵ in 1944 and took early retirement.¹⁰⁶

During the collapse of the Third Reich in 1945, Frauenholz wrote his memoirs for later publication. They are dated from April 17 to July 20 and have remained unprinted and largely unread among the papers of his literary estate to this day.¹⁰⁷ In lengthy passages on the “Jewish question,” Frauenholz emphasized his lack of understanding for the actions taken against the Jewish population; he claimed to have made no effort to hide, as syndic, “my understanding that every Jew should be treated as he deserves, and that Jews who were important scholars could not be excluded.” He personally had “not had any bad experiences with Jews.”¹⁰⁸ He then begins to describe the “Willstätter case”:

Now, I did have one experience that went in the other direction. Privy Councillor Willstätter, the well-known physicist, was a Jew and a department secretary at the academy. When a directive came out forbidding the appointment of Jews to offices, I considered it my duty as syndic to go to Privy Councillor Willstätter, without saying anything to anyone, and to bring this decree to his attention in a private conversation, so that he could resign from his office himself if he wished to do so. I expressly told him that I was coming without having informed the president in advance; after Goebel’s death, the acting president at the time was once again Privy Councillor Schwartz, who was no friend of the Jews. I told Willstätter that I wanted to bring the directive to his attention in confidence so that he could decide for himself whether he wanted to leave office voluntarily or to await further developments. What he wanted to do was for him to decide; I just wanted to spare him and the academy from unpleasantness, and nobody at the academy knew I had visited him. His behavior was not quite correct, because he raised the matter at the next meeting of the presiding committee, not only referring to me—which I had never forbidden him—but also stating his conviction that Privy Councillor Schwartz was behind my visit. I had given him assurances to the contrary.¹⁰⁹

Frauenholz wrote his account in Matrei in East Tyrol from memory, without access to documents, and some details are blurred or inaccurate. Willstätter was not a physicist, of course, and Karl von Goebel, who had died after a short period in office, had not been succeeded as president by Eduard Schwartz but by Leopold Wenger, whose tenure in the role also only lasted for a few years. But this text by Frauenholz, an independent second witness, fully supports Leidinger’s account. Its emergence in the face of the German defeat naturally implies that readers must exercise caution; self-apologetic tendencies should be expected. But the credibility of this passage is supported by the fact that Frauenholz had no incentive to protect Schwartz, who had already died, and to whom he could easily have shifted responsibility here.

Perhaps the honorable intentions Frauenholz claimed can even be credited to him, a man who cultivated chivalrous and courtly ideals and who had ridden into battle as an old-school heavy cavalryman with a lance and a saber. He was close to the former Bavarian royal family and a convert to Catholicism, and he had served as a chamberlain to Prince Ludwig Ferdinand since 1923. He clearly had no ideological affinity with National Socialism; at the University of Munich, where he lectured on military history, he was considered incapable of “representing the military sciences in the spirit of National Socialism.”¹¹⁰ He did not join the Nazi Party until 1941.¹¹¹

The “directive” that Frauenholz was reacting to was presumably the “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” passed on April 7, 1933. Its aim was to remove all “non-Aryans” from public service positions, and a rapid series of increasingly draconian regulations followed that targeted Jews for discrimination in every area of public life. The academy soon began dismissing Jewish members of its project staff.¹¹² A third such decree, issued on May 6, 1933, expressly mandated the dismissal of university professors and honorary public servants who had already been discharged from their duties.¹¹³

Remarkably enough, there seems to have been little official pressure exerted on Jewish instructors at the University of Munich at this point in time; only Hans Nawiasky—who had long been a persona non grata on account of his politics and his alleged relativization of the “shameful peace” of Versailles—had already been suspended from his teaching duties on April 20.¹¹⁴ Frauenholz was thus getting ahead of events to some extent with his intervention in the academy. To deduce just how far ahead he was, however, one would need to know when exactly he visited Willstätter, which is unclear. All that is definitively known is that Willstätter sent a letter to Friedrich Schmitt-Ott, the president of the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft, on April 25 to tender his resignation from his position on the expert committee for chemistry on the grounds that his recent election “did not yet take changed circumstances and opinions into account.”¹¹⁵ It is possible that Willstätter became aware of this sea change via Einstein’s letter of resignation if it arrived in Munich on that day. Alternatively, Frauenholz’s visit could also explain this step on his part. In this latter case, Frauenholz would have launched his plan to “Aryanize” the academy’s presiding committee before the Bavarian state parliament passed its own Enabling Act—in its final session in the Third Reich, on April 28/29, 1933—that made it clear that the “national revolution” had also prevailed in Bavaria.¹¹⁶

Whatever the exact sequence of events, it had become foreseeable by this point that “non-Aryans” would not be able to retain prominent positions in public life. The problem that Frauenholz probably foresaw for the academy was that its statutes did not supply any mechanism for excluding a member of its presiding committee. The only options for removing Willstätter from the committee were to expel him from the academy entirely, which had proven somewhat difficult even in Einstein’s case, or to nudge him into leaving voluntarily. Academic etiquette, which was maintained even during the drastic purges of 1938, demanded asking colleagues to resign from their offices rather than dismissing them outright.

As we have seen, Leidinger had no empathy at all with oppressed Jewish fellow citizens and colleagues, and his perception of this incident as “outrageous” was clearly not because of its antisemitic tendencies. He generally disliked the “noble Mr. v. Frauenholz”¹¹⁷ and regarded his move as a form of interference with the rights of academy members. This explains why he referred to him in his notes as a Betriebszelle—a word that should not be understood in its Nazi meaning (Betriebszellen-Organization as a workers’ organization) but as an allusion to Betriebsamkeit (busy activity).

Willstätter could have been protected by his unimpeachable patriotism: He was a signatory of the infamous “Manifesto of the Ninety-Three” in 1914, a document that sought to justify German military operations in Belgium during the First World War, and he had not distanced himself from it later, as some other signatories had.¹¹⁸ He had been awarded the Iron Cross in 1917 for his scientific research on poison gas defense. This distinguished him sharply from Einstein, an avowed pacifist. In addition, Willstätter was—also in contrast to Einstein—highly decorated in Bavaria; in 1925, he had (together with Eduard Schwartz!) been among the first four researchers admitted to the noble Maximilian Order for Science and Art after the end of the monarchy.¹¹⁹

Nevertheless, Willstätter does not appear to have received any backing from the presiding committee at its meeting on May 3, 1933. This is the conclusion that must be drawn from his reaction to the meeting, which Leidinger recorded on May 15, 1933: “Meeting of presiding committee in the academy presidium: Willstätter sends a letter with his resignation as section secretary and from all academy commissions.”¹²⁰

Willstätter had not followed the advice given him by his friend Fritz Haber on April 1 to avoid vacating any position voluntarily and await “extreme duress.”¹²¹ On the other hand, Haber himself had not stuck to his own advice, either: He resigned from his position as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry in Berlin-Dahlem on April 30¹²² after having been forced to dismiss most of his staff—including Willstätter’s daughter Ida, who had worked for him as a research assistant—under the provisions of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service.¹²³

Now, following Haber’s example, Willstätter opted for what he called “privatization.” This step must have been all the more bitter as Willstätter had already yielded to antisemitic pressure and resigned from his university professorship in 1925.¹²⁴ He did not expressly mention the incident at the academy in his memoirs, but he did include “academy meetings with my boring minutes” among the things that had ceased but that he did not miss “after Hitler’s seizure of power.”¹²⁵

Willstätter was succeeded as section secretary by the physicist Jonathan Zenneck,¹²⁶ who proved willing to acquiesce to the demands of the new regime and expressly defended discrimination against Jewish researchers in interactions with foreign colleagues.¹²⁷ Zenneck concluded “Science and the Volk,” his speech marking the 178th anniversary of the academy’s founding, delivered on June 16, 1937, with a bold proclamation that “science is service to the people.”¹²⁸ He did not mention that Jews in Germany were no longer part of science or of the people—because it was already common knowledge anyway.

Although Zenneck and his colleagues at the academy did have to deal with accusations leveled at them in 1940 by Otto Hörner, the lecturer’s leader at the Gau level, that they were trying to “preserve the Bayer. Academy as the last island of a reactionary anti-National Socialist republic of scholars,”¹²⁹ this reproach essentially only referred to efforts on the part of the academy to preserve its rights to self-administration and to choose its own members. It had long abandoned its innermost raison d’être —from as early as 1933—by depriving individual members of this republic of their citizenship without scholarly justification or ousting them from their academic roles. A large question mark must be attached to the view that the academies of sciences and humanities were only gleichgeschaltet (synchronized with Nazism) at a comparatively late stage.¹³⁰ As the events of spring 1933 show, the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, at least, did not need any “Gleichschaltung” to be aligned with antisemitism. A large proportion of its members, and especially of its most influential members, had long been marching in step with the new holders of power. This explained the conclusion that Richard Willstätter had already been forced to draw at the time: “From the very beginning, the universities and learned societies were among the first exponents of this weakness.”¹³¹

IV

In mid-October 1938, the Prussian Academy of Sciences and Humanities complied with a request from the minister of science, education, and national culture, Bernhard Rust, and asked its three Jewish full members to resign, which they did.¹³² In the aftermath of the November pogroms of November 9–10, 1938, the Bavarian Academy—by then under its new president, Karl Alexander von Müller, who had close ties to the regime¹³³—also pressured the Jews among its full members into leaving. On November 14, Richard Willstätter resigned from the academy together with the mathematicians Alfred Pringsheim and Heinrich Liebmann and the Indologist Lucian Scherman.¹³⁴ Willstätter managed to emigrate to Switzerland at the beginning of March 1939 and find safe exile in Muralto near Locarno. On July 13, 1939, his name was also removed from the list of members of the Prussian Academy, to which he had belonged since 1914.¹³⁵

After the demise of the Nazi regime, Willstätter could not be readmitted to the academy—he had died in 1942—and Einstein, now a permanent resident of the USA, had no interest in being readmitted. Quite soon after the American military government permitted the academy’s reestablishment on July 25, 1946, Arnold Sommerfeld was assigned the task of seeking to persuade Einstein to withdraw his resignation. Sommerfeld had always had a good relationship with Einstein.¹³⁶ He was familiar with the letter the academy had sent to Einstein in April 1933 from Einstein’s publication of it in 1934, and he apologized on the academy’s behalf for the “highly inappropriate” request:

There was nothing we could do after the madness had suddenly broken out. … But now the madness is over, and the academy would like to send you its proceedings again. … A refusal on your part would be embarrassing for us, of course. I ask you to bury the hatchet and accept membership of the academy again.¹³⁷

Einstein’s reaction on December 14, 1946, was friendly but firm:

Since the Germans murdered my Jewish brethern in Europe, I want nothing more to do with Germans, not even with a relatively harmless academy. It is different with the few individuals who remained steadfast within the realms of what possibilities there were. I heard with pleasure that you were among their number.¹³⁸

Einstein’s stance influenced the academy’s approach to selecting new members in the early post-war years. It had to be acknowledged that the election of a scholar to the academy was now—in contrast to the time before 1933—not primarily an honor for the scholar, but rather for the academy, and one which not every scholar was necessarily eager to grant. This was expressly stated in the discussions that took place in the run-up to the the membership elections of 1951. In the mathematics and natural sciences section, ten possible candidates for nominations were discussed, one of whom was the mathematician Hermann Weyl (1885–1955). Weyl’s candidacy was being advanced chiefly by Heinrich Tietze, a section secretary of long standing.¹³⁹ Weyl had emigrated in 1933 and found employment alongside Einstein at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton.¹⁴⁰ Another mathematician in the section, Oskar Perron (1880–1975), who had been a member of the academy since 1924, was concerned that this context meant that electing Weyl could cause the academy to suffer the embarrassing fate of being rejected by a candidate again, as had already happened with Einstein. In a short memorandum addressed “To the mathematicians of the Bavarian Academy expected to attend the election session,” Perron explained his reservations about the election of foreign scholars and especially those who had been forced to emigrate from Germany. He also subjected the academy’s behavior during the Nazi years to a remarkably self-critical assessment. This is all the more notable given that Perron himself had proven to be a steadfast and courageous opponent of Nazism.¹⁴¹ His comments on the academy and the “Einstein case” speak for themselves and represent an appropriate conclusion to this study:

And now about the emigrants! To them, especially, we cannot say that we are an illustrious society. Because we deserted them all. We should not inflate our importance in front of them. We should crawl into the furthest mousehole and be ashamed. Personally, I am ashamed of myself too, and that’s the crux of my stance here. That is why I am in favor of strict reticence and modest flourishing in obscurity. For what did we, what did the academy do to save the persecuted scholars in the Third Reich? Nothing. We reach for the convenient excuse that we didn’t have the power, that we were not able. In truth, however, we did not try in earnest at all. Each of us simply shied away from the risk, perhaps because of the conflicting motive of being worried about our families. We were not heroes. But the emigrants had no choice, for the most part; they and their families had to bear the risk and endure endless suffering. That is why they are a good step above us—we who silently let everything happen—in the estimation of the world. Hermann Weyl is certainly among those who are prepared to forget (and not just because he coped relatively well personally, as the bright star he is, but because of his noble character), and he showed us when he was here that he is well-disposed toward us all. But I do not want to inflate my importance in front of him, and I’m afraid that his neighbor and colleague Einstein will say something to him like: “Well, well—the Bavarian Academy! You needn’t flatter yourself too much I offer my condolences. By the way, the gentlemen wanted to have me as well, but I gave them a smack.”¹⁴²

Appendix

1

Inquiry from President Leopold Wenger to the Prussian Academy of Sciences, April 4, 1933 (copy),
PAW (1812–1945) (Prussian Academy of Sciences 1812–1945), II–III 57, p. 29, Archive of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Berlin.

Der Ausschuß unserer Akademie ist in die Behandlung des Falles Einstein darum einzutreten genötigt, weil Einstein korrespondierendes Mitglied unserer Akademie ist. Aus der im Namen der Akademie abgegebenen Erklärung des Herrn Sekretars Heymann ersehen wir, daß Herr Einstein aus Ihrer Akademie ausgetreten ist. Wir bitten, uns aus den in Ihrer Erklärung erwähnten Schriftstücken eine Abschrift der Austrittserklärung Einsteins zugehen zu lassen und ebenso, da dies für die Behandlung der Angelegenheit durch unsere Akademie nötig ist, wenn möglich eine Abschrift des Schreibens, in welchem Sie von Herrn Einstein Rechenschaft gefordert haben. Falls noch weitere Schritte von Ihnen in der Angelegenheit erfolgen sollten, so wären wir für jeweilige Mitteilungen sehr dankbar, sowie auch wir von unseren Beschlüssen Sie in Kenntnis setzen werden.
Für eine möglichste Beschleunigung wären wir bei der Dringlichkeit der Angelegenheit sehr dankbar.
Schließlich bitten wir um Mitteilung eines Weges, auf dem wir Herrn Einstein direkt ein Schreiben zukommen lassen können.
Hochachtungsvollst
L. Wenger
Präsident.

2

Letter from the Presiding Committee of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities to Albert Einstein, Munich, April 8, 1933.
Published in Albert Einstein, Mein Weltbild, Amsterdam 1934, p. 126–127; handwritten manuscript in Leidingeriana Iv.b.3.c, BSB.

Euer Hochwohlgeboren!
Sie haben in Ihrem Schreiben an die Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften Ihren Austritt mit den¹⁴³ in Deutschland gegenwärtig herrschenden Zuständen motiviert. Die Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, die Sie vor einigen Jahren zum korrespondierenden Mitglied gewählt hat, ist ebenfalls eine deutsche Akademie, mit der Preußischen und den sonstigen¹⁴⁴ Akademien in enger Solidarität verbunden¹⁴⁵, sodaß Ihre Trennung von der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften¹⁴⁶ nicht ohne Einfluß auf Ihre Beziehungen¹⁴⁷ zu unserer Akademie bleiben kann.
Wir müssen¹⁴⁸ Sie daher fragen, wie Sie nach dem, was zwischen Ihnen und der Preußischen Akademie vorgegangen ist, das Verhältnis zu unserer Akademie auffassen.
¹⁴⁹Das Präsidium der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.

3

Decision of exclusion made by the Presiding Committee of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, April 8, 1933,
manuscript, Leidingeriana IV.b.3.c., BSB.

Beschluß des Ausschusses der B. Akademie der Wissenschaften 8.IV.33:
Die Umstände, unter denen Herr Einstein seinen Austritt aus der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften erklärt hat, veranlassen den Ausschuß, an die 2. Abteilung die Frage zu richten, ob sie nicht im Hinblick auf §11, Abs. 3 der Satzungen den Ausschluß Einsteins beantragen will.

4

Albert Einstein’s letter of resignation, April 21, 1933,
Le Coq-sur-Mer, typed copy in Leidingeriana IV.b.3.c, BSB; published in Albert Einstein, Mein Weltbild, Amsterdam 1934, 127–128.

Ich habe den Rücktritt von meiner Stellung an der Preussischen Akademie damit begründet, daß ich unter den obwaltenden Umständen weder deutscher Bürger sein, noch in einer Art Abhängigkeitsverhältnis zu dem preußischen Unterrichtsministerium stehen wolle.
Diese Gründe würden an und für sich eine Lösung meiner Beziehungen zur Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften nicht bedingen. Wenn ich trotzdem wünsche, daß mein Name aus der Liste der Mitglieder gestrichen wird, so hat dies einen anderen Grund.
Akademien haben in erster Linie die Aufgabe, das wissenschaftliche Leben eines Landes zu fördern und zu schützen. Die deutschen gelehrten Gesellschaften haben aber – soviel mir bekannt ist – es schweigend hingenommen, daß ein nicht unerheblicher Teil der deutschen Gelehrten und Studenten, sowie der auf Grund einer akademischen Ausbildung Berufstätigen, ihrer Arbeitsmöglichkeiten und ihres Lebensunterhaltes in Deutschland beraubt wird. Einer Gesellschaft, die – wenn auch unter äusserem Drucke – eine solche Haltung einnimmt, will ich nicht angehören.
Mit vorzüglicher Hochachtung
gez.
A. Einstein

5

Message from Eduard Schwartz to the section secretaries, April 27, 1933,
copy for Leidinger as secretary of the history section, Leidingeriana Iv.b.3.c, BSB.

An die Herren amtierenden Klassensekretäre.
Ich beehre mich mitzuteilen, daß Herr Professor Dr. Einstein seinen Austritt aus der Zahl der korrespondierenden Mitglieder unserer Akademie erklärt hat.
E. Schwarz
Frauenholz

Notes

Michael Grüttner and Sven Kinas, “Die Vertreibung von Wissenschaftlern aus den deutschen Universitäten 1933–1945,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 55 (2007): 123–186, here 151. For an overview of the area, see most recently Reinhard Rürup, “Die Vertreibung von Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftlern aus den deutschen Universitäten und anderen wissenschaftlichen Einrichtungen seit dem Beginn der NS-Herrschaft,” in Forschen im “Zeitalter der Extreme”: Akademien und andere Forschungseinrichtungen im Nationalsozialismus und nach 1945, ed. Dirk Schumann (Göttingen 2020), 43–59.↩︎

Michael Grüttner and Sven Kinas, “Vertreibung” (as in fn. 1), 147–148; now also available in an updated version as Michael Grüttner, “The Expulsion of Academic Teaching Staff from German Universities. 1933–45,” Journal of Contemporary History 57 (2022): 513–533.↩︎

See especially Sven Kinas, Akademischer Exodus: Die Vertreibung von Hochschullehrern aus den Universitäten Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, Greifswald und Halle 1933–1945 (Heidelberg 2018).↩︎

Reinhard Rürup, Schicksale und Karrieren: Gedenkbuch für die von den Nationalsozialisten aus der Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft vertriebenen Forscherinnen und Forscher (Göttingen 2008); Michael Schüring, Minervas verstoßene Kinder: Vertriebene Wissenschaftler und die Vergangenheitspolitik der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (Göttingen 2006).↩︎

Karin Orth, Vertreibung aus dem Wissenschaftssystem: Gedenkbuch für die im Nationalsozialismus vertriebenen Gremienmitglieder der DFG (Stuttgart 2018).↩︎

Sybille Gerstengarbe, “Die Leopoldina im ‘Dritten Reich,’” in: Sybille Gerstengarbe, Jens Thiel, and Rüdiger vom Bruch, Die Leopoldina: Die Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher zwischen Kaiserreich und früher DDR (Berlin 2016), 231–427, here 389–396, in connection with the list of names, 530–540.↩︎

Gerstengarbe, “Leopoldina” (as in fn. 6), 396–399; Sybille Gerstengarbe, “Die Leopoldina und ihre jüdischen Mitglieder,” in Wissenschaftsakademien im Zeitalter der Ideologien: Politische Umbrüche—wissenschaftliche Herausforderungen—institutionelle Anpassungen, ed. Rüdiger vom Bruch et al. (Stuttgart 2014), 419–446; Peter T. Walther, “‘Arisierung,’ Nazifizierung und Militarisierung: Die Akademie im ‘Dritten Reich,’” in Die Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin 1914–1945, ed. Wolfram Fischer (Berlin 2000), 87–118, here 94; Gerald Wiemers, “Die Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig und ihre jüdischen Mitglieder in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts,” in Rüdiger vom Bruch, Wissenschaftsakademien, 447–457; Die im Dritten Reich entrechteten und vertriebenen Mitglieder der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften: Biographische Porträts (Heidelberg 2009); Désirée Schauz, Umkämpfte Identitäten: Die Göttinger Akademie der Wissenschaften und ihre Mitglieder 1914–1965 (Göttingen 2022), 209–225.↩︎

Frank-Rutger Hausmann, “Akademie und Totalitarismus im 20. Jahrhundert,” in: Das Europa der Akademien, ed. Volker Sellin (Heidelberg 2010), 171–214, here 193.↩︎

Mitchell G. Ash, “Außeruniversitäre Forschung im Nationalsozialismus—Gedanken zu einer Entwicklungsgeschichte” in Schumann, Akademien (as in fn. 1), 17–41, here 29.↩︎

Laetitia Boehm, “Langzeitvorhaben als Akademieaufgabe: Geschichtswissenschaft in Berlin und in München,” in Die Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin 1914–1945, ed. Wolfram Fischer (Berlin 2000), 391–434, here 416.↩︎

Christa Kirsten and Hans-Jürgen Treder, eds., Albert Einstein in Berlin 1913–1933, (Berlin 1979), vol. 1, Darstellung und Dokumente [description and documents], 69–74, 243–275; vol. 2, Spezialinventar [special inventory], 190–205, 285–286.↩︎

Albert Einstein, Mein Weltbild (Amsterdam 1934), 126–128.↩︎

Monika Stoermer, “Die Akademie im Dritten Reich,” in Wendepunkte: Studien zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, ed. Friedrich Wilhelm Graf (Regensburg 2013), 287–333, here 299–300; Dieter Nörr, “Leopold Wenger (1874–1953). Rechtshistoriker, Altertumswissenschaftler und Akademiepräsident 1932–1935,” in Denker, Forscher und Entdecker: Eine Geschichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften in historischen Portraits, ed. Dietmar Willoweit (Munich 2009), 269–279, here 273–275; Monika Stoermer, “Albert Einstein und die Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften,” Akademie aktuell 1 (2005): 4–7.↩︎

Walther Meissner, “Die schwierige Lage der Akademie unter der nationalsozialistischen Regierung und der Wiederaufbau in den Jahren nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg,” in Geist und Gestalt: Biographische Beiträge zur Geschichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften vornehmlich im zweiten Jahrhundert ihres Bestehens, vol. 1, Geisteswissenschaften (Munich 1959), 35–49, here 38. On Meißner himself, see Brigitte Röthlein, “Walther Meißner (1882–1974), Pionier der Tieftemperaturforschung und Präsident des Wiederaufbaus,” in Willoweit, Denker (as in fn. 13), 323–336.↩︎

Jahrbuch der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (JbBAdW), 1944/48, 122–125 (Walter Goetz); Neue Deutsche Biographie, vol. 14 (Berlin 1985), 137–138 (Sigrid von Moisy); “Wilhelm Volkert, Die Kommission für bayerische Landesgeschichte bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften,” in Im Dienst der bayerischen Geschichte, ed. Wilhelm Volkert and Walter Ziegler (Munich 1998), 21–103.↩︎

Fridolin Dressler, “Die Bayerische Staatsbibliothek im Dritten Reich,” in Beiträge zur Geschichte der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek, ed. Rupert Hacker (Munich 2000), 285–308, here 288.↩︎

This custodial history follows Leidingeriana VIII a, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich (BSB), and P. Rufiana, Korrespondenz mit Albert Hartmann, Georg Leidinger und Max Spindler [Correspondence with Albert Hartmann, Georg Leidinger, and Max Spindler], BSB.↩︎

Leidingeriana Iv.b.3.c, BSB.↩︎

Leidingeriana VIII b, Albert Hartmann to General Director Striedl, draft memorandum, undated, BSB. Hans Striedl was general director of the Bavarian State Libraries from 1967–1972.↩︎

Dressler, “Staatsbibliothek” (as in fn. 16), 288.↩︎

Leidingeriana III.e 1–29, BSB.↩︎

Cf. Gerhard Hölzle, “Die Monarchie, die Revolution, die Demokratie: Dr. Georg Leidingers Welt im Umbruch,” Jahrbuch für Buch- und Bibliotheksgeschichte 4 (2019): 107–134; Dressler, “Staatsbibliothek” (as in fn. 16), 288.↩︎

Leidingeriana VIII b, BSB.↩︎

Albrecht Fölsing, Albert Einstein: Eine Biographie (Frankfurt am Main 1995), 743–744. Much the same ground is also covered in Hubert Goenner, Einstein in Berlin: 1914–1933 (Munich 2005), 334–338.↩︎

Albert Einstein in Berlin (as in fn. 11), vol. 1, no. 164.↩︎

Albert Einstein in Berlin, vol. 1, no. 169.↩︎

Albert Einstein in Berlin, vol. 1, no. 173.↩︎

Albert Einstein in Berlin, vol. 2, no. A 805.↩︎

Hannah Ahlheim, Deutsche, kauft nicht bei Juden!: Antisemitismus und politischer Boykott in Deutschland 1924 bis 1935 (Göttingen 2011), 241–262.↩︎

“100.000 demonstrieren auf dem Königsplatz gegen die jüdische Greuelhetze” [100,000 protest against Jewish atrocity propaganda at demonstration in Munich’s Königsplatz Square], Völkischer Beobachter (Munich), April 1/2, 1933.↩︎

Völkischer Beobachter (Munich), April 3, 1933.↩︎

Born 1874 in Obervellach, Carinthia, died there 1953; academy member from 1912 on, secretary of the history section 1922–1926 and 1928–1932, president 1932–1935; obituary (by Artur Steinwenter) in JbBAdW 1955, 157–162; Nörr, Leopold Wenger (as in fn. 13); Artur Steinwenter, “Leopold Wenger und die Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften,” in Gedächtnis des 50. Todesjahres Leopold Wengers, ed. Gerhardt Thür (Vienna 2006), 9–15.↩︎

Born 1858 in Kiel, died 1940 in Munich; academy member from 1919, secretary of the philosophy and philology section and later the philosophy and history section 1920–1927 and 1934–1940, president 1927–1930; obituary in Albert Rehm, “Eduard Schwartz’ wissenschaftliches Lebenswerk,” in Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Abteilung [Proceedings of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Philosophical-Historical Section], issue 4, 1942; see also Neue Deutsche Biographie, vol. 23, 2007, 797–799 (Wolfhart Unte); Orth, Gedenkbuch (as in fn. 5), 73–74.↩︎

Born 1858 in Bonn, died 1936 in Munich; corresponding member of the academy from 1903, ordinary member from 1908, secretary of the philosophy and philology section 1927–1934; obituary in JbBAdW 1936/37, 24–28 (Ernst Buschor).↩︎

Born 1856 in Munich, died there 1934; extraordinary academy member from 1890, ordinary member from 1892, secretary of the mathematics and science section 1924–1934; obituary in JbBAdW 1934/35, 57–62 (Georg Faber); see also, Ulf Hashagen, Walther von Dyck (1856–1934): Mathematik, Technik und Wissenschaftsorganisation an der TH München (Stuttgart 2003).↩︎

Born 1872 in Karlsruhe, died 1942 in Muralto, Tessin; corresponding academy member from 1914, ordinary member from 1916, secretary of the mathematics and science section 1930–1933; obituary in JbBAdW 1944–48, 194–198 (Heinrich Wieland); cf. Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. 14, 1976, 411–412 (Joseph S. Fruton); and as a substitute for the biography of Richard Willstätter that remains a desideratum, his memoirs Aus meinem Leben: Von Arbeit, Muße und Freunden (Weinheim 1949).↩︎

Walter Ziegler, “Bayern im NS-Staat 1933 bis 1945,” in Handbuch der bayerischen Geschichte, ed. Alois Schmid, vol. 4/1, 2nd ed. (Munich 2003), 499–634, here 514–523.↩︎

Aufzeichnungen Leidingers für den Jahresbericht des Vorsitzenden in der Gesamtsitzung der Kommission für bayerische Landesgeschichte am 9. Mai 1934, [Leidinger’s notes for the annual chairperson’s report in the full sitting of the Commission for Bavarian History on May 9, 1934], undated, Leidingeriana IV.b.1.g, BSB.↩︎

Stoermer, “Akademie im Dritten Reich” (as in fn. 13), 290.↩︎

Appendix, Document 1. Wenger’s letter was read out in the exceptional plenary meeting of the Prussian Academy on April 6; Albert Einstein in Berlin (as in fn. 11), II, no. B 466.↩︎

Communication from Eduard Sthamer to the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, April 5, 1933, PAW (1812–1945) (Prussian Academy of Sciences 1812–1945), II-III-57, folio 29, Archive of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Berlin.↩︎

Leidingeriana III.e.20, BSB.↩︎

Leidingeriana III.e.19, BSB.↩︎

Leidingeriana IV.b.3.c, BSB.↩︎

Appendix, Document 2.↩︎

Appendix, Document 3.↩︎

Reinhard Heydenreuter, ed., Die Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften: Dokumente und Erläuterungen zur Verfassungsgeschichte (Regensburg 2011), 459.↩︎

The academy’s rules of procedure, as adopted on August 7, 1923, required a quorum of at least four committee members to be present for decisions to be made; Heydenreuter, 463.↩︎

Ulf Hashagen’s assumption that von Dyck could have sent Einstein the letter is moot for that reason alone; cf. Hashagen, Walther von Dyck (as in fn. 35), 655.↩︎

Communication from Eduard Sthamer to the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, April 8, 1933, PAW (1812–1945) (Prussian Academy of Sciences 1812–1945), II-III-57, folio 40, Archive of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Berlin.↩︎

For more on Eugen von Frauenholz, see note 106 below.↩︎

Communication from Eugen von Frauenholz to the Prussian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, April 18, 1933, PAW (1812–1945), II-III-57, folio 62, Archive of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. The transcribed copies (folio 63) were sent to Munich the next day.↩︎

The Bavarian Academy’s senior administrator (Kanzleivorsteher).↩︎

Leidingeriana III.e.20, BSB.↩︎

Fölsing, Albert Einstein (as in fn. 24), 750.↩︎

Appendix, Document 4.↩︎

Appendix, Document 5.↩︎

Leidingeriana III.e.20, BSB.↩︎

Leidingeriana IV.b.3.c, BSB. Leidinger had originally noted: “decided: [to write] nothing at all.”↩︎

Leidingeriana III.e.20, BSB.↩︎

Geschichte des Akademischen Gesangvereins München 1861–1911, Munich 1911.↩︎

Friedrich Kluge and Werner Rust, Deutsche Studentensprache, ed. Theodor Hölcke (Mannheim 1984/85), vol. 1, 331. The academy’s letter to Einstein was also couched in the provocative style of student fraternities.↩︎

Kluge and Rust, vol. 2, 184.↩︎

Cf. the above in connection with fn. 44.↩︎

Leidingeriana III.e.20, BSB.↩︎

Münchner Neueste Nachrichten, no. 68, March 10, 1933.↩︎

Leidingeriana III.e.20, BSB.↩︎

Leidingeriana III.e.15, November 10, 1928, BSB.↩︎

Hölzle, “Monarchie, Revolution, Demokratie” (as in fn. 22), 126–129; Nikola Becker, Bürgerliche Lebenswelt und Politik in München. Autobiographien über das Fin de Siècle, den Ersten Weltkrieg und die Weimarer Republik (Kallmünz 2014), 195–222.↩︎

Leidingeriana III.e.18, December 16, 1931, BSB.↩︎

Reinhard Weber, Das Schicksal der jüdischen Rechtsanwälte in Bayern nach 1933 (Munich 2006), 49 and 266. Weil perished in 1940 in the concentration camp Sachsenhausen. Hölzle, “Monarchie, Revolution, Demokratie” (as in fn. 22): 107–134.↩︎

Leidingeriana III.e.20, July 25, 1933, BSB.↩︎

Leidingeriana III.e.20, March 14, 1933.↩︎

Leidingeriana III.e.20, March 27, 1933.↩︎

Angelika Krebs and Barbara Hutzelmann, “Dr. Michael Samuel Strich,” in: www.muenchen.de/erinnerungszeichen. Strich was deported to Kaunas in 1941 and shot by SS men there.↩︎

Leidingeriana II, Strich, Michael, BSB.↩︎

Michael Strich, Das Kurhaus Bayern im Zeitalter Ludwigs XIV. und die europäischen Mächte (Schriftenreihe zur bayerischen Landesgeschichte 13/14), 2 vols. (Munich 1933).↩︎

Leidingeriana III.e.17, BSB.↩︎

Leidingeriana III.e.19, BSB.↩︎

Cf. Leidingeriana IV.b.3.g, folders 11–13, BSB.↩︎

Leidingeriana III.e.20, December 15, 1933, BSB.↩︎

Leidingeriana III.e.15, March 23, 1928, BSB.↩︎

Leidingeriana III.e.19, September 13, 1932, BSB.↩︎

Leidingeriana III.e.19, March 9, 1932.↩︎

Leidingeriana III.e.19, October 3, 1932.↩︎

Leidingeriana III.e.15, September 28, 1928, BSB.↩︎

Heydenreuter, Dokumente (as in fn. 47), 458.↩︎

See the description of Schwartz’s character in Karl Alexander von Müller, Im Wandel einer Welt: Erinnerungen 1919–1932 (Munich 1966), 252–254. Schwartz had, according to his son, been among the founders of the Deutschnationale Volkspartei (DNVP) in Bavaria, but he left the party in 1930; Gustav Schwartz, Alles ist Übergang zur Heimat hin: Mein Elternhaus, Eduard Schwartz und die Seinen in ihrer Zeit 1897–1941, (Wiesbaden 1964), 76, 78, and 84 (Copy in BSB, Schwartziana III).↩︎

From the summer semester of 1934 onwards, he was prohibited from teaching at the University of Munich. His reelection as academy president was prevented by the Ministry of Science, Education, and National Culture (Reichserziehungsministerium); cf. Maximilian Schreiber, “Altertumswissenschaften im Nationalsozialismus: Die Klassische Philologie an der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität,” in Die Universität München im Dritten Reich, ed. Elisabeth Kraus, vol. 1 (Munich 2006), 181–248, here 189–190, 205–206, 211–213; Matthias Berg, “‘Morgen beginnen die ersten Detonationen’: Karl Alexander von Müller und die Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften,” Zeitschrift für Bayerische Landesgeschichte 72 (2009): 643–681, here 654–655.↩︎

See below, together with fn. 109.↩︎

Leidingeriana III.e.17, November 8, 1930, BSB.↩︎

Schwartz, Alles ist Übergang (as in fn. 88), 91.↩︎

Leidingeriana III.e.20, March 14, 1933, BSB; see also Leidingeriana III.e.19, November 5, 1932, BSB.↩︎

“Wozu die übergroße Eile alles und alles auf einmal zu erneuern?” [Why the excessive hurry to change everything all at once?]; Walther von Dyck to Friedrich Schmidt-Ott, May 14, 1933, cited from Hashagen, Walther von Dyck (as in fn. 35), 657.↩︎

Walther von Dyck to Felix Klein, May 11, 1894, cited from Ulf Hashagen, Walther von Dyck, 638.↩︎

Walther von Dyck to Felix Klein, January 22, 1921, cited from Ulf Hashagen, Walther von Dyck, 636.↩︎

See below, together with fn. 122.↩︎

Walther von Dyck to Friedrich Schmidt-Ott, 14 May 1933, cited from Karin Orth, Die NS-Vertreibung der jüdischen Gelehrten: Die Politik der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft und die Reaktionen der Betroffenen (Göttingen 2016), 87.↩︎

Schwartz, Alles ist Übergang (as in fn. 88), 88.↩︎

Orth, Gedenkbuch (as in fn. 5), 67–76. Similar arguments had previously been made in the earlier discussion of Monika Stoermer’s “Die Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften im Dritten Reich,” in Die Elite der Nation im Dritten Reich—Das Verhältnis von Akademien und ihrem wissenschaftlichen Umfeld zum Nationalsozialismus, ed. Eduard Seidler, Christoph J. Scriba, and Wieland Berg (Halle an der Saale 1995), 89–109; for the discussion of Stoermer’s work, see 110–111.↩︎

Leidingeriana III.e.20, BSB.↩︎

JbBAdW 1932/33, 30; cf. in contrast JbBAdW 1931/32, 80. Willstätter is named in an account covering twenty-five chemists that does not look more closely at his specific case: Ute Deichmann, “The Expulsion of German-Jewish Chemists and Biochemists and their Correspondence with Colleagues in Germany after 1945: The Impossibility of Normalization?,” in Science in the Third Reich, ed. Margit Szöllösi-Janze (Oxford 2001), 243–280.↩︎

Ulrich Thürauf and Monika Stoermer, Gesamtverzeichnis der Mitglieder der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Geist und Gestalt, supplementary vol. 1) (Munich 1984), 7.↩︎

Heinrich Wieland, [obituary] (as in fn. 36), 194.↩︎

On von Müller’s fall from grace, cf. Matthias Berg, “Der Präsident als Führer? Karl Alexander von Müller, die Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Nationalsozialismus,” in Bruch, Wissenschaftsakademien (as in fn. 7), 313–372, here 330–331.↩︎

Born 1882 in Munich, died 1949 in Landshut; OP 19, 338, Kriegsarchiv (War Archive), Bavarian Main State Archive (BayHStA), Munich; see also Othmar Hackl, Die bayerische Kriegsakademie (1867–1914) (Munich 1989), 437–438; Hermann Rumschöttel, Das bayerische Offizierkorps 1866–1914 (Berlin 1973), 23–24; and the obituary in Zeitschrift für Bayerische Landesgeschichte 15, no. 2 (1949), 199–200 (Max Spindler).↩︎

BayHStA, Kriegsarchiv, Nachlass Eugen von Frauenholz no. 2, “Lebenserinnungen. II. Teil. von 1918 bis April 1945,” typescript, carbon copy. The first part of Frauenholz’s memoirs covers his childhood and his time in the military and is kept with another part of Frauenholz’s literary estate at the Bavarian State Archives in Landshut (Nachlässe und Nachlaßsplitter 77/78.).↩︎

Nachlass Eugen von Frauenholz No. 2, 56–58 and 86, Kriegsarchiv, BayHStA.↩︎

Nachlass Eugen von Frauenholz No. 2, 58.↩︎

Helmut Böhm, Von der Selbstverwaltung zum Führerprinzip: Die Universität München in den ersten Jahren des Dritten Reiches (1933–1936) (Berlin 1995), 236.↩︎

The civilian tribunal with jurisdiction over Frauenholz in the denazification process, Spruchkammer München VI, classified him as a Mitläufer (“follower”) on October 25, 1946, and imposed a relatively high fine of 2,000 Reichsmark, although it also acknowledged that the testimony of Munich historian Max Spindler had contributed substantially towards clearing Frauenholz of suspicion. It was recognized that he “had, as a man of intellect and culture, rejected National Socialism and especially the representatives of the system without question and regarded them with contempt … and had undoubtedly … resisted the system as much as it had been within his power to do so.” He was not classed as a “Mitläufer of National Socialism” but only as a “Mitläufer of militarism.” As a pure military historian, Frauenholz scarcely had any chance of escaping this reproach. But as a seriously disabled war veteran since the First World War, he was in any case covered by the Christmas amnesty granted on February 5, 1947. Spruchkammern, Karton 443, Frauenholz, Eugen von, State Archives Munich. Frauenholz required hospital care from April 26, 1947, and died of cancer on January 5, 1949.↩︎

Matthias Berg, “Nationalsozialistische Akademie oder Akademie im Nationalsozialismus? Die Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften und ihr Präsident Karl Alexander von Müller,” in Graf, Wendepunkte (as in fn. 13), 173–202, here 188.↩︎

Sigrun Mühl-Benninghaus, Das Beamtentum in der NS-Diktatur bis zum Ausbruch des Zweiten Weltkrieges: Zu Entstehung, Inhalt und Durchführung der einschlägigen Beamtengesetze (Düsseldorf 1996), 33–34.↩︎

Böhm, Selbstverwaltung (as in fn. 110), 110–121.↩︎

Orth, NS-Vertreibung (as in fn. 98), 85.↩︎

Ziegler, “Bayern im NS-Staat” (as in fn. 37), 522.↩︎

Leidingeriana III.e.20, November 20, 1933, BSB.↩︎

Cf. Jürgen von Ungern-Sternberg and Wolfgang von Ungern-Sternberg, Der Aufruf »An die Kulturwelt!« Das Manifest der 93 und die Anfänge der Kriegspropaganda im Ersten Weltkrieg, 2nd ed. (Frankfurt am Main 2013), 212. Willstätter’s name appears under the manifesto.↩︎

Hans Körner, Der Bayerische Maximilians-Orden für Wissenschaft und Kunst (Munich 2001), 51, 96.↩︎

Leidingeriana III.e.20, BSB.↩︎

Fritz Haber to Richard Willstätter, April 1, 1933, Berlin-Dahlem, in Fritz Haber: Briefe an Richard Willstätter 1910–1934, ed. Petra Werner and Angelika Irmscher (Berlin 1995), 127–128.↩︎

Margit Szöllösi-Janze, Fritz Haber 1868–1934: Eine Biographie (Munich 1998), 644–657.↩︎

Rürup, Schicksale und Karrieren (as in fn. 4), 365–367; Schüring, Minervas verstoßene Kinder (as in fn. 4), 102.↩︎

Freddy Litten, Der Rücktritt Richard Willstätters 1924/25 und seine Hintergründe: Ein Münchener Universitätsskandal? (Munich 1999).↩︎

Willstätter, Aus meinem Leben (as in fn. 36), 367.↩︎

Born 1871 in Ruppertshofen, Württemberg, died 1959 in Althegnenberg; extraordinary academy member from 1917, ordinary member from 1920, secretary of the mathematics and science section 1933–1941; obituary in JbBAdW 1959, 172–176 (Walther Gerlach); Stefan L. Wolff, “Jonathan Zenneck als Vorstand des Deutschen Museums,” in Das Deutsche Museum in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus: Eine Bestandsaufnahme, ed. Stefan L. Wolff and Elisabeth Vaupel (Göttingen 2010), 78–126; Zenneck’s own memoirs (Erinnerungen eines Physikers, Munich 1961) break off in 1926.↩︎

Wolff, “Jonathan Zenneck” (as in fn. 126), 83.↩︎

Separate publication by the press of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities (Munich 1938), 23. Cf. “Georg Schmucker, Jonathan Zenneck 1871–1959. Eine technisch-wissenschaftliche Biographie,” doctoral dissertation (Stuttgart 1999), 437.↩︎

Cited from Stoermer, “Akademie im Dritten Reich” (as in fn. 13), 332.↩︎

Ash, “Außeruniversitäre Forschung” (as in fn. 9), 29.↩︎

Willstätter, Aus meinem Leben (as in fn. 36), 397 (emphasis added).↩︎

Walther, “‘Arisierung,’ Nazifizierung und Militarisierung” (as in fn. 7), 94.↩︎

Matthias Berg, Karl Alexander von Müller: Historiker für den Nationalsozialismus (Göttingen 2014).↩︎

Stoermer, “Akademie im Dritten Reich” (as in fn. 13), 300–307; Berg, Der Präsident als Führer? (as in fn. 105), 324–325.↩︎

Walther, “‘Arisierung,’ Nazifizierung und Militarisierung” (as in fn. 7), 96. In 1938/39, he was also expelled from the academy in Göttingen, to which he had belonged as a corresponding member since 1910; Schauz, Umkämpfte Identitäten (as in fn. 7), 224.↩︎

Michael Eckert, Arnold Sommerfeld: Atomphysiker und Kulturbote 1868–1951 (Göttingen 2013).↩︎

Arnold Sommerfeld to Albert Einstein, October 27, 1946, in Arnold Sommerfeld: Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel, ed. Michael Eckert and Karl Märker, vol. 2 (Berlin 2004), 600.↩︎

Sommerfeld to Einstein, October 27, 1946, 602–603.↩︎

Sitzungsprotokolle der Mathematisch-naturwissenschaftlichen Klasse [Proceedings of the Mathematical-Scientific Section], December 15, 1950, January 12, 1951, and February 2, 1951. Archive of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities.)↩︎

Günther Frei and Urs Stammbach, Hermann Weyl und die Mathematik an der ETH Zürich, 1913–1930 (Basel 1992), 164–166.↩︎

Freddy Litten, “Oskar Perron—Ein Beispiel für Zivilcourage im Dritten Reich,” Frankenthal einst und jetzt 1/2 (1995): 26–28; Neue Deutsche Biographie, vol. 20, 2001, 196–197 (Freddy Litten); Ulf Hashagen, Ein ausländischer Mathematiker im NS-Staat: Constantin Carathéodory als Professor an der Universität München (Munich 2010), throughout. In 1940, Gaudozentenführer Otto Hörner, the Gau-level lecturer’s leader, classified Perron as belonging to a “reactionary clique” within the academy that “rejects and sabotages every aspiration of National Socialism”; Stoermer, “Akademie im Dritten Reich” (as in fn. 13), 331.↩︎

Eckert and Märker, Arnold Sommerfeld (as in fn. 137), 647–649 (January 1951). The nomination formulated for Hermann Weyl stressed—presumably as a reaction to Perron’s objections—that Weyl had “always held fast to his friendly sentiments towards his German colleagues”; Wahlvorschlag, Mitgliederakt Hermann Weyl, February 2, 1951, Archive of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Weyl, who had just resumed teaching at ETH Zürich, was elected as a corresponding member and accepted his election “with great pleasure”; Mitgliederakt Hermann Weyl, communication from Weyl to Heinrich Mitteis, the academy’s president, March 2, 1951, Princeton.↩︎

Deleted in the draft: Zuständen. ↩︎

Draft: übrigen deutschen. ↩︎

Deleted in the draft: sind. ↩︎

Missing in the draft: der Wissenschaften. ↩︎

Deleted in the draft: Verhältnis. ↩︎

Deleted in the draft: fühlen uns daher veranlaßt. ↩︎

The following is not in the draft. ↩︎

This article is a translation and was originally published in German as:

Die Arisierung der Gelehrtenrepublik. Albert Einstein, Richard Willstätter und die Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften im Frühjahr 1933, in: ZBLG 85 (2022), S. 475–506.

Entangled in Stories: How old are our fairy tales?

by Helge Gerndt

translated by Sarah Swift and Ellen Yuzty Glebe

2024-06-17

You can cite this article e.g.
Helge Gerndt, “Entangled in Stories: How old are our fairy tales?” in Bavarian Studies in History and Culture (2024) [originally published in German as “In Geschichten verstrickt oder: Wie alt sind unsere Märchen?”, in: “Bayerisches Jahrbuch für Volkskunde 2023”, p. 15-23], last modified 2024-06-17, https://www.bavarian-studies.org/2024-gerndt/.

This article is a translation and was originally published in German as:

Helge Gerndt, “In Geschichten verstrickt oder: Wie alt sind unsere Märchen?”, in Bayerisches Jahrbuch für Volkskunde 2023, 15-23.

This text is open access and licensed under the terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Helge Gerndt

Entangled in Stories: How old are our fairy tales?

translated by Sarah Swift and Ellen Yuzty Glebe

2024-06-17

This text is open access and licensed under terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Image: allgemeinfrei, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brothers_Grimm_Blow.jpg

Wilhelm Grimm und Jacob Grimm, 1847, Daguerreotypie von Hermann Biow.

Human beings are storytellers who live by and are given life by the tales they tell themselves and each other. Stories shape our lives more than we generally know or can even truly imagine. Although bees, ants, and some mammals are also able to use visual signs or speech-like sounds to communicate, Homo sapiens is—as far as we know thus far—the only species with the capacity to use language as a fundamental tool for shaping life in all its dimensions. Humans’ ability to tell stories, like their technical inventiveness and a capacity for economic organization, is of such decisive importance that we can and may speak with considerable justification of Homo narrans, the storytelling creature, as well as of Homo faber and Homo economicus.

When the famous storyteller Salman Rushdie—who was born in India and went to school in England—was still a small boy, his father told him many marvelous stories from the East—stories from One Thousand and One Nights, the Panchatantra, the Kathasaritsagara (the “Ocean of the Streams of Story”), as well as legends and adventure stories featuring mighty heroes. Rushdie gained two unforgettable insights into the question of what it means to grow up with stories. One of the lessons he learned was:

that stories were not true (there were no “real” genies in bottles or flying carpets or wonderful lamps), but by being untrue they could make him feel and know truths that the truth could not tell him, and second, that they all belonged to him, just as they belonged to his father, Anis, and to everyone else, they were all his, as they were his father’s, bright stories and dark stories, sacred stories and profane, his to alter and renew and discard and pick up again as and when he pleased.¹

Scheherazade showed him that “stories told against death” can “overcome even the most murderous of tyrants,” and later in his own life he discovered that a story could turn a fanatic into a murderer.² Stories do not merely narrate life and death but are intimately bound up with life and death and ultimately inexhaustible. Stories give us a feel for who we are. In Salman Rushdie’s phrasing, “Man was the storytelling animal, the only creature on earth that told itself stories to understand what kind of creature it was.”³

Telling and understanding stories is a core human skill acquired during the evolution of human culture. Experiences are passed on by narrating them. Without stories, we could neither draw inspiration from the past nor envision a shape for the future; we would have only the experience of a present in which we would, as it were, subsist from hand to mouth. The sheer variety of narrative content and forms that exist is immensely broad, highly differentiated, and far from easy to survey. Academic disciplines, especially, all have their own distinctive narrative forms, with clear differences between theoretical, empirical, and historical branches of inquiry; the forms closest to the kind of storytelling that seeks to entertain are found in the latter groups. We can do little more than speculate about everything in our past, expressing the results in stories that may then be more or less credible. The further these stories reach back in time, the more challenging it becomes to create them, substantiate them step-by-step, or appraise them. This is naturally all the truer for those long spans of time for which there are no extant written sources.

We do not know how long people have been telling each other tales. This development is a part of the history of human culture that consists of many small stories about progress (and pursuit of lines of inquiry). Each of these stories can be appraised as true, false, or mere speculative conjecture. Even scholars (who normally do not narrate but reflect and argue) ultimately tell stories with the potential to change dramatically and repeatedly whenever new evidence comes to light. Narratives about the origins of tales, too—about their beginnings in time and space, how old they are, and what changes they have undergone—must also, from a scholarly point of view, remain provisional hypotheses. Meta-stories like these are sometimes called “narratives” or “myths,” although the use of “myths” in common parlance refers to stories and legends from the oral tradition about gods and heroes or cosmic creation or collapse. It is true, of course, that many propositions and causal inferences from the scholarly tradition bear a remarkably strong resemblance to traditional myths: they are also (subtle) origin narratives that seek to explain the major and minor details of world events and the thoughts and actions of those involved.

Curiosity about the origins of many mysterious things in our surroundings has hardly been confined to scholarly circles; “common people” have often assuaged their own curiosity by inventing or appropriating tales within their milieus. These “etiological” tales provide mythical or legendary explanations that incorporate fairy-tale or even farcical elements for a wealth of topics. The most diverse phenomena (why all beans have a black seam; how the moon was placed in the sky; why a human lifetime spans seventy years) are explained in stories that usually contain surprises.⁴ The Mongols, for example, explain the origin of their fairy tales in an origin narrative based on their religious conceptions. This story of a kind person bringing fairy tales to the earth’s surface as the gift of a god of the underworld is an etiology that has emerged out of a shamanic environment.⁵ In formal terms, the story of the god’s gift to the blind Tarwaa belongs to a hybrid type: as a mythical fairy tale, it suggests that a certain proximity exists between myths and fairy tales.

To search for insights from cultural studies into the origins of fairy tales, we need to engage with the history of human evolution as it is currently narrated—essentially on the basis of insights from evolutionary biology—by writers such as the historian Yuval Noah Harari.⁶ Harari sees the “Cognitive Revolution” that he estimates to have taken place between seventy thousand and thirty thousand years ago as a pivotal point in human history. This is when Homo sapiens is thought to have developed specific abilities to remember, communicate, learn, and invent, thus providing a basis for individuals to cooperate with peers and work on shared activities in larger groups than before.

Storytelling requires language, the ability of certain kinds of living beings to communicate with each other—by means of sounds or visual signs—about things and circumstances they perceive. Non-human animals are known to use different sounds or sequences of sounds to communicate information and can repeat acoustic signals or gestures, but they deploy these signals only in broadly stereotypical patterns and can scarcely combine them in novel ways. In contrast, human languages—going beyond metaphors that apply mental images to new contexts (a night-black soul, heavenly singing) and references (in which one phenomenon points to another, like dark clouds indicating rain)—make use of words as signs that can detach themselves from specific reference objects and refer to other words, sentences, and texts.

“Tradition” [Überlieferung], the passing down of diverse cultural phenomena and values down through generations, is a complex process, but also a word that can be apprehended in an instant. A language can be understood correctly only by people who do not confuse broad general concepts with designations for specific things and can distinguish symbols from indicators (i.e., indirect from direct statements). Face-to-face communication also has the added dimension that speaking is almost inevitably accompanied and supported by facial expressions, gestures, or some other bodily movements that also require comprehension.

In comparison to the languages of other animals, human language is extremely flexible. A finite number of sounds (and written characters) can produce an infinite number of sentences that all have their own special meanings. While signals repeated in identical form appear reliable, the meanings of words can deceive. This also applies, of course, to the tales formed from words that were initially used—as Harari assumes in his account of human evolution—to exchange gossip. As a form of communication about absent persons, gossip possesses more marked narrative qualities than, say, rumors; gossip seeks not merely to convey information, but also to entertain, and it often has an expressive quality that reveals much about the connection between its purveyor(s) and the people selected as its subjects. Gossip is often concerned with judging individuals within a group. It follows that it does not usually spread beyond a reasonably narrow circle of people (relatives, acquaintances, friends). Gossip’s integrating effects are limited; furthermore, it also serves to marginalize unpopular individuals. Cumulatively, however, these social functions of storytelling could well have created a foundation of trust that made cooperating in larger groups feasible, although (in Harari’s estimation) successful joint projects at this stage would not have involved groups containing more than one hundred fifty people.⁷

To enable cooperation in even larger groups, a different and more extensive kind of communication is needed: communication not just about what one has seen and heard but about things that do not even exist. Invented stories, in other words, that go beyond tangible reality! Only humans appear to be capable of speculating about possibilities and inventing stories. A language with a capacity for fiction can be used not only to lend color to many things, but also to create shared fictions. Such ideas (about divine beings, national affiliations, or monetary systems) can in turn be assembled into narratives that facilitate flexible cooperation in large groups. While bees or ants can communicate using rigid schemes, and chimpanzees can only interact with a few close members of their immediate community, humans are able to communicate and cooperate with large numbers of strangers. Shared stories make this possible.

People—and we should be very clearly aware of this—are nothing less than “entangled in stories”: as narrators of what has been handed down to them and of their own experiences, and as the subject matter of their own storytelling about the past, the present, or even the future. This entanglement is fundamental, because, in the words of the philosopher Wilhelm Schapp, “what we know about people are their stories and the stories that are told about them.”⁸

How exactly should we conceive of this process of forming stories from words? Most everyday stories are, as Hermann Bausinger understands them, offshoots that develop from conversations. Storytelling requires a certain amount of calm, a somewhat relaxed attitude on the part of the narrator and the listener, and a reservoir of mental images. Our memories and latent desires consist essentially of sensory contours. These memories and vague yearnings take shape only when they are expressed in language. A first sentence gets the story on track—or rather opens up some possible tracks and cuts off others. With each new sentence formulated, the scope for shaping how the narrative continues becomes more constricted—but using (mental) images widens it again. Sentences that consolidate information about past and current events can even become traps that imprison narratives. Other sentences, by contrast, transport narrators to new visual scenes and plot resolutions.⁹

Storytelling is social action and shapes social action. As Harari illustrates with various examples, every ambitious human endeavor is rooted in shared stories that exist only in people’s minds. These products of the imagination (religious systems, nations, money) can only exert effects in the real world because we act as if they existed. Inventing plausible and compelling stories is admittedly far from easy. Unlike a lie, an “imagined reality is something that everyone believes in” and the result is that imagined realities have real power in the real world for as long as the beliefs about them persist.¹⁰ Patterns of human cooperation can be reshaped by making changes to the underlying myths, for example, by giving a new founding legend to an association of states or changing the target projections for an economic project. People think their way through ever more complex situations and contexts with the help of “fictive” linguistic constructs, especially in scholarly research disciplines. Each new generation of scholars reworks, advances, or expands on the “language games” of its predecessors.

The broad field of cultural studies is essentially comprised of a tightly woven web of stories that have been substantiated to a greater or lesser degree. In the specialist discipline within their realm that focuses specifically on examining the oral tradition, the stories are highly diverse. In a first step, two broad narrative complexes need to be distinguished: (1) The larger group encompasses stories that aim to present and explain material that is real, tangible, or factual—or at least relates to real conditions that can be perceived by human senses. (2) The smaller group encompasses stories that present entirely imaginary scenarios and are completely unconcerned with external realities. The prototypes offered by genre theory for the first group include reports, treatises, epics, and legends. Fantasy, fairy tales, and farces are genres that exemplify the characteristics of the second group. The first group tends to adopt a more sober style of reporting and the second group typically embraces more embellishments and entertaining elements. From a formal point of view, a wealth of specific narrative forms (epic, anecdote, legend, joke) and types of formulaic language (proverb, idiom) can be slotted into a rough grid between myths and metaphors with voluminous “true stories” at one end and minimalistic “visual snapshots” at the other. The proverb “A lie has no legs” encapsulates a common everyday experience (that lies cannot stand on their own and tend to eventually be exposed or disproven) in an image (now generally not perceived) that contains a story in a nutshell.¹¹

All narrative forms are historical products—results yielded by cultural development, in other words, but not in the sense that their history as genres can be recounted with any certainty in its specifics (apart from genres of such recent provenance as the modern short story). Genres are always abstract concepts that elude sensory perception. They are developed with the benefit of hindsight and on the basis of reflection in order to formally structure the complex world of storytelling and create an overview that facilitates a better understanding of it.

We will now focus on the group of “unrealistic” stories that are not directly linked to the real world, and here specifically on fairy tales [Märchen¹²], which will need to be distinguished more precisely over the course of time from various adjacent genres: fables and farces, sagas and legends, and tall tales and parodies. Our search for fairy tales is inevitably (and always) colored by our contemporary perspective and thus reflects a conventional characterization of “fairy tales” with which we are all more or less familiar, albeit generally unconsciously.

A “Tale of Two Brothers” recorded on an Egyptian papyrus from the thirteenth century BCE is often cited as the oldest completely preserved wonder tale.¹³ It contains numerous references to magical transformations and was generally regarded by earlier generations of researchers as a literary adaptation of various stories and myths from the oral tradition. One can reasonably assume that stories with characteristics of fairy tales were told outside ancient Egypt and also much earlier, probably well before the invention of hieroglyphics and even before the earliest known writing system, namely, the cuneiform script invented by the Sumerians in the fourth millennium BCE. The earliest written records there contained only notes and marks made by the city’s economic administrators. They were not yet texts in a form that allowed for the conservation of spoken language for posterity.

The intellectual cosmos that existed before the age of writing will forever remain closed off to us, along with its narrative cosmos, and can only be accessed—as mentioned above—by means of (imaginative) stories. And stories (in scholarly language: theses and hypotheses) are abundant, especially as they relate to fairy tales. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, when legends and fairy tales were increasingly being perceived as specific narrative forms and not only being separately collected in dedicated collections but also being provisionally defined, attempts to capture their nature were based on a extensive web of hypotheses of which scholars were only partially aware.¹⁴

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) laid the initial foundations with his assertion that “natural poetry” existed alongside consciously wrought “artistic poetry.” This distinction was soon taken up by Jacob Grimm (1785–1863), who understood it as an “eternally founded” difference between the poetry of the educated and the uneducated.¹⁵ “Natural poetry,” as the Brothers Grimm understood it, was not only the more deeply-rooted and authentic kind of poetry but essentially also the “right” kind: it was contrasted favorably with rationally formed literature and prized for its naive expression and its elementary, sensual nature. As natural poetry came to be equated with folk poetry, the stories that ordinary people told (and were still telling) in their everyday lives—especially fairy tales—began to seem especially valuable and garnered considerable attention. This theory of natural poetry and folk poetry soon became closely linked with an additional theory that focused on the oral transmission process by which this poetry was passed down: despite all its propensity to change (variability), it appeared to maintain an astonishing degree of fidelity (stability) and longevity (continuity). From the beginning of the nineteenth century right up to, quite often, the present day, extreme consistency—not merely over centuries, but even over millennia— has frequently been attributed to the folk tradition. This double theory of a quasi-natural folk poetry transmitted via an unswerving oral tradition led to a de-historicization of the material that was being collected; the stories found circulating among the “folk” appeared to be essentially timeless. Philologists and historians who looked more closely at these tales, however, noticed that some of them did indeed contain references to time and place—historical signals, in other words. This led the Brothers Grimm to distinguish two groups of stories, a group independent of historical time (the “more poetic” fairy tales), and a group of “more historical” legends with links to specific times and places.¹⁶

The establishment of the legends as a separate category marked the beginning of a harmonization process for the genre of the fairy tale, a process that the Brothers Grimm, especially, advanced further with their stylistic standardizations. Their selection of fairy tales was oriented toward stories with features such as single-line plots, formulaic introductions and conclusions, and the rule of three (characters, means of enchantment, and magical episodes tending to come in triples). Furthermore, their own additions and adaptations (whenever and wherever they deemed it appropriate) made the genre more uniform, as well. The upshot was that the form taken by the Children’s and Household Tales of the Brothers Grimm—the stories that nineteenth-century collectors widely regarded as a model collection of fairy tales , which in turn exercised a decisive influence on future searching for the origins of fairy tales—was the product of a complex process of de-historicization and harmonization that was, incidentally, also continued by Johannes Bolte (1858–1937) and Georg Polívka (1858–1933) in their Notes on the tales and by Max Lüthi (1909–1991), the twentieth-century scholar of fairy tales with the most compelling arguments.¹⁷

The Brothers Grimm viewed fairy tales as shards of a shattered gemstone (specifically, as remnants of Germanic myths). Many scholars investigating the origin of fairy tales have since followed them in this direction or thought along similar lines but drawn on other bodies of mythology, such as the myths of a different Indo-European people like the Celts or a more specific body of nature, astral, lunar, or solar mythology. Other scholars have instead favored a polygenetic theory.¹⁸ The polygenetic approach, which is rooted in anthropology, perceives fairy tales as expressing such fundamental human traits that the stories can arise anywhere in the world and re-emerge in different eras. Most research into the origin of folktales has drawn on the comparative method developed by philologists and applied principles developed for comparing written texts to the area of oral lore. Researchers have zoned in, above all, on individual motifs in tales (and interpreted them liberally as “identical” or “characteristic.”) Structural parallels in the stories compared have attracted hardly any attention.

Borne along by the positivist trend toward the end of the nineteenth century, Nordic narratologists, in particular, derived a “geographical-historical method” from the comparative method that organized the history of the evolution of individual fairy tale types according to spatial and temporal categories by organizing all the available versions (including literary versions and sometimes also illustrations) into a structure that revealed the “original home,” time of genesis, and often even the “original version” of a tale.¹⁹ The results attained using this method led, for instance, to the origins of the farcical tale “Kaiser und Abt” (The Emperor and the Abbot) being traced to an early seventh-century Jewish community in the Middle East. Many details from these results have been criticized or refuted.²⁰ It is almost self-evident that historical processes cannot feasibly be reconstructed by emphasizing only the elements of tradition that persist and ignoring the innovative changes that result from the spontaneity and creativity of individual bearers of tradition. But since its slow emergence in the nineteenth century, narrative research has displayed a fascination with unchanging continuity over vast spans of time that has blinded scholars to dynamic aspects of historical change.

An example from the second half of the twentieth century may illustrate this: August Nitschke (1926–2019), a well-respected historian in his main fields of expertise, concluded from his analysis of the social orders and patterns of behavior in fairy tales that the “Machandelboom” [The Juniper Tree] story, which the Grimm Brothers included in their collection, dates back to Neolithic times; that the tales of “Aschenputtel” [Cinderella] and “Allerleirauh” [All-Kinds-of Fur] can be attributed to hunters and herders after the last ice age; and that the tale of “Hansel and Gretel” originated among farmers and fishers “confronted with the eeriness of woods and water” during the Mesolithic period.²¹ These unsophisticated conclusions—which are representative of a large number of similar ideas advanced by Nitschke—give an impression of how the thinking in his book latches on to unspecific analogies without applying high standards of source criticism to the contextualization of texts. At the same time, they also show how, even in our own time, a historian and his audience can still hold deeply ingrained and unreflected stereotypical beliefs about a fairy tale tradition that is taken to have remained unchanged for thousands of years.

This kind of reasoning based on assumptions about social conditions in prehistorical or historical times has ultimately been typical for every generation of researchers since the early nineteenth century. Researchers have proceeded by isolating individual motifs in tales that are known today and tracing them back to periods in ancient or medieval history on the basis of having uncovered similar motifs in the literature from those earlier periods. These are then deemed—assuming continuity of transmission—to be the forerunners of and the stimulus for the tales in their current versions. Much more rarely, and with little lasting success, have scholars suggested the possibility of development in the other direction—i.e., that the motifs found in literature might provide starting points for an opaque and convoluted oral tradition. Proponents of this idea included Theodor Benfey (1809–1881), who saw Indian literature as a model for European fairy tales as early as 1859, and later Albert Wesselski (1871–1939), who interpreted medieval tales from the literary genre of the exemplum as narrative impulses.²²

The opposite view was advocated by the American folklorists who still believed after the Second World War that the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel (considered to have a virtually unchangeable core) had supplied the model for the Circe episode in the Odyssey and even that Homer’s deployment of the ship’s rudder motif in the prophecy of Tiresias, whom Odysseus encounters in Hades, was merely an embellishment on Homer’s part (more than two and a half millennia ago!) of a seafarer’s tale not recorded before 1956.²³

The question of how old fairy tales are cannot be answered without addressing other fundamental questions. Does one understand fairy tales as products of the past (as inventions of anonymous storytellers, as variable retellings that have emerged from the process of transmission, as borrowings from literature) or as an elementary expression of the human psyche? And can one determine specific areas of origin for the entire genre or only for specific themes?²⁴ It is clear, at any rate, that one must begin by examining individual fairy tales (perhaps as types that can be meaningfully characterized) before it becomes possible to draw any more general conclusions about the genre. Working from this perspective, it can be acknowledged, at a minimum, that oral transmission of individual traditional fairy tales over at least three generations has been demonstrated in numerous cases, but also that conclusive evidence exists for quite a few fairy tales being based on the inventions of single individuals (who may in some cases also have drawn on stores of imagery supplied by their personal dream experiences). In this light, it is clear that the origin of fairy tales is hardly a completely homogeneous phenomenon with a monocausal explanation.

Does this mean that modern fairy tale researchers are inextricably caught up in the present day’s tortuously tangled web of scholarly stories about fairy tale origins? Is it impossible to identify even a few phases in the history of the evolution of the genre? All is not lost—we only need to take a closer look at the parameters which govern the insights available to us. This means, to begin with, that we need to account for the historical evolution and the flexibility of the fairy tale as a genre designation since its first emergence around the dawn of the nineteenth century, and over the course of its subsequent refinement, with various shifts in emphasis along the way. We also need to appraise the body of sources available with a critical eye and reflect more deeply on the methodologies used. The comparative method tends to produce vague and inadequate results when it fails to take formal aspects into account along with content, and the vast majority of older interpretations of fairy tales made precisely this mistake.

In addition to comparing fairy tale motifs, scholars should pay at least as much, if not more, attention to structural elements , especially as fairy tales are structurally far more complex than, say, legends. There were multiple such attempts in the structuralism era, but the results were not satisfactory from a historical perspective. As mentioned above, scholars postulated that fairy tales arose at an early point in the cultural evolution of humanity and out of specific living environments. Some authors discerned relations of production in fairy tales that led them to view the tales as having emerged from patriarchal tribal societies (or their disintegration). Rather than assuming that the form of fairy tales remains essentially stable over time, some scholars advanced the hypothesis that what were initially basic, simple tales of magic could evolve over time in response to new social conditions such as changed forms of marriage.²⁵

The view that the fixation of stories in literary form could have significantly determined the development of popular narrative forms from quite early on was long a rather niche minority position in cultural studies. In Western culture, for example, one could start with the story of Cupid and Psyche in the Metamorphoses of Apuleius from the second century CE, since this marks the beginning of a history of fairy tales that can be based on solid source criticism.²⁶ This history then stretches across many “empty” centuries during the early medieval period and into the high medieval period until a consolidated narrative tradition with elements that are characteristic for fairy tales becomes clearly visible in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance.

The existence of a starting point in upper Italian cities such as Florence and Venice—in the literary works of Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) and Giovanni Francesco Straparola (ca. 1480–ca. 1558)—and a somewhat later continuation in Naples in the widely read “tales of tales” (Pentamerone) by Giambattista Basile (1583–1622) was clearly highlighted a few years ago.²⁷ This Italian entertainment literature was followed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by the literarization of fairy tales in France, for example by Charles Perrault (1628–1703), and this in turn influenced German Enlightenment writers to narrate fairy stories in the eighteenth century, a tradition that was further transformed in the era of Romanticismin the realms of both “high literature” and “folk literature.”²⁸

It was in the modern era in Europe that the conception of fairy tales as popular oral folk tales (Volksmärchen) gradually emerged and came to prevail. The genre gained its profile not only by means of processes of transmission and borrowing, but also (and to an even greater degree) from various selection processes or, to be more precise, from two processes of differentiation which excluded, on the one hand, legends and farcical stories and, on the other, literary fairy tales that now came to be described using the newly coined term Kunstmärchen. The contributions of the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (1786–1859) were a major factor in this process that still stands out today, especially those of Wilhelm, who worked continuously over the course of his lifetime to refine the style of their collected Children’s and Household Tales.²⁹

Folk tales—as a whole, not just the tales presented by the Brothers Grimm—are essentially all creative products wrought by individual personalities gifted with imagination and then successively “told into shape” in the oral transmission process—regardless of where or who the initial story came from—gradually taking on “typical” forms that could be easily committed to memory. The more research clarifies the convoluted interdependencies, borrowings, and adaptations in the fairy tale tradition of the European modern era, at any rate, the more clearly visible an essentially “literary” legacy of fairy tales becomes—and the more strongly the selective perception and the definitions and categories of the fairy tale researchers themselves remain entangled in a history of fairy tales that spans the whole world.

To summarize: Individual fairy tale motifs probably existed in oral storytelling even before the invention of writing (for how long?), but entire fairy tale narratives cannot be determined before they were first fixed in writing. More concretely, this suggests that fairy tales can only be traced back around four thousand years in the East, although the extent to which one includes narrative fragments and distinguishes fairy tales from myths is a matter of definition. In the European context, however, it hardly seems realistic to see a degree of continuity in the transmission of tales before the late Middle Ages. One can thus scarcely speak of a history of the evolution of fairy tales in Europe before then. Fascination with all things “ancient” is, in any case, a historical artifact of the nineteenth century; age is hardly valuable for its own sake. Hypothetical attributions of age should probably not be given more weight than perceptions of quality. Fairy tales are, first and foremost, meaningful—adventurous wonder tales that stand out from the broad stream of human storytelling by virtue of their effectiveness. They ultimately derive their value from their existence in the present and not from their past.

Notes

Salman Rushdie, Joseph Anton: A Memoir (New York 2012), 19.↩︎
Ibid., 19.↩︎
Ibid., 19.↩︎
The examples are taken from three folktales collected by the Brothers Grimm and published in the 1856 edition of their Kinder- und Hausmärchen [Children’s and Household Tales]: “Strohhalm, Kohle und Bohne” [The Journey Of The Straw, The Coal, And The Bean, KHM 18], “Der Mond” [The Moon, KHM 175], and “Die Lebenszeit” [The Duration of Life, KHM 176].↩︎
“Wie die Mongolen zu ihren Märchen kamen,” in Kristin Wardetzky and Dirk Nowakowski, eds., Kinder schaffen das: Märchen von mutigen und klugen Jungen und Mädchen aus aller Welt (Münster 2021), 125–126.↩︎
Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, trans. Yuval Noah Harari, John Purcell, and Haim Watzman (London 2015).↩︎
Ibid., ch. 2.↩︎
Wilhelm Schapp, In Geschichten verstrickt: Zum Sein von Mensch und Ding, 2nd ed. (Wiesbaden 1976), 100; See also Albrecht Lehmann, Reden über Erfahrung: Kulturwissenschaftliche Bewusstseinsanalyse des Erzählens (Berlin 2007); Samira El Ouassil and Friedemann Karig, Erzählende Affen: Mythen, Lügen, Utopien: Wie Geschichten unser Leben bestimmen (Berlin 2021).↩︎
Hermann Bausinger, Vom Erzählen: Poesie des Alltags (Stuttgart 2022), esp. 15–57.↩︎
Harari, Sapiens, esp. 35.↩︎
Translator’s note: The proverb cited in the original German text (Lügen haben kurze Beinen) actually says that lies have short legs (not “no legs”), but the implications are the same.↩︎
Translator’s note: It bears mention here that, unlike the English designation of this genre, the German word Märchen in fact means “little tale” and does not reference fairies.↩︎
Karel Horálek, “Brüdermärchen: Das ägyptische B.,” in Enzyklopädie des Märchens. Handwörterbuch zur historischen und vergleichenden Erzählforschung, ed. Kurt Ranke et al., vol. 2 (Berlin 1979), cols. 925–940.↩︎
Ludolph Beckedorff: “Vorrede,” in Friedrich Gottschalck, ed., Die Sagen und Volksmährchen der Deutschen, vol. 1 (Halle 1814), cited in Helge Gerndt, Sagen – Fakt, Fiktion oder Fake? Eine kurze Reise durch zweifelhafte Geschichten vom Mittelalter bis heute (Münster 2020), 39–40.↩︎
Jacob Grimm, “Gedanken: Wie sich die Sagen zur Poesie und Geschichte verhalten,” in Zeitung für Einsiedler (Heidelberg 1808), 152–156.↩︎
Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm, eds., Deutsche Sagen, vol. 1, 3rd ed. (Berlin 1891; repr. Munich 1965), 7–8; cited in Helge Gerndt, Sagen – Fakt, Fiktion, 40.↩︎
Johannes Bolte and Georg Polívka, eds., Anmerkungen zu den Kinder- und Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm, vols. 1–5 (Leipzig 1913–1932); Max Lüthi, Das europäische Volksmärchen: Form und Wesen (Bern 1947). Available in English as: Max Lüthi, The European Folk Tale: Form and Nature, trans. John D. Niles (Philadelphia 1982); see also many more of Lüthi’s books, most recently: Max Lüthi, Das Volksmärchen als Dichtung: Ästhetik und Anthropologie, 2nd rev. ed. (Göttingen 1990). Available in English (in an earlier version) as: Max Lüthi, The Fairytale as Art Form and Portrait of Man, trans. Jon Erickson (Bloomington 1984).↩︎
For more detail on the various groups of people and bodies of myths considered and for more on the polygenesis hypothesis, see the relevant headwords in Enzyklopädie des Märchens.↩︎
Lutz Röhrich, “Geographisch-historische Methode,” in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, vol. 5 (Berlin 1987), cols. 1012–1030.↩︎
Wilhelm F. H. Nicolaisen, “Kaiser und Abt,” in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, vol. 7 (Berlin 1993), cols. 845–852; Walter Anderson, Kaiser und Abt: Die Geschichte eines Schwanks (Helsinki 1923).↩︎
August Nitschke, Soziale Ordnungen im Spiegel der Märchen, vols. 1–2 (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1976–1977).↩︎
Georg von Simson, “Benfey, Theodor,” in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, vol. 2 (Berlin 1979), cols. 102–109; Ulrich Marzolph, “Wesselski, Albert,” in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, vol. 14 (Berlin 2014), cols. 652–656.↩︎
Dietz-Rüdiger Moser, “Die Homerische Frage und das Problem der mündlichen Überlieferung aus volkskundlicher Sicht,” in Fabula 20 (1979): 116–136.↩︎
Dietz-Rüdiger Moser, “Altersbestimmung des Märchens,” in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, vol. 1 (Berlin 1977), cols. 407–419.↩︎
Helge Gerndt, “Zaubermärchen,” in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, vol. 14 (Berlin 2014), cols. 1182–1189.↩︎
Lucius Apuleius, The Golden Ass or Metamorphoses, trans. E.J. Kenney (London 1998); Detlev Fehling, Amor und Psyche: Die Schöpfung des Apuleius und ihre Einwirkung auf das Märchen. Eine Kritik der romantischen Märchentheorie (Wiesbaden 1977).↩︎
Ruth B. Bottigheimer, Fairy Tales: A New History (Albany 2009); Rudolf Schenda, “Basiles Pentamerone. Ein Nachwort,” in Giambattista Basile, Das Märchen der Märchen: Das Pentamerone, trans. Hanno Helbling, Alfred Messerli, Johann Pögl, Dieter Richter, Luisa Rubini, Rudolf Schenda, and Doris Senn, ed. Rudolf Schenda (Munich 2000), 477–511.↩︎
Günter Dammann, “Conte de(e) fées,” in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, vol. 3 (Berlin 1981), cols. 131–149; Hermann Bausinger, “Aufklärung,” in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, vol. 1 (Berlin 1977), cols. 972–983.↩︎
On this, see most recently: Axel Winzer, Permanente Metamorphosen: Neues zur Verlags- und Editionsgeschichte der Kinder- und Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm (Kassel 2021); Lubomír Sůva, Der tschechische Himmel liegt in der Hölle. Märchen von Božena Němcová und den Brüdern Grimm im Vergleich (Ilmtal-Weinstraße 2022), esp. 14–58.↩︎

This article is a translation and was originally published in German as:

Helge Gerndt, “In Geschichten verstrickt oder: Wie alt sind unsere Märchen?”, in Bayerisches Jahrbuch für Volkskunde 2023, 15-23.

Multilevel Governance as a Stimulus for Regional History

by Alexander Wegmaier

translated by Sarah Swift and Ellen Yuzty Glebe

2024-01-09

You can cite this article e.g.
Alexander Wegmaier, “Multilevel Governance as a Stimulus for Regional History” in Bavarian Studies in History and Culture (2024) [originally published in German in “Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte” 84,1 (2021)], last modified 2024-01-09, https://www.bavarian-studies.org/2024-wegmaier/.

This article is a translation and was originally published in German as:

Alexander Wegmaier, “Das Potential des ʹMehrebenensystemsʹ für die Landesgeschichte”, in Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte 84 (2021), 25-75.

This text is open access and licensed under the terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Alexander Wegmaier

Multilevel Governance as a Stimulus for Regional History

translated by Sarah Swift and Ellen Yuzty Glebe

2024-01-09

This text is open access and licensed under terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Image: Alexander Wegmaier

Flags of Germany, Europe and Bavaria in front of the Bavarian State Chancellery.

Research into regional and state-level history in Europe is increasingly looking at topics and periods that have seen European bodies play a role alongside national and regional stakeholders of historically longer standing. Starting in the 1950s, the European Communities acquired extensive competences in agricultural, economic, and structural policy that intersected with the powers of subnational entities including, notably, the German Länder. The Council of Europe became an influential driver of cultural policy, and intergovernmental organizations such as CERN and the European Patent Organisation became more significant in research policy.¹

Individual works of history, in particular regional studies, have drawn on the concept of multilevel governance as a descriptive category to characterize the new situation—at times tacitly, by highlighting how the emergence of new stakeholders at various levels created new possibilities for shaping states’ policies,² and in other instances by invoking the concept directly.³ Historians appear to regard the concept as meaningful to the point of being virtually self-explanatory⁴ and either refrain from defining it or make reference to contributions from political science, a discipline that has been using the concept of multilevel governance since the mid-1990s.⁵

In their political science research on European structural policy, Gary Marks and Liesbet Hooghe highlighted the roles of subnational authorities, experts, and pressure groups as participants involved alongside member state governments in making and delivering policy decisions.⁶ This led them to reappraise the assumption that member states are consistently able to control policy outcomes and conclude, instead, that the influence of actors at the different governance levels varies considerably across and sometimes even within policy areas.⁷

Although historians were well aware of the influence of domestic politics on foreign policy in the wake of controversial discussions of the supposed “primacy of domestic politics”⁸ since the late 1960s, considerable time passed without any attempts being made to connect this insight with the role of subnational entities in European politics. In political science, however, researchers have embraced the concept of multilevel governance—especially in the context of examining the role the regions played following the Maastricht treaty and how regional and local authorities delivered structural policy on the ground.⁹

Applied more broadly, however, the insights of this approach can also prove helpful for analyzing pre-Maastricht European integration. Guido Thiemeyer recently pointed this out in his description of the emergence of the European multilevel governance system from the 1950s to the 1980s as a process of “trial and error” involving bodies at the European, national, and state or regional levels that was substantially characterized by unofficial structures and had “no legal basis.”¹⁰ Burkhardt-Reich and Hrbek/Wessels used the term “multilevel system” as early as the beginning of the 1980s—and not without reason—“to account adequately for the complex structures and processes in the Community,”¹¹ even as political scientists at the time were otherwise still largely cleaving to a two-level approach based on the assumption that national governments were fundamentally “gatekeepers between the domestic and international levels.”¹²

Including these perspectives from political science undoubtedly opens up new horizons for the discipline of history as a whole and especially for regional studies.

Fundamental aspects of the multilevel system

Multilevel governance systems arise when “power or competences are distributed between territorially delimited organizations” but “political processes” simultaneously “encompass more than one level” because “tasks are interdependent.”¹³

Interdependent tasks sometimes crop up because—in an increasingly “denationalized” world—the spaces in which problems arise tend to diverge from the spaces within which individual nation-states have the sovereign authority to bring their problem-solving expertise to bear on them.¹⁴ International financial crises or environmental problems, for instance, demand solutions that do not stop at national borders.

Interdependencies also arise—especially in the political system of the EC/EU—because of the ways in which competences are distributed between multiple actors at multiple levels. These range from agenda-setting (e.g., the European Commission has a right of initiative to propose new legislation, often based on proposals from experts) and negotiating decisions (the Council of Ministers with national government representatives who need each state’s respective backing for their decisions, to a greater or lesser extent depending on the country; since 1992 especially and increasingly the European Parliament) to the actual implementation of new policies (national and subnational authorities such as federal states, regions, and local authorities, often in cooperation with non-governmental actors).¹⁵

The ability of each level to autonomously exert control is thus limited, necessitating coordination and management across various levels. German federalism research has a word for this: Fritz W. Scharpf’s coinage of Politikverflechtung,¹⁶ literally “interwoven politics” but translatable in a number of ways, for example as a framework for joint decision-making or even a joint decision trap. But the same essential mechanisms are also found in unitary states with their voluntary or imposed cooperative relationships between government agencies at different territorial levels.¹⁷

The terms “systems of multilevel governance” and “multilevel systems” are common in scholarship within the field. Germanophone research makes especially extensive use of the “multilevel system” (Mehrebenensystem) concept. Conceiving of multilevel governance in this way may appear to evoke a hierarchical system with a “top” and a “bottom,” but neither element is essential. This is especially clear in the case of federally organized states: in Germany, for instance, the Länder (as partially sovereign constituent states) retain a distinct “statehood that is not derived from the federation but is, at the same time, limited.”¹⁸ The federation and the constituent states “are not principally superior or subordinate to each other” but are “within their sphere of action … fundamentally independent of one another, albeit bound to mutual loyalty (and under certain circumstances also obedience).”¹⁹

Even in regionalized or decentralized states in which the subnational units have only limited self-government rights or have been conceived of as decentralized administrative units, chains of hierarchical command do not work automatically: despite the presence of formal hierarchical structures, the “lower” levels typically are “powerful enough to evade the ‘reach’ of the central level” and can use the threat of non-cooperation to open up coordination channels to the “top”—informally if not officially.²⁰

Using the term “system” possibly promotes a tendency to think in terms of hierarchies and may imply the existence of regularized mechanisms for achieving the necessary cooperation. Such formal relationships are, in fact, given in some cases, for instance when a second parliamentary chamber secures the participation of the subnational level in the formation of national policy or when institutions like mediation committees or constitutional courts resolve conflicts between levels.²¹ In addition, however, cooperation can take countless informal routes that are mostly not constitutionally defined or capable of generating legally enforceable agreements. The term “multilevel governance”—frequently encountered in Anglophone research— captures the fluid nature of many such cooperative relationships more clearly.

The concept of governance was originally applied to international relations in an effort to clarify that the relationship between states is not organized hierarchically and that satisfactory outcomes can, as a rule, only be achieved through a range of negotiation processes conducted between sovereign states. This was the usage context invoked by Ursula Lehmkuhl with her suggestion that the concept could also provide a productive analytical perspective for historical scholarship.²² Since then, however, the concept of governance has shifted to encompass policy production in its entirety and not only international relations.

“Governance” represents a “counterpoint to ‘government’—understood as control of society exercised in an étatist and hierarchical way”²³—and this promotes a shift in perspective that leads away from envisaging “the state as a monolithic subject that is sovereign in its dealings with the outside world and hierarchical in its internal workings.”²⁴

Instead, “governance” foregrounds the substantial autonomy enjoyed by various subdomains in society in modern constitutional states, the large influence non-state pressure groups exert on politicians and policy-making, and the obsolescence of the idea that authority can be exerted smoothly from the top down along hierarchical chains of command.²⁵

At the same time, the governance approach also seeks to avoid the danger inherent to “forgetting, or at least trivializing, multiple phenomena that are empirically evident and involve state control of societal processes in hierarchical form.” It therefore conceives of the hierarchical organization of political processes as only “one of several patterns of managing interdependence between states and between state and societal actors.”²⁶

One of the other control mechanisms²⁷ (apart from hierarchy) is negotiation. It comes into play when a cooperation partner cannot be compelled to take a certain course of action, but interdependence makes reaching a joint solution desirable. Direct communication between the parties creates opportunities for barter, brokering compromise, or seeking concessions, although each party can also break off talks at any point and block progress towards a solution.²⁸

The Association of Alpine States (Arge Alp, short for Arbeitsgemeinschaft Alpenländer) supplies an example case for horizontal negotiations in the European multilevel system. It was founded in 1972. Participating states, cantons, and regions sought to reach joint positions on spatial planning issues and on environmental, cultural, and transport policy that they could advocate vis-à-vis their national governments and at the European level. The desire to cooperate arose out of the conviction of those involved that problems in these policy fields do not stop at national borders and often affect the Alpine region as a whole.

Despite this insight, the partners chose to work in an organization with only minimal institutional structuring that afforded opportunities for coordinated discussion of matters, but allowed for decisions to be reached only when it was possible to do so unanimously—and even these took the form of jointly formulated recommendations addressed to the relevant agencies of the national governments in each country.²⁹

Negotiations between subnational actors can also take place vertically between actors at different hierarchical levels, as the Kramer/Heubl talks on the composition of German delegations to European committees demonstrate. The nub of the problem was that committees had come into existence at the European level in which the German Länder wanted to be represented because the matters addressed fell within the scope of responsibility of the Länder in Germany. In some cases, the relevant committees played merely coordinating roles (this was, for instance, true for the Advisory Committee on Vocational Training). In others, they had substantive decision-making powers (examples included the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development and the Committee on Regional Policy).

This desire on the part of the Länder clashed with the federal government’s insistence on its primacy in the realm of foreign policy, although the federal government also conceded that the expertise of the state administrations in certain areas was helpful. Resolving the dispute via the Federal Constitutional Court was not an option, as the political cost of losing was too high for both sides. Instead, after protracted talks, the federal government and the states arrived at a negotiated arrangement facilitating the involvement of Länder representatives on a case-by-case basis. Both sides could live with this arrangement, and neither side had to formally cede an inch of its respective legal position.³⁰

The outcome produced by the Kramer/Heubl talks remained a loose agreement, however, essentially “a declaration of intent made by both sides with each side hoping that the other side would respect it.”³¹ Its interpretation repeatedly proved controversial, but the negotiations had nevertheless produced a passable outcome of sorts, albeit never codified in legislation or used to refine the constitutional order.

Networks are another steering mechanism in the governance concept. They are “more or less institutionalized, stable communication and action systems of connections [between autonomous actors] with an interest in sets of shared development issues and problems.”³² By fostering mutual trust and establishing routine processes of negotiation and decision-making, regular communication between actors in networks may reduce or even avert potential for conflict at an early stage in decision-making. While such networks often emerge between specialist administrative agencies at different levels that are concerned with the same specific policy fields, network links can also develop that connect such specialist agencies with external experts.

The emergence of the EEC mountain and hill farming program in 1974 is a case in point. Right from the beginning of the common EEC agricultural policy, both the Bavarian Farmers’ Association and the Bavarian state government had been opposed to the agenda advocated by agriculture commissioner Sicco Mansholt that favored rapid structural change and a shift to larger and more efficient farms.³³ The alternative “Bavarian Way” envisaged the continued coexistence of full-time, part-time, and sideline farmers and aspired to preserve small-scale agriculture as practiced in the Bavarian Alps with state support.

The state government repeatedly appealed to the European Commission to consider agricultural structural policy in a regionally differentiated way, but it was probably the work of agricultural economist Paul Rintelen that was ultimately decisive for the Commission’s decision to recognize, for the first time, the existence of areas or forms of farming for which specific supports could be justified (and to put these supports in place in the form of the EEC hill farming program). Rintelen, a professor at the agricultural faculty of the Technical University of Munich in Weihenstephan, had close ties to Bavarian farming networks and had supervised the doctoral thesis of Bavarian agriculture minister Hans Eisenmann.

After the European Commission tasked Rintelen with conducting a study on the situation of agriculture in the Alpine region, he made a convincing case for the Bavarian view, presented as an important expert opinion in January 1973 that paved the way for the hill farming program.³⁴

This roundabout route taken via the Bavarian agriculture network made it possible to influence the European decision-making process much more heavily than could have been achieved solely through formal channels like the state government lobbying the Bundesrat to reach a position statement that the federal government could in turn have put forward and defended against resistance in the Council of Ministers of Agriculture of the European Communities.

Finally, the governance concept also views the markets and market competition as a steering mechanism: this purely decentral process can cause stakeholders to compare their own performance or successes with the results attained by competitors and to modify their actions in turn.³⁵

Within Germany, the principle of competition between states was evident, for example, in the efforts of Social Democrat and Christian Democrat state governments in the 1960s and 1970s to garner support by demonstrating the superiority of their respective education policies to voters. It also featured in the era of prime minister Edmund Stoiber in Bavaria around the turn of the millennium and the comparisons made then between Bavaria and other German states and European regions that were used by the Bavarian government to justify various policy initiatives.³⁶

Although the concept of multilevel governance emerged from political science analysis of EC/EU regional policy and the regions’ role as formalized in the Maastricht treaty in 1992, much political science literature draws on it to reappraise the relationships between the European and nation-state levels.³⁷ To minimize analytical complexity, authors tend to confine themselves to these two levels.³⁸ Often only a “junior partner” role remains for subnational authorities at the regional level,³⁹ but the fundamental nature of the model of multilevel governance does not automatically predestine them to be sidelined in this way.

Contemporary regional history can shed some light on this blind spot and contribute to incorporating subnational levels into investigations of the European multilevel system.

The emergence of European multilevel governance—A look at the regions

The fact that the European multilevel system extends beyond the European and national levels is attributable, first and foremost, to the very fact that subnational entities exist in member states.

They are, however, by no means a homogeneous group: the number of subnational levels, their nature as legal entities, and their competences depend on whether nation-states are organized federally (as in Germany, Austria and Switzerland), with regionalized structures (as in Italy and Spain), or as decentralized unitary states like France and Norway.⁴⁰

The characteristic feature of multilevel governance—the organization of government activity by entities with varying territorial scope with interdependencies and coordinated actions—is nevertheless preserved in all of these cases.

The account below will look at the German Länder and the Italian and French regions as examples of states with, respectively, a federal structure, a regionalized structure, and a unitary structure with elements of decentralization. The discussion of these structures is confined here to the period up to the end of the 1980s, since the relationship of the regions to the European level “changed fundamentally”⁴¹ after that point. In the wake of European Structural Fund reform in 1988 and the Maastricht treaty in 1992, the nature of the regions as actors on the European stage was utterly transformed. France and Italy also embarked on extensive reform processes in the 1990s that greatly altered the role of the regions in the domestic politics of both countries.⁴²

As a generally accepted definition of the term “region” is still lacking in political science, and interdisciplinary coordination with spatial research remains underdeveloped,⁴³ the following references to regions are made with a degree of caution. The conceptual core of the “region” category can be described as a subspace of medium size, with an intermediary character, that is defined in some way by physical geography and the natural environment, history and culture, political and administrative activity, economic and functional ties, or (as is often the case) some combination of these factors.⁴⁴

In a prototypical region, these factors would all coincide, but individual regions can deviate from this prototype to varying degrees. One advantage of this approach based on prototype semantics⁴⁵ is that it allows for the sidestepping of the question whether a region must necessarily have legislative powers of its own to count as such—a characteristic that would exclude Brittany, for instance, although it will become clear below that Breton politicians and the Breton population clearly regard Brittany as a distinct region and represent its concerns as such at the French and European levels.

I. Functional interdependencies and forms of intra-country cooperation

Regionalism in France “as a call for a more rational division of the country and as a counterweight to excessive centralism … has a long and venerable tradition.”⁴⁶ The French regions emerged in an effort to close the gaping chasm in regional development between “Paris et le désert français”⁴⁷ that became increasingly evident after 1945. Regional stakeholders spearheaded by the Breton pressure group CELIB (Comité d’étude et de liaison des intérêts bretons) achieved a regionalization of national planning policy in 1956 that saw the establishment of twenty-one “program regions” (régions de programme) for spatial planning purposes (albeit with scant regard for historical and cultural links).⁴⁸

In 1964, the program regions—now redefined as “circles for regional action” (circonscriptions d’action régionale)—each gained their own Regional Economic Development Commissions (Commission de Développement Économique Régional, CODER).⁴⁹ The work of DATAR, the Agency for Land Planning and Regional Development (Délégation à l’Aménagement du Territoire et à l’Action Régionale), was coordinated and implemented by the regional prefects. To bring more expertise from the regions on board, the prefects were each assisted by two advisory committees with local elected officials, representatives of the state administration, and members of professional associations.

But the French regions always remained mere technocratic tools geared to improving planification in a modern industrial society. In 1969, President de Gaulle sought to implement his vision of a “participatory society” with a major regional reform that would have turned the regions into territorial authorities with their own councils, budgets, and competences. But this reform effort failed because de Gaulle simultaneously strove to weaken the Senate. By announcing his intention to resign if the reforms were rejected, he effectively turned the referendum on the reforms package into a plebiscite on confidence in his presidency.⁵⁰

Under de Gaulle’s successor Pompidou, a minor reform in 1972 transformed the regions into legal entities under public law with purely administrative functions in the area of regional economic planning. A regional council composed of national parliamentarians and regional representatives elected from the départements was also created.⁵¹

The regions only received the status of territorial authorities—and therefore a legal status equivalent to that of the communes and départements—during the major reform initiative that took place in 1982, during the Mitterrand presidency. Executive power passed from the regional prefect to the president of the—now directly elected—regional council, and the previous comprehensive advance control of all actions (tutelle, as this kind of administrative tutelage by the prefect was called) evolved into a form of retrospective legal supervision.⁵²

The regions acquired competences of their own in the fields of regional spatial planning, infrastructure, and economic development. They also became responsible for providing and maintaining schools of the lycée type, vocational education and training, environmental protection, and regional cultural affairs. But they remained the “economically and politically weaker level” vis-à-vis the départements that were also bolstered in this reform phase, especially as the possibility of one territorial authority exerting tutelle over another was excluded.⁵³

The subnational levels in France do not formally participate in national political decision-making; de jure responsibility for communicating issues of regional concern “up” to the central government rests with the prefects who also simultaneously serve as the representatives of the central state in the départements and regions.⁵⁴ Although a second chamber that is formally the representative body of all territorial authorities exists in the form of the Senate, the nature of the electoral system means that it is dominated by the small communes and, to a lesser extent, the départements.⁵⁵

What developed in France in the absence of formal participation structures was a strongly personalized system of interdependences that local elected officials can exploit to bring their interests into the policy process of the central state. This “pouvoir périphérique”⁵⁶ is founded (apart from the long terms of office of many important local officials) especially on the cumul des mandats (accumulation of offices) at the national and local levels that has been “one of the defining features of French parliamentarianism since the beginnings of the Third Republic.”⁵⁷

Jacques Chaban-Delmas, for example, not only served as mayor of Bordeaux for almost fifty years, but was also a member of the National Assembly for the same length of time, its president on multiple occasions, a national minister and prime minister, and twice president of the Regional Council of Aquitaine.⁵⁸ Other top-tier national politicians also held office as presidents of départements or regional councils as a form of symbolic identification with “their” regions and combined “democratic legitimacy with a vestigial remnant of great feudal lordships.”⁵⁹

Such local notables were able to exert considerable influence in this fashion and to place unsurmountable obstacles in the path of the central state as represented by its prefects in the regions and its control centers in Paris. Formal hierarchical structures thus receded into the background. Conflicts were processed in a tangled web of elected officeholders and state officials with the help of “the cross-regulation system” (régulation croisée)⁶⁰ that linked “administrative and political sources of authority via personal and territorial ties.”⁶¹

In addition to this long tradition of relying on intricate interpersonal connections, subnational units also gained a powerful tool enabling them to co-shape the policy of the national government when decentralization legislation brought in planning contracts. Even before these were put in place, effective spatial planning was not possible without the participation of the subnational levels.⁶² The seventh national plan (1976–1980) was the first national plan to integrate the regional plans of the newly created regions into the new national plan for France as a whole.

The 1982 decentralization reforms subsequently made the state-region planning contracts (contrats de plan Etat-Région, CPER) “a central tool for managing state investment in cooperation with the decentralized levels.”⁶³ The regions acquired seats on the National Planning Commission (Commission nationale du plan) entrusted with producing a national plan. Once the national plan existed, a negotiation phase followed that led to each region and the state concluding a state-region contract that set out their joint priorities and the level of funding to be awarded.

Although the central government continued to play a strong role and the regions generally had only limited financial resources,⁶⁴ the planning contracts did establish the “principle of partnership between the central level and the subnational territorial authorities in the sphere of spatial planning and regional policy”⁶⁵—especially as the financial resources of the regions were often decisive for plugging the last remaining funding gaps that needed to be closed before individual investment projects could proceed.

Foundations were thus laid for the outcomes seen today: a “major result of decentralization policy” can be identified in a shift from “hierarchical, centralist government in which the state (at least formally) had the upper hand” to “negotiation-based settlements.”⁶⁶

While the French regions were established chiefly to foster functional decentralization, the Republic of Italy was conceived of from the outset—and defined in the Italian Constitution of 1948—as being both “una e indivisibile” and a multilevel system with regions, provinces, and local authorities. It was envisaged that the Italian regions would be autonomous legal entities with powers and tasks of their own.

While regionalization was not uncontroversial, a need to “overcome the excessive centralism of fascism” supplied motivation to drive it forward.⁶⁷ Even before the constitution entered into effect, the legal prerequisites for regional administrations were created (between 1944 and 1947) in what were to become autonomous regions with special statutes—Sicily, Sardinia, Valle d’Aosta and Trentino-South Tyrol.⁶⁸

But the Christian Democrats, who initially advocated regionalization, delayed the establishment of the regions envisaged by the constitutional process because they feared left-wing opposition coming from the regions as a threat to their governing majority. Liberals, monarchists, and the ministerial bureaucracy all preferred the unitary model of statehood and were opposed to regionalization.⁶⁹

Italian regionalization proceeded along doubly asymmetrical lines:⁷⁰ the content of the special statutes (with the rank of constitutional laws) giving special autonomous status to four regions (later five following the enactment of the special statute for Friuli-Venezia Giulia in 1963) differed from region to region, and the other fifteen ordinary statute regions were different again.

The ordinary statute regions were furnished with considerably weaker competences and budgetary autonomy. In addition, their establishment proved to be a protracted process that dragged on until 1970: although the regions already featured in the constitution, the legislation governing the election of regional councils was not passed until 1968 and the legislation on regional budgets was only passed in 1970. The first regional council elections were held in June 1970 and regional governments were formed. In 1971, the regional statutes were drafted by the regional councils and approved by both chambers of the national parliament. By 1977, the transfer of competences to the regions was finally complete.⁷¹

The areas of competence of the regions with ordinary statutes were enumerated in the constitution. Taken together, they depict the regions as an “agrarian economic unit… from the pre-industrial age.”⁷² Their focus was on markets, local police forces, public welfare, vocational training, local museums and libraries, urban planning, tourism, regional infrastructure including inland waterways, agriculture, forestry, hunting, and, last but not least, the crafts and trades. The regional statutes also generally formulated objectives including participation in regional economic planning and structural policy. Regions with special statutes had additional competences in the areas of culture, industry and the economy, labor law, higher education law, and social security law.⁷³

However, the residual legislative powers remained with the central state, as did numerous obvious and more subtle levers for wielding control over processes. In most cases, only the regions with special statutes had “exclusive power to legislate” while regions with ordinary statutes had to confine themselves to enacting supplementary legislation within the limits of a legislative framework created by the central state. The central state was also able to exert a form of preventive control over regional legislative and administrative activity via government commissioners and supervisory commissions that did not confine itself to regulatory oversight but could also intervene in questions pertaining to the “national interest” or the interests of other regions.⁷⁴

Taken together with their tightly limited budgetary autonomy, the effect was that the ordinary administrative regions, especially, were strongly dependent on the central state from their very establishment. Only in the regions with special statutes did most of the national taxes levied in each region flow into the budgets of the regional governments.⁷⁵

While the regions were “kept on the leash of the central state” right from the start,⁷⁶ the second phase of the transfer of competences from the central state to the regions, which took place between 1975 and 1977, softened the rigidity of the constitutionally envisaged separation of competences and tasks. Especially in administrative action, “diverse coordination and cooperation mechanisms” emerged and responsibility for a given issue “being assigned to only a single level of government became very much the exception rather than the rule.”⁷⁷ Over time, a system of “unofficial or semi-official negotiations and consultations that was beyond democratic control developed for coordination purposes between the levels and entities involved.”⁷⁸

This was especially relevant for spatial planning and economic development, areas in which the regions received new competences. The regional presidents were members of both the Interministerial Committee for Economic Planning (Commissione interministeriale per la programmazione economica) and the Interregional Commission (Commissione interregionale), newly created in 1970. Both bodies played a decisive role in planning the national economic program and regional development programs.⁷⁹

In contrast to the provinces and local authorities, the Italian regions were involved to a limited extent as subnational bodies in the decision-making process of the central government: The regions received a right to propose national legislation, and also a right to initiate national referenda when requests were made by five regional councils. The regions participate in the constitutional bodies of the central state only via the role of regional delegates in electing the Italian president. The regional presidents of special-statute regions were also eligible to participate in cabinet meetings in an advisory capacity during discussions of matters affecting their specific regions. Although the Senate is formally “elected on a regional basis,” it is not otherwise designed as a form of regional representation.⁸⁰

The State–Regions Conference established at the insistence of the regions in 1983 was initially an infrequently convened body of no great significance, but a 1988 reform transformed it into a standing body chaired by the prime minister, who was required to convene it at least twice a year. It gradually became more significant but remained a purely advisory body “intended, on the one hand, to avoid the exclusion of the regions from the national political scene, but also, on the other, to prevent an effective regional chamber expanding regional representation at the national level.”⁸¹

While the French regions are territorial entities with autonomous administrative competences and the Italian regions have legislative competences of their own only to the degree to which the central state has ceded these competences to the regions, the German Länder are qualitatively rather different:

As partially sovereign constituent states with their own constitutions, the Länder possess the quality of statehood and original legislative powers, chiefly in the areas of culture, education, research, internal security, state planning, and administration. They also have the residual competence to legislate in all areas not expressly defined as matters falling under exclusive federal legislative power in the German Basic Law and in areas in which the federal government has not made use of its concurrent legislative competence. The state governments are also participants in federal legislative and administrative processes via the Bundesrat and can, depending on the issue being legislated, exercise an absolute or suspensory veto over Bundestag positions there.⁸²

Reconstruction of the German economy after the Second World War, the importance attached to establishing equal living conditions throughout the federal territory in the Basic Law, and the beginnings of “planning euphoria” combined—especially from the 1960s onwards—to create a steadily more unitarian trend in federal German policy which the Länder were largely unable to counter.

The budget reform of 1969⁸³ solidified a model of “cooperative federalism” with its introduction of three areas of joint responsibility (regional policy, agricultural structural policy, and university construction), a uniform fiscal system, greater fiscal equalization between states, and elements of whole-country planning. A large number of joint committees were instituted to address these joint responsibilities of the Federation and the Länder.

While the German Länder and the Italian and French regions are all very different from a constitutional law perspective, striking similarities are evident from other perspectives: the subnational levels in all three states have tasks in the areas of spatial planning, regional structural policy, and infrastructure policy. In Germany and Italy, tasks in the area of agriculture also feature. Hope that the potential of the regions could be made fertile for economic modernization processes was not the least motive behind the transfer of these areas of competence from nation-states to regions.⁸⁴

But these are areas in which a need for cooperation is especially likely to arise between central governments (that usually, at the very least, have control over funding streams and can thus influence overall planning) and the subnational authorities tasked with delivering policy on the ground. And when competences are distributed, cooperation becomes all the more essential. Even in such a strongly unitary-decentralized system as France before 1982, such cooperation can be observed, as Dörte Rasch clearly demonstrates in her study of French spatial planning policy.⁸⁵

Once the European Community gained influence in (agricultural) structural policy within the framework of the common agricultural policy, started granting its own investment loans through the European Investment Bank, and was given an expressly designated role in regional policy with the establishment of the European Regional Development Fund in 1975, interdependencies between the regional and European levels became entirely unavoidable.

In Germany, the Länder were involved from the beginning due to their administrative sovereignty. But similar patterns are discernible in Italy and France: the Italian regions were allowed to implement the EEC directives on agricultural reform independently for the first time in 1975, albeit only within the narrow parameters fixed in detailed national legislation passed in advance.⁸⁶ The reform of the European Structural Funds in the 1980s also led to the Italian regions—in stark contrast to the situation in France—becoming more involved in the planning and implementation of programs.⁸⁷

In France, the regions were initially only able to influence the distribution of European structural funds indirectly via their planning contracts with the central state. But direct links between French regions and the European Community were forged from 1986 onwards in the context of the Integrated Mediterranean Programmes. The regional council presidents and regional prefects were both program signatories and co-chaired the monitoring committees.⁸⁸ Although the French central government otherwise retained the power to distribute structural funds for itself alone and granted an active role in the regions only to the prefects, so as not to bolster the budgetary autonomy of the territorial authorities, it did at least involve regional partners in an advisory capacity in program planning and delivery.⁸⁹

In addition to the ramifications of the structural policy activity initiated at the European level, the regions themselves created additional points of contact between the European and subnational levels with every form of regional economic development they initiated.

The economic policy the member states agreed to in the EEC Treaty was essentially liberal and focused primarily on “fair competition” and the “elimination of restrictions on trade between states.”⁹⁰ It sought primarily to break down trade barriers and to prevent discrimination against trading partners from other EEC states.⁹¹ This liberal economic model found expression in Article 92 of the EEC Treaty, for instance, with its prohibition of state aid except in narrowly defined exceptional cases dependent on Commission approval.

This meant that any regional development policy that the regions in France and Italy or the Länder in Germany wished to pursue always also required that any loans or credit programs involving public funds be approved on the European level. This applied to the development programs for southern Italy administered by the Cassa per il Mezziogiorno and the regions, and it was also true for the Bavarian “zonal border development” (Zonenrandgebiet) programs.⁹² Several German Länder drew up EEC adaptation plans for their own policies as early as the 1960s.⁹³

II. The self-image of the regions

In political science, the emergence and evolution of multilevel governance is sometimes understood only in terms of the specific interdependencies that arose out of the overlap between the competences of the regions and those of the nation-state and European levels. But the self-image of some specific regions was no less important a factor, as these individual regions advocated for the relevance of the regional level in the European multilevel system and thus ultimately changed the status of regions more generally.

In the German context, the example of Bavaria is particularly salient. With its strong and long-standing tradition of asserting its own statehood, Bavaria (initially with support from North Rhine-Westphalia) was quick to position itself at the forefront of efforts to safeguard the statehood and powers of the Länder in the era of European integration.⁹⁴

Within Bavaria, the historical dimension was especially foregrounded; the state government was keen to stress, for instance, that the sovereignty of the old Kingdom of Bavaria “lives on in a weakened form in the new Free State of Bavaria”⁹⁵ and that independent contacts with the European Commission were also “a manifestation of a certain Bavarian self-reliance.”⁹⁶

The minister president of North Rhine-Westphalia, Karl Arnold, took a different tack with his expression of fears that European integration could lead to a “progressive mediatization of the Länder by the federal government and their transformation into pure administrative districts” because the—intrinsically desirable—vision of a federal European state did not include room for political decision-making at the Länder level.⁹⁷ States such as Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia chose to participate actively in European policy-making to counteract such threats and protect their statehood.

As partly sovereign constituent states, the German states were able to build on their strong position in constitutional law that gave them both original state powers and rights to participate in federal policy-making. But such consciousness of their own statehood and a desire to influence European-level politics was not equally pronounced throughout Germany.

In Italy, too, there were great differences in how involved individual regions became in foreign and European policy. The northern regions of Lombardy, Piedmont, Tuscany, Emilia-Romagna, South Tyrol, and Trentino were especially prominent—the same regions that demonstrate a strong sense of their own distinctive identities in inner-Italian discourse.⁹⁸ The southern regions seemed disinclined to exert influence on higher-level policy formation and focused their attention more narrowly on the areas of regional autonomy mapped out by the constitution.

The French regions were different again: they had been created solely to meet the needs of regionalized planification. As territorial authorities with purely administrative self-government rights regulated only by ordinary legislation, they encompassed areas that were only historically and culturally coherent to a limited extent. Historically, only Corsica, Brittany, Alsace, and Nord-pas-de-Calais had enjoyed a sense of regional awareness.⁹⁹ And it was indeed mainly the Bretons, and to a lesser extent the Alsatians, who demanded places for their respective regions in the political fabric of the European Communities.¹⁰⁰

The regions mentioned here pursued their objective of asserting the political relevance of the regions in Europe in three ways: by nudging political discourse in the direction of a “Europe of the regions,” by seeking to participate in decision-making at the European level, and by cooperating with other European regions over shared interests or challenges.

<34 id=”iii.-european-discourses-on-regionalism”>III. European discourses on regionalism

Federalism as the main design principle for a united Europe was a central component of the agenda of pro-European movements right from the outset, but it was often conceived of mainly in connection with the relationship of the European states to a desired European federation.¹⁰¹ The fact that a federal order would also need to include the states and regions at the subnational level was brought into the debate, especially in the Federal Republic of Germany, by politicians from Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia.¹⁰² Against a background of growing and strengthening regionalism in France, Italy, and the United Kingdom, a Europe-wide debate then began to gain momentum in the 1960s.¹⁰³

The Swiss philosopher Denis de Rougemont¹⁰⁴ coined the term “Europe of the regions” in 1962. He argued that nation-states ought to be abolished because they were simultaneously too big and too small to tackle the problems of the day:¹⁰⁵ too small to defend themselves, prosper, and continue to play their former role in world politics, and yet also too big to enable their citizens to personally participate in public life in appropriate and effective ways. Rougemont argued that the larger tasks of the nation-states could be handled at the European level and the smaller tasks could be handed over to the regions.

While French international law expert Guy Héraud¹⁰⁶ was pursuing a different agenda with his model of a “Europe of ethnic groups,” he arrived at much the same conclusion about the desirability of abolishing nation-states and favoring smaller regional units. As a scholar of international law, Héraud was primarily interested in the question of how to protect ethnic groups and minorities. He viewed the “(ethnic) nation” as the “natural community” and argued that many nation-states failed to provide this natural community with sufficient protection in cases where it was a minority community. This was the background to his conception of a European federation based on homogeneous ethnic regions that would end the oppression of minorities.¹⁰⁷

Both thinkers influenced regionalists in France and the Alpine region,¹⁰⁸ and their ideas also diffused into the Sardinian regionalism movement.¹⁰⁹ The Council of Europe was likewise highly influential: its committees provided forums that gave regional authorities a voice at the European level and facilitated the development of “une véritable doctrine de la régionalisation.”¹¹⁰

The “Conference of Local Authorities of Europe” became the “Conference of Local and Regional Authorities” in 1975 and the “Committee on Municipal Affairs” set up by the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe later became the “Committee on Spatial Planning and Regional Authorities.”¹¹¹ The European Conferences of Border Regions organized by the Council of Europe in the 1970s contributed significantly to the adoption of the Madrid Convention by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in 1975. This placed cross-border cooperation between subnational entities on a legitimate legal footing within an international legal framework for the first time. In 1966, the member states had blocked an earlier proposal that would have created such a framework agreement.¹¹²

The Council of Europe Conference held in 1978 from January 30 to February 1 in Bordeaux declared itself the “first meeting of the Europe of the regions.”¹¹³ By this point, at the very latest, de Rougemont’s concept had been integrated into the self-concept of the regions.

The idea of a “Europe of the Regions” was strongly advocated ahead of the Maastricht treaty in a conference series with that title. This process eventually led to the establishment of the Committee of the Regions and the incorporation of the principle of subsidiarity into the European treaties.¹¹⁴ Even today, “Europe of the regions” is a catchphrase used in contexts extending beyond politics; its recent invocation by Robert Menasse is a case in point.¹¹⁵

IV. Exploring opportunities for political participation

The creation of the Committee of the Regions marked a high point (and one that the regions had long been working towards) in the inclusion of subnational levels in European-level structures. Regions sought to be involved in decision-making processes both because the specific outcomes reached on particular issues affected their interests, given the interdependencies in specific areas outlined above, and because of the wider concerns of the Italian regions and the German states that they could gradually be “dispossessed”¹¹⁶ of their competences by what was perceived as the “regional blindness”¹¹⁷ of the European treaties.

The subnational territorial authorities in Germany and Italy could not participate in the European legislative process even when the issues being legislated fell wholly or partially within the competences they held under domestic arrangements. On the contrary: national governments were now able to influence decisions (via their participation in the Council of Ministers of the European Communities) in spheres for which they were not responsible under domestic arrangements. In Italy, the nation-state also laid claim to the task of implementing European standards even in those areas of policy for which the regions were responsible under domestic arrangements.¹¹⁸

The subnational levels adopted two tactics in their quest for greater influence: they used their clout in domestic decision-making processes to help shape the positions advanced by their respective national governments in the Council of Ministers, and they sought to bypass the national level altogether and influence European institutions directly.

Subnational authorities typically participate in domestic decision-making processes via a second parliamentary chamber. The Senates in Italy and France were, as described above, only suitable for this purpose to a limited degree. In addition, the national governments made it unmistakably clear that how they positioned themselves in the Council of Ministers was an “executive function” and “not at the disposal of any other body,” especially since European policy, as part of foreign policy, fell within the competence of the national executive.¹¹⁹

In the Federal Republic of Germany, the national government was initially only prepared to grant the Bundesrat and the states a weak right to be informed: from the initial EEC negotiations onward, there was an expectation that an observer representing the Länder within the German EC delegation and a Bundesrat special committee would satisfy the states’ need to be kept abreast of developments.¹²⁰ But this gave the states practically no scope to actively exert influence. Agreement on participation was reached for the first time in 1979, after somewhat acrimonious negotiations, and a procedure for participation was instituted at that point, the Länderbeteiligungsverfahren. After it proved “almost entirely unsuccessful”¹²¹ in practice, the Länder pushed for and achieved more far-reaching and legally guaranteed rights during the ratification procedures for the Single European Act and the Maastricht treaty, and Germany’s Basic Law gained a new Article 23 in 1992 that reflected these changes.¹²²

Developments in Italy unfolded in a broadly similar way. When the regions were first established, the parliamentary committee concerned with regional policy unsuccessfully called for the regions to participate in the decision-making process of the central government on matters of concern to the European Communities. Only after a fresh attempt to raise the issue did the regional presidents’ committee gain a weak right to be consulted by the central government in 1975. In this arrangement, the central government still held all the cards: if no consensus was reached, the central government was entitled to make decisions after consulting the parliamentary committee on regional policy.¹²³

At the end of the 1980s, the regions won improvements to their right to be consulted in the context of the State–Regions Conference. The “La Pergola law” enacted in 1989 ensured both that Italy’s European policy had to be discussed regularly in the State–Regions Conference and that regional presidents acquired the right to participate in cabinet meetings discussing European legislation issues of direct relevance to them.¹²⁴

The regions in France long remained completely cut off from the formulation of the country’s European policy.¹²⁵ Only the traditional French approach to connecting different political levels, the cumul des mandats and the notables system, allowed certain opportunities to test their influence. One such opportunity arose during the period in which the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) was created: With Jacques Chaban-Delmas, the duc d’Aquitaine, as French prime minister from 1969 to 1972, the two Bretons Olivier Guichard and René Pleven as ministers, and Alsace-born Maurice Schumann¹²⁶ as the foreign minister, important cabinet members were sensitive to regional policy issues. They placed no major obstacles in the path of the new proposals advanced by the European Commission to institute a common regional policy in the Council of Ministers of the European Communities after previous regional policy initiatives by the Commission had been shelved following resistance from various member states in the late 1960s.¹²⁷

As the willingness of national governments to allow subnational bodies to participate in the formulation of national policy on Europe remained low in all three member states discussed here, the regions also sought from an early stage to bypass the nation-state entirely and engage with the European level directly.

This could rarely be achieved through formal channels, as there was no official regional representation at the European level. Participation of subnational representatives in national delegations to European Communities bodies remained the exception.¹²⁸

Efforts to address this gap in representation were undertaken as early as 1950/51 with the founding of the Council of European Municipalities, mainly on the initiative of French and Italian local-level politicians including the mayor of Bordeaux Jacques Chaban-Delmas.¹²⁹ With this step, the founders took up municipal association models that were familiar to them from their own national contexts and extended them further. The Association des Présidents de Conseils Généraux had, for example, been the most important advocacy group representing French local authorities since 1946.¹³⁰

The role of unofficial channels for fostering direct contact was considerably more important. In Germany, the Bavarian Minister of State for Federal Affairs, Franz Heubl, spun a web of close ties linking the Bavarian state to the European Commission. Bavarian politicians used “informative visits”—in both directions—to draw attention to specific Bavarian needs in areas like agricultural and structural policy among those responsible for these areas at the European level.¹³¹ Especially early on, when the federal government was still trying to prevent contacts, Franz Heubl benefited from his close personal relationship with Walter Hallstein, the first president of the European Commission.¹³²

To a lesser degree, North Rhine-Westphalia also had direct contacts with Europe in the 1950s, and Hamburg, too, made its mark with its own distinctive foreign policy.¹³³ A similar strategy has been documented for Italian regions, albeit not yet to the same extent. In 1975, the regional government of Sicily invited George Thomson, the European commissioner with responsibility for regional policy, to visit that region, but this was an invitation extended jointly with the national government. In 1976, delegations from Emilia-Romagna and Piedmont traveled to Brussels for the first time and met with representatives of the Commission and the Parliament there.¹³⁴

In the Federal Republic of Germany, a special situation existed insofar as the CSU, a political party active only within Bavaria and politically dominant there, supported the German government coalition for long periods as part of the CDU/CSU Christian Democrat alliance while also being present in the European Parliament with its own deputies.

Due to its role in the federal government, the CSU succeeded in ensuring that Hans von der Groeben remained a member of the European Commission for another term in 1966.¹³⁵ As the party of Hans August Lücker, who chaired the Christian Democrat grouping in the European Parliament from 1969 to 1975, the CSU was even able to play an important role in the establishment of the European People’s Party.¹³⁶ In France and Italy, by contrast, regional parties (with the sole exception of the South Tyrolean People’s Party, SVP) played only minor roles during the period discussed here.¹³⁷

In France, as in Germany and Italy, the regions did not allow the national government to hedge them in entirely, although the French government “militantly favored their exclusion”¹³⁸ and stressed more emphatically than any other national government its exclusive prerogative to represent the country externally. The Breton pressure group CELIB adapted the domestic strategy it had used to lobby the French government to consider the region’s needs more fully in national structural policy and transferred it to the European level.¹³⁹

As a legally independent association, CELIB was not subject to state supervision and had more leeway to act as it saw fit than the regional administrative agencies. It was able, for instance, to organize a fact-finding tour of Brittany for members of the European Parliament and Commission officials as early as June 1966. In 1974, CELIB representatives met with European Commission president François-Xavier Ortoli and regional policy commissioner George Thomson and achieved the establishment of an advisory body at the Commission with representatives from European regions and local authorities.¹⁴⁰

Although the French national government explicitly banned direct contacts between subnational and European institutions in 1983, CELIB succeeded in being included in the European Commission’s OID program (”Opérations intégrées de développement”) in 1985 in spite of opposition from DATAR, the national spatial planning agency. The Breton network managed to present its outline program directly to the Commission, circumventing national bodies, during a brief window of opportunity characterized by both a phase of experimentation in EC structural policy and a positive buzz around decentralization in France.¹⁴¹

However, the regional office Brittany maintained in Brussels from the late 1980s onwards was largely ineffective because it was under-resourced and hampered by resistance from the central government.¹⁴² The constituent states of the Federal Republic of Germany also started opening their own representations in Brussels around this time, but their work and its effectiveness has not yet been examined in depth. The Italian regions were not allowed to set up representations of their own until 1996, and even then only on a limited scale.¹⁴³

While Brittany’s direct connections to the European level came about through the CELIB network, Alsace was able to exploit the position of the city of Strasbourg as the seat of both the Council of Europe and the European Parliament. Representatives of the city and the Département Bas-Rhin invoked Strasbourg’s vocation européenne when staking their claims to participate in European discourse.

This is particularly evident in the context of the Treaty of Rome: the members of the city and département councils met in the Prefecture of Bas-Rhin on October 19, 1957, unanimously expressed support for “all the efforts undertaken to unite the free peoples of Europe,” and called to “reunite all the European institutions in Strasbourg.”¹⁴⁴ This resolution was then dispatched not only to the French Foreign Minister Christian Pineau, but also—with scant regard for official protocol or the division of powers in France—directly to Walter Hallstein, the designated president of the European Commission, and to the chairperson of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe.¹⁴⁵

The unofficial Rassemblement Européen referendum on the establishment of a “United States of Europe” presents an even clearer example: fifty-four local authorities in Alsace made their town halls available as polling stations for an unofficial referendum on setting up a “United States of Europe” and the simulated parallel elections to a “Congress of the European People” held on November 24, 1957.¹⁴⁶

For decades, the Alsace region also had a personified bridge to European institutions in the form of Pierre Pflimlin. As mayor of Strasbourg for many years and president both of the general council of Bas-Rhin and of the regional economic development commission (CODER), Pflimlin was the leading politician in Alsace. At the same time, through the cumul des mandats, he served not only as a national parliamentarian and minister in France, but also as a member of the Assembly of the Council of Europe and of the European Parliament and even as president of the latter from 1984 to 1987.¹⁴⁷

The subnational bodies also sometimes intervened on substantive policy issues at the European level. During the discussion of the Mansholt Plan for the reform of European agriculture, the Italian section of the Council of European Municipalities adopted a position in favor of the plan in May 1969. Nevertheless, the Regional Council of Trentino-South Tyrol, where agriculture was practiced on a small scale and the Mansholt Plan was seen as a threat to traditional structures, simultaneously adopted a resolution clearly rejecting the plan.¹⁴⁸

European multilevel governance also found its early expression in Italy and France in similar episodes and phenomena. It can be registered that the regions worked to “‘upload’ the norms of their own member states”¹⁴⁹—in other words, that they reached for models already known from the domestic context and sought to apply them to their efforts to shape European institutions and processes: informal contacts through visiting delegations in all regions, somewhat more formal mechanisms of participation in Italy and the Federal Republic of Germany, personal or party networks in Germany and France, and lobbying by umbrella organizations and pressure groups in France and Italy.

V. Visibility through cooperation

The regions contributed to the emergence of a European multilevel system not only by seeking to participate in decision-making processes at the European level but also by working together with other regions that faced similar challenges or had similar interests and finding ways to represent such shared interests collectively. Municipalities along the border between the Netherlands and the German Länder North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony banded together as early as 1958 to form the Euregio association.¹⁵⁰ The Association of European Border Regions emerged out of similar efforts in 1971.¹⁵¹

In 1971/72, a Bavarian and Tyrolean initiative led to the foundation of the Association of Alpine States (Arge Alp, short for “Arbeitsgemeinschaft Alpenländer”), a loose cooperation initially between the heads of government in the states, regions, and autonomous provinces of Bavaria, Graubünden, Lombardy, Salzburg, Tyrol, Vorarlberg, and Bolzano-South Tyrol. The regions aimed to jointly address issues in the areas of infrastructure, spatial planning, agriculture, environmental protection, and culture that did not stop at national borders but were relevant for the Alpine region as a whole.

The heads of the regional governments worked to reach joint resolutions in this loosely structured working group without involving the committees in their respective regional assemblies. They then communicated these results as recommendations to the respective national agencies and also, for informational purposes, to European institutions.

Arge Alp consciously envisaged itself as an “experimental European regional model” and anticipated that such regional working groups across the entire Alpine arch could become the nuclei of a “Europe of the regions.”¹⁵² Other working groups did indeed follow: the Alps-Adriatic Working Community in 1978, the Working Community of the Western Alps (COTRAO) linking French, Italian, and Swiss regions in 1982, the Working Community of the Pyrenees (CTP) with regions from France, Spain, and Andorra in 1983, and the Working Community of the Jura (CTJ) with French and Swiss regions in 1985.¹⁵³

With conspicuously similar timing to the founding of Arge Alp, CELIB convened a Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions of Europe (CPMR) in 1973. Representatives of twenty-three regions from nine states, ranging from Scotland to Sicily, came together to represent their interests vis-à-vis European institutions jointly.¹⁵⁴

The conference had a “caractère semi-privé” but was “sous le patronage” of French spatial planning minister Olivier Guichard.¹⁵⁵ The support of this top Breton politician did not suffice to deter the Minister of the Interior from instructing the regional prefects to ensure that the conference was on no account funded from the budgets of participating regions. Jacques Chaban-Delmas stepped in with funds from the city of Bordeaux and the Italian region of Sardinia contributed, as well, and the tide turned when the French government changed in 1977, and the new Minister of the Interior was the Breton Christian Bonnet, who promptly lifted the ban.¹⁵⁶

Regional organizations like Arge Alp, the CPMR, and the numerous Euregios were brought together by, as it were, “natural” interests they shared due to a common border area or a similar (peripheral) geographical location.¹⁵⁷ Other bilateral or multilateral alliances were created to institute formal links between regions that were not neighbors but nevertheless wished to cooperate more closely. A partnership agreement building on earlier bilateral ties was, for instance, concluded in 1988 between the German state of Baden-Württemberg, the Spanish autonomous community of Catalonia, the Italian region of Lombardy, and the French region of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. As the “Four Motors for Europe,” these regions aimed to cooperate especially in the areas of business, technology, and research.¹⁵⁸ The idea was not to create a new spatial unit, but to advocate for shared socioeconomic interests at the European level and exploit synergies between the regions.¹⁵⁹

As these various kinds of cooperation between regions progressed, a Europeanization of the regions was simultaneously taking place: as countries and regions engaged in political exchanges, developed joint strategies, and competed for the best solutions, they began to site themselves in broader comparative political and economic frameworks. While regions had always had their immediate neighbors in their own nation-states as jumping-off points for comparisons, other European regions facing similar challenges now started coming into view as possible points of reference:

One concern of the European Wine Regions Conference (CERV) founded in 1988 at the instigation of Edgar Faure, Jacques Chaban-Delmas, and the Council of Europe director Gérard Baloup was jointly representing the interests of wine regions to the European Commission, which was responsible for regulating the wine market in the context of the common agricultural policy. But the increase in political cooperation between the regions inevitably also led to individual regions becoming more aware of their own market position and their own special interests. At times, competitive wrangling for the best solutions also came into play (in the working group on training winegrowers, for example).¹⁶⁰

The interregional cooperation that broke new ground and spawned a growing number of organizations in the 1970s was a significant component in European regions becoming increasingly vocal and visible in the 1980s and thereby gaining greater political heft.¹⁶¹ In France and Italy, especially, the rise of regional units gave rise to a new and increasingly self-confident “première génération d’exécutifs régionaux.”¹⁶² Joint umbrella organizations such as the Liaison Office of European Regional Organisations (BLORE) developed into important pressure groups linking the regional and European levels; BLORE was founded in 1979 and evolved into the newly established Council of European Regions in 1985 that was known as the Assembly of European Regions from 1987 onward.¹⁶³

VI. The openness of European institutions

In addition to the regions being interested in participating at the European level, the European institutions also had motives of their own for fostering their ties with the regions.

The European Commission organized a Conference on Regional Economies as early as 1961 that left some participants unable to “avoid gaining the impression that regionalism was being encouraged here by the Commission.”¹⁶⁴ In its proposal for the First Medium-Term Economic Policy Programme, the Commission expressly envisaged consultation with the regions affected by regional policy measures. The member states unequivocally rejected this proposal in 1966, however, and stressed that they and they alone were the Commission’s dialogue partners as defined in the treaties.¹⁶⁵

The Commission nevertheless continued to purposefully pursue the establishment of a European regional policy¹⁶⁶ and to maintain contacts with subnational territorial authorities. Regional Policy Commissioner Albert Borschette justified this in a lecture given in Munich as follows: “To fulfill its political mandate, the Commission not only needs constant dialogue with the governments of the member states. It also needs direct contact with the governments of the Länder and the authorities in the regions.”¹⁶⁷ Formal justification for this logic was available in the form of Article 213 of the Treaty of Rome, which stipulated that the Commission could “collect any information and carry out any checks required for the performance of the tasks entrusted to it.”

The Commission’s self-image as a motor driving European integration and seeking to promote progressive unification at all levels was probably a contributory factor in this policy. What was just as significant, however, was that having open lines of communication with the regions improved the Commission’s negotiating position vis-à-vis the Council, in which decisions were made by representatives of member state governments, since the Commission was able to draw on informed insights into the progress of domestic discussions and into possible differences of opinion at the domestic level to poke holes in monolithic arguments put forward by member states. The German Federal Ministry of Economics indignantly registered as early as 1964 that the Länder were “tripping up” of the federal government when the Commission raised repeated objections based on information it could only have gained from Länder sources.¹⁶⁸

European regions encountered especially fair winds in the 1970s. While Walter Hallstein, the Commission’s first president, had already sought contact with the regions, an entire series of people well-disposed towards the regions held posts in the Commission during this decade of supposed “eurosclerosis”: Industrial Affairs Commissioner Altiero Spinelli was a passionate federalist. Regional commissioner George Thomson, a Scot, recommended that his homeland take its cue from Bavaria and establish its own contacts with Brussels.¹⁶⁹ In 1974, Thomson and Commission president François-Xavier Ortoli—himself a Corsican!—met with CELIB representatives and agreed to set up an advisory body at the Commission with representatives from European regions and local authorities.¹⁷⁰

The Bavarian commissioner Peter M. Schmidhuber also gave decisive support to the regions-friendly establishment of a Consultative Council of Regional and Local Authorities in 1988, the predecessor of the European Committee of the Regions (CoR). This was a body for which the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR) had long been campaigning.¹⁷¹

While the European Commission sought to give the regions access to the European level through regional policy as a policy field in which it had gained increasing competences, the Council of Europe granted the regions their own place in its structures. Since the 1950s, the Council of Europe had been attempting to involve local and regional authorities in its work and to provide them with a political forum so that European unification could grow from below as well as being fostered by national governments.¹⁷²

At the urging of the Council of European Municipalities, the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe set up its own municipal affairs committee as early as 1952. In 1955, it decided to convene an annual conference of local authorities. This European Conference of Local Authorities met for the first time in 1957 and was officially set up by the Committee of Ministers in 1961 as an advisory body tasked with advising the Council of Europe on municipal issues and keeping European municipalities abreast of European issues.¹⁷³

In 1965, the Council of Europe politicians Fernand Dehousse, Nicola Signorello, and Willi Birkelbach took this initiative further again with their call for a European Senate with regional and national representatives to be established within the EEC to foster democratized European regional policy.¹⁷⁴ Until then, the European Conference of Local Authorities had also dealt with the problems of peripheral, disadvantaged, or border regions as a kind of proxy.¹⁷⁵ But in 1975, the formal remit of the Conference of Local Authorities was expanded (at its own request) by the Committee of Ministers to include representation of the regions; by this point, the Council of Europe conferences on European peripheral and border regions (Brest 1970, Strasbourg 1972, Innsbruck and Galway 1975) had left an impression.

The establishment of the new Conference of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe sought to give a voice to the regions and to promote closer ties between the Council of Europe and the European Communities.¹⁷⁶ This represented a “milestone in the development of international law, and specifically European law, as it gave regions within states a firm place—however modest—in European-level institutions for the first time.”¹⁷⁷

The nation-states (or rather their governments) dragged their feet and obstructed all these developments. They were reluctant to cede or unnecessarily weaken their position as gatekeepers between European and national politics. From their point of view, organizing negotiations with Europe as a “two-level game”¹⁷⁸ where they faced the Commission alone in the Council of Ministers was a logical goal. Attempts by national governments to prevent subnational bodies from engaging in contacts with European institutions are known from all member states.

In Germany, preventing Bavarian delegations from making regular informational visits to Brussels proved impossible. In Italy, the prohibition of official contacts between the regions and the European level (a ban that also encompassed informal contacts until 1980) was “undoubtedly among the least heeded” rules¹⁷⁹—just as the promise extracted from the European Commission by the French government in 1993 that the Commission would respect the internal distribution of powers in France and refrain from fostering regional autonomy also scarcely had practical consequences.¹⁸⁰

But for all their resistance, it was often the nation-states themselves that made decisions that—often unintentionally—advanced the development of a European multilevel system. By creating the regions and furnishing them with certain competences that were at least partially encroached on by European competences, the French and Italian governments created a degree of interdependence with the European level that made mutual contact inevitable. At the European level, too, the nation-states made decisions that strengthened the hand of the regions. At a 1972 Paris summit, the long-standing efforts of the Commission to finally establish European regional policy as a distinct policy area in its own right finally paid off when government leaders recognized that regional policy was necessary for a stronger Community and decided that a European regional development fund could be established.

While the reasons underlying this decision were mainly political and tactical—the idea was to smooth the path of the United Kingdom to becoming a member state¹⁸¹—the momentum it created was unstoppable and the nation-states soon had to live with the consequences: once the Commission had powers of its own in the area of regional policy and funding to disburse, the European and subnational levels automatically moved closer together because they had more common ground on substantive policy issues.

In the Council of Europe, too, the Consultative Assembly initially pushed to have local and regional bodies more involved in the Council’s mandate and then decided to establish a Municipal Committee and convene the Conference of Local Authorities of Europe. The Conference formulated “une véritable doctrine de la régionalisation” on its own initiative¹⁸² but its formal recognition as a consultative body of the Council of Europe was effected by the representatives of national governments in the Committee of Ministers in 1961. The Council’s mandate was subsequently extended to encompass the representation of the regions in 1975.¹⁸³ The Committee of Ministers also decided to establish a European convention on cross-border cooperation between territorial authorities in 1975—after avoiding a decision for the best part of a decade.¹⁸⁴ While the nation-states made numerous protocol declarations geared to undermining the effectiveness of the new convention, an international law framework giving legitimacy to cooperation across borders between subnational units now existed and went on to develop dynamics of its own that were beyond the control of nation-states.

VII. An opportunity for regions outside the European Community

The various interregional cooperation formats and the regional policy of the Council of Europe not only made the regions increasingly visible at the European level but also enabled certain stakeholders to participate in a limited way in the process of European integration despite their apparent status as merely external stakeholders due to their nation-states not being EC members. Austrian federal states and Swiss cantons were members of Arge Alp, for example, and representatives of Norwegian regions played a role in European politics in the Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions and the Council of Europe.

The activities of the Austrian federal states and Swiss cantons have already been investigated in considerable depth.¹⁸⁵ One reason why Tyrol, together with Bavaria, took the initiative to set up Arge Alp was its hope of canvassing broad support for joint transport plans, especially a planned Ulm–Milan expressway.¹⁸⁶ Tyrolean politicians also had the European Conference of Local Authorities pass a resolution favoring a new Ulm–Milan link in 1972.¹⁸⁷

Tyrol benefited from having two top contacts in the Council of Europe bodies concerned with local and regional policy: Alois Lugger was president of the state parliament in Tyrol and also the president or vice president of the Conference of Local Authorities for many years, and Alois Larcher had been the secretary of the Special Committee on Municipal Affairs set up by the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe (later the Committee on Spatial Planning and Regional Affairs) since 1967.¹⁸⁸

Although Austria’s obligation to remain neutral prevented it from joining the European Community, so that it was only able to make representations from an external perspective, Tyrol nevertheless succeeded in feeding its political concerns on substantive issues directly into the Community process through the back door of European regional policy: all decisions reached by Arge Alp were forwarded to the Commission, the European Parliament’s Committee on Regional Policy, and the Council of Ministers,¹⁸⁹ and the regional organization definitely attracted attention: the European Conference of Ministers Responsible for Spatial Planning described it as the “most effective example of regional cooperation in Europe” at their 1976 conference in Bari.¹⁹⁰ The fact that the Ulm–Milan link was not ultimately realized was due more to a change in Tyrolean political priorities than to a lack of support from European institutions: Tyrol’s governor Eduard Wallnöfer had long based his policy on the premise that “traffic over the passes … was an existential question for Tyrol”¹⁹¹ but pivoted away from the project later in the 1970s as the burdens placed on Tyrol by road freight transport became ever more obvious.¹⁹²

The European Conference of Local and Regional Authorities was not expected to confine itself to advising the Council of Europe; it was expressly conceived of as a regional policy link to the European Community following the extension of its mandate to include the representation of the regions in 1975. It approached this task confidently and sought contact with leading European Community politicians: even prior to the official extension of its mandate, the members in attendance at its 1974 meeting were able to engage in debate on regional and environmental policy in the European Community and on the progress of European integration with George Thomson (the European commissioner responsible for regional policy), Cornelis Berkhouwer (the president of the European Parliament), James Hill (the chair of the European Parliament Committee on Regional Policy and Transport), and Michel Carpentier (the director of the Environment Sub-Division in the Directorate-General for Industry).¹⁹³ There were also five Norwegian delegates in the plenum—on this occasion, they were delegates from a national umbrella organization, the Norwegian Association of Municipalities, but Norwegian participation often also arose at the regional level.

In principle, Norway had been organized as a decentralized unitary state with similarities to France since the adoption of its 1814 constitution.¹⁹⁴ But the fylke (county) had been an established unit of regional administration since the Middle Ages. These counties emerged from petty kingdoms that existed before the consolidation of the kingdom of Norway, and they were gradually transformed into an administrative instrument of the king with royally appointed bailiffs (the fylkesmenn). The Local Government Acts of 1837 established local self-government for villages and larger municipalities and saw the establishment of the fylkeskommune as a political unit. The fylkesmann was now not only the representative of the state in the fylke, but also head of the fylkeskommune. And the fylkesting was instituted as a political representative body consisting of the mayors of the rural municipalities within a county.

These county administrations were initially only entrusted with a handful of tasks above the local level that related to schools, health care, and transport infrastructure. Only during a series of reforms in the 1960s and 1970s were they expanded into a significant level of self-government: in 1964, the cities were integrated into the counties and the political and administrative levels were separated with the creation of the new role of fylkesordfører (county mayor) as the elected chairperson of the fylkesting. The county authorities were given responsibility for planning and operating secondary schools and hospitals in several steps and also gained new competences in transport, environmental protection, and culture. They were involved, too, in preparing and delivering regional development plans. The switch to a directly elected fylkesting in 1975, the transfer of responsibility for administrative management from the fylkesmann to the fylkesordfører in 1976, and the introduction of a separate county tax in 1977 finally turned the fylkeskommune into a fully-fledged unit of regional self-government.¹⁹⁵

The course of developments in Norway was thus markedly similar to the French experience—and in Norway, too, regions soon found themselves looking for opportunities to exchange ideas and cooperate with other regions. The Norwegian delegation to the European Conference of Local and Regional Authorities in 1974 included Leo Tallaksen, fylkesordfører of Vest-Agder, Sigurd Østlien, fylkesordfører of Oppland, and Sverre Krogh, fylkesvaraordfører (the deputy county mayor) of Akershus. As the head of the Norwegian Association of Local Authorities, Kjell T. Evers,¹⁹⁶ was president of the Conference from 1970 to 1972 and subsequently its vice president from 1972 to 1976, he clearly had some influence on the Conference’s position statements as they related to, for example, environmental and regional policy in Europe.¹⁹⁷

The Conference was, admittedly, neither as prestigious nor as visibly in the public eye as the European Parliament. But national ministers and representatives of European Community institutions were present in the plenary sittings and responded to the issues raised in debate just as they did in the parliament. Norwegian, Austrian, and Swiss delegates were thus also able to play a modest role in the political decision-making process of the European Community and to feed their positions into its deliberations.

Norwegian regional politicians also participated in the founding of the Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions (CPMR) in 1973. Like Arge Alp, the CPMR aimed to influence European Community institutions by representing the interests of regions facing similar challenges. Representatives from Northern Norway were among the twenty-three regional delegations at a conference initiated by CELIB that took place June 21–23, 1973, in Saint-Malo, Brittany.

The fylkes Nordland, Troms, and Finnmark in the northernmost part of Norway were linked by a shared sense of history and culture and created a joint coordination committee (as also happened in other parts of the country) to exchange information on a fairly informal basis.¹⁹⁸ As Norway’s most peripheral coastal region, they had the opportunity to introduce their positions on the “exploitation des océans et aménagement du littoral” in the final resolution reached in Saint-Malo.¹⁹⁹ Only six months earlier, it had been these same fylkes that most emphatically rejected Norwegian accession to the European Community in the 1972 referendum—with more than 75 percent voting in opposition. Concerns over the possible imposition of restrictions on Norwegian fisheries were one central reason for rejecting accession. In the CPMR, these same counties found allies who were just as open to exploiting European seas.²⁰⁰ Cooperation with European regions on a sectoral basis to articulate specific Norwegian interests appears to be seen as unproblematic and desirable by Norwegian regions right up to the present day.²⁰¹ The CPMR provided such an opportunity. From the early 1990s onward, many other Norwegian fylkes also opted to open regional offices and to present themselves to the EU as international stakeholders.²⁰²

Multilevel governance as a stimulus for historiography

As with so many seemingly new methods, stimuli, or turns, the analytical agenda of the multilevel governance concept is not entirely unprecedented in historical scholarship. Historians have long recognized that power is always exercised within some form of territorial or functional hierarchy and that the roles and involvement of intermediary instances must be considered to round out the overall picture.²⁰³ Regional history can, nevertheless, tap into “significant potential” opened up by “the reception of the discussion of multilevel governance in political science.”²⁰⁴

The first point to be made here is that the multilevel approach may simply make historians generally more sensitive to the role of intermediary actors. Even in the absence of any further methodological or theoretical reflection, historians can reach a greater awareness of the significance of the different levels simply by perceiving them and by perceiving the limitations their sheer existence imposes on the knowledge that can be gained—for example, because access to sources is limited or research needs to be confined to certain levels for pragmatic reasons.²⁰⁵

For historians working at the level of regions and states within states, considering the levels “above” has always been a standard part of their practice, since they deal with spaces that are “always integrated into overarching structures and processes that force local and regional actors to position themselves and also influence conditions on the ground.”²⁰⁶ The entangled structures linking states with larger units within empires or federations have often been investigated,²⁰⁷ and the European dimensions of regional history are increasingly also being investigated either as an independent topic or in connection with other topics.²⁰⁸

But even regional historians rarely look at the “lower” levels. This article, too, has mentioned départements, provinces, and local authorities only in passing and has confined itself mainly to the first subnational level, states and regions, to bring European multilevel governance into a sharper focus. This first subnational level, however, also depends on the levels below for the implementation of its policies and many structures reach “downward”: politicians at the regional or state level are always also advocates for their own constituencies, they are often members of municipal committees, and they depend on the backing of local chapters of their political parties. Numerous district council heads and city mayors were simultaneously members of the state parliament in Bavaria until the 1970 Legal Status Act came into force, and municipal umbrella organizations have a weighty say in negotiations over the distribution of funding. To date, only a handful of studies have investigated the workings of multilevel governance within an individual state.²⁰⁹

The second point that presents itself is that a history of European integration that takes the multilevel concept into account can show “that the history of the continent is far more diverse and complex than the older fixation on nation-states” might suggest.²¹⁰ New light is shed on the history of European integration: as the examples above show, the process was not only shaped by nation-states. However limited the opportunities open to them were, regional actors also searched for their own niches and participated in the integration process.

Going beyond this, interregional alliances such as Arge Alp or the CPMR and the Conference of Local Authorities of the Council of Europe gave regional stakeholders opportunities to introduce positions into the decision-making processes of the European Communities—even regional stakeholders from countries like Norway or Austria that were not actually member states. This adds nuance to the overly simple narrative suggesting that an “inner six” EEC states worked towards integration without the participation of the “outer seven” states that were in the EFTA but not the EEC.²¹¹

At the same time, a more complex and nuanced picture of the regional dimension of European history as a whole also appears. While it is true that historians working on regional and state-level topics have uncovered many facets of this dimension, their findings have often been confined to the specific regions under investigation. Only by making comparisons with other specific regions that had already been studied, or that could be incorporated into one’s own investigation, has it been possible to arrive at conclusions that are generalizable to some degree.

Understanding European history after the Second World War as the history of a multilevel governance system, on the other hand, can “look beyond individual regions” and pave the way for the more “systematic access to the regional dimension as a characteristic of European history” that Ferdinand Kramer has advocated.²¹² Furthermore, a consciousness of the different levels—including the nation-state level—helps to keep scholars from lapsing into “a master narrative of a ‘Europe of the regions’ that is oriented teleologically towards the present.”²¹³

As well as paying little attention to the subregional levels, this article has deliberately confined itself to Europe after the Second World War. Some contributors have sought to extend the utility of the concept of multilevel governance beyond contemporary history. Jana Osterkamp perceives “a structural similarity to modern federal orders such as the European Union” in the Habsburg Monarchy with its simultaneously coexistent “clearly vertical” structures of rule and “both institutional and personal mechanisms of horizontal interconnection.”²¹⁴ Going beyond this, Udo Schäfer and Georg Schmidt see a parallel to modern European multilevel governance in the complementary statehood of the Old Reich.²¹⁵ Although Karl Härter rejects such an “ahistorical comparison,” he himself also speaks at least of the “legal multilevel system of the empire.”²¹⁶ Scattered works also use the term without further theoretical reflection or substantive definitions to describe the Holy Roman Empire during the High Middle Ages, or, for later periods, the empires under the British Crown and German Kaiser.²¹⁷

Applying concepts from the time of “open nation-states”²¹⁸ to the earlier era of pre-national regimes can refine the view offered by some analogies: if one “puts three floors into the ornate edifice of the empire” as Axel Gotthard suggests, one undoubtedly arrives at “an initial approximation” of the basic structure of the Old Reich.²¹⁹ Evaluations can also shift: drawing a parallel between the “complementary statehood of the Old Reich” and modern EC/EU multilevel governance clears the former “from the accusation, plausible only from the perspective of the nation-state, that it only caused German fragmentation.”²²⁰

But the “risk of transferring modern concepts to the Middle Ages” is fraught, not only when the modern concepts belong to such traditional categories as “state” or “constitution,”²²¹ but also when terms of modern governance are involved: one basis of the multilevel governance concept is the high number of interdependent tasks that make it necessary to interweave political processes across several levels. Acquiring the enormous range of varied tasks accomplished by modern states and the implementation resources reaching right down to the local level that worked in favor of such policy entanglement and made it inevitable in certain spheres of policy was a long and protracted process for central governments.²²² In medieval or early modern regimes, these interdependent tasks seem to have existed only to a very limited extent. Even in the Old Reich, the target of most attempts to apply the concept, components of multilevel governance were present,²²³ but the influence of subsidiarity²²⁴ was much stronger, and the frequently fuzzy nature of responsibility for decision-making ensured that the greatest possible degree of autonomy was accorded to individual elements in the system. Using the concept of multilevel governance merely to illustrate a territorial stratification of rule or the polycentric coexistence of (partially) autonomous units²²⁵ would, however, quickly rob the concept of its heuristic utility.

Seeing states and regions as part of a national and supranational multilevel system does not only foster greater attunement towards the importance of intermediary actors and the regional dimension of European history; it can, and this is my third point, also help to avoid regional history becoming excessively obsessed with “its own” state or region.

Ludwig Petry’s oft repeated catchphrase that regional history works “boundlessly within boundaries”²²⁶ sometimes all too easily favors a reductive methodological focus on the region as an “autonomous spatial unit” with a “kind of quasi-personal identity.”²²⁷ But working with such an administratively defined and unquestioned “container space”²²⁸ limits the scope of the discoveries that can be made. Choosing instead to consider a “network of manifold external interdependencies” in which “all historical landscapes” are politically, economically, and culturally integrated can, as Alois Schmid puts it, become the “cornerstone of a comprehensive view of historical reality.”²²⁹

The concept of multilevel governance makes “the” state or “the” region into an element in a larger interdependent system in which various governmental and non-governmental stakeholders cooperate or compete, at times in hierarchies and at times in networks.²³⁰ Networks reaching up, down, or out thus become constitutive parts of regional or state-level history even as the territorial reality of subnational territorial authorities and constituent states is also acknowledged. This can undoubtedly be a powerful stimulus for history at the subnational level.

Notes

Examples for Bavaria: Stephan Deutinger, “Europa in Bayern? Der Freistaat und die Planungen von CERN zu einem Forschungszentrum im Ebersberger Forst bei München 1962–1967,” in Ivo Schneider, Helmuth Trischler, and Ulrich Wengenroth (eds.), Oszillationen. Naturwissenschaftler und Ingenieure zwischen Forschung und Markt, Munich 2000, 297–324; Stefan Grüner, Geplantes “Wirtschaftswunder”? Industrie- und Strukturpolitik in Bayern 1945 bis 1973, Munich 2009; Thomas Jehle, Die auswärtige Kulturpolitik des Freistaats Bayern 1945–1978, Munich 2016; Raphael Gerhardt, Agrarmodernisierung und europäische Integration. Das bayerische Landwirtschaftsministerium als politischer Akteur 1945–1975, Munich 2019; Rudolf Himpsl, Europäische Integration und internationalisierte Märkte: Die Außenwirtschaftspolitik des Freistaats Bayern 1957–1982, Munich 2019.↩︎

Dietmar Petzina, “Krise und Aufbruch: Wirtschaft und Staat im Jahrzehnt der Reformen 1965–1975,” in Stefan Goch (ed.), Strukturwandel und Strukturpolitik in Nordrhein-Westfalen, Münster 2004, 105–135, here 116.↩︎

Guido Thiemeyer, “Stepchildren of Integration: The West German Länder and the Emergence of the European System of Multilevel Governance from 1950 to 1985,” in German Yearbook of Contemporary History 4 (2019), 105–132; Eve Hepburn, Using Europe. Territorial Party Strategies in a multi-level System, Manchester 2010.↩︎

The German parliamentarian Hermann Kopf, a Christian Democrat with expertise in European policy, remarked as early as 1952 that the German Basic Law—and Article 24, specifically—provided for a “triple-level state structure” with the Länder, the Federal Republic, and the “future ... international level” (at a meeting of the Bundestag Legal Affairs Committee on October 20, 1952). Cited from Hermann Schmitz-Wenzel, Die deutschen Länder und ihre Stellung im Europäischen Einigungsprozess. Ein Beitrag zur Wahrnehmung der internationalen Beziehungen im Bundesstaat, Bonn 1969, 174 f.↩︎

For an overview of this research, see Arthur Benz, Politik in Mehrebenensystemen, Wiesbaden 2009, 66–70, and Arthur Benz, “Multilevel Governance – Governance in Mehrebenensystemen,” in Arthur Benz and Nicolai Dose (eds.), Governance – Regieren in komplexen Regelsystemen. Eine Einführung, 2nd updated ed., Wiesbaden 2010, 111–135, here 112–116.↩︎

Liesbet Hooghe (ed.), Cohesion Policy and European Integration: Building Multi-Level Governance, Oxford 1996. Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks, Multi-Level Governance and European Integration, Lanham 2001.↩︎

Gary Marks, “Politikmuster und Einflusslogik in der Strukturpolitik,” in Markus Jachtenfuchs and Beate Kohler-Koch (eds.), Europäische Integration, Opladen 1996, 313–344, here 339.↩︎

Eckart Kehr, Der Primat der Innenpolitik. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur preußisch-deutschen Sozialgeschichte im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. and with an introduction by Hans-Ulrich Wehler, with a preface by Hans Herzfeld, Berlin 1965; on the debate, see Eckart Conze, “Zwischen Staatenwelt und Gesellschaftswelt. Die gesellschaftliche Dimension in der internationalen Geschichte,” in Wilfried Loth and Jürgen Osterhammel (eds.), Internationale Geschichte. Themen – Ergebnisse – Aussichten, Munich 2000, 117–140, here 121–123; Robert Meyer, Europa zwischen Land und Meer. Geopolitisches Denken und geopolitische Europamodelle nach der “Raumrevolution,” Bonn 2014, 121–123.↩︎

Cornelia Föhn, Der Ausschuss der Regionen – Interessenvertretung der Regionen Europas. Eine Darstellung unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der deutschen Bundesländer, Munich 2003; Sabine Saurugger, Theoretical Approaches to European Integration, Basingstoke 2014, 102–122. Katrin Auel, Regionalisiertes Europa – Demokratisches Europa? Eine Untersuchung am Beispiel der europäischen Strukturpolitik, Baden-Baden 2003; Ian Bache, Europeanization and Multilevel Governance: Cohesion Policy in the European Union and in Britain, Lanham 2008; Ingeborg Tömmel, Staatliche Regulierung und europäische Integration. Die Regionalpolitik der EG und ihre Implementation in Italien, Baden-Baden 1994.↩︎

Thiemeyer, “Stiefkinder,” 362.↩︎

Barbara Burkhardt-Reich, Agrarverbände in der EG: Das agrarpolitische Entscheidungsgefüge in Brüssel und in den EG-Mitgliedstaaten unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Euro-Verbandes COPA und seiner nationalen Mitgliedsverbände, Kehl 1983, 385. See also: Rudolf Hrbek and Wolfgang Wessels, “Nationale Interessen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der Integrationsprozess,” in Rudolf Hrbek and Wolfgang Wessels (eds.), EG-Mitgliedschaft: ein vitales Interesse der Bundesrepublik Deutschland? Bonn 1984, 29–69, here 34, 60. Both works build on the model of the European Community advanced by Donald J. Puchala that sees “an international system of states” in which “states are the fundamental units” and “their governments the main actors” even as the Community is also “an action system spanning multiple levels: the subnational level, i.e., regional units, as well as the national level of the member states, ...; and additionally the transnational and supranational levels.” (Hrbek and Wessels, Interessen, 34.)↩︎

Kai Oppermann, Prinzipale und Agenten in Zwei-Ebenen-Spielen: Die innerstaatlichen Restriktionen der Europapolitik Großbritanniens unter Tony Blair, Wiesbaden 2008, 24. See also, Andreas Wilhelm, Außenpolitik: Grundlagen, Strukturen und Prozesse, Munich 2006, 226–230.↩︎

Benz, “Multilevel Governance”, 111 f.↩︎

Michael Zürn, Regieren jenseits des Nationalstaats, Frankfurt am Main 1998, 17–20.↩︎

Benz, Politik in Mehrebenensystemen, 82.↩︎

For more on the origins of the concept, see Fritz W. Scharpf et al. (eds.), Politikverflechtung: Theorie und Empirie des kooperativen Föderalismus in der Bundesrepublik, Kronberg 1976. For a current account, see Sabine Kropp, Kooperativer Föderalismus und Politikverflechtung, Wiesbaden 2010.↩︎

Renate Mayntz, “Governance im modernen Staat,” in Benz and Dose, Governance, 37–48, here 40.↩︎

Peter Unruh, Der Verfassungsbegriff des Grundgesetzes. Eine verfassungstheoretische Rekonstruktion, Tübingen 2002, 565.↩︎

Wolfgang Graf Vitzthum, “Die Bedeutung gliedstaatlichen Verfassungsrecht in der Gegenwart,” Veröffentlichungen der Vereinigung der Deutschen Staatsrechtslehrer 46 (1988): 7–56, here 15.↩︎

Benz, “Multilevel Governance,” 119.↩︎

Dirk Hanschel, Konfliktlösung im Bundesstaat. Die Lösung föderaler Kompetenz-, Finanz- und Territorialkonflikte in Deutschland, den USA und der Schweiz, Tübingen 2012.↩︎

Ursula Lehmkuhl, “Konflikt und Kooperation in der Geschichte der Internationalen Beziehungen: Analyseperspektiven und Forschungsfelder des ‘Global Governance’-Ansatzes,” in Benjamin Ziemann (ed.), Perspektiven der historischen Friedensforschung, Essen 2002, 173–193.↩︎

Arthur Benz et al., “Einleitung,” in Arthur Benz et al. (eds.), Handbuch Governance: Theoretische Grundlagen und empirische Anwendungsfelder, Wiesbaden 2007, 9–25, here 11.↩︎

Alexander Grasse, Modernisierungsfaktor Region: Subnationale Politik und Föderalisierung in Italien, Wiesbaden 2005, 39.↩︎

Mayntz, “Governance,” 42.↩︎

Benz et. al., “Einleitung,” 13.↩︎

For an overview of the mechanisms, see Benz, Politik in Mehrebenensystemen, 85–92.↩︎

See Katharina Holzinger, “Verhandeln statt Argumentieren oder Verhandeln durch Argumentieren? Eine empirische Analyse auf der Basis der Sprechakttheorie,” Politische Vierteljahresschrift 42 (2001): 414–446; Peter Kotzian, “Arguing and Bargaining in International Negotiations. On the Application of the Frame-Selection Model and its Implications,” International Political Science Review 28 (2007): 79–99.↩︎

Rainer Kessler, “Die Arbeitsgemeinschaft Alpenländer – ein Beispiel für grenzüberschreitenden Regionalismus,” in Bayerische Landeszentrale für Politische Bildungsarbeit [Bavarian State Center for Political Education] (ed.), Regionalismus in Europa. [Report on an academic conference in Brixen/Bressanone (South Tyrol), October 30–November 3, 1978], vol. 1, Munich 1981, 273–278, here 273f.↩︎

Alexander Wegmaier, “Europäer sein und Bayern bleiben”: Die Idee Europa und die bayerische Europapolitik 1945–1979, Munich 2018, 319–324.↩︎

Matthias Bode, Die auswärtige Kulturverwaltung der frühen Bundesrepublik. Eine Untersuchung ihrer Etablierung zwischen Norminterpretation und Normgenese, Tübingen 2014, 583.↩︎

Grasse, Modernisierungsfaktor, 40f.↩︎

On the Mansholt Plan and the run-up to its emergence, see: Katja Seidel, “Taking Farmers off Welfare: The EEC Commission’s Memorandum ‘Agriculture 1980’ of 1968,” Journal of European Integration History 16 (2010): 83–101; Kiran Klaus Patel, Europäisierung wider Willen. Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland in der Agrarintegration der EWG 1955–1973, Munich 2009, 427–452.↩︎

Gerhardt, Agrarmodernisierung, 433–442.↩︎

Benz, Politik in Mehrebenensystemen, 88f.↩︎

See Norbert Lehning, Bayerns Weg in die Bildungsgesellschaft: Das höhere Schulwesen im Freistaat Bayern zwischen Tradition und Expansion, 1949/50–1972/73, Munich 2006, 1027–1046.↩︎

See most recently, for example, Heinrich Oberreuter, “Mehrebenensystem,” in Staatslexikon. Recht, Wirtschaft, Gesellschaft, vol. 3, Herrschaft – Migration, ed. Görres Society, 8th ed., Freiburg im Breisgau 2019, 1519.↩︎

See, for instance, Miriam Hartlapp and Claudia Wiesner (eds.), “Gewaltenteilung und Demokratie im Mehrebenensystem der EU: Neu, anders – oder weniger legitim?,” Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft 26, special issue 1 (2016).↩︎

Benz, Politik in Mehrebenensystemen, 92.↩︎

On the types of vertical state organization, see Jürgen Dieringer, “Regionen und Regionalismus im europäischen Kontext,” in Jürgen Dieringer and Roland Sturm (eds.), Regional Governance in EU-Staaten, Opladen 2010, 347–363, here 352–361. For an overview of the states: Mario Caciagli, Regioni d’Europa. Devoluzioni, regionalismi, integrazione europea, Bologna 2003, 19–64.↩︎

Peter Schmitt-Egner, Handbuch der europäischen Regionalorganisationen: Akteure und Netzwerke des transnationalen Regionalismus von A bis Z, Baden-Baden 2000, 28.↩︎

See the regular country reports in Jahrbuch des Föderalismus; see also for France: Marie-José Tulard, La Région, Paris 2008; Andrea Fischer-Hotzel, Vetospieler in territorialen Verfassungsreformen. Britische Devolution und französische Dezentralisierung im Vergleich, Baden-Baden 2013, 103–119. More currently: Frankreich-Jahrbuch 2015 (“Frankreich nach der Territorialreform”). For Italy: Grasse, Modernisierungsfaktor, 357–426; Maurizio Cotta, Political Institutions in Italy, Oxford 2007, 171–201. More currently: Luciano Vandelli, “Der Senat und die Regionen in der gescheiterten Verfassungsreform 2016: Italien auf der Suche nach neuen Gleichgewichten,” in Alexander Grasse et al. (eds.), Italien zwischen Krise und Aufbruch. Reformen und Reformversuche der Regierung Renzi, Wiesbaden 2018, 59–84.↩︎

In the context of international relations, for example, regions are often not understood as belonging to the subnational level but seen as a “dimension above the level of the state and below the level of the international system” (Simon Koschut, “Introduction,” in Simon Koschut (ed.), Regionen und Regionalismus in den Internationalen Beziehungen: Eine Einführung, Wiesbaden 2017, 1–17, here 1.)↩︎

Schmitt-Egner, Handbuch, 514. For an overview teasing out the various possible meanings of the “region” concept, see, for instance, Joachim Jens Hesse, “Europäische Regionen zwischen Integrationsanspruch und neuem Regionalismus,” in Hans Heinrich Blotevogel (ed.), Europäische Regionen im Wandel. Strukturelle Erneuerung, Raumordnung und Regionalpolitik im Europa der Regionen, Dortmund 1991, 11–25, here 11f.↩︎

Prototype semantics refrains from imposing unambiguous classifications based on definitions. Instead, it postulates that entities belonging to a conceptual category can deviate to differing degrees from the central prototype on which the category is based. See Dietrich Busse, Semantik, Paderborn 2009, 49–59; Martina Mangasser-Wahl (ed.), Prototypentheorie in der Linguistik: Anwendungsbeispiele, Methodenreflexion, Perspektiven, Tübingen 2000.↩︎

Henry W. Ehrmann, Das politische System Frankreichs: Eine Einführung, Munich 1976, 182.↩︎

Jean F. Gravier’s influential 1947 book bearing this title set the agenda for spatial planning in France in the years following its publication.↩︎

The region of Brittany, for example, did not include the Département Loire-Atlantique with Nantes, historically the capital of Brittany. Hints of the considerable arbitrariness with which other regions were formed are contained in such hyphenated names as “Languedoc-Roussillon” and in bland, meaningless names like “Centre.”↩︎

Heinz-Helmut Lüger, “Zentralistische Staatsgewalt und monarchistisches Präsidialsystem?,” in Heinz-Helmut Lüger and Ernst-Ulrich Große (eds.), Frankreich verstehen: Eine Einführung mit Vergleichen zu Deutschland, Darmstadt 2008, 26f.; see also Romain Pasquier, “The French Regions and the European Union: Policy Change and Institutional Stability,” in Roger Scully and Richard Wyn Jones (eds.), Europe, Regions and European Regionalism, Houndmills 2010, 35–52, here 38.↩︎

Lüger, “Staatsgewalt,” 28; Ehrmann, System, 183.↩︎

Auel, Regionalisiertes Europa, 123.↩︎

Auel, Regionalisiertes Europa, 123–125.↩︎

Vincent Hoffmann-Martinot, “Zentralisierung und Dezentralisierung in Frankreich,” in Adolf Kimmel and Henrik Uterwedde (eds.), Länderbericht Frankreich, Bonn 2012, 92–110, here 100f.; Auel, Regionalisiertes Europa, 127.↩︎

Auel, Regionalisiertes Europa, 132.↩︎

Rainer Grote, Das Regierungssystem der V. französischen Republik. Verfassungstheorie und -praxis, Baden-Baden 1995, 66–71.↩︎

Pierre Grémion, Le pouvoir périphérique. Bureaucrates et notables dans le système politique français, Paris 1976.↩︎

Grote, Regierungssystem, 79.↩︎

See Bernard Lachaise et al. (eds.), Jacques Chaban-Delmas en politique, Paris 2007. Arthur Benz and Albrecht Frenzel, “The institutional dynamic of the urban region of Bordeaux: From the ‘Chaban system’ to Alain Juppé,” in Bernard Jouve and Christian Lefevre (eds.), Local Power, Territory and Institutions in European Metropolitan Regions, London 2002, 57–81.↩︎

Vlad Constantinesco, “Föderalismus und Regionalismus in Europa. Landesbericht Frankreich,” in Fritz Ossenbühl (ed.), Föderalismus und Regionalismus in Europa, (Proceedings of a conference held in Bonn, September 14–16, 1989), Baden-Baden 1990, 199–237, here 209f.↩︎

Michel Crozier/Jean-Claude Thoenig, “The Regulation of Complex Organized Systems,” Administrative Science Quarterly 21 (1976): 547–570.↩︎

Auel, Regionalisiertes Europa, 121f.↩︎

Dörte Rasch, Kooperation im Unitarismus. Dargestellt am Beispiel französischer Raumordnungspolitik (1967–1981), Frankfurt am Main 1983.↩︎

Auel, Regionalisiertes Europa, 193.↩︎

Wolfgang Brücher, “Frankreich im Umbruch zwischen Zentralismus, Dezentralisierung und europäischer Integration,” Europa Regional 5 (1997): 1–11, here 5.↩︎

Auel, Regionalisiertes Europa, 194f.↩︎

Sabine Kuhlmann, “Dezentralisierung in Frankreich. Ende der ‘Unteilbaren Republik’?,” dms – der moderne staat – Zeitschrift für Public Policy, Recht und Management 1 (2008): 1–21, here 13.↩︎

Martina Seitz, Italien zwischen Zentralismus und Föderalismus: Dezentralisierung und Nord-Süd-Konflikt, Wiesbaden 1997, 55.↩︎

Valerio Onida, “Landesbericht Italien,” in Ossenbühl, Föderalismus und Regionalismus in Europa, 239–261, here 243.↩︎

Seitz, Italien, 59.↩︎

For a constitutional law analysis, see Francesco Palermo, Die Außenbeziehungen der italienischen Regionen in rechtsvergleichender Sicht, Frankfurt am Main 1999, 25–74.↩︎

Dirk-Hermann Voss, Regionen und Regionalismus im Recht der Mitgliedstaaten der Europäischen Gemeinschaften. Strukturelemente einer Europäischen Verfassungsordnung, Frankfurt am Main 1989, 104f.↩︎

Hermann-Josef Blanke, Föderalismus und Integrationsgewalt. Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Spanien, Italien und Belgien als dezentralisierte Staaten in der EG, Berlin 1991, 133.↩︎

On the powers of the regions, see Voss, Regionen, 105–124, and Grasse, Modernisierungsfaktor, 73–89.↩︎

Grasse, Modernisierungsfaktor, 81–83.↩︎

Grasse, Modernisierungsfaktor, 84f.↩︎

Grasse, Modernisierungsfaktor, 83.↩︎

Seitz, Italien, 62; Voss, Regionen, 122.↩︎

Seitz, Italien, 64.↩︎

Sabino Cassese and Donatello Serrani, “Moderner Regionalismus in Italien,” Jahrbuch des öffentlichen Rechts der Gegenwart, new series 27 (1978): 23–40, here 27–28.↩︎

Voss, Regionen, 124.↩︎

Seitz, Italien, 66f.; see also, Grasse, Modernisierungsfaktor, 83f.↩︎

For an overall picture of the German Länder, cf. Heinz Laufer and Ursula Münch, Das föderale System der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Munich 2010; Gerhard Lehmbruch, “Föderalismus als entwicklungsgeschichtlich geronnene Verteilungsentscheidungen,” in Hans-Georg Wehling (ed.), Die deutschen Länder: Geschichte, Politik, Wirtschaft, Wiesbaden 2004, 337–354.↩︎

On budgetary reform: Wolfgang Renzsch, Finanzverfassung und Finanzausgleich: Die Auseinandersetzung um ihre politische Gestaltung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland zwischen Währungsreform und deutscher Vereinigung (1948 bis 1990), Bonn 1991, 209–261; Grüner, Wirtschaftswunder, 357–363; Ernst Heinsen, “Der Kampf um die Große Finanzreform 1969,” in Rudolf Hrbek (ed.), Miterlebt – Mitgestaltet: Der Bundesrat im Rückblick, Stuttgart 1989, 187–223.↩︎

Udo Bullmann, “Regionen im Integrationsprozess der Europäischen Union,” in Udo Bullmann (ed.), Die Politik der dritten Ebene: Regionen im Europa der Union, Baden-Baden 1994, 15–41, here 25.↩︎

Rasch, Kooperation.↩︎

Alexander Grasse, “Die ‘dritte Ebene’ im Transformationsprozess – regionale ‘Außenkompetenz’ und Föderalisierung in Italien,” in Xuewu Gu (ed.), Grenzüberschreitende Zusammenarbeit zwischen den Regionen in Europa, Baden-Baden 2002, 143–197, here 172; See also Ingeborg Tömmel, “System-Entwicklung und Politikgestaltung in der Europäischen Gemeinschaft am Beispiel der Regionalpolitik,” in Michael Kreile (ed.), Die Integration Europas, Opladen 1992, 185–208; Tömmel, Regulierung.↩︎

Marinella Marino, “Le regioni del Mezzogiorno d’Italia e l’integrazione europea nella prospettiva dei nuovi regolamenti die fondi strutturali,” Rivista giuridica del Mezzogiorno 3 (1993): 663–675, here 673–675.↩︎

Auel, Regionalisiertes Europa, 131. On the Integrated Mediterranean Programmes, see Hubert Heinelt, “Die Strukturförderung – Politikprozesse im Mehrebenensystem der Europäischen Union,” in Hubert Heinelt (ed.), Politiknetzwerke und europäische Strukturfondsförderung: Ein Vergleich zwischen EU-Mitgliedstaaten, Opladen 1996, 17–32, here 23f.↩︎

Auel, Regionalisiertes Europa, 216, 225; Andy Smith and Mark E. Smyrl, “À la recherche d’interlocuteurs. La commission européenne et le développement territorial,” Science de la société 34 (1995): 41–58, here 45; Brücher, “Frankreich,” 5.↩︎

Preamble to the treaty establishing the European Economic Community.↩︎

On the liberal economic model envisaged, see Meinrad Dreher, “Der Rang des Wettbewerbs im europäischen Gemeinschaftsrecht,” in Meinrad Dreher and Dieter Dörr (eds.), Europa als Rechtsgemeinschaft, Baden-Baden 1997, 105–122.↩︎

Wegmaier, Europäer, 392–422; Seitz, Italien, 70–75.↩︎

For instance, Schleswig-Holstein in 1963, Rhineland-Palatinate in 1965 and Lower Saxony in 1966 (see Hans Eberhard Birke, Die deutschen Bundesländer in den Europäischen Gemeinschaften, Berlin (West) 1973, 58); on the individual plans, see Dieter Heymans, Die Regionalpolitik der EWG und die Länder der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Cologne 1969, 89–103. For Bavaria, see Bavarian State Ministry of Economics and Transport (State Planning Office), Die Anpassung Bayerns an die EWG: Chances, Probleme und Aufgaben, Munich 1967.↩︎

Ursula Rombeck-Jaschinski, Nordrhein-Westfalen, die Ruhr und Europa: Föderalismus und Europapolitik 1945–55, Essen 1990; Guido Thiemeyer, “Nordrhein-Westfalen und die Entstehung des europäischen Mehrebenensystems 1950–1985,” Geschichte im Westen 30 (2015): 145–166; Martin Hübler, Die Europapolitik des Freistaates Bayern. Von der Einheitlichen Europäischen Akte bis zum Amsterdamer Vertrag, Munich 2002; Wegmaier, Europäer.↩︎

Franz Heubl, “Bayern in der EWG,” Der Arbeitgeber 22 (1970): 305f.↩︎

Preliminary note made by the Bavarian State Chancellery on July 19, 1971, Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv (hereafter referred to as BayHStA), StK 16588.↩︎

Letter from Karl Arnold to Hans Ehard, June 18, 1951, BayHStA Stk 13034; cf. also Arnold’s speech on the European Coal and Steel Community in the 61st session of the Bundesrat on June 27, 1951, in Verhandlungen des Bundesrats (VdBr) 1951, 445 f.↩︎

Grasse, “Regionale Außenkompetenz,” 170; See also Valerio Castronovo, Il Piemonte nel processo di integrazione europea, Milano 2008; Emilio Diodato, “Politiche di internazionalizzazione e arene della rappresentanza. Una comparazione tra Lombardia e Toscana,” Rivista italiana di scienza politica 2 (2007): 207–231; Fabio Zucca (ed.), Europeismo e federalismo in Lombardia dal Risorgimento all’Unione europea, Bologna 2007; Emilio Diodato (ed.), La Toscana e la globalizzazione dal basso, Florence 2004. On regional identities, see Grasse, Modernisierungsfaktor, 129–140.↩︎

Stefan Seidendorf, “Warum es kaum erfolgreiche Regionalparteien in Frankreich gibt,” Frankreich-Jahrbuch (2015): 111–128, here 113.↩︎

See Romain Pasquier, Regional Governance and Power in France: The Dynamics of Political Space, New York 2015 (original: Le pouvoir régional. Mobilisations, décentralisation et gouvernance en France, Paris 2012); René Kahn, “Les Regions et la construction europeenne. Le cas de l’Alsace,” in Marie-Thérèse Bitsch (ed.), Le fait régional et la construction Européenne, Brussels 2003, 363–379.↩︎

See Wilfried Loth, “Die Europa-Bewegung in den Anfangsjahren der Bundesrepublik,” in Ludolf Herbst et al (eds.), Vom Marshall-Plan zur EWG: Die Eingliederung der Bundesrepublik in die westliche Welt, Munich 1990, 63–77.↩︎

Karl-Ulrich Gelberg, Hans Ehard: Die föderalistische Politik des bayerischen Ministerpräsidenten 1946–1954, Düsseldorf 1992, 318–323 and 369–383.↩︎

Undine Ruge, Die Erfindung des “Europa der Regionen”: Kritische Ideengeschichte eines konservativen Konzepts, Frankfurt am Main 2003, 173–177 and 184; for a more detailed account, see also Matthias Schulz, Regionalismus und die Gestaltung Europas. Die konstitutionelle Bedeutung der Region im europäischen Drama zwischen Integration und Disintegration, Hamburg 1993; Xosé M. Núñez Seixas/Eric Storm (eds.), Regionalism and Modern Europe: Identity Construction and Movements from 1890 to the Present Day, London 2019, and the contemporary essays on regionalism in Europe gathered in Bayerische Zentrale für politische Bildung, Regionalismus in Europa, 11–242.↩︎

On Denis de Rougement, see: Bruno Ackermann, Denis de Rougemont: De la personne à l’Europe. Essai biographique, Lausanne 2000; Franz Knipping, “Denis de Rougemont (1906–1985),” in Heinz Duchhardt et al. (eds.), Europa-Historiker. Ein biographisches Handbuch, vol. 3, Göttingen 2007, 157–175; François Saint-Ouen, “La notion d’Europe des Régions chez Denis de Rougemont,” in Bitsch (ed.), Le fait régional, 45–56.↩︎

Denis de Rougemont, “Vers une fédération des régions,” in Bulletin du Centre Européen de la Culture 12 (1967): 35–56, here 40. See also Ruge, “Erfindung,” 185–190.↩︎

To date, no scholarly biography of Guy Héraud has appeared. On Alexandre Marc’s innovative role, see: Hartmut Marhold, “Alexandre Marc und der ‘Integrale Föderalismus,’” Jahrbuch des Föderalismus 12 (2011): 83–95.↩︎

Ruge, Erfindung, 243–246.↩︎

Ruge, Erfindung, 280–305; Wegmaier, Europäer, 265–269.↩︎

Eve Hepburn, Using Europe: Territorial Party Strategies in a Multi-Level System, Manchester 2010, 161, 168–170; Paolo Fois, “L’Europa delle Regioni e delle Etnie nel pensiero di Antonio Simon Mossa,” in Federico Francioni (ed.), Antonio Simon Mossa (1916–1971): L’architetto, l’intellettuale, il federalista. Dall’utopia al progetto [Proceedings of a symposium held in Sassari, April 10–13, 2003], Cagliari 2004, 127–132.↩︎

Rinaldo Locatelli, “La Conférence Pérmanente des Pouvoirs Locaux et Régionaux de l’Europe et les régions,” in Theodor Veiter (ed.), Fédéralisme, régionalisme, et droit des groupes ethniques en Europe. Föderalismus, Regionalismus und Volksgruppenrecht in Europa. Festschrift für Guy Héraud, Vienna 1989, 222–231, here 226.↩︎

Schulz, Regionalismus, 200–242.↩︎

Ulrich Beyerlein, “Grenzüberschreitende unterstaatliche Zusammenarbeit in Europa. Zum Entwurf eines Europäischen Rahmenübereinkommens über die grenzüberschreitende Zusammenarbeit zwischen Gebietskörperschaften,” Zeitschrift für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht 40 (1980): 573–595, here 574f; on the Council of Europe symposia on border regions, see Ingrid Grom, Regional grenzüberschreitende Zusammenarbeit als Beitrag zur Förderung der europäischen Integration: Die Einheit Europas setzt das Überwinden der Grenzen voraus, Berlin 1995, 81–84.↩︎

Fried Esterbauer (ed.), Regionalismus. Phänomen, Planungsmittel, Herausforderung für Europa: Eine Einführung, Munich 1978, 215.↩︎

Hübler, Europapolitik, 106–162.↩︎

Interview “Nie wieder Realismus!,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, no. 194 (August 22, 2018), 11.↩︎

Voss, Regionen, 120.↩︎

Hans Peter Ipsen, “Als Bundesstaat in der Gemeinschaft,” in Ernst von Caemmerer et. al. (eds.), Probleme des Europäischen Rechts: Festschrift für Walter Hallstein zu seinem 65. Geburtstag, Frankfurt am Main 1966, 248–265, here 256.↩︎

Voss, Regionen, 120.↩︎

Preliminary notes by Berger, head of the legal department at the German Foreign Office, dated April 24, 1957, and April 30, 1957, Political Archive of the Federal Foreign Office (PA AA), B 130 VS 3665A. For Italy, see Grasse, “Regionale Außenkompetenz,” 171. On the domaine réservé in France, see Udo Kempf, Das politische System Frankreichs, 4th ed.,, Wiesbaden 2007, 66–69; Richard Georg Wieber, Die Stellung des französischen Parlaments im Europäischen Normsetzungsprozess gemäß Art. 88–4 der französischen Verfassung der V. Republik, Frankfurt am Main 1999.↩︎

Doris Fuhrmann-Mittlmeier, Die deutschen Länder im Prozess der europäischen Einigung. Eine Analyse der Europapolitik unter integrationspolitischen Gesichtspunkten, Berlin 1991, 164–166 and 176–180.↩︎

Sebastian Harnisch, Internationale Politik und Verfassung: Die Domestizierung der deutschen Sicherheits- und Europapolitik, Baden-Baden 2006, 48. See also Hübler, Europapolitik, 72.↩︎

Bardo Fassbender, Der offene Bundesstaat. Studien zur auswärtigen Gewalt und zur Völkerrechtssubjektivität bundesstaatlicher Teilstaaten in Europa, Tübingen 2007, 391–397.↩︎

Massimo Panebianco, “Europäische Integration und italienische Verfassungsordnung,” in Thomas Berberich et al. (eds.), Neue Entwicklungen im öffentlichen Recht. Beiträge zum Verhältnis von Bürger und Staat aus Völkerrecht, Verfassungsrecht und Verwaltungsrecht, Stuttgart et. al. 1979, 103–122, here 110f.; Claudia Morviducci, “The International Activities of the Italian Regions,” The Italian Yearbook of International Law 2 (1976): 201–223, here 208f.↩︎

Grasse, “Regionale Außenkompetenz,” 173f.↩︎

Richard Balme, “French Regionalization and European Integration. Territorial Adaptation and Change in a Unitary State,” in Barry Jones and Michael Keating (eds.), The European Union and the Regions, Oxford 1995, 167–188, here 182.↩︎

As far back as 1949, Schuman had already founded a committee dedicated to preserving the rights of local authorities and départements together with Jacques Chaban-Delmas and François Mitterrand; see Fabio Zucca, The International Relations of Local Authorities. From Institutional Twinning to the Committee of the Regions: Fifty Years of European Integration History, Brussels 2012, 75.↩︎

Christine Manigand, “Jacques Chaban-Delmas et l’Europe,” in Bernard Lachaise et. al. (eds.), Jacques Chaban-Delmas en politique, Paris 2007, 237–250, here 246 and 249; Fabio Zucca, “L’Europe des communes et des régions à travers l’action de deux de ses acteurs principaux: Jacques Chaban-Delmas et Umberto Serfanini,” in Sylvain Schirmann (ed.), Quelles architectures pour qelle Europe? Des projects d’une Europe unie à l’Union européenne (1945–1992): Actes des deuxièmes journées d’étude de la Maison de Robert Schuman. Metz, 9, 10 et 11 mai 2010, Brussels 2011, 91–111. On the genesis of EC regional policy, see Tömmel, Regulierung, 37–45, and Antonio Varsori, “Die europäische Regionalpolitik. Anfänge einer Solidarität,” in Michel Dumoulin (ed.), Die Europäische Kommission 1958–1972: Geschichte und Erinnerungen einer Institution, Brussels 2007, 443–458, here 454.↩︎

The Florentine city councilor Giancarlo Zoli was, for example, the representative of the enti locali in the European Economic and Social Committee from 1958 to 1970; see Official Journal of the European Communities L 017 of 6 October 1958, 400/58. When the German interior minister Gerhard Schröder expressed a wish in in 1958 “that the municipalities be represented in the committee,” Chancellor Konrad Adenauer rejected the suggestion with no further challenges; the issue was not brought up again (minutes of the 153rd cabinet meeting on April 14, 1958, in Die Kabinettsprotokolle der Bundesregierung, vol. 11: 1958, edited for the federal archives by Hartmut Weber, edited by Ulrich Enders and Christoph Schawe with the assistance of Ralf Behrendt, Josef Henke, and Uta Rössel, Munich 2002, 194).↩︎

Jean-Marie Palayret, “De la CECA au Comité des Régions: Le Conseil des communes et des régions d’Europe: un demi siècle de lobbying en faveur de l’Europe des régions,” in Bitsch (ed.), Le fait régional, 85–114; Zucca, “International Relations,” 73–84; Fabio Zucca, “Spinelli, Serafini e l’Associazione italiana per il Consiglio dei Comuni e delle Regioni d’Europa,” in Daniela Preda (ed.), Altiero Spinelli e i movimenti per l’unità europea, Padua 2010, 203–230.↩︎

Auel, Regionalisiertes Europa, 132.↩︎

Wegmaier, Europäer, 343–351.↩︎

Interview with Franz Heubl, in Hanns Seidel Foundation (ed.), Geschichte einer Volkspartei: 50 Jahre CSU 1945–1995, Munich 1995, 541–562, here 559.↩︎

Rombeck-Jaschinski, Nordrhein-Westfalen, 77 and 139–142. The Hamburg Senate began regular informative visits from the mid-1970s onward (Thiemeyer, “Stiefkinder,” 357f.) after Hamburg had already, with its “policy of the Elbe,” been charting a course of its own in trade and European policy since the 1950s that differed markedly from the positions advanced by Germany’s national government; see Frank Bajohr, “Hochburg des Internationalismus: Hamburger ‘Außenpolitik’ in den 1950er und 1960er Jahren,” in Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte in Hamburg [Research Center for Contemporary History in Hamburg] (ed.), Zeitgeschichte in Hamburg 2008, Hamburg 2009, 25–43; Christoph Strupp, “Das Tor zur Welt. Die ‘Politik der Elbe’ und die EWG: Hamburger Europapolitik in den 1950er und 1960er Jahren,” published 2010, in Themenportal Europäische Geschichte, URL: http://www.europa.clio-online.de/2010/Article=455 (last accessed March 7, 2021).↩︎

Art. “Thomson Looks at Italian Regions,” European Community 183 (1975): 12; Giovanni Damele, “Gli orientamenti della classe politica piemontese nei riguardi della causa comunitaria,” in Valerio Castronovo (ed.), Il Piemonte nel processo di integrazione europea, Milan 2008, 181–259, here 191. Morviducci, “Activities,” 211. The president of Tuscany, Lelio Lagorio, also sought contact with European institutions early on (Emilio Diodato, “Politiche di internazionalizzazione e arene della rappresentanza. Una comparazione tra Lombardia e Toscana,” Rivista italiana di scienza politica 2 (2007): 207–231).↩︎

Wegmaier, Europäer, 355–357.↩︎

Wegmaier, Europäer, 362–364.↩︎

For an appraisal of the role of the SNP for Scotland, see Hepburn, Europe, 71–80.↩︎

Jean-François Drevet, Histoire de la politique régionale de l’Union européenne, Paris 2008, 56.↩︎

For more on CELIB, see Romain Pasquier, La capacité politique des régions. Une comparaison France-Espagne, Rennes 2004, 34–48.↩︎

Pasquier, Pouvoir regional, 272; Gilbert Noël, “La Conférence des régions périphériques maritimes d’Europe. Une initiative originale pour une politique régionale européenne,” in Yves Denéchère and Marie-Bénédicte Vincent (eds.), Vivre et construire l’Europe à l’échelle territoriale de 1945 à nos jours, Brussels 2010, 265–279, here 271.↩︎

Auel, Regionalisiertes Europa, 131 and 158f. Whether other regional interest groups such as CEBSO in Aquitaine (Benz and Frenzel, “Bordeaux”) attempted similar strategies has not yet been investigated.↩︎

Auel, Regionalisiertes Europa, 131f. and 159f.↩︎

Grasse, “Regionale Außenkompetenz,” 167.↩︎

Les Annales Conferencia 68 (1961), 8; see also André Mutter, L’Alsace à l’heure de l’Europe, Paris 1968, 87.↩︎

Jacob Krumrey, The Symbolic Politics of European Integration: Staging Europe, Cham 2018, 175.↩︎

Der Föderalist: Zeitschrift für europäischen Föderalismus 2 (1958): 29; Alain Howiller, Mémoires de midi. Les mutations de l’Alsace (1960–1993), Strasbourg 1994, 21.↩︎

On Pflimlin, see François Brunagel: Pierre Pflimlin. Alsacien et Européen, Strasbourg 2007. In the Consultative Assembly of the European Parliament, René Radius was another highly significant figure from Alsace.↩︎

Robert Asam, Der Luis: Luis Durnwalders Aufstieg zur Macht, Die Biographie, Bolzano 2001, 188–190; Italian Association for the Council of European Municipalities, “Policy Document on Agricultural Reform in the European Community,” May 1969, (https://www.cvce.eu/obj/italian_association_for_the_council_of_european_municipalities_policy_document_may_1969-en-ae31fca6-73d0-487d-8ef7-a47133ed48b5.html).↩︎

Harnisch, Politik, 33.↩︎

Claudia Breuer, Europäische Integration und grenzüberschreitende Zusammenarbeit. Konsens oder Konflikt? Das Beispiel EUREGIO, Bochum 2001; Verena Müller, 25 Jahre EUREGIO-Rat. Rückblick auf die Arbeit eines politischen Gremiums im “kleinen Europa,” Gronau and Enschede 2003; Claudia Hiepel, “Grenzüberschreitende Zusammenarbeit in Europa. Die deutsch-niederländische EUREGIO,” in Christian Henrich-Franke et al. (eds.), Grenzüberschreitende institutionalisierte Zusammenarbeit von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, Baden-Baden 2019, 79–100.↩︎

Gerhard Eickhorn, “Grenzen verbinden: Die Arbeitsgemeinschaft Europäischer Grenzregionen – eine Bocholter Initiative,” in Hans Dieter Metz and Heiner Timmermann (eds.), Europa – Ziel und Aufgabe: Festschrift für Arno Krause zum 70. Geburtstag, Berlin 2000, 181–190.↩︎

Kessler, “Arbeitsgemeinschaft,” 273f. See also Wegmaier, Europäer, 371–382.↩︎

Hans Mayer, “Multilaterale Zusammenarbeit von Ländern und Regionen in Mitteleuropa,” Jahrbuch des Föderalismus 7 (2006): 496–512, here 497; Andreas Kiefer, “Salzburgs Mitwirkung in europäischen Regionalinstitutionen,” in Roland Floimair (ed.), Die regionale Außenpolitik des Landes Salzburg, Salzburg 1993, 147–176, here 147. For an introductory overview of the various working communities, see Rudolf Hrbek and Sabine Weyand, betrifft: Das Europa der Regionen. Fakten, Probleme, Perspektiven, Munich 1994, 53–68. For more detail, see Schmitt-Egner, Handbuch, 143–506.↩︎

Pasquier, Pouvoir regional, 272, Noël, “Conférence,” 269f., Georges Pierret, Régions d’Europe: La face chachée de l’union. Une aventure vécue, Rennes 1997, 97–113.↩︎

Noël, “Conférence,” 270f.↩︎

Pierret, Régions, 114.↩︎

For further examples, see Martin Nagelschmidt, Das oberrheinische Mehrebenensystem. Institutionelle Bedingungen und funktionale Herausforderungen grenzübergreifender Zusammenarbeit in Europa, Basel 2005; Wolfgang Ott, Grenzüberschreitende Zusammenarbeit Bayerns. Fallbeispiel EUREGIO Egrensis, Baden-Baden 2010.↩︎

Petra Zimmermann-Steinhart, “Die Entstehung der Initiative ‘Vier Motoren für Europa,’” in Thomas Fischer and Siegfried Frech (eds.), Baden-Württemberg und seine Partnerregionen, Stuttgart 2001, 48–61.↩︎

Yasemin Haack, Europäische Integration durch transnationale Strategien der Regionenbildung? Grenzüberschreitende Zusammenarbeit im böhmisch-bayerischen Grenzgebiet, Passau 2010, 42.↩︎

Schmitt-Egner, Handbuch, 469.↩︎

For an overview, see Rudolf Hrbek, “Die Regionen in Europa,” Jahrbuch der Europäischen Integration 11 (1990/91): 277–284, here 280–283.↩︎

Drevet, Histoire, 44.↩︎

Dieter Eissel et al., Interregionale Zusammenarbeit in der EU: Analysen zur Partnerschaft zwischen Hessen, der Emilia-Romagna und der Aquitaine, Opladen 1999, 136f.↩︎

Schulz, Regionalismus, 194.↩︎

Schmitz-Wenzel, Länder, 152.↩︎

Varsori, Regionalpolitik.↩︎

Lecture given by Borschette to the Munich-based Foreign Affairs Association (Gesellschaft für Auslandskunde) on April 21, 1972, Archives of the European Commission BAC 12/1992 267.↩︎

Note from the Bundesrat Ministry dated January 20, 1964, German Federal Archives B144/1024.↩︎

Grant Jordan, “Scottish Local Government and Europe,” in Clive Archer and John Main (eds.), Scotland’s Voice in International Affairs: The Overseas Representation of Scottish Interests, with special reference to the European Community, London 1980, 19–36, here 35. On Scotland’s positioning vis-à-vis Europe, see also Hepburn, Europe, 53–98.↩︎

Noël, “Conférence,” 271.↩︎

Eissel, Interregionale Zusammenarbeit, 131.↩︎

Viktor von Malchus, Partnerschaft an europäischen Grenzen. Integration durch grenzüberschreitende Zusammenarbeit, Bonn 1975, 109; Bert Schaffarzik, Handbuch der Europäischen Charta der kommunalen Selbstverwaltung, Stuttgart et al. 2002, 17f.↩︎

See Klaus Fiedler, “Zwanzig Jahre Europäische Kommunalkonferenz,” Der Städtetag 31 (1978): 200–202, 274–276, and 344–346, here 201 f.; Dirk Gerdes, Regionalismus als soziale Bewegung. Westeuropa, Frankreich, Korsika: Vom Vergleich zur Kontextanalyse, Frankfurt am Main 1985, 88.↩︎

Schulz, Regionalismus, 195. Dehousse and Signorello were established regional politicians who were active in the Conference of Local Authorities of Europe and the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR). Dehousse, a federalist and an activist in the Walloon movement, was a senator for the province of Liège (1950–1971), a member of the Consultative Assembly (1954–1961), its president (1956–1959), and subsequently the chairperson of the Special Committee on Municipal and Regional Affairs. Signorello was a member of the Provincial Council of the Province of Rome (1952–1960), president of the Province of Rome (1961–1965), and a senator for the Lazio region (1968–1985).↩︎

Council of Europe: 50 Years of Local Democracy in Europe, Strasbourg 2007, 22; Pierre Kukawa and Jean Tournon, The Council of Europe and Regionalism. The Regional Dimension in the Work of the Standing Conference of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe (CLARE), 1957–85, Strasbourg 1987, 6.↩︎

Fiedler, “Zwanzig Jahre,” 345.↩︎

Grom, Zusammenarbeit, 85.↩︎

Robert D. Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games,” International Organization 42 (1988): 427–460.↩︎

Grasse, “Regionale Außenkompetenz,” 167.↩︎

Auel, Regionalisiertes Europa, 132.↩︎

Tömmel, Regulierung, 41f.↩︎

Locatelli, “Conférence,” 226.↩︎

Cf. Fiedler, “Zwanzig Jahre,” 201f.; Gerdes, Regionalismus, 88.↩︎

Beyerlein, “Zusammenarbeit,” 574f.↩︎

See Peter Hänni (ed.), Schweizerischer Föderalismus und europäische Integration. Die Rolle der Kantone in einem sich wandelnden internationalen Kontext, Zürich 2000; Dieter Freiburghaus (ed.), Die Kantone und Europa, Bern 1994; Martin Bundi/Christian Rathgeb (eds.), Graubünden zwischen Integration und Isolation, Chur 2006; Fritz Staudigl and Renate Fischler (eds.), Die Teilnahme der Bundesländer am europäischen Integrationsprozess, Vienna 1996; Stefan Hammer and Peter Bussjäger (eds.), Außenbeziehungen im Bundesstaat, Vienna 2007.↩︎

File note from the Bavarian State Chancellery, June 24, 1972, BayHStA Stk 16600.↩︎

DPA copy dated May 17, 1972, BayHStA Stk 16601.↩︎

Alois Lugger, Mayor of Innsbruck and President of the Tyrolean Parliament, was president of the seventh session of the European Conference of Local Authorities and its vice-president on several occasions. He was also vice president of the Council of European Municipalities (Erich Pramböck, 90 Jahre kommunale Interessenvertretung. Österreichischer Städtebund 1915–2005, Vienna 2005, 26–28). Alois Larcher was secretary of the Committee of the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe for Municipal Affairs (and later Spatial Planning and Regional Affairs) from 1967 on (Pauliner Forum. Mitteilungen des Paulinervereins No. 15, March 1991, 13f., and Pauliner Forum. Mitteilungen des Paulinervereins No. 44, Juni 2006, 12f.).↩︎

Kessler, “Arbeitsgemeinschaft,” 275.↩︎

Cited from Landespressebüro Salzburg: Leitbild für die Entwicklung und Sicherung des Alpengebietes, Salzburg 1981, 26.↩︎

Cited from Hans Köchler, “Regionalpolitische Initiativen Tirols,” in Hans Köchler (ed.), Die europäische Aufgabe der Alpenregion, Innsbruck 1972, 87–99, here 89.↩︎

Hanns Hummer, Eduard Wallnöfer. Eine Biographie, Innsbruck 1999, 54. On the evolution of the discussion of transalpine road projects in general and the Ulm–Milan link in particular, see Magdalena Pernold, Traumstraße oder Transithölle? Eine Diskursgeschichte der Brennerautobahn in Tirol und Südtirol (1950–1980), Bielefeld 2016, 187–192.↩︎

European Conference of Local Authorities: Tenth ordinary session 16–20 September 1974. Official Report of Debates, Strasbourg 1974.↩︎

Jan Eik Grindheim, Knut Heidar, and Kaare W. Strøm (eds.), Norsk politikk, Oslo 2017; Hermann Gross and Walter Rothholz, “Das politische System Norwegens,” in Wolfgang Ismayr (ed.), Die politischen Systeme Westeuropas, Wiesbaden 2009, 151–194.↩︎

On the Norwegian regions, see Gro Sandkjær Hanssen, Jan Erling Klausen, and Ove Langeland (eds.), Det regionale Norge 1950–2050, Oslo 2012; Yngve Flo, Statens mann, fylkets mann: Norsk amtmanns- og fylkesmannshistorie 1814–2014, Bergen 2014.↩︎

For more on Evers, see Andreas Hompland and Jon Helge Lesjø, Konstante Spenninger. KS i den norske modellen, Oslo 2016, 146–157.↩︎

See European Conference of Local Authorities: Tenth ordinary session 16–20 September 1974. Official Report of Debates, Strasbourg 1974.↩︎

Maja Busch Sevaldsen, Regional representasjon i Brussel. En kvalitativ analyse av Nord-Norges Europakontor, Trondheim 2015.↩︎

“Résolution finale votée a l’issue de la 1re conférence de Saint-Malo le 23 juin 1973 (adoptée a l’unanimité),” in George Pierret, Vivre l’Europe... autrement. Les Régions entrent en scène, Paris 2001, 315–318.↩︎

Noël, “Conférence,” 272f.↩︎

In the consultation process on the EU Commission’s Green Paper on EU Maritime Policy 2005, for example, the Western Norway Council and the Regional Committee for Northern Norway participated in a coordinated manner through the CPMR. The two fylkesordfører Roald Bergsaker (Rogaland) and Gunn Marit Helgesen (Telemark) were both board members of CPMR at that time (Policy Document: “CPMR og EU: Utforming av ein heilskapleg maritim politikk for Europa. Vidare engasjement frå Vestlandsrådet,” Vestlandsrådet, Arkivsaksnr. 05/79). https://www.vestlandsraadet.no/uploads/documents/0048-05-CPMR-og-EU.pdf ↩︎

See Peter Austin et al., Norske regioner som internasjonale aktører. KS Forskning og utvikling, 03/2006 (https://www.ks.no/contentassets/5796a5a4332c49a19c96de6273ad1729/sluttrapport.pdf); Andreas Børnick, Europeisering av fylkeskommunen. En sammenlignende studie av regionale europeiseringsprosesser i Norge og EU, Oslo 2007; Kjell A. Eliassen and Pavlina Peneva, Norwegian Non-Governmental Actors in Brussels 1980–2010: Interest Representation and Lobbying, Oslo 2011; Jan Erik Grindheim, Norway, in Søren Dosenrode and Henrik Halkier (eds.), The Nordic Regions and the European Union, Aldershot 2004, 55–76.↩︎

“Gesellschaftliche Strukturen als Verfassungsproblem. Intermediäre Gewalten, Assoziationen, Öffentliche Körperschaften im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert,” [Proceedings of the founding conference of the Vereinigung für Verfassungsgeschichte, October 3–4, 1977, in Hofgeismar] (Supplements to Der Staat: Zeitschrift für Staatslehre, Öffentliches Recht und Verfassungsgeschichte, Issue 2), Berlin 1978; Peter Claus Hartmann (ed.), Regionen in der Frühen Neuzeit. Reichskreise im deutschen Raum, Provinzen in Frankreich, Regionen unter polnischer Oberhoheit: Ein Vergleich ihrer Strukturen, Funktionen und ihrer Bedeutung, Berlin 1994.↩︎

Ferdinand Kramer, “Landesgeschichte in europäischer Perspektive. Zusammenfassung und Diskussionsbeitrag,” in Sigrid Hirbodian et al. (eds.), Methoden und Wege der Landesgeschichte, Ostfildern 2015, 209–217, here 215.↩︎

For a discussion of this basic idea in connection with spatial models, see Martin Ott, “Raumkonzepte in der Landesgeschichte nach dem Spatial Turn,” in Sigrid Hirbodian et al. (eds.), Methoden und Wege der Landesgeschichte, Ostfildern 2015, 111–125, here 114.↩︎

Andreas Rutz, “Landesgeschichte in Europa: Traditionen – Institutionen – Perspektiven,” in Werner Freitag et al. (eds.), Handbuch Landesgeschichte, Oldenburg 2018, 102–126, here 103.↩︎

See, for example, Angelika Fox, Die wirtschaftliche Integration Bayerns in das Zweite Deutsche Kaiserreich: Studien zu den wirtschaftspolitischen Spielräumen eines deutschen Mittelstaates zwischen 1862 und 1875, Munich 2001; Wolfgang Benz, Süddeutschland in der Weimarer Republik. Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Innenpolitik 1918–1923, Berlin 1970; Ursula Münch, Freistaat im Bundesstaat. Bayerns Politik in 50 Jahren Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Munich 1999, and the “Bayern im Bund” series edited by Thomas Schlemmer and Hans Woller. For Rhineland-Palatinate, see, for instance, Heinrich Küppers, Staatsaufbau zwischen Bruch und Tradition. Geschichte des Landes Rheinland-Pfalz 1946–1955, Mainz 1990. For North Rhine-Westphalia, see Ulrich Schmidt (ed.), Karl Arnold. Nordrhein-Westfalens Ministerpräsident 1947–1956, Düsseldorf 2001..↩︎

See also: Grüner, Wirtschaftswunder; Gerhardt, Agrarmodernisierung; Himpsl, Außenwirtschaftspolitik; Jehle, Kulturpolitik, and Kurt Düwell, “Nordrhein-Westfalens Minister für Bundesangelegenheiten. Ihr Wirken zwischen Landeskabinett, Bundesrat und europäischer Ebene,” in Jürgen Brautmeier and Ulrich Heinemann (eds.), Mythen – Möglichkeiten – Wirklichkeiten: 60 Jahre Nordrhein-Westfalen, Essen 2007, 131–153; Walter Helfrich, Die Anfänge der Europabewegung in der Pfalz nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, Kaiserslautern 2013.↩︎

For instance, in Stefan Lülf, London – Regensburg – Indien. Die Einbindung bayerischer Städte in den Luftverkehr 1919–1933, Kallmünz 2017,, and Julia Mattern, Dörfer nach der Gebietsreform: Die Auswirkungen der kommunalen Neuordnung auf kleine Gemeinden in Bayern (1978–2008), Regensburg 2020.↩︎

Kramer, “Landesgeschichte,” 216.↩︎

Keijo Viljanen, Zum Wortschatz der wirtschaftlichen Integration nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg in Europa: Eine terminologische Untersuchung, Turku 1984, 137–143, 194. A contemporary account is available in, for example, Kurt Birrenbach, “Europe, the European Economic Community and the Outer Seven,” International Journal 15 (1960): 59–65. The language of this narrative, at least, is still present in, for instance, Wolfram Kaiser, “Das Europa der ‘äußeren Sieben’: Die ‘surcharge’-Krise der Europäischen Freihandelsgemeinschaft im Herbst 1964,” published 2016, in Themenportal Europäische Geschichte, URL: www.europa.clio-online.de/essay/id/fdae-1621 (last accessed March 7, 2021).↩︎

Ferdinand Kramer, “Zur regionalen Dimension der europäischen Geschichte,” Blätter für deutsche Landesgeschichte 147 (2011): 1–6, here 2.↩︎

Rutz, “Landesgeschichte,” 117.↩︎

Jana Osterkamp, “Föderale Schwebelage: Die Habsburgermonarchie als politisches Mehrebenensystem,” in Gerold Ambrosius et al. (eds.), Föderalismus in vergleichender historischer Perspektive, vol. 2, Föderale Systeme: Kaiserreich – Donaumonarchie – Europäische Union, Baden-Baden 2015, 197–219, here 198 and 214.↩︎

Udo Schäfer, “Rechtsvielfalt und Rechtseinheit in Europa. Zum Einfluss des europäischen Rechts auf das nationale Archivwesen,” Archivalische Zeitschrift 88 (2006): 819–846, here 822–824. Georg Schmidt, Der Dreißigjährige Krieg, 9th ed., Munich 2018, 7 and 22.↩︎

Karl Härter, “Der Immerwährende Reichstag (1663–1806) in der historischen Forschung,” zeitenblicke 11, no. 2 (January 30, 2013), URL: https://www.zeitenblicke.de/2012/2/Haerter/index_html (last accessed March 7, 2021).↩︎

Klaus Kremb, “Macht und Gegenmacht im mittelalterlichen Mehrebenensystem. Das römisch-deutsche Königtum Richards von Cornwall als Beispiel prekärer Staatlichkeit im Interregnum,” in Anton Neugebauer et al. (eds.), Richard von Cornwall. Römisch-deutsches Königtum in nachstaufischer Zeit, Kaiserslautern 2010, 267–280; Jörg Broschek, Der kanadische Föderalismus. Eine historisch-institutionalistische Analyse, Wiesbaden 2009, 111; Felix Selgert, “Die politische Entscheidungsfindung im Mehrebenensystem des Deutschen Kaiserreichs am Beispiel des Aktienrechts (1873–1897),” in Gerold Ambrosius/Christian Henrich-Franke/CorneliusNeutsch (eds.), Föderalismus in historisch vergleichender Perspektive, vol. 6: Integrieren durch Regieren, Baden-Baden 2018, 151–196.↩︎

Rolf Grawert et al. (eds.), Offene Staatlichkeit. Festschrift für Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde zum 65. Geburtstag, Berlin 1995; Rainer Wahl, “Der offene Staat und seine Rechtsgrundlagen,” Juristische Schulung 43 (2003): 1145–1150.↩︎

Axel Gotthard, Das Alte Reich. 1495–1806, Darmstadt 2003, 2f., cf. also Axel Gotthard, Der Dreißigjährige Krieg: Eine Einführung, Cologne 2016, 299f.↩︎

Georg Schmidt, “Freisein unter Zwang? Die alte, die neue und die deutsche Freiheit,” in Daniel Fulda et al. (eds.), Freiheit und Zwang: Studien zu ihrer Interdependenz von der Aufklärung bis zur Gegenwart, Paderborn 2018, 77–96, here 95.↩︎

Stefan Esders and Gunnar Folke Schuppert, Mittelalterliches Regieren in der Moderne oder modernes Regieren im Mittelalter?, Baden-Baden 2015, 17.↩︎

Wolfgang Reinhard, Geschichte der Staatsgewalt: Eine vergleichende Verfassungsgeschichte Europas von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, Munich 2002, 27–29.↩︎

For example, the “framework legislation” of the imperial diet, the “commissioned administration” by the imperial estates, and the participation of the estates in decision-making in the provincial, district, and imperial diets. Johannes Burkhardt, “Wer hat Angst vor den Reichskreisen? Problemaufriss und Lösungsvorschlag,” in Wolfgang Wüst and Michael Müller (eds.), Reichskreise und Regionen im frühmodernen Europa. Horizonte und Grenzen im spatial turn, Frankfurt am Main 2011, 39–60, here 49. Karl Härter, “Das Recht des Alten Reiches: Reichsherkommen, Reichsgesetzgebung und ‘gute Policey,’” in Stephan Wendehorst and Siegrid Westphal (eds.), Lesebuch Altes Reich, Munich 2014, 87–94, here 92f.↩︎

Peter Claus Hartmann, “Subsidiarität, politische Willensbildung und Repräsentation im frühneuzeitlichen Alten Reich,” in Wolfgang Wüst (ed.), Mitregieren und Herrschaftsteilung in der Frühen Neuzeit. Beiträge zur Machtfrage im Alten Reich und in Bayern, Stegaurach 2016, 41–53, here 44.↩︎

See, for example, Thomas O. Hueglin, Early Modern Concepts for a Late Modern World: Althusius on Community and Federalism, Waterloo (Ontario) 1999, 3–6; Flavio G. I. Inocencio, Reconceptualizing Sovereignty in the Post-National State. Statehood Attributes in the International Order: The Federal Tradition, Bloomington 2014, 98.↩︎

Ludwig Petry, In Grenzen unbegrenzt: Möglichkeiten und Wege der geschichtlichen Landeskunde. Jahresgabe des Instituts für geschichtliche Landeskunde an der Universität Mainz 1961, Mainz 1961.↩︎

Reinhard Stauber, “Regionalgeschichte versus Landesgeschichte? Entwicklung und Bewertung von Konzepten der Erforschung von ‘Geschichte in kleinen Räumen,’” Geschichte und Region / Storia e Regione 3 (1994): 227–260, here 246.↩︎

Ott, “Raumkonzepte,” 114f. Important steps towards abandoning a “container geography” in social geography were taken by Benno Werlen, Sozialgeographie alltäglicher Regionalisierungen, vol. 2: Globalisierung, Region und Regionalisierung, Stuttgart 1997.↩︎

Alois Schmid, “Interterritoriale Landesgeschichte. Die Beziehungen Bayerns zum Benelux-Raum im Alten Reich,” in Alois Schmid, Neue Wege der bayerischen Landesgeschichte, Wiesbaden 2008, 37–76, here 43.↩︎

Michael Ruck, “‘Mehrebenensystem’” – ein Impuls für die Landesgeschichte im 21. Jahrhundert?,” Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte 84 (2021), 11–24, here 23f.↩︎

This article is a translation and was originally published in German as:

Alexander Wegmaier, “Das Potential des ʹMehrebenensystemsʹ für die Landesgeschichte”, in Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte 84 (2021), 25-75.

Anniversaries and Jubilees between Memory, Carnival and Protest

The Prague Velvet Carnival as an Urban Liminoid Phenomenon

by Marketa Spiritova

translated by Philip Saunders

2023-01-24

You can cite this article e.g.
Marketa Spiritova, “Anniversaries and Jubilees between Memory, Carnival and Protest: The Prague Velvet Carnival as an Urban Liminoid Phenomenon” in Bavarian Studies in History and Culture (2023) [originally published in German 2020], last modified 2023-01-24, https://www.bavarian-studies.org/2023-spiritova/.

This article is a translation and was originally published in German as:

Marketa Spiritova, “Jahrestage und Jubiläen zwischen Erinnerung, Karneval und Protest. Der Prager Samtene Karneval als urbanes Phänomen des Liminoiden” in Bayerisches Jahrbuch für Volkskunde (2020), 17-35.

This text is open access and licensed under the terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Marketa Spiritova

Anniversaries and Jubilees between Memory, Carnival and Protest

The Prague Velvet Carnival as an Urban Liminoid Phenomenon

translated by Philip Saunders

2023-01-24

This text is open access and licensed under terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Image: M. Spiritova

Velvet Carnival, Prague, 17 November 2014. Pražský Majdan (Prager Maidan): “We have a small tent – Maidan

Anniversaries and jubilees are central to the formation of cultural memory¹ as “monuments in time”.² They, as well as the commemorative rituals performed on anniversaries, have important functions in the process of memory and identity building by contributing to the transmission, fixation and institutionalisation of identity-securing knowledge within collectives. The past is reconstructed in the present on anniversaries in a way that gives meaning and makes it relatable for the future: the “past” is, as Winfried Müller somewhat crudely puts it, “directed towards one’s own history”.³ This “dressing up” takes place through cultural practices of visualisation, which are simultaneously reinterpretations of the event to be remembered. They are practices of retelling and re-enactment, of medialisation and materialisation, of staging, performing and “curating”.⁴ Anniversaries and jubilees, says Peter Burke, “reconstruct history or ‘re-collect’ or ‘re-member’ it in the sense of practising bricolage, assembling fragments of the past into new patterns”.⁵ They order and structure the past, present and future and, thus, have a stabilising effect on society. However, they are characterised by ambivalence. This means that they can also have “a considerable potential for cultural change”,⁶ especially if they are understood as cultural performances⁷in the theoretical tradition of ethnological ritual research. In Erika Fischer-Lichte’s words, a performance is initially understood in very general terms as “a structured programme of activities that is performed or presented at a specific time and place by a group of actors in front of a group of spectators”.⁸These can be events of all kinds, such as “rituals, ceremonies, festivals, games, sports competitions, political events, circus performances, striptease shows, concerts, opera, dance, drama, artistic performances, etc.”.⁹ If such performances – such as commemorative rituals on the occasion of historical anniversaries – function as cultural performances, they become a “stage on which ideas and interpretations are made visible and vivid and can thus also be made available for social negotiation”.¹⁰ This is because these public event complexes are “temporally limited […] situations” in which “goods and values are spread out before an audience in a mostly highly condensed form”, reflected upon and confirmed or questioned.¹¹ Thus, cultural performances as “privileged moments of entry” are particularly suitable “for ethnographic investigations”.¹² Using the Berlin Schlossplatz debate as an example, the European ethnologist Beate Binder has made this concept extremely fruitful for ethnological urban research – even against the background of questions of memory culture and historical politics. To this end, she observed numerous cultural performances, such as information events, exhibitions, events, discussion forums, public meetings and protest events, and investigated their role in constituting Berlin’s urban space.¹³ This conceptual and methodological approach also proves to be insightful in the context of memory research, because it is precisely within the framework of anniversaries and jubilees that “the coexistence of competing patterns of interpretation in processes of change can be made visible”,¹⁴ because “the palpability and tangibility of these performances makes them an important venue for political and social conflicts”, according to Binder.¹⁵ The visualisation of a plural memory landscape should also be the goal of cultural anthropological memory research, insofar as the (national) anniversaries, which are usually choreographed and decreed ‘from above’, contribute to the homogenisation of the memory discourse and the legitimisation and consolidation of hegemonic structures. It is, therefore, important to understand anniversaries and jubilees as plural arenas in order to also make visible the counter-discourses and suppressed narratives that are produced by memory-cultural staging practices, especially by non-state actors.

Cultural commemorations of anniversaries, especially those of civil society institutions and actors, always have two central characteristics: on the one hand, they have a communal, identity-forming character, as do all social (especially ritual and/or event-oriented) events. Sociologist Regina Bormann writes: “They serve social self-expression, public reflection, sometimes also the design of alternative social courses of action. As collective designs, they serve to communalise, to create a sense of community, of ‘identities’”.¹⁶ On the other hand, the forms of cultural memory have an increasingly demonstrative and protest character, especially in the regions of East Central Europe. The cultural performances listed are, thus, also always to be understood as “political interventions in public space”, and are, therefore, simultaneously, “part of social critique”.¹⁷ Characteristics such as community building, the exercise of critique and the questioning of prevailing discourses and collective identity offerings come into play especially in times of crisis and upheaval, they have, thus, been described by Victor Turner as “phenomena of the liminoid”. Such phenomena can be identified – analogously to “phenomena of the liminal” that exist(ed) in pre-industrial societies – in complex, late-modern societies that are characterised by diversity, plurality and fragmentation:¹⁸

Liminiod phenomena emerge away from the central economic and political processes, at the margins, in the interstices and gaps of central institutions – they have a pluralistic, fragmentary and experimental character. [… they] are often part of social critiques or even revolutionary manifestos – books, plays, paintings, films, etc. that denounce the injustice, inefficiency and immorality of economic and political structures and organisations.¹⁹

Bormann has harnessed Turner’s concept of the liminoid for the study of urban experiential spaces. She describes the urban spaces marked (if not produced) by consumption and events as “zones of the liminoid”, i.e. as “stages of cultural performance where the possibilities and limits of society are playfully tested, explored, negotiated or discarded”, as places “where the existing can be examined and the new imagined”.²⁰ In the following, the performative production of such urban “zones of the liminoid” and their function as instances of social control with the potential for mobilisation and change will be examined based on selected cultural performances in the context of historical anniversaries in the Czech Republic. The focus of the study is the so-called Velvet Carnival in Prague, a commemorative event on the anniversary of the “Velvet Revolution” based on the Basel carnival, which is characterised by a highly socio-critical impetus and sees itself as a counter-hegemonic actor. It is founded on ethnographic research, particularly participant observation, photographic documentation, dense descriptions and media analyses of the commemorative events on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the “Velvet Revolution” in 2014.²¹

The discursive framing: The “Velvet Revolution” in the national culture of remembrance

Although the so-called “velvet” or “soft” revolution (sametová revoluce), which brought down the communist regime in Czechoslovakia in the autumn of 1989, has a national holiday in both the Czech and Slovak Republics, this event remains a place of remembrance ‘from below’.²² According to historian Muriel Blaive, the “revolution” is even a “non-lieu de mémoire” politically and in terms of society as a whole, as it is neither suitable for creating myths and legitimising existing power relationships in terms of identity politics, nor for constructing an overall national sense of unity.²³ A central reason for this is a politics of memory that, on the one hand, interprets communism as a foreign implant, “as a historical distortion, an interlude, an aberration from the supposed natural past of national history, an ‘Asiatic despotism’ imported from the ‘East’”.²⁴ This is reflected, for example, in the research mandate of the national authority Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů – ÚSTR), “which is to address the legacy of the Nazi occupation and the dictatorship of the KSČ (Komunistická strana Československa – Communist Party of Czechoslovakia)”, as well as in the “research into the period 1938–1989, which is defined by law”.²⁵ The institute, thus, ranks the period of communism “among the other totalitarianisms of the 20th century”²⁶ and contributes significantly not only to externalising this period, but to telling it as a story of oppression by major enemy powers. This narrative is legally supported by the controversial “lustration laws”²⁷ of the early 1990s, which define the pre-complaint regimes as “unlawful and criminal”.²⁸ The laws are problematic in several respects: on the one hand, there is insufficient differentiation between “perpetrators” and “victims”, because they also pillory those people who did not necessarily belong to the regime’s henchmen, such as numerous members of the “grey zone”, i.e. people who were active in the official structures but, at the same time, supported dissent.²⁹ On the other hand, however, a number of communists from the nomenklatura have not been prosecuted at all. On the contrary, many of them are among the beneficiaries of privatisation. The lustration laws have not always been implemented, which means that a change of elites has not taken place in all institutions.³⁰ In addition, there has been the growing strength and entry into parliament of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (Komunistická strana Čech a Moravy – KSČM), the successor party to the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (Komunistická strana Československa – KSČ), a party that has so far not undergone any reforms and, to this day, clings to the legitimacy of the past regime, which was characterised by a gross disregard for human rights. This is an important reason why widespread resistance is forming on the anniversary of the “Velvet Revolution” on 17 November and a change in the politics of remembrance is being demanded. It is, therefore, not surprising that the majority of urban stages on this day are occupied by civil society actors – student initiatives, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), associations, artists and other memory activists – while the state is increasingly withdrawing from public space.³¹ The commemoration events, which are staged bottom-up by civil society actors, are, therefore, also and especially an expression of a political will to influence and a critical public.³² The occupation of public space and demand for a different politics of remembrance, for a “decommunization” (dekomunizace) of state and society, are important building blocks in this memory building. At the same time, the commemoration of the “Velvet Revolution” and the admonishing memory of the victims and crimes of the communist regime serve as a foil on which many other grievances in politics and society are made visible. These notably include the high level of corruption, discrimination against minorities, the power of the economic elites, problems of environmental pollution and, time and again, the political culture. The latter has been under particular rebuke since Václav Klaus replaced Václav Havel in the office of president in 2003 and even more so since Klaus’ successor Miloš Zeman took office (in 2013). Zeman is highly polarised: while he is popular among former communists, people in rural, structurally weak regions and those in precarious social milieus, opposition to him is forming especially in the intellectual academic urban milieu, which is also reflected in critical media coverage (especially in Lidové noviny [People’s Newspaper] and Mladá Fronta Dnes [Young Front Today]). The reasons for this are mainly Zeman’s populist and Russia- and China-friendly policies (at least until Russia’s war against the Ukraine), his vulgar and often tasteless political style and his broad support within the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM).³³ Moreover, criticism of the “lack of decency in politics” has continued to rise since the election of Andrej Babiš as prime minister (until 2021). Thirty years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, up to 300,000 people have taken to the streets against the two office holders in Prague alone. Doing memory in the Czech Republic is, therefore, primarily associated with doing civil society and doing democracy.

Nevertheless, it should also be taken into account that only certain sections of society inscribe themselves and their interpretations in the urban (memory) spaces. On the one hand, the civil society actors belong to the successor generations of the “Velvet Revolution”, i.e. today’s 20- to 40-year-olds. They are often the children and grandchildren of former dissidents or the children of those young people (especially from the student milieu) who took to the streets in 1989 in their hundreds of thousands. On the other hand, many of them come from urban academic milieus. They are citizens who generally have a high level of cultural, social and, in some cases, economic capital: students from various disciplines and universities and their families, NGOs and civic initiatives, and representatives from the fields of culture and art. They are memory activists who are competent enough to take on the role of an authority regulating the state and the market, or are able to interpret the messages of the organisational elites ‘correctly’ and communicate them through their own networks.³⁴ Sections of the population who do not have such capital, count themselves among the losers of the system transformation and are politically more on the left or right fringe, on the other hand, are not represented or they have their own rallies and try to disrupt the commemorative events of civic initiatives. These are, for example, supporters of the KSČM and right-wing or extreme right-wing groups.³⁵

It has become clear that on the anniversary of the “Velvet Revolution” in the Czech Republic, large sections particularly of civil society are occupying the public space in order to remember the events of 1989, recall the crimes of the communist regime, commemorate the victims and criticise what they see as a failed politics of remembrance. On the other hand, they aim to draw attention to problems in politics and society, question claims to hegemony and demand participation in political decision-making processes. At the same time, in the sense of late-modern experience orientation, the actors are concerned to let doing memory and doing democracy take place in a unique event that appeals to all the senses – especially in order to mobilise the younger generations for their own interests. Thus, a diverse and colourful repertoire of (remembrance) cultural practices is spreading on the urban stages on the anniversaries: vigils, light chains and (open-air) exhibitions commemorating the victims’ experiences of violence and calling for “never again communism”; politically motivated street festivals, flash mobs, carnival parades and re-enactments; readings, concerts, panel discussions and theatre; protest events of all kinds, mostly demonstrations for but, above all, against members of the government, as well as radical right-wing rallies that extend to violent excesses by neo-Nazi groups.³⁶

These initiatives and events have been particularly prominent in recent years: the Sametové posvícení (literally “Velvet Church Fair”, usually translated as “Velvet Carnival” or “Prague Carnival”), founded by the academics and artists’ initiative FÓR_UM in 2012, an association of various NGOs whose members explicitly model themselves on the Basel Carnival and carry their causes into the centre of Prague in carnivalesque costumes. A more detailed description and analysis of these carnival-like commemorative and protest practices follows on the next few pages. It is also worth mentioning the all-day street festival Korzo Národní (Parade on the National Street) organised by the NGO Díky, že můžem! (Thank you that we can!), one of the most diverse and crowd-pleasing events initiated by a small group of students in 2014.³⁷

Other actions initiated by various NGOs and associations in recent years which have (had) a high mobilisation potential and have also received or experienced great popularity in the media were, for example, the re-enactment or “reconstruction of the velvet parade” ³⁸ of 17 November 1989 on the 10th and 20th anniversaries in 2009 and 2019 – actions through which the rebirth of civil society was to be re-enacted above all.³⁹ Once again, in 2014, the initiative Chci si s vámi promluvit, pane prezidente (I want to talk to you, Mr. President) initiated by Martin Přykril, a member of the Prague indie band The Prostitutes, caused a sensation by demonstrating against the incumbent president Miloš Zeman with their media-effective actions Červená karta pro Miloše Zemana (Red Card for Miloš Zeman) and Pochod na hrad (March on the Castle).⁴⁰ And to celebrate the 30th anniversary, the commemorations joined a long line of protests calling for the resignation of Miloš Zeman and Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, who has been proven, inter alia, to have funnelled EU funds into his own pocket and worked in state security.⁴¹ All these actions have been attended by anywhere from about 10,000 (re-enactment of the 17 November 1989 demonstration on 17 November 2009) to more than 250,000 people (Demisi! [Resign!] demonstration on 16 November 2019) in recent years.

The Velvet Carnival will be the focus of attention in the following. Firstly, we will look at the actors and their practices and motives for shaping the anniversary. Then, this urban phenomenon of the liminoid will be examined in the context of larger processes of social transformation.

The Velvet Carnival as an urban zone of the liminoid

The Velvet Carnival can be defined as a ritualised cultural performance imported to the Czech Republic and adapted to local traditions⁴² as an invented tradition brought about by migration and globalisation processes, which in recent years has become an important part of Prague’s culture of remembrance ‘from below’. It was initiated in 2012 by the FÓR_UM initiative, which emerged from an interdisciplinary project by theatre scholars and performance artists on the topic of “Satire in Public Space”.⁴³ One of the initiators, the religious scholar and performance activist Olga Věra Cieslarová (*1980), developed the idea of transferring the Swiss custom, or individual elements of it, to Prague in the course of her research on the Basel Carnival and to establish a “Prague Carnival” in the context of the “Velvet Revolution” on 17 November.⁴⁴ According to Cieslarová when she started the collaborative project, there were no actions in the Czech Republic on the anniversary of the “Velvet Revolution” that were communal and promoted democracy. On the contrary, violent protests would increase on 17 November. Therefore, there should be an alliance of civil society initiatives (e.g. for the reappraisal of communist crimes or for equal opportunities and against discrimination), non-profit NGOs (e.g. environmental organisations such as Greenpeace or Extinction Rebellion) and artists from the fields of visual arts and music, who together open a public space for reflection, providing “a platform for a broad public discussion”.⁴⁵ The primary aim of FÓR_UM is to “support playfulness and creativity in the formulation of serious social and political issues” and to “raise awareness of social issues and values”,⁴⁶ for which the forms of satire and carnival are better suited than banners. “Following the Basel model”, the aim was to “support democracy in the Czech Republic with satire and art” and promote “free, creative and democratic citizenship”.⁴⁷ “Satire and the ability to reflect” are particularly necessary today because they are the “most effective defence against populism, demagogy and totalitarianism of all kinds”.⁴⁸

The participants develop their “subjects” in joint workshops every year, similar to the carnival cliques in Basel, and translate them into carnivalesque-satirical forms. The city provides vacant rooms for temporary use, which the participants first convert into workshops (dílny) where the “larvae” (masks) and costumes are designed and produced and the pamphlets are printed. Around 17 November, these will then become the “velvet centre” (sametové centrum), where readings, panel discussions and art performances will take place. The terms and theoretical programmes that FÓR_UM uses as a guide, as well as the forms of expression and practices that it employs, make the deliberate reference to various customary traditions, especially those of the Basel carnival, unmistakable: there are the themes, motifs or materials known as “subjects”, which are processed in a carnivalesque way and made available to the public for consideration. The “subjects” are transmitted via the communication medium of the “entertaining pamphlets”, as the organisers call their satirical-political information flyers and brochures, i.e. the political pamphlets that point out grievances in politics and society and call for them to be fought against. Then there are the masks, reminiscent of the “larvae” of the Basel Fasnacht, but also of the masks of the Comedia dell’arte and the Carnival of Venice, and costumes like those worn in circus arenas and jugglers’ performances. Some of the disguises look very professional, while for others their designers make do with simple materials, such as painting egg and shoe boxes or working with crepe paper, old bedsheets and (plastic) rubbish. The Middle Ages are just as present in the form of knight, executioner and clergy costumes as are abstract arts and artificial intelligences of the 20th and 21st centuries. Music, as in all well-known carnival, Fasching and Fas(t)nacht traditions, is an important element that accompanies the procession. The repertoire of genres at the Velvet Carnival ranges from Basel Guggenmusik and flute music to Latin American samba sounds, pop, hip-hop, Schlager and folk songs from the national and international music scene. Some “cliques” are led by individual musicians, others have an orchestra with them, and a few do without any musical accompaniment at all. This blend of elements from different customs points to the underlying hybridity of the Velvet Carnival. In addition to its outward appearance, it is also evident in its functionality: the Velvet Carnival is both an art and theatre production, it is a celebration and ritual, a party and event, an information and educational platform. This ambiguity in terms of form and function also reveals the impossibility of committing oneself terminologically to this kind of postmodern “custom”. If one were to follow the older German-language research on customs here, the German designation “Prager Fasnacht” would be preferable to the designation Velvet Carnival – especially since the Velvet Carnival is explicitly based on the Basel Carnival. Werner Mezger distinguishes between carnival and Fastnacht as follows:

In simplified terms, the two customs can be summarised in the following pairs of opposites according to their different manifestations: carnival versus Fastnacht, that is costume versus disguise, cardboard nose versus wooden mask, spontaneity versus ritual, frivolity versus melancholy or, to put it a little more pointedly, wine bliss versus beer seriousness.⁴⁹

However, if one takes a closer look at the cultural performance in Prague, such a dichotomy cannot be maintained, because elements of both categories of customs can be found, as well as elements from other traditions. Due to this bricolage-like composition and in view of the semantic charge of “velvet”, the translation “Velvet Carnival” seems to make the most sense.

Against the background of this initially general definition and theoretical positioning, the Velvet Carnival will be described in more detail based on concrete questions: Who are the civil society actors hiding behind the masks? What subjects are transported through them into the urban space and into the everyday lives of the masses? How are the subjects staged discursively and performatively? And how can the Velvet Carnival be placed in wider social contexts?

Fig. 1: Velvet Carnival, Programme flyer 2014.

The Velvet Carnival took place for the first time in 2012. Six “NGO cliques” together with five artists created 150 masks on a volunteer basis, at a cost of just under 1,000 euros. One year later, there were already more than twice as many cliques and the costs amounted to over 11,000 euros.⁵⁰ At the beginning particularly, the carnival pioneers in Prague were also supported by artists from Basel, who assisted in the making of the “larvae” and accompanied the procession with their flute playing (which individual cliques from Basel still do today).⁵¹ During the period of my research in 2014, there were more than 15 cliques, 21 artists and 8 dramaturges who offered a cultural programme in the city for one month after the parade on 17 November. The costs, largely raised by sponsors, are said to have amounted to about 25,000 €.⁵²

In accordance with the Czech meaning of the word “Church fair” (posvícení), the logo of the carnival forms a place setting with a plate, knife and fork (Fig. 1). The geographical silhouette of the Czech Republic is depicted on the plate, reminiscent of a breaded schnitzel – one of the most popular dishes in the Czech Republic. The logo, thus, ironically alludes to the motif of celebration and pleasure, of eating and drinking before the (meatless) Lenten season, and simultaneously links it to the objectives formulated to bring grievances to the table. Every year, a new motto is added to the logo, which, as in Basel, reflects current discourses. The topics in previous years have included a failed culture of remembrance and commemoration (2012),⁵³ domestic government crises (2015),⁵⁴ Fake News (2017),⁵⁵ bee deaths and climate change (2019).⁵⁶ In the anniversary year 2014, 25 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the motto was “With humour for the enlightened schnitzel”.⁵⁷ The flyer was decorated with the likenesses of allegedly corrupt politicians and entrepreneurs preparing and eating a schnitzel. The A3-sized information leaflet, which announced all participating cliques with texts and pictures, said among other things:

Fig. 2: Velvet Carnival, Prague, 17 November 2014. Člověk v tísni (“Man in Need”): “Where to put them? Or: “Edudant and Francimor want to go to your school.” Photo: M. Spiritova.

We do not want to spend 17 November nostalgically laying wreaths, we want to celebrate freedom with creative and positive energy expressing our civic positions. […] We want to fight against what annoys and torments us for our and your enlightened schnitzel with weapons that are firmly rooted in our Czech essence – with hyperbole and humour!

This brief text summarises what the cultural performance stands for: on the one hand, it aims to create a civic alternative to common commemoration and protest formats and establish a counter-design to existing cultural practices of remembrance. On the other hand, the aim is to “fight” against grievances. However, especially against the background of increasing violence on 17 November in the streets of Prague (as well as in Brno and other larger cities), this struggle should be peaceful, creative, humorous and open to all. Indeed, the Velvet Carnival seemed friendlier, more open, relaxed and joyful than any of the commemorative events I attended on 17 November 2014 (as well as in other years). Nevertheless, attitudes were also very clearly expressed here and social concerns were called for with visible and quite confrontational and unsettling means (e.g. through the use of prisoners’ costumes). However, masks, puppet theatre, music, dance, confetti and especially the presence of lots of children among the participants and spectators contributed to the perception of this “velvet” performance as a colourful and friendly celebration. On the occasion of the milestone anniversary in 2014, 15 cliques took part, whose concerns can be roughly categorised as follows:⁵⁸ social justice and the struggle for recognition and participation; environmental and animal protection; and criticism of political decision-making processes and corrupt economic practices.

A number of NGOs and initiatives that advocate for the needs of disadvantaged families, especially children and young people, such as Člověk v tísni (People in Need), appeared with the slogan “Where to go with them?”. Or also: “Edudant and Francimor want to go to your school”, which called for the inclusion of children and young people with physical and mental disabilities in mainstream schools. The subject was staged as a small play that addressed negative prejudices against mentally disabled children anchored in society. The practices of discrimination were represented by a teacher who elevated “smart kids with high foreheads” and blond hair to the norm, while bullying those with red hair and crooked teeth (Fig. 2). The accompanying pamphlet, entitled “A weekday morning in the school street in an average Czech town”, featured a corresponding scene with two pupils and the headmaster of a mainstream school. The two boys Edudant and Francimor, one of whom suffers from Asperger’s syndrome and the other is of below-average intelligence, very fat and has dyslexia, dream of going to a mainstream school like “normal” children. But they fear that they are not “normal enough” and “too conspicuous”. An impression that comes true when the headmaster chases the two boys away towards a special school.

Another association, the Nízkoprahový klub Husita (Low-threshold Club Husita), founded by members of the Hussite Czechoslovak Church, again addressed the stigmatisation of children and young people from socially precarious family backgrounds in the Žižkov district of Prague, a former working-class neighbourhood increasingly affected by gentrification measures. The initiative’s flyer was printed with simple bird motifs, mainly doves, and the message “We are rushing to help” (in Czech: “We are flying to help”) and folded into a paper aeroplane. The activists wore bird masks in the style of commedia dell’arte and held oversized birds, reminiscent of vultures, on sticks in their midst. Another NGO pointing out state and societal stigmatisation and discrimination was Tosara (Romani: The Morning). Tosara is a very active association founded by students of Romany studies that provides educational and recreational services for children and young people, mainly from Roma families, who are affected by neglect. In 2014, the subject referred to the discrimination of Roma in educational institutions, the motto was: “They sent me to a special school because I’m Roma. Isn’t that stupid?” More than half of the children in special schools have a Roma background; in some regions Roma make up 80 % of the pupils in special schools. While the student performers wore simple eye masks and walked “voluntarily” in front of the university building made of white cardboard, the heads of the “special needs students” were completely covered with masks and the students themselves were chained to an upside-down special needs school.⁵⁹

Other NGOs and associations, in turn, addressed the increasing homelessness in the city (“Every city has the homeless it deserves”), inadequate rehabilitation measures for former prisoners (“The real prison starts when you’re out and nobody gives you a job”, Fig. 3)

Fig. 3: Velvet Carnival, Prague, 17 November 2014. RUBIKON: “The real prison starts when you are out and no one gives you work.” Photo: M. Spiritova.

or demonstrated for renewable sources of energy, against factory farming and for a (capital) city with sufficient green spaces and children’s playgrounds, markets, organic food shops and vegetarian or vegan restaurants. Still others denounced corruption and tax scandals, drew attention to discrimination against LGTBQ movements by the churches (“Even warm pigs go to heaven”) or autocratic regimes in other parts of the world. The latter included, for example, the protest movement Pražský Majdan (Prague Maidan), which emerged in September 2014 as a reaction “to the lax attitude of the Czech president and government to the situation in Ukraine”.⁶⁰ Under the slogan “We have a small tent – Maidan”, the activists critical of Moscow protested symbolically against Russia’s aggressive Ukraine policy within the framework of the Velvet Carnival: a yellow tent decorated with motifs of Ukrainian traditional costumes (so-called Vyshyvanka motifs) and the flag of the EU, and demonstrators with yellow and blue hair wreaths drove the Russian bear, alias President Vladimir V. Putin, before them (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4: Velvet Carnival, Prague, 17 November 2014. Pražský Majdan (Prager Maidan): “We have a small tent – Maidan” Photo: M. Spiritova.

The NGO most directly related in 2014 to the event of the “Velvet Revolution” and remembering the repressive policies of the pre-transition regime was Političtí vězni.cz (Political Prisoners.cz), a digital oral history project “that aims to ethically capture and preserve the memories and life experiences of former political prisoners – eyewitnesses and actors of historical events that were meant to be forgotten”.⁶¹ The activists and researchers conduct mainly oral history interviews and make them available to the public on their website. In 2014, women and their children in the communist labour camps of the 1950s, for example, in the Vojna uranium mine, were the focus of the Velvet Carnival under the slogan “They were there too!”. According to Političtí vězni.cz, the history of repressed women, especially mothers, is a topic that is still taboo and has been insufficiently dealt with so far. The participants were dressed as female camp prisoners in grey suits and their heads covered with scarves; they rolled a red star with babies’ faces painted on it in front of them in a pram that resembled a cage (Fig. 5). The face masks or “larvae” gave an emaciated, injured and agonised impression. The group was accompanied musically by a trumpet player wearing a black balaclava. The pamphlets, written in Czech and English, were designed in the form of red postcards with the face of a sleeping baby on the front, and above some of them were moving quotes from interviews with imprisoned women or from their autobiographies. The writer Božena Kuklová-Jíšová (1929–2014), who was sentenced to twelve years in a labour camp in 1954, was quoted as saying: “We felt most sorry for the mothers who had left their children at home […] Maruška Zenáhlíková had three and served twelve years. With something like that, you could no longer even complain. And this suffering of women is not talked about at all today” (Fig. 6).

Fig. 5: Velvet Carnival, Prague, 17 November 2014. Političtí vězni.cz (Political Prisoners.cz): “You were there too.” Photo: M. Spiritova.

Fig. 6: Velvet Carnival, Prague, 17 November 2014. Političtí vězni.cz (Political Prisoners.cz): “You were there too.” Photo: M. Spiritova.

And on another one it said:

In the beginning, when they [the guards] came to the cells individually, they molested us. But when some of the women became pregnant, they were ordered to come in pairs. The women were in a dreadful situation. One was very afraid to tell her husband about the pregnancy. It was a struggle for values. To have an abortion was a great sin. But in such a situation, it was something else. Arrested mothers simply had their children taken away from them and in many cases gave them up for adoption, so that the woman concerned would never find her child again.⁶²

Although the Velvet Carnival was all about entertainment, parties and events, the critical impetus was omnipresent: dealing with the communist legacy and the crimes committed by the communist regime between 1948 and 1989; current corruption and distribution struggles; education policy, social discrimination and disintegration; environmental and climate protection – socio-political concerns that, with varying degrees of importance, are currently being expressed on the streets and made available for negotiation by civil society actors all over Europe and beyond. In contrast to other forms of protest and memorialisation in the Czech Republic in recent years, such as mass demonstrations (here the march on the castle in Prague or the red card against Zeman), which place a theme at the centre of the performance (in 2014 it was particularly Zeman’s political style), the Velvet Carnival makes it possible to bring different subjects into the public sphere and make a variety of grievances visible. It seems to be a suitable platform not only for NGOs that already have a high profile, such as Greenpeace, but especially for smaller initiatives that rarely attract media attention and do not have prominent advocates, for example, FÓR_UM with its cultural performance offers the opportunity to stage their own concerns on the urban stage. The Velvet Carnival gives socially marginalised people the opportunity to become part of a critical public sphere. By giving “oppressed” people space to occupy central and historically significant places in the city (e.g. Wenceslas Square, Charles Bridge and the National Street), it “contributes to the ‘empowerment’ of socially disadvantaged groups […]”.⁶³ The carnival does this by means of satire and the grotesque, with humour as a “weapon of the weak”,⁶⁴ by having the rulers – in this case Zeman, Putin and corrupt entrepreneurs – appear in the form of exaggerated, grotesque bodies made of papier mâché, wood, plastic waste or metal objects, and by reversing the roles between ‘above’ and ‘below’, between the hegemon and the oppressed (e.g. the Maidan drives the Russian bear before it). Alongside oppressive, serious subject productions, such as those of former political prisoners, a topsy-turvy world is brought onto the stage – very much in the style of François Rabelais (or in his reception by Mikhail Bakhtin) – and laughter is placed at the centre as a practice of resistance.⁶⁵

The Velvet Carnival is a hybrid, polyvalent phenomenon in a late modern society. First of all, it is an event to remember the upheavals of 1989, to commemorate the “velvet” end of the repressive regime under the rule of the Communist Party and the regaining of democracy. Regarding the how, i.e. the praxeological design of the anniversary, the initiators are concerned to distinguish themselves from conventional remembrance rituals, such as wreath-laying ceremonies, and to create new commemorative practices. This is done by explicitly adapting elements of the Basel carnival: such as socio-political subjects, masks and “larvae”, pamphlets, music, confetti and the parade. The commemorative procession is, thus, also and above all a carnival or Shrovetide procession that deals with social issues in a satirical way. In this function, it can be described as a tradition newly established by civil society actors, as a “hybrid new construction”⁶⁶ that is composed bricolage-like of different building blocks and that satisfies different needs and fulfils different functions. Humour and wit, satire and creativity as the guiding motifs of carnival and Fasnacht are linked here with the demand for unconventional, but above all peaceful rituals, especially against the background of the increasingly “aggressive demonstrations” on the occasion of the anniversary celebrations on 17 November. According to the initiators, they want to counter this development with something “cheerful”, “humorous” and “intelligently critical”,⁶⁷ they want to “transform anger into creativity”.⁶⁸ Here, FÓR_UM follows the global trend of recent years to replace confrontational forms of protest, violent ones at that, which often deterred interested parties and ran counter to mass mobilisation, with new, creative, playful and thus communicative and inclusive forms. Sonja Brünzels writes about this in connection with the often carnivalesque practices of the Reclaim the Streets movement – a movement that emerged in Britain in the 1990s as a reaction to the displacement of the population from the inner cities to reclaim public space creatively and with fun: “Carnival [is] initially inclusive – its pull is strong enough to blur boundaries between actors and spectators, above and below, good and evil. Protest, on the other hand, is confrontational and exclusive – it separates the good from the bad, the accusers from the accused.”⁶⁹

Secondly, the Velvet Carnival offers participating civil society initiatives the opportunity to articulate concerns and demands to the public in a media-effective way, to provide knowledge about social shortcomings and injustices – for example, in the school system, in relation to the social fabric, in (remembrance) politics and the economy – and to propose alternative life and social models (e.g. inclusion, sustainable economy). The cultural performances are, thus, on the one hand, the stage on which very different (interpretations) are staged and different collective identities are reflected and presented. Instead of identities “that cannot be fully lived out in everyday life”, it is more a matter of “exaggerations and expulsions of identity elements that are suppressed by hegemonic cultural tendencies”.⁷⁰ On the other hand, as a form of protest, they are a “resource of the powerless”,⁷¹ since they are about the creative occupation of public spaces. FÓR_UM sees itself as an important civil society actor with an educational and enlightening sense of mission, committed to not only “influencing civil society engagement” but also “spreading good humour”.⁷²

The “‘preparation’ phase” of the carnival in particular would help to “connect members of different social classes” and, thus, “help to cultivate civil society”.⁷³ It is about creatively participating in the shaping and negotiation of society. This cultural performance also fits into the global trend of appropriating urban spaces through creative action, helping to shape them and intervening in them through performative artistic acts.⁷⁴

Finally, the Velvet Carnival promises experiences and events, entertainment and pleasure: on the one hand, as an end in itself (“We create a good mood”), on the other hand, to generate positive emotions (“When people see this, they associate November with something good and valuable that should be protected”). The cultural performance on the occasion of the anniversary of the “Velvet Revolution” is a popular cultural event that promises an aesthetically pleasurable experience, which is also an important motive for mobilising the participants and the mass media. The satirical street parade, inspired by the Basel Fasnacht, is an event that promises to satisfy individual and collective cravings for fun and (self-)staging, for communalisation and identity. It is an event that, like any other, has to assert itself over and over again in the (media) public sphere and fight for its position on the civil society experience market, which is also a history market throughout (East) Central Europe in November.

The Velvet Carnival can, therefore, be summarised as a liminoid cultural performance that is characterised by hybridity, polyvalence and polyfunctionality. Liminoid because – to echo Turner – it emerged “in the interstices […] of central institutions”, has “a pluralistic, fragmentary and experimental character” and as “part of social critique […] denounce[d] the injustice, inefficiency and immorality of economic and political structures and organisations”.⁷⁵ However, the extent to which it can actually contribute to overcoming the boundaries of milieus and reach a large number of citizens must be critically questioned, as the actors are primarily members of the educated middle classes. Although a perception of the Velvet Carnival as an elitist event in the capital cannot be ruled out, the cultural practice of the carnival seems to be more accessible and open to broad sections of the population compared to wreath-laying ceremonies, panel discussions, demonstrations and the like.

Notes

Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (München ²1999).↩︎

Aleida Assmann, “Jahrestage – Denkmäler in der Zeit,” in Jubiläum, Jubiläum … Zur Geschichte öffentlicher und privater Erinnerung, ed. Paul Münch (Essen, 2005), 305–14.↩︎

Winfried Müller, “Das historische Jubiläum. Zur Geschichtlichkeit einer Zeitkonstruktion,” In Das historische Jubiläum. Genese, Ordnungsleistung und Inszenierungsgeschichte eines institutionellen Mechanismus, ed. Winfried Müller (Münster 2004), 1‒76 here 3.↩︎

Philipp Schorch, “Introduction,” in Curating (Post)Socialist Environments, eds. Philipp Schorch and Daniel Habit (Bielefeld, 2021); Marketa Spiritova, “Curating Socialism? Curating Democracy! Die (Re-)Inszenierung der Zivilgesellschaft nach 1989 in Tschechien,” in Curating (Post)Socialist Environments, eds Philipp Schorch and Daniel Habit (Bielefeld), 309–330.↩︎

Peter Burke, “Co-memorations. Performing the past,” in Performing the Past. Memory, History, and Identity in modern Europe, eds. Karin Tilmans, Frank van Vree and Jay Winter (Amsterdam, 2010) 105–18, here 106.↩︎

Doris Bachmann-Medick, “Performative Turn,” in Cultural Turns. Neuorientierungen in den Kulturwissenschaften, Doris Bachmann-Medick (Hamburg, ²2007), 104–43, here 118.↩︎

Milton B. Singer, When a Great Tradition Modernizes: An Anthropological Approach to Indian Civilization (New York/Washington/London, 1972); Victor Turner, Das Ritual. Struktur und Anti-Struktur (Frankfurt am Main, 1989); Victor Turner, Vom Ritual zum Theater. Der Ernst des menschlichen Spiels (Frankfurt am Main/New York, 1989); Erika Fischer-Lichte, Ästhetik des Performativen (Frankfurt am Main, 2004).↩︎

Erika Fischer-Lichte, “Performativität und Ereignis,” in Performativität und Ereignis, Erika Fischer-Lichte (Tübingen/Basel, 2003), 15.↩︎

Fischer-Lichte, “Performativität”, 15.↩︎

Beate Binder, Streitfall Stadtmitte, Der Berliner Schlossplatz (Cologne/Weimar/Vienna, 2009), 84.↩︎

Beate Binder, “Kampf um ein Straßenschild. Cultural Performance als Politik der symbolischen Transformation des Berliner Stadtraums,” in Performativität und Ereignis, Erika Fischer-Lichte (Tübingen/Basel, 2003), 359–75, here 362.↩︎

Franziska Becker and Beate Binder, “Hauptstadt-Rituale,” in Ritualität und Grenze, eds. Erika Fischer-Lichte, Christian Horn, Sandra Umathum and Matthias Warstat (Tübingen, 2003), 251–70, here 252.↩︎

Binder, Streitfall Stadtmitte.↩︎

Becker and Binder, “Hauptstadt-Rituale”, 253, 257 f.↩︎

Becker and Binder, “Hauptstadt-Rituale”, 254.↩︎

Regina Bormann, “Urbane Erlebnisräume als Zonen des Liminoiden,” in Die Stadt als Event. Zur Konstruktion urbaner Erlebnisräume, ed. Regina Bittner (Frankfurt am Main/New York, 2002), 99–108, here 102; Turner, Vom Ritual zum Theater.↩︎

Turner, Vom Ritual zum Theater, 86; cf. Bormann, “Urbane Erlebnisräume”.↩︎

Turner, Das Ritual; Turner, Vom Ritual zum Theater; Gottfried Korff, “Neue Strukturen einer urbanen Festkultur. Auf dem Weg zur Festivalisierung und Kommerzialisierung,” in Simplizität und Sinnfälligkeit. Volkskundliche Studien zu Ritual und Symbol, Gottfried Korff (Tübingen, 2013), 87–101.↩︎

Turner, Vom Ritual zum Theater, 86.↩︎

Bormann, “Urbane Erlebnisräume”, 107.↩︎

This text is based on the findings of my habilitation at the Institute for Empirical Cultural Studies and European Ethnology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. The field research in the Czech Republic was financed with funds from “LMUexzellent” (appointment of funds Prof. Irene Götz), see Marketa Spiritova and Irene Götz, “Ethnologische Erkundungen des östlichen Europa am Beispiel der Gedächtnisforschung. Ein Forschungsprogramm,” in Europäische Ethnologie in München. Ein kulturwissenschaftlicher Reader, eds. Irene Götz, Johannes Moser, Moritz Ege and Burkhardt Lauterbach (Münster, 2014), 310–26.

As far as the research perspective is concerned, it must be critically reflected that the focus here is exclusively on the actors being researched, so that a very positive, only slightly critical picture of the Velvet Carnival is drawn. There are several reasons for this: firstly, this is a snapshot of this cultural performance; a diachronic perspective that would reveal a possible change is missing. Secondly, the Velvet Carnival is an event that – at least according to the empirical findings based on participant observations and a review of social media channels and the local press – has not yet been intervened in, for example, by political opponents from either the communist or right-wing nationalist camp. Furthermore, during the study period (and beyond), a consistently positive, albeit rather low, feedback of the carnival in the press and social media could be observed.↩︎

The demonstration on 17 November 1989 in Prague, which was mainly attended by students, was the decisive turning point in political events in Czechoslovakia. It was actually dedicated to the commemoration of the closure of Czech universities and the murder of student leaders by the National Socialists on 17 November 1939 and had been registered as such. However, due to the events in the GDR and Hungary, it became increasingly critical of the regime. The demonstrators moved into the centre of Prague without permission and protested ever louder against the Communist Party’s autocracy and state security, whereupon the state police attempted to bloodily put down the demonstration in an arcade in Prague’s National Street. This brutal intervention of the state against the young people contributed to the final mass mobilisation and the fall of the communist regime. Cf. Jiří Suk, Labyrintem revoluce: aktéři, zápletky a křižovatky jedné politické krize (od listopadu 1989 do června 1990) [“Through the Labyrinth of Revolution: Actors, Entanglements and Crossroads of a Political Crisis (from November 1989 to June 1999)”] (Prague, 2003). Since 1990, 17 November, the Day of the Struggle for Freedom and Democracy (Den boje za svobodu a demokracii) has been an official state holiday.↩︎

Muriel Blaive, “The 1989 Revolution as a Non-Lieu de Mémoire in the Czech Republic,” in Elektronický sborník z konference “1989–2009”: Společnost, Dějiny, Politika, ed. Adéla Gjuričová (Prague, 2009).↩︎

Michal Kopeček, “In the Search of ‘National Memory’: The Politics of History, Nostalgia and the Historiography of Communism in the Czech Republic and East Central Europe,” in Past in the Making: Historical Revisionism in Central Europe after 1989, ed. Michal Kopeček (Budapest, 2008), 75‒95, here 77.↩︎

Číslo jednání [Proceedings number]/ÚSTR 486/2015, accessed 30 March 2020. https://www.ustrcr.cz/o-nas/plan-cinnosti-ustavu/koncepce-vedeckeho-zamereni/.↩︎

Birgit Hofmann, “‘Prager Frühling’ und ‘Samtene Revolution’: Narrative des Realsozialismus in der tschechischen nationalen Identitätskonstruktion,” in Nationen und ihre Selbstbilder. Postdiktatorische Gesellschaften in Europa, eds. Regina Fritz, Carola Sachse and Edgar Wolfrum (Göttingen, 2008), 171–92, here 176.↩︎

The Act on the Requirement for the Performance of Some Functions in State Bodies and Organisations (Zákon, kterým se stanoví některé další předpoklady pro výkon některých funkcí ve státních orgánech a organizacích České a Slovenské Federativní Republiky, České republiky a Slovenské republiky) entered into force on 4 October 1991 (Sborník zákonů/Collection of Laws 451/1991). This so-called lustration law, which was only voted into being by a narrow majority in parliament, was intended to ensure that former high-ranking KSČ functionaries and employees of state security did not occupy leading positions in public-state institutions, i.e. in administration, police, media, schools, ministries, the army and state enterprises, for five years (cf. Christiane Brenner, “Vergangenheitspolitik und Vergangenheitsdiskurs in Tschechien 1989–1998,” in Vergangenheitsbewältigung am Ende des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts, eds. Helmut König, Michael Kohlstruck and Andreas Wöll (Opladen, 1998), 195–232, here 208–215; Kopeček, “National Memory”, 76). In fact, by 2002, only 365,000 people, or about 3 % of the population, had been excluded from political public life, leading to deep disappointment among victim groups (Jan Pauer, “Zur Herausbildung kollektiver Identitäten in der Tschechischen und Slowakischen Republik nach 1989,” in Kultur als Bestimmungsfaktor der Transformation im Osten Europas. Konzeptionelle Entwicklungen – empirische Befunde, ed. Hans-Hermann Höhmann (Bremen, 2001), 254‒73; Françoise Mayer, Češi a jejich komunismus [“The Czechs and Their Communism”] (Prague, 2009), French Original: Les Tchèques et leur communisme: Mémoire et identités politiques (Paris, 2004). In Slovakia, where the law was in force until 1996, no lustrations took place at all (cf. Pauer, “Zur Herausbildung”, 257). Despite considerable criticism from the Council of Europe and the European Parliament, human rights organisations such as Helsinki Watch, former dissidents and Slovak parliamentarians, the law was extended indefinitely in 2000 (Sborník zákonů/Collection of Laws 422/2000 & 424/2000) and reaffirmed in 2016. This was followed in 1993 by the Act on the Illegality of the Communist Regime and Resistance to it (Zákon o protiprávnosti komunistického režimu a o odporu proti němu) (Sborník zákonů/Collection of Laws 198/1993), which implicitly assumes the collective guilt of all former members of the KSČ.↩︎

Christiane Brenner, “Das ‘totalitäre Zeitalter’? Demokratie und Diktatur in Tschechiens Erinnerungspolitik”, Osteuropa 58, no. 6 (2008): 103–116, here 110.↩︎

Cf. Jiřina Šiklová, “The ‘Gray Zone’ and the Future of Dissent in Czechoslovakia,” Social Research 57, no. 2 (1990): 347‒63; Marketa Spiritova, Hexenjagd in Tschechoslowakei. Intellektuelle zwischen Prager Frühling und dem Ende des Kommunismus (Cologne/Weimar/Vienna, 2010).↩︎

Mayer, Češi a jejich komunismus.↩︎

As early as 2009, the government spokesperson announced: “The state left the celebrations for 20 years of ‘velvet’ to the people. […] The government said that there was no time to plan the celebrations because of complaints against politicians”. The then-Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek commented on this at the press conference: “[17 November] deserves greater celebrations if the majority of people think there is something to celebrate. […] On the other hand, it is perhaps better for civil society to take care of the celebrations itself rather than some ‘May Day’ holiday organised by the state” (Jan Wirnitzer, “Oslavy dvaceti let ‘sametu’ nechal stát na lidech. I kvůli půtkám politiků” [“The State Left the Celebrations on the Occasion of 20 Years of ‘Velvet’ to the People. Also to Reprimand the Politicians”]. iDnes.cz, 12.11.2009. Accessed 1 April 2020. https://zpravy.idnes.cz/oslavy-dvaceti-let-sametu-nechal-stat-na-lidech-i-kvuli-putkam-politiku-13v-/domaci.aspx?c=A091112_150059_domaci_jw.↩︎

Parallels can be seen here with the constitution of a “second public sphere” not only in the 1970s and 1980s, but especially in 1989. Some of the productions also explicitly reflect this moment, such as the re-enactment of the most important demonstration of 17 November 1989 by the NGO Opona (“Curtain”) 2009. Cf. Spiritova, Hexenjagd; Spiritova, Curating Socialism?.↩︎

Zeman, for example, publicly called the mass media “crap, manure, rabble” and the women of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot “cunts”; he refused to appoint the homosexual literary scholar Martin C. Putna to a professorship. In 2014, he gave an interview in Russian on the pro-Kremlin TV channel 1tv in which he criticised the European Union (EU) sanctions against Russia and promised that the Czech Republic would not support Ukraine. Zeman asserted during his visit to China in October 2014 that he had not come to lecture China on human rights and that the Czech Republic would fully recognise the territorial integrity of China, including Tibet and Taiwan. The interviews are well documented in numerous newspapers and on YouTube.↩︎

Following Jürgen Kocka, civil society is understood as voluntary associations – including student initiatives, NGOs, associations and artists’ groups – that lie at the interface between the state, the economy and the private sphere. In the sense of a critical public sphere, they see themselves as a more or less independent authority that regulates or at least controls the state and the market. Using various means, such as petitions, open letters, demonstrations, artistic performances and carnivals, they make social and political grievances visible and offer alternative solutions. Cf. Jürgen Kocka, “Zivilgesellschaft als historisches Problem und Versprechen,” in Europäische Zivilgesellschaft in Ost und West. Begriff, Geschichte, Chancen, eds. Manfred Hildermeier, Jürgen Kocka and Christoph Conrad (Frankfurt am Main/New York, 2000), 13–39. In this way, at least in the case of the Czech Republic, they follow the tradition of the dissidents of East-Central Europe, who considered the constitution of an extra-parliamentary public sphere as a “civil society opposition strategy” to be one of the highest assets; see Winfried Thaa, Die Wiedergeburt des Politischen. Zivilgesellschaft und Legitimitätskonflikt in den Revolutionen von 1989 (Opladen, 1996), 228.↩︎

“Left” in the Czech context usually means communist, Marxist, sometimes Stalinist.↩︎

Except for the communist and right-wing events, all are co-ordinated by the supra-regional platform of Festival svobody (Festival of Freedom). Accessed 1 April 2020. https://festivalsvobody.cz/.↩︎

Díky, že můžem! [Thank You That We Can Do This]. Accessed 1 April 2020. https://dikyzemuzem.cz/. The Korzo Národní occupies the entire National Street in the centre of Prague each 17 November with, for example, theatre and concert stages, exhibitions, a children’s programme, food trucks and NGO information stands.↩︎

Czech: Sametový průvod. Rekonstrukce průvodu z roku 1989 (Velvet Parade. Reconstruction of the 1989 parade). Accessed 9 December 2022. https://festivalsvobody.cz/tha_events/rekonstrukce-pruvodu-z-roku-1989/.↩︎

The re-enactment of the demonstration of 17 November 1989, which finally brought down the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, was initiated in 2009 by the student organisations Opona and Inventura demokracie (Democracy Inventory). The young people expressed the following about their main motives: “We felt the need to dignifiedly commemorate the fall of the Iron Curtain and to celebrate its 20th anniversary” and, thus, to “counteract the radical positions in the present” (exhibition board of the Opona project Kalendárium totality (Calendar of Totality), field note of 16 November 2014); see Opona, Facebook page. Accessed 16 January 2020. https://www.facebook.com/OPONA-ops-228219223908046/; cf. also Conor O’Dwyer, “Remembering, Not Commemorating 1989: The Twenty-Year Anniversary of the Velvet Revolution in the Czech Republic,” in Twenty Years after Communism. The Politics of Memory and Commemoration, eds. Michael Bernhard and Jan Kubik (Oxford, 2014), 171‒92; Spiritova, Curating socialism?. Several student organisations joined forces for the Sametový průvod action in 2019 under the umbrella of Festival svobody.↩︎

Following a call on Facebook, at 11 a.m. on 17 November 2014, people all over the country showed Zeman the red card as if he had been sent off in a football stadium. Přykril then directed his message at Zeman for “not having kept his promise to represent the citizens of this country in a level-headed and decent manner” (field note of 17 November 2014) and declared the event over. As quickly as this action had begun, it also ended. A short time later, people moved onto the Prague Castle to demonstrate against Zeman. Cf. field note of 17 November 2014 and the numerous video recordings on iDNES and YouTube.↩︎

However, this did not have any legal consequences for Babiš and demonstrates the ineffectiveness of the lustration law.↩︎

Sametové posvícení is also called Prager Fasnacht in German because of its references to the Basler Fasnacht (“Basle Shrovetide”), but it is called the “Velvet Carnival” in English.↩︎

Olga Věra Cieslarová, “Chvála zlosti. Satira jako forma kreativní transformace negativních emocí [In Praise of Malice. Satire as a Kind of Creative Transformation of Negative Emotions],” in Autorenkollektiv: Satira. Maska. Happening (Prague, 2013), 50–73.↩︎

Olga Věra Cieslarová, Fasnacht. Karneval v Basileji? [Shrovetide. Carnival in Basel?] (Prague, 2012); Cieslarová, “Chvála zlosti”; Ronald L. Grimes, “Ritual in Prague’s Velvet Carnival,” Drama Review 61, no. 3 (2017): 56–71, here 59; and the (multilingual) website of Samite posvícení. Accessed 6 April 2020. https://cs-cz.facebook.com/pg/iniciativaforum/about/?ref=page_internal.↩︎

See the Facebook site of Sametové posvícení. Accessed 21 May 2020. https://cs-cz.facebook.com/pg/iniciativaforum/about/?ref=page_internal.↩︎

See the Facebook site of FÓR_UM. Accessed 21 May 2020. https://cs-cz.facebook.com/pg/iniciativaforum/about/?ref=page_internal.↩︎

See the Internet site of Sametové posvícení (in German). Accessed 6 April 2020. https://www.sametoveposviceni.cz/german/.↩︎

Co je sametové posvícení? (What is the Velvet Carnival?). Accessed 6 April 2020. https://www.sametoveposviceni.cz/co-je-posviceni/.↩︎

Werner Mezger, Das große Buch der schwäbisch-alemannischen Fasnet: Ursprünge, Entwicklungen und Erscheinungsformen organisierter Narretei in Südwestdeutschland (Stuttgart, 1999), 8.↩︎

Olga Věra Cieslarová, Prager Fasnacht. Nach Basler Vorbild mit Satire und Kunst die Demokratie in Tschechien unterstützen (Prague, 2017). The numbers in FÓR_UM’s publications do not always match. In other places, for example, there is talk of 8 cliques and 120 masks. Cf. FÓR_UM, 7 let sametové posvícení [7 Years of the Velvet Carnival] (Prague, 2019). Accessed 8 April 2020, https://www.sametoveposviceni.cz/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/KATALOG_7_LET_web.pdf.↩︎

Cf. Cieslarová, “Chvála zlosti”, 58–60; Pavla Bendová and Markéta Machková, “Sametové posvícení – Ohlednutí za prvním ročníkem” [Velvet Carnival – Review of the First Year], in Autorenkollektiv: Satira. Maska. Happening (Prague, 2013), XL–LI, here XLII.↩︎

FÓR_UM was not able to raise the funds in all years and, therefore, had to bear the costs itself. Cf. FÓR_UM, 7 let sametové posvícení.↩︎

The motto of the first year’s Velvet Carnival, in line with its embeddedness in Czech remembrance culture, was “Let’s shed light on what bothers us on 17 November. Let us transform our anger into creative energy”. (orig.: “Posviťme si 17. listopadu na to, co nám vadí. Transformujme svůj vztek v kreativní sílu”).↩︎

In 2015, the motto was the “Ship of Fools”, which was drawn as a silhouette. Below the ship, several politicians and entrepreneurs were depicted and the picture ensemble was headed with “Where is my home?” (Kde domov můj?), the Czech national anthem.↩︎

In 2017, the motto was entitled “This is not a duck” (Toto není kachna).↩︎

The motto for 2019 was “Ulítly ti v čele?” (Did they fly away from you in front?). This is a play on words: on the one hand, “in front” (v čele) refers to the politicians in power, who have become increasingly distant from the concerns of the citizens, and, on the other hand, “včela” means bee.↩︎

“Humorem za zářné řízky!” The breaded schnitzel was the most popular and most ordered meal in the Czech Republic in 2014. Cf. Ilona Víchová, Žebříček oblíbených jídel: U Čechů vede řízek a smažák! [The most popular meals. For the Czechs, schnitzel and baked cheese are the leaders!] Žena [Woman], 14 August 2014. Accessed 11 September 2018. https://zena.aktualne.cz/volny-cas/zebricek-oblibenych-jidel-u-cechu-vede-rizek-a-smazak/r~i:article:804213/.↩︎

For all the “cliques”, see the information leaflet from 2014 and FÓR_UM 2019. For a good visual insight, also see the YouTube video by Lukáš Ballý (Lukáš Ballý, Sametové posvícení 2014, YouTube, 24 November 2014. Accessed 14 April 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUTY9DXeZos).↩︎

This is again a play on words: “Isn’t it upside down?” in Czech is “Není to na hlavu?” (Is/isn’t it standing on its head?).↩︎

Prag Maidan BLOG from 6 September 2016. Accessed 21 May 2020. https://www.facebook.com/praguemaidanblog/posts/1829100573987051/.↩︎

Političtí vězni.cz (Political Prinsoners.cz). Internet site. Accessed 14 April 2020. http://www.politictivezni.cz/vice-o-projektu.html.↩︎

The quotes can be found on the Političtí vězni.cz portal under Sametové posvícení 2014 – Byly tam taky! (Velvet Carnival 2014 – You Were There Too!). Accessed 21 May 2020. http://www.politictivezni.cz/politicti-vezni-cz-sametove-posviceni-2014.html.↩︎

Michi Knecht, “‘Who is carnivalizing whom?’ Ethnologische Perspektiven auf neue Karnevalsformen,” Betae Binder (Red.): Karnevalisierung (Münster, 2002), 7–17, here 13.↩︎

Marjolein ‘t Hart, “Humour and Social Protest. An Introduction,” International Review of Social History 52, Supplement 15 (2007): 1‒20.↩︎

Cf. Michail Bachtin, Literatur und Karneval. Zur Romantheorie und Lachkultur (Munich, 1969); Cieslarová, “Chvála zlosti”.↩︎

Daniel Drascek, “Bräuche: Medien: Transformationen. Zum Verhältnis von performativen Praktiken und medialen (Re-)Präsentationen,” in Bräuche : Medien : Transformationen. Zum Verhältnis von performativen Praktiken und medialen (Re-)Präsentationen, eds. Daniel Drascek and Gabriele Wolf (Munich, 2016), 9–22, here 20.↩︎

Cieslarová, Prager Fasnacht.↩︎

Ronald L. Grimes, Velvet Carnival 2012 (Prague, 2012). Accessed 1 April 2020. https://vimeo.com/album/2688862/video/54645049.↩︎

Sonja Brünzels, Reclaim the Streets: Karneval und Konfrontation. .com\UneFarce 3 (1999). Accessed 14 April 2020. http://www.copyriot.com/unefarce/no3/reclaim.htm.↩︎

Karl Braun, “Karneval? Karnevaleske! Zur volkskundlich-ethnologischen Erforschung karnevalesker Ereignisse [Carnival? Carnivalesque! On the folkloristic-ethnological research of carnivalesque events],” Zeitschrift für Volkskunde 98, (2002): 1–16, here 8.↩︎

Michael Lipsky, “Protest as a Political Resource,” American Political Science Review 62, no. 4 (1968): 1144‒1158.↩︎

Cieslarová, Prager Fasnacht.↩︎

Cieslarová, Prager Fasnacht.↩︎

Cf. Henning Mohr and Friedrike Landau, “Interventionen als kreative Praxisform: Die Suche nach Neuheit als gesellschaftliches Phänomen,” in Die Experimentalstadt: Kreativität und die kulturelle Dimension der Nachhaltigen Entwicklung, eds. Julia-Lena Reinermann and Friederike Behr (Wiesbaden, 2017), 59‒76, here 62; Andreas Reckwitz, Die Erfindung der Kreativität. Zum Prozess gesellschaftlicher Ästhetisierung (Berlin, 2012).↩︎

Turner, Vom Ritual zum Theater, 86.↩︎

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Mohr, Henning u. Friederike Landau: Interventionen als kreative Praxisform: Die Suche nach Neuheit als gesellschaftliches Phänomen. In: Julia-Lena Reinermann u. Friederike Behr (Hg.): Die Experimentalstadt: Kreativität und die kulturelle Dimension der Nachhaltigen Entwicklung. Wiesbaden 2017, S. 59‒76.

Müller, Winfried: Das historische Jubiläum. Zur Geschichtlichkeit einer Zeitkonstruktion. In: Ders. (Hg.): Das historische Jubiläum. Genese, Ordnungsleistung und Inszenierungsgeschichte eines institutionellen Mechanismus (Geschichte. Forschung und Wissenschaft 3). Münster 2004, S. 1‒76.

O’Dwyer, Conor: Remembering, Not Commemorating 1989: The Twenty-Year Anniversary of the Velvet Revolution in the Czech Republic. In: Michael Bernhard u. Jan Kubik (Hg.): Twenty Years after Communism. The Politics of Memory and Commemoration. Oxford 2014, S. 171‒192.

Pauer, Jan: Zur Herausbildung kollektiver Identitäten in der Tschechischen und Slowakischen Republik nach 1989. In: Hans-Hermann Höhmann (Hg.): Kultur als Bestimmungsfaktor der Transformation im Osten Europas. Konzeptionelle Entwicklungen ‑ empirische Befunde (Analysen zur Kultur und Gesellschaft im östlichen Europa 10). Bremen 2001, S. 254‒273.

Reckwitz, Andreas: Die Erfindung der Kreativität. Zum Prozess gesellschaftlicher Ästhetisierung. Berlin 2012.

Schorch, Philipp: Introduction. In: Philipp Schorch u. Daniel Habit (Hg.): Curating (Post)Socialist Environments (Ethnografische Perspektiven auf das östliche Europa). Bielefeld 2020 (in Druck).

Šiklová, Jiřina: The „Gray Zone“ and The Future of Dissent in Czechoslovakia. In: Social Research 57 (1990), Nr. 2, S. 347‒363.

Singer, Milton B.: When a Great Tradition Modernizes: An Anthropological Approach to Indian Civilization. New York, Washington, London 1972.

Spiritova, Marketa: Curating Socialism? Curating Democracy! Die (Re-)Inszenierung der Zivilgesellschaft nach 1989 in Tschechien. In: Philipp Schorch u. Daniel Habit (Hg.): Curating (Post)Socialist Environments (Ethnografische Perspektiven auf das östliche Europa). Bielefeld 2020 (in Druck).

Spiritova, Marketa: Hexenjagd in Tschechoslowakei. Intellektuelle zwischen Prager Frühling und dem Ende des Kommunismus. Köln, Weimar, Wien 2010.

Spiritova, Marketa u. Irene Götz: Ethnologische Erkundungen des östlichen Europa am Beispiel der Gedächtnisforschung. Ein Forschungsprogramm. In: Irene Götz u. a. (Hg.): Europäische Ethnologie in München. Ein kulturwissenschaftlicher Reader (Münchner Beiträge zur Volkskunde 42). Münster 2014, S. 310-326.

Suk, Jiří: Labyrintem revoluce: aktéři, zápletky a křižovatky jedné politické krize (od listopadu 1989 do června 1990) [Durch das Labyrinth der Revolution: Akteure, Verwicklungen und Kreuzungen einer politischen Krise (von November 1989 bis Juni 1999)]. Prag 2003.

Thaa, Winfried: Die Wiedergeburt des Politischen. Zivilgesellschaft und Legitimitätskonflikt in den Revolutionen von 1989. Opladen 1996.

Turner, Victor: Das Ritual. Struktur und Anti-Struktur (Theorie und Gesellschaft 10). Frankfurt am Main 1989.

Turner, Victor: Vom Ritual zum Theater. Der Ernst des menschlichen Spiels. Frankfurt am Main, New York 1989.

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This article is a translation and was originally published in German as:

An English-Language Bibliography on Bavarian History

Academic Publications of the Last Fifty Years

by Matthias Bischel

2022-12-20

Matthias Bischel, “An English-Language Bibliography on Bavarian History: Academic Publications of the Last Fifty Years” in Bavarian Studies in History and Culture (2022), last modified 2022-12-20, https://www.bavarian-studies.org/2022/bischel

This is the second, expanded edition of the bibliography as of Summer 2022. The bibliography originally published in 2019 can be found here.

Version 1

This is the second, expanded edition of the bibliography as of Summer 2022. The bibliography originally published in 2019 can be found here.

This text is open access and licensed under the terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Matthias Bischel

An English-Language Bibliography on Bavarian History

Academic Publications of the Last Fifty Years

2022-12-20

This is the second, expanded edition of the bibliography as of Summer 2022. The bibliography originally published in 2019 can be found here.

This text is open access and licensed under terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Introduction

In the course of my work at the Institute of Bavarian History at the University of Munich, I have developed the following bibliography, which is intended as a working aid for international scholars and students. It covers the range of English-language publications on Bavarian history but does not claim to be complete. Suggestions to supplement and complete the bibliography are welcome and can be submitted via the feedback form at the end of this text.

The bibliography adheres to the following guidelines:

The bibliography systematically considers academic publications from 1968 to 2018 in addition to especially significant publications outside of this period.
Studies on all areas and regions within the present Free State of Bavaria are recorded, regardless of their territorial affiliation in the period under consideration. Therefore, the regions Upper and Lower Bavaria, Franconia, Upper Palatinate, and Bavarian Swabia are included, whereas the former Rhenish Palatinate is not.
The publications included focus specifically on Bavarian history; studies which only briefly or incidentally deal with historical events in Bavaria are not included.
The list does not include research on events that took place in Bavaria but are not inherently linked to Bavarian history (e.g., Nuremberg Trials, Munich Agreement, etc.).
Titles of publications which do not clearly indicate how the study is related to Bavarian history are expanded to include the corresponding information in square brackets.
Doctoral dissertations on Bavarian history are marked with the abbreviation “PhD.”
In order to ensure better clarity, titles are classified by epoch, except in the case of the categories “Theory and Methodology” and “Source Editions.”

Some general remarks: Most of the works listed were originally written in English; little German-language research in these fields is currently available in English translation. The large number of studies on the early modern era is also particularly striking. The publications identified deal mainly with the following fields of research:

Political history of Bavaria and the territories that have merged into Bavaria
History of religion and church history: monasteries, Reformation and confessionalization, Jewish history
Economic history: guilds, trading houses and trade relations, history of large enterprises
History of the free imperial cities, in particular: Augsburg, Nuremberg, Regensburg
Cultural and art history (e.g., Dürer, Munich around 1900)
International networks (e.g., relations with other countries)
History of education and schools (especially in the nineteenth century)
Military and war history
Superstitions and witch-hunts
Denazification after World War II

Bibliography

Content

Theory and Methodology of Regional History
Source Editions
Cross-Epochal
9^th to 13^thCentury: Early and High Middle Ages
14^th and 15^th Centuries: Late Middle Ages
16^th to 18^th Century: Early Modern Ages (General)
16^th Century: Renaissance and Reformation
17^th and 18^th Centuries: Counter-Reformation, Thirty Years’ War, and Absolutism
18^th Century: Age of Enlightenment
1806–1871: The Kingdom of Bavaria: Napoleon and the German Confederation
1871–1914: Bavaria in the German Empire
1914–1933: The First World War and Bavaria under the Weimar Republic
1933–1945: Nazi Germany
Bavaria after 1945
Biographies
Institutions / Museums / Exhibitions / Historic Sites

Theory and Methodology of Regional History

Aston, Michael, Interpreting the Landscape. Landscape Archaeology and Local History, London 2006.
Atkins, Peter - Simmons, Ian G. - Roberts, Brian (eds.), People, Land and Time. An historical introduction to the relations between landscape, culture and environment, London etc. 1998.
Atkinson, David, Cultural Geography. A Critical Dictionary of Key Concepts, London etc. 2005.
Balée, William L. (ed.), Advances in Historical Ecology, New York 1998.
Börzel, Tanja Anita - Risse, Thomas (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Regionalism, Oxford 2016.
Calcatinge, Alexandru, The need for a Cultural Landscape Theory. An Architect's Approach, Wien etc. 2012.
Classen, Albrecht (ed.), Rural space in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age. The Spatial Turn in Premodern Studies, Berlin etc. 2012.
Crang, Mike, Thinking Space, London etc. 2000.
Crumley, Carole L. (ed.), Historical Ecology. Cultural knowledge and changing landscapes, Santa Fe 1994.
Crumley, Carole L. – Lennartsson, Tommy – Westin, Anna (eds.), Issues and Concepts in Historical Ecology: The past and future of landscapes and regions, Cambridge / New York 2017.
Doyle, Barry M., Introduction, in: Ibid. (ed.), Urban Politics and Space in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Regional Perspectives, Newcastle 2007, 1-29.
Flint, Colin, The Theoretical and Methodological Utility of Space and Spatial Statistics for Historical Studies. The Nazi Party in Geographic Context, in: Historical Methods 35 (2002), 32-42.
Gamper, Anna, Regions and Regionalism(s): An Introduction, in: Grabher, Gudrun M. - Mathis-Moser, Ursula (eds.), Regionalism(s). A Variety of Perspectives from Europe and the Americas, Wien 2014, 3-24.
Hönninghausen, Lothar (ed.), Regionalism in the Age of Globalism, 2 Volumes, Madison/WI 2005.
Hroch, Miroslav, National history in opposition to Regional History? In: Eberhard, Winfried - Lübke, Christian (eds.), The Plurality of Europe. Identities and Spaces, Leipzig 2010, 83-96.
Hroch, Miroslav, Regional Memory. Reflections on the Role of History in (Re)Constructing Regional Identity, in: Ellis, Steven G. (ed.), Frontiers, Regions and Identities in Europe, Pisa 2009, 1-14.
Jacobson, Stephen et al., What is a Region? Regions in European History, in: Ellis, Steven G. et al. (ed.), Regional and Transnational History in Europe (Creating a new historical perspective: EU and the wider world / Clioworld readers 8), Pisa 2011, 11-66.
Ickerodt, Ulf, The Term “Cultural Landscape”, in: Meier, Thomas (ed.), Landscape Ideologies (Archaeolingua / Series minor 22), Budapest 2006, 53-80.
Keating, Michael, Regionalism in the Alps: Subnational, Supranational, and Transnational, in: Caramani, Daniele (ed.), Challenges to consensual politics: Democracy, identity, and populist protest in the Alpine region (Regionalism and Federalism 6), Bruxelles etc. 2005, 53-70.
Knoll, Martin - Boscani Leoni, Simona (eds.), An Environmental History of the Early Modern Period: Experiments and Perspectives, Wien etc. 2014.
Koch, Andreas, Identity and Space. Construction and Interdependency of Local Neighborhood, in: Coelsch-Foisner, Sabine (ed.), Raum in Wandel: L’espace en metamorphose: Space in change (Wissenschaft und Kunst 14), Heidelberg 2011, 33-41.
Kolen, Jan etc. (eds.), Landscape Biographies. Geographical, Historical and Archaeological Perspectives on the Production and Transmission of Landscapes, Amsterdam 2015.
Lancaster, Bill et al. (ed.), An Agenda for Regional History, Newcastle 2007.
Lehmkuhl, Ursula (ed.), Historians and Nature. Comparative approaches to environmental history, Oxford etc. 2007.
Loughlin, John - Kincaid, John - Swenden, Wilfried (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Regionalism & Federalism, London / New York 2013.
Muir, Richard, How the Read a Village, London 2007.
Muir, Richard, Landscape Encyclopaedia. A reference guide to the historic landscape, Bollington 2004.
Muir, Richard, The New Reading the Landscape. Fieldwork in Landscape History, Exeter 2000.
Nieuwenhuis, Marijn - Crouch, David (eds.), The Question of Space. Interrogating the spatial turn between disciplines, London 2017.
Nuñez Seixas, Xosé-Manuel, Historiographical Approaches to Sub-National Identities in Europe: A Reappraisal and Some Suggestions, in: Augusteijn, Jost - Storm, Erich (eds.), Region and State in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Nation-building, regional identities and separatism, Basingstoke 2012, 13-35.
Nuñez Seixas, Xosé-Manuel - Storm, Eric (eds.), Regionalism and Modern Europe. Identity Construction and Movements from 1890 to the Present Day, London etc. 2019.
O´Keeffe, Tadhg, Landscape and Memory: Historiography, Theory, Methodology, in: Moore, Niam et al. (eds.), Heritage, Memory and the Politics of Identity. New Perspectives on the Cultural Landscape, Aldershot etc. 2007, 3-18.
Rippon, Stephen, Making Sense of an Historic Landscape, Oxford 2012.
Söderbaum, Fredrik, Rethinking Regionalism, Basingstoke 2016.
Sonkoly, Gabor, Historical Urban Landscape, New York 2017.
Thomas, Alexander W., Critical Rural Theory. Structure, Space, Culture, Lanham etc. 2011.
Umbach, Maiken (ed.), Municipalism, Regionalism, Nationalism: Hybrid Identity Formations and the Making of Modern Europe, in: European Review of History 15 (2008) – Special Issue, 235-330.
Warf, Barney et al. (ed.), The Spatial Turn. Interdisciplinary Perspectives, London etc. 2009.

Source Editions

Anderson, Roberta - Bellenger, Dominic Aidan (ed.), Medieval Religion. A Sourcebook, London etc. 2007.
Baynes, Norman Hepburn (ed.), Speeches of Adolf Hitler. Representative Passages from the Early Speeches, 1922-1924, New York 2006.
Brown, John C. - Guinnane, Timothy W., The Munich Polizeimeldebogen as a source for quantitative history, in: Historical Methods 26 (1993), 101-118.
Cohen, Adam S. (ed.), The Uta Codex. Art, Philosophy, and Reform in eleventh-century Germany, University Park 2000.
Cohen-Mushlin, Aliza (ed.), Selected Hebrew Manuscripts from the Bavarian State Library: In collaboration with Yaffa Levy, Michal Sternthal, Ilona Steimann, Anna Nizza-Caplan and Estherlee Kanon-Ebner, Jerusalem 2020.
Crew, David F., Hitler and the Nazis. A History in Documents, Oxford 2005.
Dannemann, Gerhard - Böttcher, Lorenz (eds.), German Law Archive (University of Oxford) [URL: <https://germanlawarchive.iuscomp.org/>]
Flemming, Barbara, The Diary of Karl Süssheim 1878–1947. Orientalist between Munich and Istanbul (Verzeichnis der orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland, Supplementband 32), Stuttgart 2002.

German Historical Institute, Washington D.C. (ed.), German History in Documents and Images [URL: <http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/Index.cfm?language=English>]
Gregor, Neil, How to Read Hitler, London 2014.
Gregor, Neil, Mein Kampf: Some Afterthoughts, in: German Historical Institute London Bulletin 39 (2017), 105-111.
Godman, Peter, Rethinking the Carmina Burana (I): The Medieval Context and Modern Reception of the Codex Buranus, in: Journal of Medieval & Early Modern Studies 45 (2015), 245-286.
Halsall, Paul (ed.), Internet Medieval Sourcebook (Fordham University Center for Medieval Studies) [URL: <https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/sbook.asp>]
Halsall, Paul (ed.), Internet Modern History Sourcebook (Fordham University) [URL: <https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/modsbook.asp>]
Heinzle, Joachim, The Manuscripts of the Nibelungenlied, in: McConnell, Winder (ed.), A Companion to the Nibelungenlied, Columbia/SC 1998, 105-126.
Jones, Christopher A., The Pseudo-Augustinian Excerpts in Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 6389, in: Revue d'Etudes Augustiniennes et Patristiques 63 (2017), 277-310.
Kidder, Annemarie S. (ed.), Ultimate Price. Testimonies of Christians who Resisted the Third Reich, Maryknoll 2012. [Alfred Delp, Sophie Scholl, Rupert Mayer]
Klemperer, Victor, Munich 1919. Diary of a Revolution, Cambridge / Malden 2017.
Knauer, Georg Nikolaus, The Humanistic Collectanea of a Benedictine Monk, Johannes ex Grafing, a Student of Johannes Reuchlin and Conrad Celtis. Observations concerning Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, manuscript Cgrm 582a, Chm 400, 401, and also Cgm 323, Haverford / PA 2012.
Kuhn, Gabriel, All Power to the Councils! A Documentary History of the German Revolution of 1918-1919, Oakland/CA 2012. [Landauer, Mühsam]
Liess, Albrecht, History of Reorganisation and Rearrangement of the Holdings of the State Archives in Bavaria, in: Archivalische Zeitschrit 84 (2001), 123-154.
Lindberg, Carter (ed.), The European Reformations Sourcebook, Chichester ²2014.
Lloyd, Alexandra (ed.), Defying Hitler: The White Rose Pamphlets, Oxford 2022.
Lotz-Neumann, Ute (ed.), A Sourcebook of Early Modern European History. Life, Death, and Everything in Between, London / New York 2019.
Loud, Graham A. - Schenk, Jochen (eds.), The Origins of the German Principalities, 1100-1350. Essays by German Historians, London - New York 2017. [Privilegium Minus 1156, Gelnhausen Charter 1180 (Deposition of Henry the Lion), Confoederatio cum Principibus Ecclesiasticis 1220, Statutum in Favorem Principum 1230, Mainz Land Peace 1235]
Mairhofer, Daniela, Medieval Manuscripts from Würzburg in the Bodleian Library, Oxford: A Descriptive Catalogue, Oxford 2014.
Malzahn, Manfred, Germany 1945-1949. A Sourcebook, London etc. 1991.
Marshall, Tariq (ed.), The Carmina Burana: Songs from Benediktbeuren: a full and faithfull translation with critical annotations, [s.l.] 2011.
Medick, Hans - Marschke, Benjamin (ed.), Experiencing the Thirty Years War. A Brief History with Documents, Boston / New York 2013.
Merritt, Anna J. - Merritt, Richard L. (eds.), Public Opinion in Occupied Germany. The OMGUS Surveys, 1945–1949. Urbana etc. 1970.
Merritt, Anna J. - Merritt, Richard L. (eds.), Public Opinion in Semisovereign Germany. The HICOG Surveys, 1949 - 1955, Urbana etc. 1980.
Münsterer, Hanns Otto, The Young Brecht, edited and translated by Tom Kuhn and Karen J. Leeder, London 1992.
Noble Society. Five Lives from Twelfth-Century Germany. Selected Sources translated and annotated by Jonathan R. Lyon (Manchester Medieval Sources Series), Manchester 2017 [Mechthild von Dießen; Otto von Bamberg]
Ó Riain, Pádraig (ed.), The Martyrology of the Regensburg Schottenkloster, Woodbridge / Rochester/NY 2019.
Otto Frisingensis, The Two Cities: A Chronicle of Universal History to the Year 1146 A.D., translated by Charles Christopher Mierow, edited by Austin P. Evans, New York 2002.
Pope, Ernest R., Munich Playground. The Nazi Leadership at Rest and Play, edited by Alan Sutton, Oxford / Charleston/SC 2015. [Reports by an American Journalist]
Pirckheimer, Caritas, A Journal of the Reformation Years 1524-1528, translated by Paul A. MacKenzie, Woodbridge / Suffolk etc. 2006.
Rabinbach, Anson - Gilman, Sander L. (eds.), The Third Reich Sourcebook, Berkeley / Los Angeles 2013.
Reuter, Marianne, Antiquarianism and Image Production: Early Pictorial Manuscripts from the Wittelsbach Collections in Munich, in: Brooker, T. Kimball (ed.), International Association of Bibliophiles: Transactions. 28th Congress, Edinburgh 2019, 73-116.
Rivers, Theodore John (ed.), Laws of the Alamans and Bavarians (Leges Alamannorum - Lex Baiuvariorum), Philadelphia 1977.
Rosemann, Philipp W. - McEvoy, James J., Robert Grosseteste at Munich: The "Abbreviatio" by Frater Andreas, O.F.M., of the Commentaries by Robert Grosseteste on the Pseudo-Dionysius (Dallas medieval texts and translations 14), Paris etc. 2012.
Sauer, Hans, Angelsächsisches Erbe in München: Angelsächsische Handschriften, Schreiber und Autoren aus den Beständen der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek in München = Anglo-Saxon Heritage in Munich, Frankfurt am Main u.a. 2005.
Schier, Volker - Schleif, Corine - Simon, Anne (eds.), Pepper for Prayer. The Correspondence of the Birgittine Nun Katerina Lemmel, 1516-1525 (Editiones - Sällskapet Runica et Mediaevalia 13), Stockholm 2019.
Scholl, Inge, The White Rose. Munich 1942-1943, Middletown 1983.
Scott, Tom, The German Peasants' War: A history in documents, Atlantic Highlands 1991.
Seidensticker, Tilman, How Arabic Manuscripts Moved to German Libraries, in: Manuscript Cultures 10 (2017), 73-82. [Widmannstetter]
Smith, Lesley, Bruno of Würzburg in the Bodleian Library, in: The Bodleian Library Record 20 (2007), 102-117.
Talbert, Richard J., Rome´s World. The Peutinger Map Reconsidered, Cambridge etc. 2010.
Tlusty, B. Ann (ed.), Augsburg during the Reformation era. An Anthology of Sources, Indianapolis etc. 2012.
Toorians, Lauran, The Earliest Inventory of Mexican Objects in Munich, 1572, in: Journal of the History of Collections 6 (1994), 59-67.
Wagner, Bettina, Bodleian Incunables from Bavarian Monasteries, in: Bodleian Library Record 15 (1995), 90-107.
Wagner, Bettina, Collecting, Cataloguing, and Digitizing Incunabula at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Munich, in: Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 101 (2007), 451-479.
Wagner, Bettina, “Libri impressi bibliothecae monasterii Sancti Emmerammi”. The Incunable Collection of St Emmeram, Regensburg, and its Catalogue of 1501, in: Jensen, Kristian (ed.), Incunabula and Their Readers: Printing, Selling and Using Books in the Fifteenth Century, London 2003, 179-205.
Wagner, Bettina - Booton, Diane E., Worlds of Learning: The Library and World Chronicle of the Nuremberg Physician Hartmann Schedel (1440-1514) (Ausstellungskataloge - Bayerische Staatsbibliothek 89), München 2015.
Waldmann, Glenys A., The Wessobrunn Prayer manuscript CLM 22053: a transliteration, translation and study of parallels, Ann Arbor 1975.
Wilson, Peter H., The Thirty Years War: A Sourcebook, Basingstoke etc. 2010.

Cross-Epochal

Applegate, Celia, A Nation of Provincials. The German Idea of Heimat, Berkeley 1990. [Bavarian Palatinate]
Bähr, Johannes - Banken, Ralf - Flemming, Thomas, MAN. The History of a German Industrial Enterprise, München 2009.
Bähr, Johannes - Erker, Paul - Rieder, Maximiliane, 180 Years of KraussMaffei. The History of a Global Brand, München 2018.
Bähr, Johannes - Kopper, Christopher, Munich Re. The Company History 1880-1980, München 2016.
Bauernfeind, Walter - Woitek, Ulrich, Agrarian Cycles in Germany 1339-1670: A Spectral Analysis of Grain Prices and Output in Nuremberg, in: Explorations in Economic History 33 (1996), 459-478.
Beattie, Andrew, The Danube. A Cultural History (Landscapes of imagination), Oxford 2010.
Böttcher, Judith, Vowed to Community or ordained to Mission? Aspects of Separation and Integration in the Lutheran Deaconess Institute Neuendettelsau, Bavaria (Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte 114), Göttingen 2018.
Brockmann, Stephen, Nuremberg. The Imaginary Capital (Studies in german literature, linguistics, and culture), Rochester 2006.
Brooks, Alasdair - Mehler, Natascha, Kilts and Lederhosen: The Historical Archaeology of Nationalism in Scotland and Bavaria, in: Ibid. (eds.), The Country Where My Heart Is: Historical Archaeologies of Nationalism and National Identity, Gainesville 2017, 3-34.
Burkhard, Marianne, Stability and Adaptation: The History of St. Walburg Abbey in Eichstätt, in: American Benedictine Review 64 (2013), 178-197.
Dittscheid, Hans Christoph - Berger-Dittscheid, Cornelia, The Jewish Settlement in Floß, Upper Palatinate (Bavaria), in: Cohen-Mushlin, Aliza - Thies, Harmen - Narkiss, Bezalel (eds.), Jewish Architecture in Europe (Schriften der Bet Tfila-Forschungsstelle für jüdische Architektur in Europa 6), Petersberg 2010, 175-188.
Eggenkämper, Barbara - Modert, Gerd - Pretzlik, Stefan (ed.), Allianz. The Company History 1890-2015, München 2015.
Eißing, Thomas - DITTMAR, Christoph, Timber Transport and Dendro-Provenancing in Thuringia and Bavaria, in: FRAITURE, Pascale (eds.), Tree Rings, Art, Archaeology. Proceedings of an International Conference, Brussels 2011, 137-150.
Fegert, Friedemann, "You cannot imagine what it is like in America." Emigration from the Bavarian Forest in Germany to the United States from 1841 to 1931, Freyung 2021.
Flachenecker, Helmut, The Christian Landscape in Southern Germany in the Aftermath of the Reformation. Religious Separation as a Source of Regional Identity, Bindas, Kenneth J. - Ricciardelli, Fabrizio (eds.), Regional History as Cultural Identity, Roma 2017, 151-166.
Fouse, Gary C., Erlangen. An American's History of a German Town, Landham etc. 2005.
Gaab, Jeffrey S., Munich: Hofbräuhaus & History - beer, culture, & politics, New York etc. 2006.
Gingerich, Josef, The Amish Mennonites in Bavaria, in: The Mennonite Quarterly Review 56 (1982), 179-188.
Gregor, Neil, Bruckner, Munich, and the Longue Durée of Musical Listening between the Imperial and Postwar Eras, in: Ibid. - Irvine, Thomas (eds.), Dreams of Germany. Musical Imaginaries from the Concert Hall to the Dance Floor (Spektrum 18), New York / Oxford 2019, 97-122.
Grunert, Manfred - Triebel, Florian (eds.), BMW since 1916, München 2006.
Gürtler, Daniel - Urban, Markus - Jenkins, John, The Main-Danube-Canal. Idea - History - Technology, Nürnberg 2013.
Haas, Michaela, History of the Franciscan Sisters of Dillingen from 1241 to 1900, Lindenberg 2018.
Häberlein, Mark, Italian Merchants and Traders North of the Alps: Commercial Practices and Social Strategies, in: Denzel, Markus A. - Bonoldi, Andrea - Schöpfer, Marie-Claude (eds.), Oeconomia Alpium II: Economic History of the Alps in Preindustrial Times. Methods and Perspectives of Research, Berlin / Boston 2022, 141-158.
Harwood, Jonathan. Technology’s Dilemma: Agricultural Colleges between Science and Practice in Germany, 1860–1934, Bern / Frankfurt / New York 2005. [among others: Munich and Weihenstephan]
Hessler, Ulrike, The Munich National Theatre. From Royal Court Theatre to the Bavarian State Opera, Münchn 1991.
Hiley, Ann, Regensburg. A Short History, Regensburg 2013.
Horst, Thomas, Cartographic Treasures destroyed "With Fire and Sword"? The Unwritten Story of the Map Collection of the Bavarian Army Library, in: Journal of Map & Geography Libraries 16 (2020), 110-139.
Keay, Donald L., The Government of Regensburg from 1180 to 1401, PhD Boston 1971.
Keller, Tait, Apostles of the Alps. Mountaineering and Nation Building in Germany and Austria, 1860-1939, Chapel Hill 2016.
Klahr, Douglas, Munich as Kunststadt, 1900-1937: Art, Architecture, and Civic Identity, in: Oxford Art Journal 34 (2011), 179-201.
Knodel, John, Two and a Half Centuries of Demographic History in a Bavarian Village, in: Population Studies 24 (1970), 353-376. [Anhausen]
Köstler, Eberhard, Books, Books, Books, Books: The Golden Age of Munich Bibliophily, in: Brooker, T. Kimball (ed.), International Association of Bibliophiles: Transactions. 28th Congress, Edinburgh 2019, 161-176. [20th Century]
Kümin, Beat, Imperial Villages. Cultures of Political Freedom in the German Lands, c. 1300-1800 (Studies in Central European Histories 65), Leiden / Boston 2019. [Gochsheim, Sennfeld]
Kümin, Beat, Rural Autonomy and Popular Politics in Imperial Villages, in: German History 33 (2015), 194-213. [Gochsheim, Sennfeld]
Lepovitz, Helena Waddy, Gateway to the Mountains: Tourism and Positive Deindustrialization in the Bavarian Alps, in: German History 7 (1989), 293-318.
Lepovitz, Helena Waddy, Pilgrims, Patients, and Painters: The Formation of a Tourist Culture in Bavaria, in: Historical Reflections 18 (1992), 121-145.
LMU (ed.), Ludwig-Maximilian University Munich, Haar bei München ²2001.
Loester, Barbara, The Pluricentric Borders of Bavaria, in: Andrén, Mats et al. (eds.), Cultural Borders of Europe: Narratives, Concepts and Practices in the Present and the Past, New York / Oxford 2017, 85-99.
Mahl, Tobias, Cosmopolite Meeting Place and Artists' House: The Villa Waldberta. A Mirror of the 20th Century, München 2010.
Magocsi, Paul R., Historical Atlas of Central Europe. From the Early Fifth Century to the Present, London 2002.
Meier, Lars, Industrial, Urban and Worker Identity Transitions in Nuremberg, in: Kirk, John et al. (eds.), Changing Work and Community Identities in European Regions. Perspectives on the Past and Present, Houndmills 2012, 23-56.
Merz, Johannes, Free State of Bavaria (Freistaat Bayern), in: Historisches Lexikon Bayerns [URL: https://www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de/Lexikon/EN:Free_State_of_Bavaria_(Freistaat_Bayern)]
Michels, Eckard, Deutsch als Weltsprache? Franz Thierfelder, the Deutsche Akademie in Munich and the Promotion of the German Language Abroad, 1923-1945, in: German History 22 (2004), 206-228.
Mueller, Steven, The Wittelsbach Dynasty, Broadview 2007.
Murr, Karl Borromäus, The Local Face of Global Trade. Augsburg Cotton Imports from the United States in the Long Nineteenth Century, in: Bavarian Studies in History and Culture [URL: https://www.bavarian-studies.org/2020-murr/]
Muthesius, Stefan, Bavarianism: A Loveable and Wholesome National Stereotype, or Ways of Ideologizing Architecture in the 19th and 20th Centuries, in: Mako, Vladimir (ed.), Architecture and Ideology, Newcastle upon Tyne 2014, 63-76.
Pindl, Kathrin, Grain Policies and Storage in Southern Germany: The Regensburg Hospital (17th-19th centuries), in: Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte 59 (2018), 415-445.
Ó Riain, Diarmuid, An Irish Jerusalem in Franconia: The Abbey of the Holy Cross and Holy Sepulchre at Eichstätt, in: Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section C: Archaeology, Celtic Studies, History, Linguistics, Literature 112 (2012), 219-270.
Ó Riain, Diarmuid, The Schottenklöster in the World: Identity, Independence and Integration, in: Hovden, Eirik - Lutter, Christina - Pohl, Walter (eds.), Meanings of Community across Medieval Eurasia: Comparative Approaches, Leiden / Boston 2016, 388-416. [Focus on Bavaria]
O’Sullivan, Michael E., Disruptive Potential: Therese Neumann of Konnersreuth, National Socialism, and Democracy, in: Black, Monica - Kurlander, Eric (eds.), Revisiting the "Nazi occult": histories, realities, legacies, Rochester / New York 2015, 181-201.
O`Sullivan, Michael E., Disruptive Power. Catholic Women, Miracles, and Politics in Modern Germany, 1918-1965, Toronto 2018. [Therese Neumann of Konnersreuth]
Reder, Dirk Alexander - Roeseling, Severin, VisionsInTime. The History of Optische Werke G. Rodenstock, München 2003.
Rohr, Christian, The Impact of Natural Disasters on Economic Life in the Eastern Alps. The Case of the Salzach-Inn and Traun River Catchment Areas, in: Denzel, Markus A. - Bonoldi, Andrea - Schöpfer, Marie-Claude (eds.), Oeconomia Alpium II: Economic History of the Alps in Preindustrial Times. Methods and Perspectives of Research, Berlin / Boston 2022, 1-30.
Rosenbaum, Adam T., Bavarian Tourism and the Modern World 1800-1950, New York 2016.
Rosenbaum, Adam T., Timeless, Modern, and German? The Re-Mapping of Bavaria through the Marketing of Tourism, 1800-1939, in: Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, Washington D.C. 52 (2013), 37-54
Rudnytzky, Leonid, Ukrainian Free University of Munich - 90th Anniversary: Crescat scientia, vita excolatur, in: Ukrainian Quarterly 67 (2011), 99-106.
Rupprecht, Klaus, Purity Law, 1516, in: Historisches Lexikon Bayerns [URL: https://www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de/Lexikon/EN:Purity_Law,_1516]
Schöpfer, Marie-Claude, Across the Passes. Transport Structures and Markets in the Alpine Area of the Pre-Industrial Period, in: Denzel, Markus A. - Bonoldi, Andrea - ibid. (eds.), Oeconomia Alpium II: Economic History of the Alps in Preindustrial Times. Methods and Perspectives of Research, Berlin / Boston 2022, 89-110.
Sieber, Godfrey, The Missionary Benedictines of St Ottilien. A Short History (Missionary Benedictine texts and studies 10), Sankt Ottilien 2016.
Smith, Jeffrey, The Changing American Perceptions of Nuremberg and its Artistic Heritage, in: Maué, Hermann et al. (ed.), Quasi centrum Europae, Nürnberg 2002, 17-43.
Spotts, Frederic, Bayreuth: A History of the Wagner Festival, New Haven / London 1994.
Stein, Mary Beth, Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl and the Scientific-Literary Formation of “Volkskunde”, in: German Studies Review 24 (2001), 487-512.
Storm, Eric, The Culture of Regionalism. Art, Architecture and International Exhibitions in France, Germany and Spain, 1890-1939, Manchester etc. 2010.
Tlusty, B. Ann - Häberlein, Mark (eds.), A Companion to Late Medieval and Early Modern Augsburg (Brill's Companions to European History 20), Leiden / Boston 2020.
Tögl, Gero, The Bayreuth Enterprise 1848-1914, Würzburg 2017.
Tomko, Helena M., Sacramental Realism. Gertrud von Le Fort and German Catholic Literature in the Weimar Republic and Third Reich (1924-46) (Texts and Dissertations 68), London 2007.
Umbach, Maiken, German Federalism. Past, Present, Future, Basingstoke etc. 2002.
Volkert, Wilhelm, Bavarian Coat of Arms, in: Historisches Lexikon Bayerns [URL: https://www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de/Lexikon/EN:Bavarian_coat_of_arms]
Vorländer, Hermann, Church in Motion. The History of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission in Bavaria (Missional Church, Public Theology, World Christianity 8), Eugene/Oregon 2018.
Wagner, Jonathan F., The Hard Lessons of a Political Life: The Career of Socialist Hans Dill (1887-1973), in: Internationale Wissenschaftliche Korrespondenz zur Geschichte der Deutschen Arbeiterbewegung 29 (1993), 194-207.
Wetmore, Kevin J., The Oberammergau Passion Play. Essays on the 2010 performance and the centuries-long tradition, Jefferson / NC 2017.
Wheatley, Paul, Munich. From Monks to Modernity, München 2010.
Wittmann, Reinhard, The Golden Age of Munich's Antiquarian Book Trade, in: Brooker, T. Kimball (ed.), International Association of Bibliophiles: Transactions. 28th Congress, Edinburgh 2019, 177-193. [19-20th Centuries]
Wolf, Armin, Electors, in: Historisches Lexikon Bayerns [URL: https://www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de/Lexikon/EN:Electors]

9^th to 13^th Century: Early and High Middle Ages

Airlie, Stuart, Narratives of Triumph and Rituals of Submission: Charlemagne's Mastering of Bavaria, in: Transactions of the Royal Historical Society ser.6,9 (1999), 93-119.
Airlie, Stuart, The Nearly Men: Boso of Vienne and Arnulf of Bavaria, in: Duggan, Anne (ed.), Nobles and Nobility in Medieval Europe. Concepts, Origins, Transformations, Woodbridge 2000, 25-42.
Airlie, Stuart, True Teachers and Pious Kings: Salzburg, Louis the German, and Christian Order, in: Gameson, Richard - Leyser, Henrietta (eds.), Belief and Culture in the Middle Ages: Studies presented to Henry Mayr-Harting, Oxford 2001, 89-105.
Agus, Irving A., Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg: His Life and his Works as Sources for the Religious, Legal, and Social History of the Jews of Germany in the Thirteenth Century. Two volumes in one, New York ²1970.
Alexander, Paul J., The Papacy, the Bavarian Clergy and the Slavonic Apostles, in: Slavonic and East European Review 20 (1971), 266-293.
Arnold, Benjamin, Count and Bishop in Medieval Germany. A Study of Regional Power 1100-1350, Philadelphia 1991. [Eichstätt]
Beach, Alison I., Claustration and Collaboration between the Sexes in the Twelfth-Century Scriptorium, in: Farmer, Sharon - Rosenwein, Barbara H. (eds.), Monks and Nuns, Saints and Outcasts: Religion in Medieval Society. Essays in Honor of Lester K. Little, Ithaca 2000, 57-75. [Admont and Schäftlarn]
Beach, Alison I., Women as Scribes. Book Production and Monastic Reform in Twelfth-Century Bavaria, Cambridge u.a. 2004.
Bennett, Camille E., Historiography as Historical Event: Otto of Freising's Use of the Past for Religious Restoration, PhD. Cornell University 1985.
Bernhardt, John W., King Henry II of Germany: Royal Self-Representation and Historical Memory, in: Althoff, Gerd - Fried, Johannes - Geary, Patrick J. (ed.), Medieval Concepts of the Past: Ritual, Memory, Historiography, Washington D.C. 2002, 39-69.
Brown, Warren, The Idea of Empire in Carolingian Bavaria, in: Weiler, Björn (ed.), Representations of Power in Medieval Germany 800-1500 (International Medieval Research 16), Turnhout 2006, 37-55.
Brown, Warren, The use of Norms in Disputes in Early Medieval Bavaria, in: Viator. Medieval and Renaissance Studies 30 (1999), 15-40.
Brown, Warren, Unjust Seizure: Conflict, Interest, and Authority in an Early Medieval Society, Ithaca u.a. 2001.
Bowlus, Charles R., Italia - Bavaria- Avaria: The Grand Strategy behind Charlemagne's Renovatio Imperii in the West, in: Journal of Medieval Military History 1 (2002), 43-60.
Bowlus, Charles R., The Battle of Lechfeld and its Aftermath, August 955. The End of the Age of Migrations in the Latin West, Aldershot 2006.
Chinca, Mark, Uses of the Past in Twelfth-Century Germany: The Case of the Middle High German Kaiserchronik, in: Central European History 49 (2016), 19-38.
Cohen, Adam S., The Art of Reform in a Bavarian Nunnery around 1000, in: Speculum 74 (1999), 992-1020. [Niedermünster]
Couser, Jonathan, A Usable Past: early Bavarian Hagiography in Context, in: Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History ser. 3 4 (2007), 1-56.
Couser, Jonathan, Inventing Paganism in Eighth-Century Bavaria, in: Early Medieval Europe 18 (2010), 26-42.
Couser, Jonathan, "Let Them Make Him Duke to Rule that People": The "Law of the Bavarians" and Regime Change in Early Medieval Europe, in: Law and History Review 30 (2012), 865-899.
Couser, Jonathan, The changing Fortunes of Early Medieval Bavaria to 907 AD, in: History Compass 8 (2010), 330-344.
Dalhede, Christina, The European Ox Trade in Early Modern Time: Southern Germany, the Southern Netherlands and Western Sweden, in: Liljewall, Britt (ed.), Agrarian Systems in Early Modern Europe. Technology, Tools, Trade (Skrifter om skogs- och lantbrukshistoria 13), Stockholm 1999, 57-95.
Diesenberger, Maximilian, Repertoires and Strategies in Bavaria: Hagiography, in: Pohl, Walter - Heydemann, Gerda (eds.), Strategies of Identification. Ethnicity and Religion in Early Medieval Europe (Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages 13), Turnhout 2013, 209-232.
Diesenberger, Maximilian u.a. (ed.), The Prague Sacramentary. Culture, Religion, and Politics in late Eight-Century Bavaria, Turnhout 2016.
Dilworth, Mark, The First Scottish Monks in Ratisbon, in: The Innes Review 16 (1965), 180-198.
Dockray-Miller, Mary, The Books and the Life of Judith of Flanders, Farnham etc. 2015.
DuBruck, Edelgard et al. (ed.), Crossroads of Medieval Civilization: The City of Regensburg and its Intellectual Milieu. A Collection of Essays (Medieval and Renaissance monograph series 5), Detroit 1984.
Ettel, Peter, Karlburg am Main (Bavaria) and its Role as a Local Centre in the Late Merovingian and Ottonian Periods, in: Henning, Joachim (ed.), Post-Roman Towns, Trade and Settlement in Europe and Byzantium, Vol. 1: The Heirs of the Roman West (Millennium-Studien 5), Berlin etc. 2007, 319-340.
Fehr, Hubert - Heitmeier, Irmtraut, Introduction and Summary: A Quarter of a Century Later ..., in: Ibid. (eds.), Die Anfänge Bayerns. Von Raetien und Noricum zur frühmittelalterlichen Baiovaria (Bayerische Landesgeschichte und europäische Regionalgeschichte 1), St. Ottilien 2012, 665-672. [Bavarian Studies in History and Culture]
Flachenecker, Helmut, A Clergyman out of Control: Portray of a Bishop around the year 1000, in: Concilium medii aevi 17 (2014), 1-9 [Megingaud of Eichstätt]
Flachenecker, Helmut, The Remuneration of Preaching Abroad: The Death Sermon of Bishop Otto of Bamberg, in: Johnson, Timothy J. - Wrisley Shelby, Katherine - Young, John D. (eds.), Preaching and New Worlds. Sermons as Mirrors of Realms near and far (Routledge Studies in Medieval Religion and Culture 13), New York / London 2019, 135-150.
Flint, Valerie I., Anti-Jewish Literature and Attitudes in the Twelfth Century, in: The Journal of Jewish Studies 37 (1986), 183-205.
Flint, Valerie I., The Career of Honorius Augustodunensis: some fresh evidence, in: Revue Bénédictine 82 (1972), 63-83.
Flint, Valerie I., The Chronologie of the Works of Honorius Augustodunensis, in: Revue Bénédictine 82 (1972), 215-242.
Freed, John B., Artistic and Literary Representations of Family Consciousness, in: Althoff, Gerd - Fried, Johannes - Geary, Patrick J. (eds.), Medieval Concepts of the Past: Ritual, Memory, Historiography (Publications of the German Historical Institute), Washington D.C. 2002, 233-252.
Freed, John B., Bavarian Wine and Woolless sheep. The "Urbar" of Count Sigiboto IV of Falkenstein (1126-ca. 1198), in: Viator 35 (2004), 71-112.
Freed, John B., The Counts of Falkenstein. Noble Self-Consciousness in 12th-century Germany (American Philosophical Society: Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 74,6), Philadelphia 1984.
Freed, John B., The Creation of the "Codex Falkensteinensis" (1166). Self-Representation and Reality, in: Weiler, Björn – MacLean, Simon (eds.), Representations of Power in Medieval Germany 800-1500 (International medieval research 16), Turnhout 2006, 189-210.
Fries-Knoblach, Janine - Steuer, Heiko (eds.), The Baiuvarii and Thuringi. An ethnographic perspective (Studies in historical archaeoethnology 9), Woodbridge 2014.
Geary, Patrick H. - Freed, John B., Literacy and Violence in twelth-century Bavaria: The "murder letter" of Count Sibito IV, in: Viator 25 (1994), 115-129.
Godthardt, Frank, The Philosopher as Political Actor - Marsilius of Padua at the Court of Ludwig the Bavarian: The Sources Revisited, in: Moreno-Riaño, Gerson, The World of Marsilius of Padua (Disputatio 5), Turnhout 2006, 29-46.
Grabowski, Antoni T., The “Duel” between Henry I and Arnulf of Bavaria according to Liudprand of Cremona, in: Czaja, Roman - Mühle, Eduard - Radziminski, Andrzej (eds.), Konfliktbewältigung und Friedensstiftung im Mittelalter - Przezwyciężanie konfliktów i ustanawianie pokoju w Średniowieczu, Torun 2012, 387-400.
Haas-Gebhard, Brigitte, The Unterhaching Grave Finds: Richly Dressed Burials from Sixth-Century Bavaria, in: Netherton, Robin - Owen-Crocker, Gale R. (eds.), Medieval Clothing and Textiles, Woodbridge 2012, 1-23.
Hakenbeck, Susanne, Local, Regional and Ethnic Identities in Early Medieval Cemeteries in Bavaria, Florenz 2011.
Hammer, Carl I., A Large-Scale Slave Society of the Early Middle Ages: Slaves and their Families in Early Medieval Bavaria, Aldershotu.a. 2002.
Hammer, Carl I., "A Suitable Place for Putting up a Mill". Water Power Landscapes and Structures in Carolingian Bavaria, in: Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 95 (2008), 319-334.
Hammer, Carl I., Arbeo of Freising's Life and Passion of St. Emmeram. The martyr and his critics, in: Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique 101 (2006), 5-36.
Hammer, Carl I., Country Churches, Clerical Inventories and the Carolingian Renaissance in Bavaria, in: Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 49 (1980), 5-17.
Hammer, Carl I,, Crowding the King: Rebellion and Political Violence in Late Carolingian Bavaria and Italy, in: Studimedievali 48 (2007), 493-541.
Hammer, Carl I., Early Merovingian Bavaria. A Late Antique Italian Perspective, in: Journal of Late Antiquity 4 (2011), 217-244.
Hammer, Carl I., Family and Familia in Early-Medieval Bavaria, in: Wall, Richard - Robin, Jean - Laslett, Peter (eds.), Peter Family Forms in Historic Europe, Cambridge 1983, 217-248.
Hammer, Carl I., “For all the Saints”. Bishop Vivolo of Passau and the Eighth-Century Origins of the Feast, in: Revue Mabillon: Revue internationale d'histoire et de littérature religieuses 15 (2004), 5-26.
Hammer, Carl I., From Ducatus to Regnum: Ruling Bavaria under the Merovingians and Early Carolingians, Turnhout 2007.
Hammer, Carl I., Hoc and Hnaef in Bavaria? Early-Medieval Prosopography and Heroic Poetry, in: Medieval Prosopography: History and Collective Biography 26 (2009), 13-50.
Hammer, Carl I., Huosiland. A Small Country in Carolingian Europe, Oxford 2018.
Hammer, Carl I., Land Sales in Eight- and Ninth-Century Bavaria: Legal, Economic, and Social Aspects, in: Early Medieval Europe 6 (1997), 47-76.
Hammer, Carl I., "Pipinus Rex": Pippin's Plot of 792 and Bavaria, in: Traditio 63 (2008), 235-276.
Hammer, Carl I., Servile Names and Seigneurial Organization in Early-Medieval Bavaria, in: Studi Medievali ser. 3 36 (1995), 903-915.
Hammer, Carl I., The Handmaid's Tale. Morganatic relationships in Early-Medieval Bavaria, in: Continuity and Change 10 (1995), 345-368.
Hammer, Carl I., Town and Country in Early-Medieval Bavaria. Two Studies in Urban and Comital Structure, Oxford 2012.
Hardt, Michael, The Bavarians, in: Goetz, Hans Werner et al. (eds.), Regna and Gentes. The relationship between late antique and early medieval peoples and kingdoms in the transformation of the Roman world (The Transformation of the Roman World 13), Leiden etc. 2003, 429-461.
Haymes, Edward, The Nibelungenlied. History and Interpretation (Illinois Medieval Monographs 2), Urbana/Ill. etc. 1986.
Hubby, John Clifton, Lordship and Rural Society in Medieval Bavaria. The Estates of the Abbey of Tegernsee, c. 979-c. 1450, PhD Columbia University 2000.
Joyce, Ellen, Scribal Performance and Identity in the Autobiographical Visions of Otloh of St. Emmeram (d. 1067), in: Essays in Medieval Studies 22 (2005), 95-106.
Kohl, Thomas, “Presbyter in parochia sua”: Local Priests and their Churches in Early Medieval Bavaria, in: Patzold, Steffen - van Rhijn, Carine (eds.), Men in the Middle: Local Priests in Early Medieval Europe (Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, Ergänzungsbände 93), Berlin / Boston 2016, 50-77.
Kulzer, Linda, Erentrude: Nonnberg, Eichstätt, America, in: Schmitt, Miriam - Ibid. (eds.), Medieval Women Monastics: Wisdom's Wellsprings, Collegeville 1996, 49-61.
Kyle, Joseph D., Sankt St. Emmeran, Regensburg, as a Center of Culture in the Late Tenth Century, Diss. Pittsburgh 1976.
Lavoie, Raymond V., Saints, Kings, and Religious Reformers. Texts, Social Ties, and Identity in the Religious Communities of Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Regensburg, PhD. Los Angeles 1999.
Lifshits, Yosef Yitsḥaḳ, Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg and the Foundation of Jewish Political Thought, Cambridge 2016.
Linck, Roland, Interaction of Geophysical Prospection, Archaeological Excavation and Historical Sources to reconstruct a Medieval Monastery in Southern Bavaria, in: Bonsall, James (ed.), New Global Perspectives on Archaeological Prospection. 13th International Conference on Archaeological Prospection, 28 August - 1 September 2019, Sligo - Ireland, Oxford 2019, 54-57. [Monastery of Schlehdorf]
Lyon, Jonathan R, Cooperation, Compromise and Conflict Avoidance: Family Relationships in the House of Andechs, ca. 1100-1204, PhD. Notre Dame/Ind. 2004.
McConnell, Winder et al. (eds.), The Nibelungen Tradition. An Encyclopedia, New York 2011.
Merta, Brigitte, Why Royal Charters? A Look at their Use in Carolingian Bavaria, in: Pohl, Walter (ed.), Vom Nutzen des Schreibens: Soziales Gedächtnis, Herrschaft und Besitz im Mittelalter (Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 5), Wien 2002, 183-191.
Mews, Constant J., Accusation of Heresy and Error in the Twelth-Century Schools: The Witness of Gerhoh of Reichersberg and Otto of Freising, in: Hunter, Ian - Laursen, John Christian - Nederman, Cary J. (eds.), Heresy in Transition. Transforming Ideas of Heresy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, London / New York 2005, 43-58.
Nelson, Janet L., Staging Integration in Bavaria, 791-793, in: Pohl, Walter - Diesenberger, Maximilian - Zeller, Bernhard (eds.), Neue Wege der Frühmittelalterforschung - Bilanz und Perspektiven (Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 22), Wien 2018, 225-237.
Newman, Martha G., Cistercian Stories for Nuns and Monks. The Sacramental Imagination of Engelhard of Langheim, Philadelphia 2020.
Notari, Tamás, Bavarian Historiography in Early Medieval Salzburg, Passau 2010.
Notari, Tamás, Criminal Law in Lex Baiuvariorum, in: Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Legal Studies 2 (2013), 67-90.
Notari, Tamás, Law and Society in Lex Baiuvariorum, Passau 2014.
Notari, Tamás, On Bishop Virgil's Litigations in Bavaria, in: Acta Juridica Hungarica 48 (2007), 49-71.
Obrist, Barbara, Cosmological Iconography in Twelfth-Century Bavaria. The Earthly Zones and their Circling Serpent in Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, CLM 7785, in: Studi Medievali ser. 3 48 (2007), 543-574.
Otten, Willemien, The Bible and the Self in Medieval Autobiography: Otloh of St. Emmeram (1010-1070) and Peter Abelard (1079-1142), in: McCarthy, John - Aune, David (eds.), The Whole and Divided Self: The Bible and Theological Anthropology, New York 1997, 130-157.
Parsons, David, Some Churches of the Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Southern Germany: A Review of the Evidence, in: Early Medieval Europe 8 (1999), 31-67. [Eichstätt, Solnhofen]
Pearson, Kathy Lynne, Conflicting Loyalities in Early Medieval Bavaria. A View of Social-Political Interaction, 680-900, Aldershot 1999.
Pearson, Kathy Lynne, Rulers, Magnates, and Outsiders in Bavaria and its Marches, in: Gosman, Martin - Vanderjagt, Arjo - Veenstra, Jan (eds.), The Propagation of Power in the Medieval West: Selected Proceedings of the International Conference, Groningen 20-23 November 1996 (Mediaevalia Groningana, 23), Groningen 1997, 177-189.
Pearson, Kathy Lynne, Land and Family in Bavaria: A Social History of the Landowning Class in the Eight and Ninth Centuries, PhD. Emory University 1990.
Phelan, Owen M., The Carolingian Renewal and Christian Formation in Ninth-Century Bavaria, in: Corradini, Richard et al. (eds.), Texts Andidentities in the Early Middle Ages (Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 12), Wien 2006, 389-399.
Pohl, Walter - Diesenberger, Maximilian (eds.), Eugippius und Severin. Der Autor, der Text und der Heilige (Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 2), Wien 2001 [5 articles in English]
Resnick, Irven, Litterati, Spirituales, and Lay Christians according to Otloh of Saint Emmeram, in: Church History 55 (1986), 165-178.
Resnick, Irven, Scientia liberalis, Dialectics, and Otloh of St. Emmeram, in: Revue Bénédictine 97 (1987), 241-252.
Reuter, Timothy, Charlemagne and the World beyond the Rhine, in: Story, Joanna (ed.), Charlemagne: Empire and Society, Manchester 2005, 183-194.
Rivers, Theodore John, Contributions to the Criticism and Interpretation of the Lex Baiuvariorum: A Comparative Study of the Alamannic and Bavarian Codes, PhD. New York 1973.
Ryan, Michael, Insular Chalices and the Tassilo-Liutpirc Chalice, in: Wamers, Egon - Becher, Matthias (ed.), Der Tassilo-Liutpirc-Kelch im Stift Kremsmünster, Regensburg 2019, 287-296.
Scharer, Anton, Duke Tassilo of Bavaria and the Origins of the Rupertus Cross, in: Gameson, Richard - Leyser, Henrietta (ed.), Belief and Culture in the Middle Ages. Studies presented to Henry Mayr-Harting, Oxford 2001, 69-75.
Scharer, Anton, Bishops in Ottonian Bavaria, in: Ibid. (ed.), Changing Perspectives on England and the Continent in the Early Middle Ages (Variroum Collected Studies Series 1042), Farnham 2014, 1-17.
Schmitt, Miriam, St. Irmengard: No Poor on the Isle of Chiemsee, in: Ibid. - Kulzer, Lina (eds.), Medieval Women Monastics: Wisdom's Wellsprings, Collegeville 1996, 117-134.
Schmitz-Esser, Romedio, The Bishop and the Emperor: Tracing Narrative Intent in Otto of Freising's "Gesta Frederici", in: The Medieval Chronicle 9 (2014), 297-324.
Toch, Michael, The formation of a Diaspora: the Settlement of Jews in the Medieval German "Reich", in: Aschkenas 7 (1997), 55-78.
Toch, Michael, The Peasant Community and its Laws: Medieval Bavaria, in: Hen, Yitzhak (ed.), De sionexibitlex et verbum domini de Hierusalem (Cultural encounters in late antiquity and the middle ages 1), Turnhout 2001, 183-196.
Walter, James K., The Upper German Servatius. Secular Influences on the Art of a Saint's Life in the late Twelfth Century, in: Hintz, Ernst Ralf (ed.), Nu lôn' ich iu der gâbe: Festschrift for Francis G. Gentry (Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik 693), Göppingen 2003, 285-298.
Weber, Andreas Otto, The Organisation of Wine-Production and Wine-Transport in the Middle Ages: the Example of Bavarian Monasteries and their Vineyards in Bavaria, Austria, and South Tyrol and General Conclusions on Comparative Wine-History, in: Maldonado, Javier (ed.), Actas del I Simposio de la Asociación Internacional de Historia y Civilización de la Vid y el Vino, 1999, El Puerto de Santa María 2001, 435-444.
Williams, Hannah, Composing the Mind: Doubt and Divine Inspiration in Otloh of St Emmeran’s Book of Temptations, in: European Review of History 16 (2009), 855-873.
Winckler, Katharina, Roads, Tolls and the Development of Ecclesiastical Institutions in the Alps (400–900), in: Denzel, Markus A. - Bonoldi, Andrea - Schöpfer, Marie-Claude (eds.), Oeconomia Alpium II: Economic History of the Alps in Preindustrial Times. Methods and Perspectives of Research, Berlin / Boston 2022, 43-72.
Winckler, Katharina, Romanness at the Fringes of the Frankish Empire: The Strange Case of Bavaria, in: Pohl, Walter et al. (eds.), Transformations of Romanness. Early Medieval Regions and Identities, Berlin / Boston 2018, 419-436.
Winckler, Katharina, The Territory of the Bishop: Ritual and Diocesan Boundaries in Early Medieval Bavaria., in: Popovic, Mihailo etc. (ed.), Power in Landscape – Geographic and Digital Approaches on Historical Research, Leipzig 2019, 33-44.
Wolfram, Herwig, Bavaria in the Tenth and Early Eleventh Century, in: McKitterick, Rosamond (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History. Volume 3, Cambridge 1999, 293-309.
Wolfram, Herwig, Columbanus and the Mission to the Bavarians and the Slavs in the Seventh Century, in: O’Hara, Alexander (ed.), Columbanus and the Peoples of Post-Roman Europe (Oxford Studies in Late Antiquity), New York 2018, 165-173.
Wood, Ian, The Missionary Life. Saints and the Evangelization of Europe, 400-1050, Milton Park / New York 2001. [Virgil, Rupert, Korbinian, Arbeo, Kilian]
Wright, Stephen K., Was there a Twelfth-Century Play at St. Emmeram? in: Medieval English Theatre 18 (1998), 74-84.

13^th to 15^th Centuries: Late Middle Ages

Adamson, Melitta Weiss, Lost in Translation? The Arrival of Byzantine Viniculture in Fifteenth-Century Bavaria, in: Medium Aevum Quotidianum 67 (2014), 26-36.
Aylett, Robert (ed.), Hans Sachs and Folk Theatre in the Late Middle Ages. Studies in the History of Popular Culture (Bristol German Publications 5), Lewiston etc. 1995.
Boer, Dick E.H. de, Ludwig the Bavarian and the Scholars, in: Drijvers, Jan Willem - MacDonald, Alasdair A. (eds.), Centres of Learning: Learning and Location in Pre-Modern Europe and the Near East (Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 61), Leiden 1995, 229-244.
Brown, Thomas Andrew, Ludwig the Bavarian and the German Estates, PhD. Syracuse University 1975.
Cassidy-Welch, Megan, Pilgrimage and Embodiment: Captives and the Cult of Saints in Late Medieval Bavaria, in: Parergon. Journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies 20 (2003), 47-70. [Inchenhofen]
Courtenay, William J., The Franciscan Studia in Southern Germany in the Fourteenth Century, in: Seibt, Ferdinand (ed.), Gesellschaftsgeschichte: Festschrift für Karl Bosl zum 80. Geburtstag, München 1988, 81-90.
Dahlem, Andreas M., The Wittelsbach Court in Munich: History and Authority in the Visual Arts (1460-1508), PhD. Glasgow 2009.
Erb, James R., Fictions, Realities and the Fifteenth-Century Nuremberg "Fastnachtspiel", Eisenbichler, Konrad et al. (eds.), Carnival and the Carnivalesque (Ludus 4), Amsterdam etc. 1999, 89-116.
Flachenecker, Helmut, Eichstätt: Abbey, Diocese, Lordship, in: Loud, Graham A. - Schenk, Jochen (eds.), The Origins of the German Principalities, 1100-1350. Essays by German Historians, London - New York 2017, 121-136.
Ghosh, Shami, Rural Commercialisation in Fourteenth-Century Southern Germany: The Evidence from Scheyern Abbey, in: Vierteljahrschrift für Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte 104 (2017), 52-77.
Graf, Wolfgang, Nürnberg: World-Trade-Center Forspice, in: Protzner, Wolfgang - Köglmaier-Horn, Christiane (eds.), Culina Franconiae, Vol. 1 (Beiträge zur Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte 109), Stuttgart 2007, 73-90.
Groebner, Valentin, Black Money and the Language of Things: Observations on the Economy of the Labouring Poor in late Fifteenth-Century Nuremberg, in: Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für Deutsche Geschichte 22 (1993), 275-291.
Groos, Arthur, The City as Community and Space: Nuremberg Stadtlob, 1447-1530, in: Stock, Markus – Vöhringer, Nicola (eds.), Spatial Practices: Medieval / Modern (Transatlantische Studien zu Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit 6), Göttingen 2014, 187-206.
Herde, Peter, From Adolf of Nassau to Lewis of Bavaria, 1292-1347, in: Jones, Michael (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. VI: c. 1300 - c. 1415, Cambridge 2000, 515-550.
Hergemüller, Bernd-Ulrich, Golden Bull, 1356, in: Historisches Lexikon Bayerns [URL: https://www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de/Lexikon/EN:Golden_Bull,_1356]
Hoffmann, Richard C., Fishers in Late Medieval Rural Society around Tegernsee, Bavaria: A Preliminary Sketch, in: DeWindt, Edwin Brezette - Raftis, James Ambrose (eds.), The Salt of Common Life: Individuality and Choice in the Medieval Town, Countryside and Church. Essays Presented to J. Ambrose Raftis (Studies in Medieval Culture 36), Kalamazoo 1995, 371-408.
Klepper, Deeana Copeland, Pastoral Literature in Local Context: Albert of Diessen’s Mirror of Priests on Christian-Jewish Coexistence, in: Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies 92 (2017), 692-723.
Liebhart, Wilhelm, 500 Years Birgittine Convent Altomünster (1497-1997), in: Brigittiana 2 (1996), 223-234.
Lindner, Klaus M., Courtship and the Courts: Marriage and Law in Southern Germany 1350-1550, PhD. Cambrigde/Mass. 1988.
Lutter, Christina, The Babenbergs: From Frontier March to Principality, in: Loud, Graham A. - Schenk, Jochen (eds.), The Origins of the German Principalities, 1100-1350. Essays by German Historians, London / New York 2017, 312-328.
McQuillen, John T., In Manuscript and Print. The Fifteenth-Century Library of Scheyern Abbey, PhD. Toronto 2012.
Merback, Mitchell B., Cleansing the Temple. The Munich Gruftkirche as Converted Synagogue, in: Ibid. (ed.), Beyond the Yellow Badge. Anti-Judaism and Antisemitism in Medieval and Early Modern Visual Culture (Brill's Series in Jewish studies 37), Leiden etc. 2008, 305-345.
Meyer-Schlenkrich, Carla, The Imperial City: The example of Nuremberg, in: Loud, Graham A. - Schenk, Jochen (eds.), The Origins of the German Principalities, 1100-1350. Essays by German Historians, London - New York 2017, 68-82.
Miller, Michael L., The Bavarian Episcopacy in the Fourteenth Century, PhD. Ohio State University 1980.
Minagawa, Taku, Border Conflicts between Bohemia and Bavaria and their Solutions. Comparative Considerations, in: Bellabarba, Marco - Obermair, Hannes (eds.), Communities and Conflicts in the Alps from the Late Middle Ages to Early Modernity (Annali dell'Istituto Storico Italo-Germanico in Trento / Contributi 30), Berlin/Bologna 2015, 73-90.
Miner, John N., Change and Continutiy in the Schools of Later Medieval Nuremberg, in: The Catholic Historical Review 73 (1987), 1-22.
Mixson, James D., Poverty's Proprietors: Ownership and Mortal Sin at the Origins of the Observant Movement (Studies in the history of Christian Traditions 143), Leiden etc. 2009.
Modestin, Georg, The Making of a Heretic: Pope John XXII's Campaign against Louis of Bavaria, in: Bailey, Michael D. - Field, Sean L. (eds.), Late Medieval Heresy: New Perspectives. Studies in Honor of Robert E. Lerner, Rochester/NY 2018, 76-95.
Moody, D. Branch, Healing Power in the Marian Miracle Books of Bavarian Healing Shrines, 1489-1523, in: Journal of the History of Medicine & Allied Sciences 47 (1992), 68-90.
Ogier, James, Hartlieb and Beheim at the Munich Court: Parallel Trajectories, in: Jefferis, Sibylle (ed.), Earthly and Spiritual Pleasures in Medieval Life, Literature, Art, and Music (Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik 779), Göppingen 2014, 173-186.
Olesen, Jens E., Christopher of Bavaria, King of Denmark, Norway and Sweden (1440-1448): Scandinavia and Southern Germany in the 15th Century, in: Ibid. (ed.), Erich von Pommern und Christopher von Bayern - Studien zur Kalmarer Union (Publikationen des Lehrstuhls für Nordische Geschichte 21), Greifswald 2016, 239-269.
Page, Jamie, Prostitution and Subjectivity in Late Medieval Germany, Oxford 2021. [Augsburg, Nördlingen]
Petri, Matthias et al., The Archaeological Survey Project in Fatschenbrunn, Municipality of Oberaurach, Germany: A Case Study for the Reconstruction of Past Farming Regimes in the Late Medieval and Post-Medieval Era, in: International Journal of Historical Archaeology 21 (2017), 389-419.
Pope, Ben, Nuremberg's Noble Servant: Werner von Parsberg (d. 1455) between Town and Nobility in Late Medieval Germany, in: German History 36 (2018), 159-180.
Rasmussen, Ann Marie, Reading in Nuremberg's Fifteenth-Century Carnival Plays, in: Downing, Eric et al. (ed.), Literary Studies and the Pursuits of Reading, Rochester 2012, 68-83.
Reinle, Christine, Peasants' Feuds in Medieval Bavaria (Fourteenth-Fifteenth Century), in: Netterstrøm, Jeppe - Poulsen, Bjørn (eds.), Feud in Medieval and Early Modern Europe., Aarhus 2007, 161-174.
Sargent, Steven D., Miracle Books and Pilgrimage Shrines in Late Medieval Bavaria, in: Historical Reflections 13 (1986), 455-471.
Sargent, Steven D., Religion and Society in Late Medieval Bavaria: The Cult of Saint Leonard, 1258-1500, PhD. University of Pennsylvania 1982.
Scales, Len, Wenceslas Looks Out: Monarchy, Locality, and the Symbolism of Power in Fourteenth-Century Bavaria, in: Central European History 52 (2019), 179-210.
Schmidt, Peter, The Use of Prints in German Convents of the Fifteenth Century: The Example of Nuremberg, in: Studies in Iconography 24 (2003), 43-69.
Schreg, Rainer, Late Medieval Deserted Settlements in Southern Germany as a Consequence of Long-Term Landscape Transformations, in: Brady, Niall - Theune-Vogt, Claudia (eds.), Settlement Change across Medieval Europe. Old Paradigms and New Vistas (Ruralia 12), Leiden 2019, 161-170.
Sheffler, David L., Schools and Schooling in Late Medieval Germany: Regensburg, 1250-1500 (Education and Society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance 33), Leiden etc. 2008.
Simon, Anne, The Cult of Saint Katherine of Alexandria in Late-Medieval Nuremberg: Saint and the City, Farnham etc. 2012.
Smelyansky, Eugene, Heresy and Citizenship. Persecution of Heresy in Late Medieval German Cities, London/New York 2021. [Augsburg, Rothenburg]
Smelyansky, Eugene, Urban Order and Urban Other: Anti-Waldensian Inquisition in Augsburg, 1393, in: German History 34 (2016), 1-20.
Stromer von Reichenbach, Wolfgang, Nuremberg as Epicentre of Invention and Innovation towards the End of the Middle Age, in: History of Technology 19 (1997), 19-45.
Stromer von Reichenbach, Wolfgang, Nuremberg in the International Economics of the Middle Ages, in: Business History Review 44 (1970), 210-221.
Timmermann, Achim, Frau Venus, the Eucharist and the Jews of Landshut, in: Kessler, Herbert L. - Nirenberg, David (eds.), Judaism and Christian Art. Aesthetic Anxieties from the Catacombs to Colonialism, Philadelphia etc. 2011, 183-202.
Toch, Michael, Ethics, Emotion and Self-Interest: Rural Bavaria in the Later Middle Ages, in: Ibid. (ed.), Peasants and Jews in Medieval Germany. Studies in Cultural, Social, and Economic History (Collected Studies Series 757), Burlington 2003, 135-147. [Indersdorf]
Toch, Michael, Hauling away in Late Medieval Bavaria. The Economics of Inland Transport in an Agrarian Market, in: Ibid. (ed.), Peasants and Jews in Medieval Germany. Studies in Cultural, Social, and Economic History (Collected Studies Series 757), Burlington 2003, 111-123.
Toch, Michael, Local Credit in an Agrarian Economy: The Case of Bavaria, 14th to 15th centuries, in: Ibid. (ed.), Peasants and Jews in Medieval Germany. Studies in Cultural, Social, and Economic History (Collected Studies Series 757), Burlington 2003, 793-803.
Wagner, Bettina, The Windberg Accounts. A Premonstratensian Monastery and its Library in the 15th century, in: Bibliologia 3 (2008), 17-34.
Weiß, Dieter J., Spiritual Life in the Teutonic Order. A Comparison between the Commanderies of Franconia and Prussia, in: Luttrell, Anthony (ed.), La commanderie. Institution des ordres militaires dans l'Occident medieval (Archélogie et d'histoire de l'art14), Paris 2002, 159-173.
Westphal-Wihl, Sarah, Kunigunde of Bavaria and the "Conquest of Regensburg". Politics, gender, and the Public Sphere in 1489, in: Emden, Christian J. et al. (eds.), Changing Perceptions of the Public sphere, New York etc. 2012, 35-56.
Wranovix, Matthew, Priests and Their Books in Late Medieval Eichstätt, Lanham 2017.

16^th to 18^th Century: Early Modern Ages (General)

Arnold-Becker, Alice, Friedberg - A Centre of Watch- and Clock-Making in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Bavaria, in: Antiquarian Horology 1/35 (2014), 663-683.
Berger, Albrecht, Byzantium in Bavaria, in: Marciniak, Przemyslaw - Smythe, Dion C. (eds.), The Reception of Byzantium in European Culture since 1500, Farnham etc. 2016, 115-131.
Bubenik, Andrea, Reframing Albrecht Dürer. The Appropriation of Art, 1528-1700, Farnham etc. 2013.
Babel, Rainer, The Courts of the Wittelsbachs c. 1500-1750. The Duchy of Bavaria, in: Adamson, John (ed.), The Princely courts of Europe. Ritual, Politics and Culture under the Ancien Régime 1500-1750, London 1999, 188-209.
Becker, Rainald, Catholic Print Cultures: German Jesuits and Colonial North America, in: Scheiding, Oliver - Bassimir, Anja Maria (ed.), Religious Periodicals and Publishing in Transnational Contexts, Cambridge 2017, 25-48.
Becker, Rainald, New Worlds Turning Southern German: Knowledge of the Americas in Early Modern Bavaria, in: Lachenicht, Susanne (ed.), Europeans Engaging the Atlantic. Knowledge and Trade 1500-1800, Frankfurt am Main etc. 2014, 89-109.
Behringer, Wolfgang, Witchcraft Prosecution in Bavaria. Popular Magic, Religious Zealotry and Reason of State in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge 1997.
Blickle, Renate, From Subsistence to Property: Traces of a Fundamental Change in Early Modern Bavaria, in: Central European History 25 (1992), 377-385.
Creasman, Allyson F., Side-Stepping the Censor. The Clandestine Trade in Prohibited Texts in Early Modern Augsburg, in: Crane, Mark et al. (eds.), Shell Games. Studies in Scams, Frauds, and Deceits (1300-1650), Toronto 2004, 211-237.
Dahlem, Andreas, Late Fifteenth Century Architectural Manifestations of Ducal Authority in the Vicinity of Munich, in: Anderson, Emily Jane (ed.), Visible Exports / Imports. New Research on Medieval and Renaissance European Art and Culture, Newcastle upon Tyne 2012, 239-259.
Dilworth, Mark, Benedictine Monks of Ratisbon and Wurzburg in the 17th and 18th Centuries, Emigrés from the Highlands of Scotland, in: Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness 44 (1965), 94-110.
Dilworth, Mark, The Scots in Franconia. A Century of Monastic life, Edinburgh etc. 1974.
Durrant, Jonathan B., Witchcraft, Gender and Society in Early Modern Germany (Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions 124), Leiden 2007 [Prince-Bishopric of Eichstätt]
Corpis, Duane J., Crossing the Boundaries of Belief. Geographies of Religious Conversion in Southern Germany, 1648-1800 (Studies in Early Modern German History), Charlottesville 2014.
Corpis, Duane J., Losing one's Place: Memory, History, and Space in Post-Reformation Germany, in: Tatlock, Lynne (ed.), Enduring Loss in Early Modern Germany. Cross Disciplinary Perspectives, Leiden etc. 2010, 326-367. [St. Ulrich Augsburg]
Corpis, Duane J., Mapping the Boundaries of Confession: Space and Urban Religious Life in the Diocese of Augsburg, 1648-1750, in: Coster, Will - Spicer, Andrew (ed.), Sacred Space in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge etc. 2005, 302-325.
Corpis, Duane J., Marian Pilgrimage and the Performance of Male Privilege in Eighteenth-Century Augsburg, in: Central European History 45 (2012), 375-406.
Forster, Marc R., Catholic Germany from the Reformation to the Enlightenment (European History in Perspective), Basingstoke 2007.
Gantet, Claire, Peace Festivals and the Culture of Memory in Early Modern South German Cities, in: Friedrich, Karin (ed.), Festive Culture in Germany and Europe from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century, Lewiston etc. 2000, 57-71.
Harrington, Joel F., An Unmarried Mother-to-be Weighs her Options in Sixteenth-Century Nuremberg, in: Studies in Medieval & Renaissance History 2 (2005), 149-203.
Harrington, Joel F., Child Circulation within the Early Modern Urban Community: Rejection and Support of Unwanted Children in Nuremberg, in: Halvorson, Michael F. - Spierling, Karen E. (ed.), Defining Community in Early Modern Europe, Aldershot 2008, 103-120.
Harrington, Joel F., "Singing for his Supper". The Reinvention of Juvenile Streetsinging in Early Modern Nuremberg, in: Social History 22 (1997), 27-45.
Harrington, Joel F., The Unwanted Child: The Fate of Foundlings, Orphans, and Juvenile Criminals in Early Modern Germany, Chicago etc. 2009. [Nürnberg]
Harrington, Joel F., Tortured Truths: The Self-Expositions of a Juvenile Career Criminal in Early Modern Nuremberg, in: German History 23 (2005), 143-171.
Heal, Bridget, The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Early Modern Germany. Protestant and Catholic Piety, 1500-1648, Cambridge etc. 2009.
Hoppe, Stefan, Translating the Past. Local Romanesque Architecture in Germany and Its Fifteenth-Century Reinterpretation, in: Ottenheym, Konrad - Enenkel, Karl (Hg.), The Quest for an Appropriate Past in Literature, Art and Architecture. Leiden / Boston 2018, 511–585.
Hoppe-Münzberg, The Princely Horse as a Work of Art and its Architectural Frame. A Munich Example, a Habsburg Model, in: García García, Bernardo José (ed.), Felix Austria. Lazos familiares, cultura política y mecenazgo artístico entre las cortes de los Habsburgo en el contexto europeo (1516-1715), Madrid 2016, 203-219.
Hörger, Hermann, Organisational Forms of Popular Piety in Rural Old Bavaria (Sixteenth to Nineteenth Centuries), in: Greyerz, Kaspar von (ed.), Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1800, Boston 1984, 212-222.
Kägler, Britta, Competition at the Catholic Court of Munich: Italian Musicians and Family Networks, in: zur Nieden, Gesa – Over, Berthold (eds.), Musicians' Mobilities and Music Migrations in Early Modern Europe, Bielefeld 2016, 73-90.
Kägler, Britta, Manifestations of trust – Medical careers at the Munich Court in Early Modern Times, in: Medizinhistorisches Journal 53 (2018), 217-240.
Kägler, Britta, Serving the Prince as the First Step of Female Carees: The Electoral Court of Munich, c. 1660-1840, in: Ilmakunnas, Johanna - Rahikainen, Marjatta - Vainio-Korhonen, Kirsi (eds.), Early Professional Women in Northern Europe, c. 1650-1850 (Routledge Research in Early Modern History), London / New York 2018, 43-67.
Kammerling, Joy Margaret, Andreas Osiander and the Jews of Nuremberg: A Reformation Pastor and Jewish Toleration in Sixteenth-Century Germany, PhD. Univerity of Illinois 1995.
Kießling, Rolf, Between Expulsion and Emancipation: Jewish Villages in East Suabia during Early Modern Period, in: Shofar 15 (1997), 59-87.
Klingensmith, Samuel Jon, The Utility of Splendor: Ceremony, Social Life and Architecture at the Court of Bavaria 1600-1800, Chicago u.a. 1993.
Knox, Ellis Lee, The Guilds of Early Modern Augsburg. A Study in Urban Institutions, PhD. University of Massachuetts 1984.
Koudounaris, Paul, Heavenly Bodies. Cult Treasures and Spectacular Saints from the Catacombs, London 2013. [Catacomb Saints in Southern Germany, Austria and Switzerland]
Kümin, Beat, Drinking Matters: Public Houses and Social Exchange in Early Modern Central Europe (Early Modern History: Society and Culture), Houndmills etc. 2007. [Canton of Bern and Bavaria]
Kunstler, Serge, Italy and the South German Baroque, PhD. Clayton/Victora 1996.
Lederer, David, Living with the Dead. Ghosts in Early Modern Bavaria, in: Edwards, Kathryn A. (ed.), Werewolves, Witches, and Wandering Spirits. Traditional Believs& Folklore in Early Modern Europe (Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies 62), Kirksville / MS 2002, 25-53.
Lederer, David, Madness, Religion and the State in Early Modern Europe: A Bavarian Beacon, Cambridge u.a. 2006.
Lewis, Margaret Brennan, Infanticide and Abortion in Early Modern Germany (The body, gender and culture 19), London / New York 2016. [Augsburg]
Lidman, Satu, To Report or not? To Punish or not? Between Tightening Laws, Old Habits and Loyalty in Early Modern Bavaria, in: Matikainen, Olli (ed.), Morality, Crime and Social Control in Europe 1500-1900 (Studia historica 84), Helsinki 2014, 87-106.
Maxwell, Susan, Every Living Beast: Collecting Animals in Early Modern Munich, in: Pia F. Cuneo (ed.), Animals and Early Modern Identity, Farnham etc. 2014, 45-66.
Meier, Hans, Welfare and Health of Children and Adolescents in Early Modern England and Southern Germany: Case studies of Bampton (Oxfordshire) and Oettingen (Southern Germany) in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, PhD. Oxford University 1995.
Murr, Karl Borromäus - Breil, Michaela, Textile Printing in Early Modern Augsburg: at the Crossroads of Local and Global Histories of Industry, in: Siebenhüner, Kim - Jordan, John - Schopf, Gabi (eds.), Cotton in Context. Manufacturing, Marketing, and Consuming Textiles in the German-Speaking World (1500-1900), Köln 2019, 91-118.
Ozment, Steven E., Flesh and Spirit. Private Life in Early-Modern Germany, New York u.a. 1999. [Nürnberg]
Schindling, Anton, The Development of the Eternal Diet in Regensburg, in: Journal of Modern History 58 (1986), 64-75.
Roper, Lyndal, The Gorgon of Augsburg, in; Ibid. (ed.), The Witch in the Western Imagination, Charlottesville 2012, 48-71.
Roper, Lyndal, Oedipus and the Devil. Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe, London etc. 1994.
Roper, Lyndal, Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany, New Haven etc. 2004.
Roper, Lyndal, Witchcraft and Fantasy in Early Modern Germany, in: History Workshop 32 (1991), 19-43.
Safley, Thomas Max, Bankruptcy. Family and Finance in Early Modern Augsburg, in: The Journal of European Economic History 29 (2000), 53-75.
Safley, Thomas Max, Charity and Economy in the Orphanages of Early Modern Augsburg (Studies in central European histories), Atlantic Highlands 2007.
Safley, Thomas Max, Children of the Laboring Poor: Expectation and Experience among the Orphans of Early Modern Augsburg (Studies in Central European Histories 38), Leiden etc. 2007.
Safley, Thomas Max, Success and Failure. Reflections on the Effectiveness of Early Modern Poor Relief in the Orphanages of Augsburg, in: Ocker, Christopher et al. (eds.), Ratsräson und Bürgersinn. Essays in Honor of Thomas A. Brady Jr. (Studies in Medieval and Reformation traditions 128), Leiden 2007, 283-313.
Slafter, Stewart, The Augsburg Shopkeepers' Guild and the Circulation of Goods in Early Modern Europe, PhD. Chicago/Ill. 1999.
Schremmer, Eckart, Saltmining and the Salt-trade. A State-Monopoly in the XVIth–XVIIth Centuries. A Case-Study in Public Enterprise and Development in Austria and the South German States, in: Journal of European Economic History 8 (1979), 291-312.
Smith, Jeffrey, Imaging and Imagining Nuremberg, in: Grood, Arthur et al. (ed.), Topographies of the Early Modern City (Transatlantische Studien zu Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit 3), Göttingen 2008, 17-41.
Spoerer, Mark, The Revenue Structures of Brandenburg-Prussia, Saxony and Bavaria (Fifteenth to Nineteenth Centuries): Are they Compatible with the Bonney-Ormrod model? in: Cavaciocchi, Simonetta (ed.), La Fiscalità nell'economia europea secc. XIII-XVIII - Fiscal Systems in the European Economy from the 13th to the 18th Centuries. Ed. (Atti delle Settimane di Studi e altri Convegni 39), Firenze 2008, 781-791.
Sreenivasan, Govind Paul, Prosecuting Injuries in Early Modern Germany (ca. 1550-1650), in: Central European History 47 (2014), 544-584. [Cases of Swabia and Lower Franconia]
Sreenivasan, Govind Paul, The Peasants of Ottobeuren 1487-1726. A Rural Society in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge u.a. 2004.
Stein, Claudia, Negotiating the French Pox in Early Modern Germany, Aldershot etc. 2008. [Augsburg]
Stein, Claudia, The Meaning of Signs: Diagnosing the French Pox in Early Modern Augsburg, in: Bulletin of the History of Medicine 80 (2006), 617-648.
Thomas, Andrew J., A House Divided: Wittelsbach Confessional Court Cultures in the Holy Roman Empire, c. 1550-1650 (Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions 150), Leiden u.a. 2010.
Tlusty, B. Ann, Bacchus and Civic Order: The Culture of Drink in Early Modern Germany (Studies in Early Modern German History), Charlottesville etc. 2001.
Tlusty, B. Ann, Full Cups, Full Coffers: Tax Strategies and Consumer Culture in the Early Modern German Cities, in: German History 32 (2014), 1-28.
Tlusty, B. Ann, Jonas Losch and the Augsburg's Artisan Singers, in: Zeitschrift des Historischen Vereins für Schwaben 109 (2017), 29-53.
Tlusty, B. Ann, The Devil's Altar: The Tavern and Society in Early Modern Augsburg, PhD. University of Maryland 1994.
Tlusty, B. Ann, The Martial Ethic in Early Modern Germany: Civic Duty and the Right of Arms, Basingstoke etc. 2011. [Augsburg, Nördlingen]
Tlusty, B. Ann, Violence and Urban Identity in Early Modern Augsburg: Communication Strategies between Authorities and Citizens in the Adjudication of Fights, in: Van Horn Melton, James (ed.), Cultures of Communication from Reformation to Enlightenment. Constructing Publics in the Early Modern German Lands, Aldershot 2002, 10-23.
Tlusty, B. Ann, Water of Life, Water of Death: The Controversy over Brandy and Gin in Early Modern Augsburg, in: Central European History 31 (1998), 1-30.
Tyler, Jeffery J., Lord of the Sacred City. The Episcopus Exclusus in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany (Studies in medieval and Reformation thought 72), Leiden etc. 1999 [Augsburg]
Tyler, Jeffery J., Lordship, Expulsion, and Survival: The Episcopus exclusus in Late Medieval and Early Modern Augsburg and Konstanz, in: Zeitschrift des Historischen Vereins für Schwaben 92 (1999), 31-53.
Tyler, Jeffery J., Refugees and Reform: Banishment and Exile in Early Modern Augsburg, in: Bast, Robert B. et al. (eds.), Continuity and Change: The Harvest of Late Medieval and Reformation History. Essays Presented to Heiko A. Oberman on his 70th birthday, Leiden etc. 2000, 77-97.
Ullmann, Sabine, Poor Jewish Families in Early Modern Rural Swabia, in: Fontaine, Laurence et al. (eds.), Household Strategies for Survival 1600-2000. Fission, Faction and Cooperation (International Review of Social History, Supplement 8), Cambridge etc. 2000, 93-113.
Walisnki-Kiehl, Robert, "Godly States", Confessional Conflict and Witch-Hunting in Early Modern Germany, in: Levack, Brian P (ed.), New perspectives on Witchcraft, Magic, and Demonology. Vol. 2: Witchcraft in Europe, New York etc. 2001, 483-494.
Walinski-Kiehl, Robert, The Devil's Children: Child Witch-Trials in Early Modern Germany, in: Continuity and change 11 (1996), 171-189.
Wilson, Peter H., The Immerwährende Reichstag in English and American Historiography, in: Rudolph, Harriet – von Schlachta, Astrid (eds.), Reichsstadt - Reich – Europa. Neue Perspektiven auf den Immerwährenden Reichstag zu Regensburg (1663-1806), Regensburg 2015, 105-122.
Winiwarter, Verena - Haidvogl, Gertrud - Bürkner, Michael, The Rise and Fall of Munich’s Early Modern Water Network. A Tale of Prowess and Power, in: Water History 8 (2016), 277-299.
Zmora, Hillay, The Feud in Early Modern Germany, Cambridge etc. 2011. [Franconia]
Zmora, Hillay, The Formation of the Imperial Knighthood in Franconia: a Comparative European Perspective, in: Evans, Richard J. - Schaich, Michael - Wilson, Peter W. (ed.), The Holy Roman Empire (Studies of the German Historical Institute London), Oxford etc. 2011, 283-302.

16^th Century: Renaissance and Reformation

Albu, Emily, The Medieval Peutinger Map: Imperial Roman Revival in a German Empire, New York 2014.
Beer, Mathias, Private Correspondence in Germany in the Reformation Era: A Forgotten Source for the History of the Burgher family, in: The Sixteenth Century Journal 32 (2001), 931-951. [Linhart Tucher]
Boivin, Katherine M., Riemenschneider in Rothenburg. Sacred Space and Civic Identity in the Late Medieval City, University Park / PA 2021.
Boner, Patrick J., Statesman and Scholar: Herwarth von Hohenburg as Patron and Author in the Republic of Letters, in: History of Science 52 (2014), 29-51.
Brann, Noel L., The Abbot Trithemius (1462–1516). The Renaissance of Monastic Humanism (Studies in the History of Christian Thought 24), Leiden 1981.
Broadhead, Philip, Guildsmen, Religious Reform and the Search for the Common Good: The Role of the Guilds in the Early Reformation in Augsburg, in: The Historical Journal 39 (1996), 577-597.
Broadhead, Philip, Internal Politics and Civic Society in Augsburg during the Era of the Early Reformation, 1518-37, PhD. Canterbury 1981.
Broadhead, Philip, "One Heart and one Soul": The Changing Nature of Public Worship in Augsburg, 1521-1548, in: Swanson, Robert N. (ed.), Continuity and Change in Christian Worship, Woodbridge 1999, 116-127.
Broadhead, Philip, Public Worship, Liturgy and the Introduction of the Lutheran Reformation in the Territorial Lands of Nuremberg, in: English Historical Review 120 (2005), 277-302.
Broadhead, Philip, Self-Interest and Security: Relations between Nuremberg and its Territory in the Early Sixteenth Century, in: German History 11 (1993), 1-19.
Burn, David. J., On the Transmission and Preservation of Mass-Propers at the Bavarian Court, in: Göllner, Theodor (ed.), Die Münchner Hofkapelle des 16. Jahrhunderts im europäischen Kontext (Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften - Philosophisch-Historische Klasse, Abhandlungen N.F. 128), München 2006, 319-333.
Burnett, Stephen G., Distorted Mirrors: Antonius Margaritha, Johann Buxtorf and Christian Ethnographies of the Jews, in: Sixteenth Century Journal 25 (1994), 275-287.
Buskirk, Jessica E., Portraiture and Arithmetic in Sixteenth-Century Bavaria: Deciphering Barthel Beham's Calculator, in: Renaissance Quarterly 66 (2013), 35-80.
Bushart, Bruno, Venice and Augsburg. Architecture and Sculpture in the Sixteenth Century, in: Aikema, Bernard - Brown, Beverly Louise (eds.), Renaissance Venice and the North: Crosscurrents in the Time of Bellini, Dürer, and Titian, New York 2000, 160-171.
Chapuis, Julien (ed.), Tilman Riemenschneider, c. 1460-1531. Proceedings of the Symposium "Tilman Riemenschneider: A Late Medieval Master Sculptor" (Studies in the History of Art 65), New Haven etc. 2004.
Chapuis, Julien - Baxandall, Michael (eds.), Tilman Riemenschneider: Master Sculptor of the Late Middle Ages, New Haven etc. 1999.
Clasen, Claus-Peter, Anabaptism. A Social History, 1525-1618: Switzerland, Austria, Moravia, South and Central Germany, Ithaca 1972.
Classen, Albrecht, Woman Poet and Reformer: The 16th-century Feminist Argula von Grumbach, in: Daphnis 20 (1991), 167-197.
Close, Christopher W., Augsburg, Zurich, and the Transfer of Preachers during the Schmalkaldic War, in: Central European History 42 (2009), 595-619.
Close, Christopher W., Estate Solidarity and Empire: Charlres V's Failed Attempt to Revive the Swabian League, in: Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 104 (2013), 134-157.
Close, Christopher W., Urban Magistrates, Religious Reform, and the Politics of Alliance in the Low Countries and Southern Germany after the Peace of Augsburg, in: Dingel, Irene - Lotz-Heumann, Ute - Hofmann, Andrea (eds.), Entfaltung und zeitgenössische Wirkung der Reformation im europäischen Kontext, Gütersloh 2015, 154-172.
Close, Christopher W., The Mindelaltheim affair: High Justice, ius reformandi, and the Rural Reformation in Eastern Swabia (1542-46), in: The Sixteenth Century Journal 38 (2007), 371-392.
Close, Christopher W., The Urban Reformation in Donauwörth, in: Ibid. (ed.), The negotiated Reformation. Imperial cities and the politics of urban reform, 1525-1550, Cambridge etc. 2009, 110-143.
Close, Christopher W., The Urban Reformation in Kaufbeuren, in: Ibid. (ed.), The negotiated Reformation. Imperial cities and the politics of urban reform, 1525-1550, Cambridge etc. 2009, 144-178.
Close, Christopher W., Urban Magistrates, Regional Reform, and the Politics of Alliance in The Low Countries and Southern Germany after the Peace of Augsburg, in: Dingel, Irene – Lotz-Heumann, Ute (eds.), Entfaltung und zeitgenössische Wirkung der Reformation im europäischen Kontext (Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte 216), Gütersloh 2015, 154-172.
Close, Christopher W., Zurich, Augsburg, and the Transfer of Preachers during the Schmalkaldic War, in: Central European History 42 (2009), 595-619.
Creasman, Allyson F., Censorship and Civic Order in Reformation Germany, 1517-1648: 'Printed Poison & Evil Talk', Farnham etc. 2012.
Creasman, Allyson F., The Virgin Mary against the Jews: Anti-Jewish Polemic in the Pilgrimage to the Schöne Maria of Regensburg 1519–25, in: The Sixteenth Century Journal 33 (2002), 963-980.
Crook, David W., Orlando di Lasso's Imitation Magnificats for Counter Reformation Munich, Princeton / NJ 1994.
Cuneo, Pia F., Art and Power in Augsburg: The Art Production of Jörg Breu the Elder (ca. 1475-1536), PhD. Nortwestern University 1991.
Cuneo, Pia F., Art and Politics in Early Modern Germany: Jörg Breu the Elder and the Fashioning of Political Identity, ca. 1475-1536 (Studies in medieval and Reformation thought 67), Leiden 1998.
Cuneo, Pia F., Jörg Breu the Elder's "Death of Lucretia": History, Sexuality, and the State, in: Caroll, Jane L. - Stewart, Alison G. (ed.), Saints, Sinners, and Sisters: Gender and Northern art in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Burlington 2010, 26-43.
Cuneo, Pia F., Propriety, Property, and Politics: Jörg Breu the Elder and Issues of Iconoclasm in Reformation Augsburg, in: German History 14 (1996), 1-20.
Diemling, Maria, Anthonius Margaritha and his „Der Gantz Judisch Glaub“, in: Bell, Dean Phillip - Burnett, Stephen G. (eds.), Jews, Judaism and the Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Germany (Studies in Central European Histories), Boston / Leiden 2006, 303–333.
Dixon, C. Scott, Popular Beliefs and the Reformation in Brandenburg-Ansbach, in: Scribner, Bob et al. (ed.), Popular Religion in Germany and Central Europe 1400-1800, Basingstoke etc. 1996, 119-139.
Dixon, C. Scott, The German Reformation and the Territorial City: Reform Initiatives in Schwabach, 1523-1527, in: German History 14 (1996), 123-140.
Dixon, C. Scott, The Imperial Cities and the Politics of Reformation, in: Evans, Richard J. – Schaich, Michael – Wilson, Peter H. (eds.), The Holy Roman Empire 1495-1806, Oxford 2011, 139-164.
Dixon, C. Scott, The Reformation and Parish Morality in Brandenburg-Ansbach-Kulmbach, in: Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 87 (1996), 255-286.
Dixon, C. Scott, The Reformation and Rural Society: The Parishes of Brandenburg-Ansbach-Kulmbach, 1528-1603 (Cambridge studies in early modern history), Cambridge etc. 2002.
Dixon, C. Scott, Urban Order and Religious Coexistence in the German Imperial City: Augsburg and Donauwörth, 1548-1608, in: Central European History 40 (2007), 1-33.
Dueck, Abe J., Religion and Temporal Authority in the Reformation: The Controversy among the Protestants Prior to the Peace of Nuremberg, 1532, in: The Sixteenth Century Journal 13 (1982), 55-74.
Dunwoody, Sean F., Civic Peace as a Spatial Practice. Calming Confessional Tensions in Augsburg, 1547-1600, in: Stock, Markus - Vöhringer, Nicola (eds.), Spatial Practices Medieval / Modern (Transatlantische Studien zu Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit 6), Göttingen 2014, 207-240.
Eberhardt Bate, Heidi, Portrait and Pageantry: New Idioms in the Interaction between City and Empire in Sixteenth-Century Nuremberg, in: Ocker, Christopher et al. (eds.), Politics and Reformations. Communities, Polities, Nations, and Empires. Essays in Honor of Thomas A. Brady, Jr., Leiden / Boston 2007, 121-142.
Eichberger, Dagmar - Zika, Charles (ed.), Dürer and his Culture, Cambridge etc. 2005.
Enenkel, Karl A., The Invention of the Emblem Book and the Transmission of Knowledge, ca. 1510-1610, Leiden/Boston 2019. [Johann von Schwarzenberg]
Fisher, Gary, The Munich Kapelle of Orlando di Lasso 1563-1594. A Model for Renaissance Choral Performance Practice, Diss. Oklahoma University 1987.
Freedman, Richard, From Munich to Paris: Orlando di Lasso, Adrian le Roy, and Listeners at the Royal Court of France, in: Göllner, Theodor (ed.), Die Münchner Hofkapelle des 16. Jahrhunderts im europäischen Kontext (Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften - Philosophisch-Historische Klasse, Abhandlungen N.F. 128), München 2006, 144-159.
Gasch, Stefan - Tröster, Sonja - Lodes, Birgit (eds.), Ludwig Senfl (c. 1490-1543). A Catalogue raisonné of the Works and Sources, 2 Vol., Turnhout 2019.
Gates, Jann W., The Formulation of City Council Policy and the Introduction of the Protestant Reformation in Nuremberg 1524-1525, PhD. Columbus/Ohio 1975.
Graser, Helmut - Tlusty, B. Ann, Layers of Literacy in a Sixteenth-Century Case of Fraud, in: Plummer, Majorie Elizabeth - Midelforth, H.C. Erik (ed.), Ideas and Cultural Margins in Early Modern Germany, Burlington 2009, 31-47.
Häberlein, Mark, Apprentices, Sojourners, Expatriates: Southern German Merchants in European Cities, c. 1450–1650, in: Antunes, Cátia - Bethencourt, Francisco (eds.), Merchant Cultures. A Global Approach to Spaces, Representations and World of Trade, 1500–1800, Leiden/Boston 2022, 231-250.
Häberlein, Mark, Atlantic Sugar and Southern German Merchant Capital in the Sixteenth Century, in: Lachenicht, Susanne (ed.), Europeans Engaging the Atlantic: Knowledge and Trade 1500 - 1800, Frankfurt am Main etc. 2014, 47-71.
Häberlein, Mark, Connected Histories: South German Merchants and Portuguese Expansion in the Sixteenth Century, in: RiMe. Rivista dell’Istituto di Storia dell’Europa Mediterranea 9 (2021), 35-53.
Häberlein, Mark, Economy and Confession: The Business Practices of Augsburg Merchant Companies in the Reformation Era, in: Revue de l’histoire des réligions 237 (2020), 627-646.
Häberlein, Mark, Merchants as Bibliophiles. The Fuggers of Augsburg and their Libraries in the Sixteenth Centuries, in: Brooker, T. Kimball (ed.), International Association of Bibliophiles: Transactions. 28th Congress, Edinburgh 2019, 135-159.
Häberlein, Mark, Merchant's Bankruptcies, Economic Development and Social Relations in German Cities during the Long 16th Century, in: Safley, Thomas Max (ed.), The History of Bankruptcy. Economic, Social and Cultural Implications in Early Modern Europe, London etc. 2013, 17-33.
Häberlein, Mark, The Fuggers of Augsburg: Pursuing Wealth and Honor in Renaissance Germany (Studies in early modern German history), Charlottesville 2012.
Hammond, Mitchell, From Pilgrims to Patients: Care for the Sick in Sixteenth-Century Augsburg, in: Gilomen, Hans Jörg et al. (eds.), Von der Barmherzigkeit zur Sozialversicherung (Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte 18), Zürich 2001, 59-71.
Hanß, Stefan, Timing the Self in Sixteenth-Century Augsburg: Veit Konrad Schwarz (1541–1561), in: German History 35 (2017), 495-524.
Harreld, Donald J., High Germans in the Low Countries: German Merchants and Commerce in Golden Age Antwerp (The Northern World 14), Leiden / Boston 2004.
Harrington, Joel F., The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century, New York 2013. [Nürnberg]
Head, Randolph C., Early Modern Inventories: Habsburg Austria and Würzburg, in: ibid. (ed.), Making Archives in Early Modern Europe: Proof, Information, and Political Record-keeping, 1400-1700, Cambridge 2019, 159-182.
Herre, Franz, The Life and Times of the Fuggers, Augsburg 2009.
Horst, Thomas, The Voyage of the Bavarian Explorer Balthasar Sprenger to India (1505/1506) at the Turning Point between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Times: His Travelogue and the Contemporary Cartography as Historical Sources, in: Billion, Philipp et al. (eds.), Weltbilder im Mittelalter / Perceptions of the World in the Middle Ages, Bonn 2009, 167-197.
Ingersoll, Catharine, Hans Wertinger in Context: Art, Politics, and Humanism at the Court of Ludwig X, Duke of Bavaria, PhD. Austin/Texas 2014.
Ingersoll, Catharine, The Battle of Wenzenbach as a Pictorial Subject at the Habsburg and Wittelsbach Courts, in: Ibid. - McCusker, Alisa - Weiss, Jessica (eds.), Imagery and Ingenuity in Early Modern Europe. Essays in Honor of Jeffrey Chipps Smith, Turnhout 2018, 181-190.
Jansen, Dirk Jakob, Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court. The Antique as Innovation, 2 Vol., Leiden / Boston 2019.
Johnson, Christine R., The Image of America in Sixteenth-Century Augsburg, in: Gassert, Philipp (ed.), Augsburg und Amerika. Aneignungen und globale Verflechtungen in einer Stadt (Documenta Augustana 24), Augsburg 2013, 39-56.
Kaltwasser, Franz Georg, The Common Roots of Library and Museum in the Sixteenth Century: the Example of Munich, in: Library History 20 (2004), 163-181.
Katritzky, M. A., How did the Commedia dell'arte cross the Alps to Bavaria? in: Theatre Research International 16 (1991), 201-215.
Kinser, Samuel, Presentation and Representation: Carnival at Nuremberg, 1450-1550, in: Representations 13 (1986), 1-33.
Kinzelbach, Annemarie, Hospitals, Medicine, and Society: Southern German Imperial Towns in the Sixteenth Century, in: Renaissance Studies 15 (2001), 217-228.
Kirch, Lisa, Looking at Prints in Renaissance Germany: The Court of Ottheinrich, in: Gáldy, Andrea - Heudecker, Sylvia (eds.), Collecting Prints and Drawings, Newcastle upon Tyne 2018, 72-86.
Kirwan, Richard, Empowerment and Representation at the University in Early Modern Germany: Helmstedt and Würzburg, 1576-1634 (Wolfenbütteler Arbeiten zur Barockforschung 46), Wiesbaden 2009.
Kirwan, Richard, Negotiating the Social Landscape: The Uses of Academic Space in Early Modern Germany, in: Friedrich, Karin (ed.), Die Erschließung des Raumes: Konstruktion, Imagination und Darstellung von Räumen und Grenzen im Barockzeitalter, Vol. II, Wiesbaden 2014, 521-544.
Kirwan, Richard, The Conversion of Jacob Reihing: Academic Controversy and the Professorial Ideal in Confessional Germany, in: German History 36 (2018), 1-20.
Knauer, Georg Nikolaus, The Earliest Vocabulary of Romani Words (c. 1515) in the Collectanea of Johannes ex Grafing, a Student of Johannes Reuchlin and Conrad Celtis, in: Romani Studies 19 (2010), 1-15.
Kokole, Metoda, The Musical Repertoire Cultivated on the Territory of Modern Slovenia (1567-c. 1620) and its Possible Connections with the Court Chapel in Munich, in: Göllner, Theodor (ed.), Die Münchner Hofkapelle des 16. Jahrhunderts im europäischen Kontext (Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften - Philosophisch-Historische Klasse, Abhandlungen N.F. 128), München 2006, 171-189.
Künast, Hans Jörg, Augsburg's Role in the German Book Trade in the First Half of the Sixteenth Century, in: Walsby, Malcom (ed.), The Book Triumphant: Print in Transition in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Leiden etc. 2011, 320-333.
Kuhn, Christian, Generational Discourse and Images of Urban Youth in Private Letters: The Nuremberg Tucher Family around 1550, in: Cochelin, Isabelle et al. (ed.), Medieval Life Cycles (International Medieval Research 18), Turnhout 2013, 211-238.
Kuhn, Christian, Urban Laughter as a "Counter-Public" sphere in Augsburg: The Case of the City Mayor, Jakob Herbrot (1490/95-1564), in: International Review of Social History 52 (2007), 77-93.
Lederer, David, Welfare Land: Johannes Eberlin von Günzburg and the Reformation of Folly, in: Plummer, Marjorie E. (ed.), Ideas and Cultural Margins in Early Modern Germany. Essays in Honor of H.C. Erik Midelfort, Burlington/Vt. 2009, 165-181.
Limouze, Dorothy, From Bavaria to the Veneto, and Return: the Sadelers, Jacopo Bassano, and Italian art in Munich, in: Bukovinská, Beket - Konečný, Lubomír (eds.), München-Prag um 1600 (Studia Rudolphina, Sonderheft), Praha 2009, 117-124.
Lodes, Birgit, Ludwig Senfl and the Munich Choirbooks. The Emperor´s or the Duke´s? in: Göllner, Theodor (ed.), Die Münchner Hofkapelle des 16. Jahrhunderts im europäischen Kontext (Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften - Philosophisch-Historische Klasse, Abhandlungen N.F. 128), München 2006, 224-233.
Matheson, Peter, Breaking the Silence: Women, Censorship, and the Reformation, in: Sixteenth Century Journal 27 (1996), 97-109 [Argula von Grumbach]
Mathew, Kuzhippalli Skaria, Indo-Portuguese trade and the Fuggers of Germany: sixteenth century, New Dehli 1997.
Maxwell, Susan, A Marriage Commemorated in the Stairway of Fools, in: Sixteenth Century Journal 36 (2005), 717-741.
Maxwell, Susan, Lazy Foreigners and Indignant Locals: Influence and Rivalry in Bavarian Court Patronage, in: Eichberger, Dagmar - Lorentz, Philip (eds.), The artist between Court and City (1300–1600) = L'artiste entre la cour et la ville = Der Künstler zwischen Hof und Stadt, Petersberg 2017, 280-291.
Maxwell, Susan, The Court Art of Friedrich Sustris. Patronage in Late Renaissance Bavaria, Farnham etc. 2011.
Maxwell, Susan, The Pursuit of Art and Pleasure in the Secret Grotto of Wilhelm V of Bavaria, in: Renaissance Quarterly 61 (2008), 414-463.
McCusker, Alisa, Hans Schwarz and Hans Holbein the Elder: Training a Portraitist in Early Sixteenth-Century Augsburg, in: Ingersoll, Catharine - McCusker, Alisa - Weiss, Jessica (eds.), Imagery and Ingenuity in Early Modern Europe. Essays in Honor of Jeffrey Chipps Smith, Turnhout 2018, 109-120.
Michel, Eva, "For praise and eternal memory": Albrecht Altdorfer's "Triumphal Procession" for Emperor Maximilian I, in: Ibid. - Hollegger, Manfred (eds.), Emperor Maximilian I and the Age of Dürer, München etc. 2012, 49-65.
Miller, Doug, The Army of the Swabian League (From Retinue to Regiment 3), Solihull 2019.
Mobley, Susan Spruell, Confessionalizing the Curriculum: The Faculties of Arts and Theology at the Universities of Tübingen and Ingolstadt in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century, PhD. University of Wisconsin 1998.
Morrall, Andrew, Urban Craftsmen and the Courts in Sixteenth-Century Germany, in: Eichberger, Dagmar - Lorentz, Philippe - Tacke, Andreas (ed.), The Artist between Court and City, Petersberg 2017, 220-245. [Augsburg, Nürnberg]
Murphy, Hannah, A New Order of Medicine. The Rise of Physicians in Reformation Nuremberg, Pittsburgh 2019.
Nagel, Elke, Town Portraiture in the Renaissance Period. The Sandtner Models and Town Models in the Context of Humanistic Communities and Empirical Discovery, in: Frommel, Sabine (ed.), Les maquettes d’architecture: fonction et évolution d’un instrument de conception et realization (Itinéraires percorsi 3), Paris 2015, 297-307.
Newman, Jane O., Pastoral Conventions: Poetry, language, and Thought in Seventeenth-Century Nuremberg, Baltimore etc. 1990.
Ninness, Richard J., Between Opposition and Collaboration. Nobles, Bishops, and the German Reformations in the Prince-Bishopric of Bamberg, 1555-1619 (Studies in Central European histories 53), Leiden 2011.
Ninness, Richard J., Confessional Conflict and Cooperation in Early Modern Germany: The Catholic Prince-Bishopric of Bamberg and its Protestant Aristocracy (1555-1619), PhD. Philadelphia 2006.
Ninness, Richard J., Imperial Knights and Confessional Cooperation in the Prince-Bishopric of Bamberg (1555-1648), in: Kaufmann, Thomas et al. (eds.), Frühneuzeitliche Konfessionskulturen (Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte 207), Gütersloh 2008, 49-67.
Ninness, Richard J., Protestants as Agents of the Counter-Reformation in the Prince-Bishopric of Bamberg, in: The Sixteenth Century Journal 40 (2009), 699-720.
Pilaski Kaliardos, Katharina, Prodigious Relics: Confessional Argument and the Sacralization of the Territory in the Munich Kunstkammer of Albrecht V, in: Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 102 (2011), 267-295.
Pilaski Kaliardos, Katharina, The Munich Kunstkammer: Art, Nature, and the Representation of Knowledge in Courtly Contexts (Spätmittelalter, Humanismus, Reformation 73), Tübingen 2013.
Overbeeke, Noes M., Cardinal Otto Truchsess von Waldburg and his Role as Art Dealer for Albrecht V. of Bavaria, in: Journal of the History of Collections 6 (1994), 173-197.
Owens, Jessie Ann, Cipriano de Rore's New Year's Gift for Albrecht V of Bavaria: A New Interpretation, in: Göllner, Theodor (ed.), Die Münchner Hofkapelle des 16. Jahrhunderts im europäischen Kontext (Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften - Philosophisch-Historische Klasse, Abhandlungen N.F. 128), München 2006, 244-273.
Ozment, Steven, The Private Life of an Early Modern Teenager. A Nuremberg Lutheran Visits Catholic Louvain (1577), in: Journal of Family History 20 (1996), 22-43.
Price, David, Albrecht Dürer’s Renaissance: Humanism, Reformation and the Art of Faith, Ann Arbor ²2004.
Rainer, Bernhard, La quale fu cantata molto bene – The Performances of Alessandro Striggios’ Monumental 40-Part Compositions in Munich 1567/68, in: Mirabilia Journal 33 (2021), 198-221.
Rice, Edward L, The Influence of the Reformation on Nuremberg's Provisions for Social Welfare, 1521-1528, PhD. Ohio State University 1975.
Rittgers, Ronald K., Private Confession and the Lutheranization of Sixteenth-Century Nördlingen, in: Sixteenth Century Journal 36 (2005), 1063-1085.
Roeck, Bernd, Venice and Germany. Commercial Contacts and Intellectual Inspirations, in: Aikema, Bernard - Brown, Beverly Louise (eds.), Renaissance Venice and the North: Crosscurrents in the Time of Bellini, Dürer, and Titian, New York 2000, 44-55.
Roper, Lyndal, Discipline and Respectability: Prostitution and the Reformation in Augsburg, in: History Workshop 19 (1985), 3-28.
Roper, Lyndal, Mothers of Debauchery: Procuresses in Reformation Augsburg, in: German History 6 (1988), 1-19.
Roper, Lyndal, The Holy Household. Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg (Oxford studies of history), Oxford 1989.
Roper, Lyndal, Will and Honour: Sex, Words and Power in Augsburg Criminal Trials, in: Radical History Review 43 (1989), 45-71.
Safley, Thomas Max, After the fall: The Dynamics of Social Death and Rebirth in the Wake of the Höchstetter Bankruptcy, 1529 to 1586, in: Tatlock, Lynne (ed.), Enduring Loss in Early Modern Germany (Studies in central European histories 50), Leiden etc. 2010, 415-434.
Safley, Thomas Max, Family Firms and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe: The Business, Bankruptcy and Resilience of the Höchstetters of Augsburg (Routledge explorations in economic history), London / New York 2020.
Safley, Thomas Max, Matheus Miller's Memoir. A Merchant's life in the Seventeenth Century (Early modern history: Society and culture), Basingstoke etc. 2000.
Safley, Thomas Max, The Höchstetter Bankruptcy of 1529 and its Relationship to the European Quicksilver Market, in: Rössner, Philipp Robinson (eds.), Cities, Coins, Commerce (Studien zur Gewerbe- und Handelsgeschichte der vorindustriellen Zeit 31), Stuttgart 2012, 149-166.
Sargent, Steven D., Saints' Cults and Naming Patterns in Bavaria, 1400-1600, in: Catholic Historical Review 76 (1990), 673-697.
Schier, Volker - Schleif, Corine, Seeing and Singing, Touching and Tasting the Holy Lance: The Power and Politics of Embodied Religious Experiences in Nuremberg, 1424-1524, in: Petersen, Nils Holger (ed.), Signs of Change. Transformations of Christian Traditions and their Representation in the Arts, 1000-2000 (Textxet: Studies in Comparative Literature 43), Amsterdam etc. 2004, 401-426.
Schier, Volker - Schleif, Corine, Views and Voices From Within: Sister Katerina Lemmel On the Glazing of the Cloister at Maria Mai, in: Becksmann, Rüdiger (ed.), Glasmalerei im Kontext - Bildprogramme und Raumfunktionen, Akten des XXII. internationalen Colloquiums des Corpus Vitrearum, Nürnberg, 29. August - 1. September 2004 (Anzeiger des Germanischen Nationalmuseums, wissenschaftlicher Beiband 25), Nürnberg 2005, 211-228.
Schleif, Corine, Forgotten Roles of Women as Donors: Sister Katerina Lemmel’s Negotiated Exchanges in the Care for the Here and the Hereafter, in: Bueren, Truus van (ed.), Care for the Here and the Hereafter. Memoria, Art and Ritual in the Middle Ages (Museums at the Crossroads 13), Turnhout 2005, 137-154.
Schleif, Corine, Nicodemus and Sculptors: Self-Reflexivity in Works by Adam Kraft and Tilman Riemenschneider, in: The Art Bulletin 75 (1993), 599-626.
Schleif, Corine, The Many Wives of Adam Kraft. Early Modern Workshop Wives in Legal Documents, Art-Historical Scholarship and Historical Fiction, in: Georges-Bloch-Jahrbuch des Kunstgeschichtlichen Seminars der Universität Zürich 5 (1998), 61-74.
Schleif, Corine, The Proper Attitude Toward Death: Windowpanes Designed for the House of Canon Sixtus Tucher, in: The Art Bulletin 69 (1987), 587-603.
Schleif, Corine - Schier, Volker (eds.), Katerina's Windows: Donation and Devotion, Art and Music, as Heard and Seen through the Writings of a Birgittine Nun, University Park/PA 2009. [Katerina Lemmel in Nuremberg and Monastery of Maihingen]
Seebaß, Gottfried, The Importance of the Imperial City of Nuremberg in the Reformation, in: Kirk, James (ed.), Humanism and Reform. The Church in Europe, England, and Scotland, 1400-1643. Essays in honour of James K. Cameron (Studies in Church History, Subsidia 8), 113-127.
Silver, Larry, Re-Christening Altdorfer´s Regensburg, in: Ingersoll, Catharine - McCusker, Alisa - Weiss, Jessica (eds.), Imagery and Ingenuity in Early Modern Europe. Essays in Honor of Jeffrey Chipps Smith, Turnhout 2018, 43-54.
Silver, Larry (ed.), The Essential Dürer, Philadelphia 2010.
Smith, Jeffrey, Albrecht Dürer and Eastern Europe, in: Ars 42 (2009), 5-22.
Smith, Jeffrey, Netherlandish Artists and Art in Renaissance Nuremberg, in: Simiolus 20 (1991), 153-167.
Smith, Jeffrey, Nuremberg. A Renaissance City, 1500-1618, Austin 1983.
Smith, Jeffrey, The 2010 Josephine Waters Bennett lecture: Albrecht Dürer as Collector, in: Renaissance Quarterly 61 (2011), 1-49.
Smith, William Bradford, Anticlericalism in Bamberg on the Eve of the Peasants' War, in: Van Horn Melton, James (ed.), Cultures of Communication from Reformation to Enlightenment, Aldershot 2002, 48-65.
Smith, William Bradford, Friedrich Förner, the Catholic Reformation, and Witch-Hunting in Bamberg, in: The Sixteenth Century Journal 36 (2005), 115-128.
Smith, William Bradford, Lutheran Resistance to the Imperial Interim in Hesse and Kulmbach, in: Lutheran Quarterly 19 (2005), 249-275.
Smith, William Bradford, Reformation and the German territorial state: Upper Franconia, 1300-1630 (Changing perspectives on early modern Europe 8), Rochester etc. 2008.
Smoller, Laura A., Playing Cards and Popular Culture in Sixteenth-Century Nuremberg, in: Sixteenth Century Journal 17 (1986), 183-214.
Sreenivasan, Govind Paul, The Social Origins of the Peasants´ War of 1525 in Upper Swabia, in: Past & Present 171 (2001), 30-65.
Stein, Claudia, Images and Meaning-Making in a World of Resemblance: The Bavarian-Saxon Kidney Stone Affair of 1580, in: European History Quarterly 43 (2013), 205-234.
Stewart, Alison G., Taverns in Nuremberg Prints at the Time of the German Reformation, in: Kümin, Beat et al. (ed.), The World of the Tavern, Aldershot 2002, 95-115.
Stewart, Alison G., The Beginning of Peasant Festival Imagery: Sebald Beham and the Reform of Festivals in Nuremberg, in: Ibid. (ed.), Before Bruegel, Aldershot etc. 2008, 15-57.
Steward, Alison G. - Roberts, Nicole, A New Hand-Coloured Impression of Sebald Beham's „Military Display in Honor of the Visit of Emperor Charles V to Munich”, in: Oberbayerisches Archiv 140 (2016), 23-38.
Stievermann, Dieter, Southern German Courts around 1500, in: Asch, Ronald G. - Birke, Adolf M. (eds.), Princes, Patronage and the Nobility: The Court at the Beginning of the Modern Age c.1450-1650 (Studies of German Historical Institute London), Oxford 1991, 157-172.
Strauss, Gerald, Nuremberg in the Sixteenth Century. City Politics and Life between Middle Ages and Modern Times, Bloomington 1976.
Thomas, Andrew L., The Apocalypse in Reformation Nuremberg: Jews and Turks in Andreas Osiander’s World, Ann Arbor 2022.
Thomas, Andrew L., Wittelsbachs, Habsburgs, and Hohenzollerns: Gender, Kinship, and Confession in the Funeral Literature for Susanna of Bavaria, in: Austrian History Yearbook 48 (2017), 131-144.
Trüter, Johannes, Johannes Eck (1486-1543). Academic Career and Self-Fashioning, in: Kirwan, Richard (ed.), Scholary Self-Fashioning and Community in the Early Modern University, Farnham etc. 2013, 59-78.
Vice, Roy L., Ehrenfried Kumpf: Karlstadt's Patron and Peasants' War Rebel, in: Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 86 (1995), 153-174.
Vice, Roy L., Iconoclasm in Rothenburg ob der Tauber in 1525, in: Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 89 (1998), 55-78.
Vice, Roy L., The German Peasants' War of 1525 and its Aftermath in Rothenburg ob der Tauber and Würzburg, PhD. Chicago 1984.
Vice, Roy L., The Leadership and Structure of the Tauber Band during the Peasant's War in Franconia, in: Central European History 21 (1988), 175-195.
Vice, Roy L., The Politics of Blame in the Aftermath of the Peasants' War in Franconia: Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt and Rothenburg ob der Tauber, in: Borchardt, Karl et al. (ed.), Städte, Regionen, Vergangenheiten (Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte des Bistums und Hochstifts Würzburg 59), Würzburg 2003, 243-262.
Vice, Roy L., The Village Clergy near Rothenburg ob der Tauber and the Peasants' War, in: Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 82 (1991), 123-146.
Vice, Roy L., Vineyards, Vinedressers, and the Peasants' war in Franconia, in: Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 79 (1988), 138-157.
Wagner, Bettina, The Mutable Fortunes of a Fifteenth-Century Bibliophile: Hartmann Schedel, the Compiler of the Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493, in: Brooker, T. Kimball (ed.), International Association of Bibliophiles: Transactions. 28th Congress, Edinburgh 2019, 49-72.
Walton, Michael T., Anthonius Margaritha and the Jewish Faith. Jewish Life and Conversion in Sixteenth-Century Germany, Detroit 2012.
Wieland, Christian, German Aristocracies and Social Discipline. Noble Hierarchies, the State, and the Law in Sixteenth-Century Bavaria, in: Evans, Richard J. - Schaich, Michael - Wilson, Peter W. (ed.), The Holy Roman Empire 1495-1806 (Studies of the German Historical Institute London), Oxford etc. 2011, 263-281.
Wilkinson, Robert J., Orientalism, Aramaic, and Kabbalah in the Catholic Reformation: The First Printing of the Syriac New Testament, Boston 2007 [Chapter about Johann Albrecht Widmanstetter]
Wilson, Norman J., Implicit Meanings and Self-Representations in Official Correspondence and Accounting: Regensburg, 1467-1561, PhD. Los Angeles 1992.
Wolfart, Johannes C., Religion, Government and Political Culture in Early Modern Germany: Lindau, 1520-1628 (Early modern history: society and culture), Basingstoke 2002.
Wolfart, Johannes C., Sex, Lies and Manuscript. On the "Castration" of the Lindau archives, in: Crane, Mark et al. (eds.), Shell Games. Studies in Scams, Frauds, and Deceits (1300-1650), Toronto 2004, 271-285.
Wood, Christopher S., Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape, London ²2014.
Zapalac, Kristin E., In His Image and Likeness: Political Iconography and Religious Change in Regensburg, 1500-1600, Ithaca 1990.
Zelinsky Hanson, Michele, Religious Identity in an Early Reformation Community: Augsburg, 1517 to 1555, Leiden / Boston 2009.
Zika, Charles, Nuremberg. The City and its Culture in the Early Sixteenth Century, in: Zdanowicz, Irena (ed.), Albrecht Dürer in the Collection of the National Gallery of Victoria (The Robert Raynor Publications in Prints and Drawings 5), Melbourne 1994, 28-44.
Zmora, Hillay, Princely State-Making and the "Crisis of the Aristocracy" in Late Medieval Germany, in: Past and Present 153 (1996), 37-63.
Zmora, Hillay, State and Nobility in Early Modern Germany: the Knightly Feud in Franconia, 1440-1567 (Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History), Cambridge etc. 1997.
Zmora, Hillay, The Princely State and the Noble Family: Conflict and Co-operation in the Margraviates Ansbach-Kulmbach in the Fifteetnth and Sixteenth Century, in: The Historical Journal 49 (2006), 1-21.
Zophy, Jonathan, Patriarchal Politics and Christoph Kress 1484-1535 of Nuremberg (Studies in German thought and history 14), Lewiston etc. 1992.

17^th and 18^th Centuries: Counter-Reformation, Thirty Years’ War, and Absolutism

Anderson, Alison D., On the Verge of War: International Relations and the Jülich-Kleve Succession Crisis (1609-1614) (Studies in Central European histories), Boston 1999.
Bangert, Anette, Elector Ferdinand Maria of Bavaria. Bavarian imperial politics during the interregnum 1657-58, München 2008.
Beisel, David R., The Bavarian nobility in the seventeenth century, PhD. New York 1969.
Best, Thomas W., Jacob Bidermann (Twayne's world authors series 314), New York 1975.
Blickle, Renate, Peasant Protest and the Language of Women´s petitions: Christina Vend´s Supplications of 1629, in: Rublack, Ulrike (ed.), Gender in Early Modern History, Cambridge 2002, 177-199.
Blom, Frans, Christoph and Andreas Arnold and England: The Travels and Book-Collections of two Seventeenth-Century Nurembergers (Nürnberger Werkstücke zur Stadt- und Landesgeschichte 34), Nürnberg 1982.
Calvi, Giulia, Connected Courts. Violante Beatrice of Bavaria in Florence and Siena, in: Benadusi, Giovanna - Brown, Judith C. (eds.), Medici Women. The Making of a Dynasty in Grand Ducal Tuscany, Toronto 2015, 302-321.
Cole, Richard Glenn, What did the Lutheran Reformation Look Like a Hundred Years after Martin Luther? Community and Culture in Ansbach, Germany in the Seventeenth Century, Lewiston 2014.
Davis, Margaret Daly, Munich in 1663. Notes from a "Bildungsreise" through Germany, in: Augustyn, Wolfgang - Diemer, Peter - Lauterbach, Iris (ed.), Rondo: Beiträge für Peter Diemer zum 65. Geburtstag (Veröffentlichungen des Zentralinstituts für Kunstgeschichte 25), München 2010, 131-144.
Dugan, Eileen T., Images of Marriage and Family Life in Nördlingen: Moral Preaching and Devotional Literature 1589-1712, PhD. Ohio State University 1987.
Dugan, Eileen T., The Funeral Sermon as a Key to Familial Values in Early Modern Nördlingen, in: Sixteenth Century Journal 22 (1989), 631-645.
Engle, Roland Gene, Franz Lang and the Jesuit Stage, PhD. University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) 1968.
Falkner, James, Blenheim 1704, Stroud 2015.
Fisher, Alexander J., A Musical Dialogue in Bronze: Gregor Aichinger's Lacrumae (1604) and Hans Reichle's Crucifixion Group for the Basilica of SS. Ulrich and Afra in Augsburg, in: Smith, Jeffrey Chipps (ed.), Visual Acuity and the Arts of Communication in Early Modern Germany, Farnham / Burlington 2014, 119-141.
Fisher, Alexander J., “Alls wie mann inn krieg pflegt zue thuen”. Music and Catholic Processions in Counter-Reformation Augsburg, in: Clark, Glenn et al. (ed.), City Limits: Perspectives on the Historical European City, Montréal 2010, 254-272.
Fisher, Alexander J., Celestial Sirens and Nightingales: Change and Assimilation in the Munich Anthologies of Georg Victorinus, in: Journal of Seventeenth Century Music 14 (2008), (without page numbers).
Fisher, Alexander J., Jonas Losch and Musical Culture in Late Sixteenth-Century Augsburg, in: Zeitschrift des Historischen Vereins für Schwaben 109 (2017), 85-95.
Fisher, Alexander J., ‘Mit singen und klingen’: Urban Processional Culture and the Soundscapes of Post-Reformation Germany, in: Filippi, Daniele V. - Noone, Michael (eds.), Listening to Early Modern Catholicism. Perspectives from Musicology, Leiden / Boston 2017, 187-203.
Fisher, Alexander J., Music, Piety, and Propaganda. The Soundscapes of Counter-Reformation Bavaria, Oxford u.a. 2014.
Fisher, Alexander J., Music and Religious Identity in Counter-Reformation Augsburg 1580-1630, Burlington/Vt. 2003.
Fisher, Alexander J., Music and the Jesuit “Way of Proceeding” in the German Counter-Reformation, in: Journal of Jesuit Studies 3 (2016), 377-399.
Fisher, Alexander J., Musicalische Friedens-Freud: The Westphalian Peace and Music in Protestant Nuremberg, in: Scholz Williams, Gerhild - Haude, Sigrun - Schneider, Christian (eds.), Rethinking Europe: War and Peace in the Early Modern German Lands, Leiden 2019, 277-299.
Fisher, Alexander J., Per mia particolare devotione: Orlando di Lasso’s Lagrime di San Pietro and Jesuit Spirituality in Counter-Reformation Munich, in: Journal of the Royal Musical Association 2007, 1-54.
Fisher, Aleander J., Reworking the Confessional Soundscape in the German Counter-Reformation, in: Basler Jahrbuch für historische Musikpraxis 38 (2014), 103-114.
Fisher, Alexander J., Themes of Exile and (Re-)Enclosure in Music for the Franciscan Convents of Counter-Reformation Munich during the Thirty Years War, in: Tatlock, Lynee (ed.), Enduring Loss in Early Modern Germany: Cross Disciplinary Perspectives, Leiden 2010, 281-305.
Fisher, Alexander J., Thesaurus Litaniarum: The Symbolism and Practice of Musical Litanies in Counter-Reformation Germany, in: Early Music History (2015), 45-95 [Jesuits in Munich]
Forster, Marc R., Debating the Meaning of Pilgrimage: Maria Steinbach 1733, in: van Horn Melton, James (ed.), Cultures of Communication from Reformation to Enlightenment. Constructing Publics in the Early Modern German Lands (St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History), Burlington/Vt. 2002, 93-103.
Friedrich, Susanne, The Moment(um) for a Declaration of Imperial War. The Imperial Diet and the Beginning of the War of Spanish Succession, in: Pohlig, Matthias - Schaich, Michael (eds.), The War of the Spanish Succession. New Perspectives (Studies of the German Historical Institute London), Oxford 2018, 159-186.
Friedrichs, Christopher R., Urban Society in an Age of War: Nördlingen 1580-1720, Princeton 1979.
Gaeddert, Dale Albert, The Franco-Bavarian alliance during the War of the Spanish Succession, Diss. Ohio State University 1969.
Garland, John L., Irish Officers in the Bavarian Service during the War of Spanish Succession, in: Irish Sword: Journal of the Military History Society of Ireland 56 (1981), 240-255.
Göttler, Christine, ‘Sacred Woods’: Performing Solitude at the Court of Duke Wilhelm V of Bavaria, in: Enenkel, Karl A.E. - ibid. (eds.), Solitudo. Spaces, Places, and Times of Solitude in Late Medieval and Early Modern Cultures, Leiden / Boston 2018, 140-176.
Göttler, Christine, The Art of Solitude: Environments of Prayer at the Bavarian Court of Wilhelm V, in: Art History 40 (2017), 404-429.
Golding, Alfred S., A Baroque Theory of Acting and Playwriting as Symbolic Representation: Lang's "Essay on Stage Performance" (1727), in: Theatre Studies 21 (1974), 5–25.
Harries, Karsten, The Bavarian Rococo Church: Between Faith and Aestheticism, New Haven 1983.
Hattendorf, John B., English Grand Strategy and the Blenheim Campaign of 1704, in: International History Review 5 (1983), 3-19.
Haude, Sigrun, Coping with Life during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), Leiden / Boston 2021 [Focus on Bavaria]
Haude, Sigrun, Experiencing the Thirty Years War. Autobiographical Writings by Members of Religious Orders in Bavaria, in: Spinks, Jennifer - Zika, Charles (eds.), Disaster, Death and the Emotions in the Shadow of the Apocalypse, 1400-1700, London 2016, 135-153.
Haude, Sigrun, Social Control and Social Justice under Maximilian I of Bavaria (R. 1598-1651), in: Ocker, Christopher (ed.), Politics and Reformations. Communities, Polities, Nations, and Empires. Essays in honor of Thomas A. Brady (Studies in medieval and Reformation traditions 128), Leiden 2007, 423-439.
Haude, Sigrun, War - A Fortuitous Occasion for Social Disciplining and Political Centralization? The Case of Bavaria under Maximilian I, in: Mladek, Klaus (ed.), Police forces. A cultural history of an institution, New York 2007, 13-24.
Heisner, Beverly Faye, Giovanni Antonio Viscardi's Mariahilfkirche at Freystadt, PhD. University of Michigan 1970.
Hsia, Ronnie Po-Chia, Two Types of Politics. A Comparative Study of Jesuits at Courts in 17th Century Bavaria and France, in: Meinhardt, Matthias et al. (eds.), Religion, Macht, Politik. Hofgeistlichkeit im Europa der Frühen Neuzeit (1500-1800) (Wolfenbütteler Forschungen 137), Wiesbaden 2014, 249-266.
Jeggle, Christof, Coping with the Crisis: Italian Merchants in Seventeenth-Century Nuremberg, in: Bonoldi, Andrea (ed.), Merchants in Times of Crises (16th to mid-19th century) (Beiträge zur Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte 127), Stuttgart 2015, 51-78.
Johnson, Trevor, Defining the Confessional Frontier: Bavaria, the Upper Palatinate and Counter-Reformation "Historica Sacra", in: Ellis, Steven G. et al. (eds.), Frontiers and the Writing of History 1500-1850 (The formation of Europe 1), Hannover-Laatzen 2006, 151-166.
Johnson, Trevor, Holy Fabrications: The Catacomb Saints and the Counter-Reformation in Bavaria, in: The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 47 (1996), 274-297.
Johnson, Trevor, Magistrates, Madonnas, and Miracles: The Counter-Reformation in the Upper Palatinate, Farnham etc. 2009.
Kenworthy-Browne, Christina (ed.), Mary Ward (1585-1645): 'A Briefe Relation', with Autobiographical Fragments and a Selection of Letters (Catholic Record Society publications / Records series 81), Woobridge 2008.
Kis, Csongor, In the Right Place at the Right Time. Political Propaganda in the Archiepiscopal Palace of Würzburg, in: Baxter, Denise Amy - Martin, Meredith (eds.), Architectural Space in Eighteenth-Century Europe: Constructing Identities and Interiors, Farnham etc. 2010, 57-79.
Krems, Eva-Bettina, "Uxor fulget dignitate mariti". Eemale Art Patronage at the Wittelsbach Court in Munich, in: Frommel, Sabine - Dumas, Juliette (eds.), Bâtir au féminin? Traditions et stratégies en Europe et dans l'Empire ottoman (Itinéraires percorsi 2), Paris 2013, 47-58.
Leuschner, Eckhard, Propagating St. Michael in Munich: The New Jesuit Church and its Early Representations in the Light of International Visual Communications, in: Oy-Marra, Elisabeth – Remmert, Volker R. (eds.), Le monde est une peinture. Jesuitische Identität und die Rolle der Bilder (Beiträge zu den Historischen Kulturwissenschaften 7), Berlin 2011, 177-202.
Mason, Hugh J., „Salmonella Typhi“ and the Crown of Spain, in: Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 7 (1990), 31-52.
Maxwell, Susan, Artful Negotiator: Peter Paul Rubens' Intervention in the Cause of Catholic Bavaria, in: Scholz Williams, Gerhild - Haude, Sigrun - Schneider, Christian (eds.), Rethinking Europe: War and Peace in the Early Modern German Lands, Leiden / Boston 2019, 125-149.
Maxwell, Susan, Maximilian I of Bavaria. Patronage and Politics, in: Brink, Claudia - Jaeger, Susanne - Winzeler, Marius (eds.), Bellum & Artes: Central Europe in the Thirty Years’ War, Dresden 2021, 287-296.
Miller, James, "nothing else than fire and smoke": Bavaria, 1632, in: Ibid. (ed.), Swords for hire. The Scottish Mercenary, Edinburgh 2007, 169-185.
Newman, Jane O., Institutions in the Pastoral: The Nuremberg Pegnesischer Blumenorden (1644), PhD. Princeton 1983.
Newman, Jane O., Pastoral Conventions. Poetry, Language and Thought in seventeenth-century Nuremberg, Baltimore etc. 1990.
Noreen, Kirstin, Replicating the Icon of Santa Maria Maggiore: The Mater ter admirabilis and the Jesuits of Ingolstadt, in: Visual Resources: An International Journal of Documentation 24 (2008), 19-37.
Oba, Haruka, Using the Past for the Church's "Present" and "Future". The Remembrance of Catholic Japan in Drama and Art in the Southern German-Speaking Area, in: Schmale, Wolfgang - Romberg, Marion - Köstlbauer, Josef (ed.), The Language of Continent Allegories in Baroque Central Europe, Stuttgart 2016, 71-85.
Over, Berthold, From Munich to ‘Foreign’ Lands and Back Again.: Relocation of the Munich Court and Migration of Musicians (c. 1690-1715), in: zur Nieden, Gesa - Ibid. (eds.), Musicians' mobilities and music migrations in early modern Europe, Bielefeld 2016, 91-134.
Paas, John Roger, From Respected Guest to persona non grata: The Engraver and Broadsheet Publisher Peter Isselburg in Nuremberg, 1612 to 1622, in: German Life and Letters 48 (1995), 292-310.
Paas, John Roger, Joachim von Sandrart as Entrepreneur. The Months as Print Series with Verses, in: Ebert-Schifferer, Sybille - Mazzetti di Pietralata, Cecilia (eds.), Joachim von Sandrart: Ein europäischer Künstler und Theoretiker zwischen Italien und Deutschland. Akten des internationalen Studientages der Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rom, 3.-4. April 2006 (Römische Studien der Bibliotheca Hertziana 25), München 2009, 123-131.
Paas, John Roger, The Changing Landscape of the Competitive Nuremberg print trade: The Rise and Fall of Paulus Fürst (1608-1666), in: Kirwan, Richard et al. (eds.), Specialist Markets in the Early Modern Book World (Library of the written word 40), Leiden etc. 2015, 35-68.
Place, Richard, Bavaria and the Collapse of Louis XIV´s German Policy, 1687-1688, in: Journal of Modern History 49 (1977), 369-393.
Pursell, Brennan C., The Winter King. Frederick V of the Palatinate and the Coming of the Thirty Years' War, Aldershot 2003.
Reifsnyder, Kristen L., Encountering the Enemy: Two Women's Personal Narratives from Seventeenth-Century Germany, in: Daphnis 33 (2004), 267-284. [Klara Staiger]
Rowlands, Alison, Demonological Texts, Judicial Procedure, and the Spread of Ideas about Witchcraft in Early Modern Rothenburg ob der Tauber, in: Goodare, Julian - Voltmer, Rita - Willumsen, Liv Helene (eds.), Demonology and Witch-Hunting in Early Modern Europe, London / New York 2020, 208-232.
Rowlands, Alison, Father Confessors and Clerical Intervention in Witch-Trials in Seventeenth-Century Lutheran Germany: The case of Rothenburg, 1692, in: English Historical Review 131 (2016), 1010-1042.
Rowlands, Alison, Gender, Ungodly Parents and a Witch Family in Seventeenth-Century Germany, in: Past & Present 232 (2016), 45-86.
Rowlands, Alison, Identity, Memory, Self-Fashioning: Narratives of Non-confession in the Witch-trial of Margaretha Horn, 1652, in: Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraf 14 (2020), 336-370.
Rowlands, Alison, ‘In Great Secrecy’. The Crime of Infanticide in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, 1501–1618, in: German History 15 (1997), 179-199.
Rowlands, Alison, Monstrous Deception: Midwifery, Fraud and Gender in Early Modern Rothenburg ob der Tauber, in: Rublack, Ulinka (ed.), Gender in Early Modern German History, Cambridge etc. 2002, 71-101.
Rowlands, Alison, The Witch-Cleric Stereotype in a Seventeenth-Century Lutheran Context, in: German History 38 (2020), 1-23.
Rowlands, Alison, Witchcraft and Popular Religion in Early Modern Rothenburg Obder Tauber, in: Levack, Brian P. (ed.), New Perspectives on Witchcraft, Magic and Demonology, Vol. 5: Witchcraft, Healing, and Popular Diseases, New York etc. 2001, 153-171.
Rowlands, Alison, Witchcraft Narratives in Germany: Rothenburg, 1561-1652, Manchester 2003.
Safley, Thomas Max, Production, Transaction, and Proletarianization. The Textile Industry in Upper Swabia, 1580–1660, in: Ibid. et al. (eds.), The Workplace before the Factory. Artisans and Proletarians 1500 - 1800, Ithaca etc. 1993, 118-145.
Smith, Jeffrey, A Tale of two Cities: Nuremberg and Munich, in: Cohen, Gary B. - Szabo, Franz A. (ed.), Embodiments of Power. Building Baroque Cities in Europe, New York/Oxford 2008, 164-190.
Smith, Jeffrey, Rebuilding Faith through Art. Christoph Schwarz`s “Mary Altarpiece” for the Jesuit College in Munich, in: Hall, Marcia B. - Cooper, Tracy Elizabeth (ed.), The Sensuous in the Counter-Reformation Church, New York 2013, 230-251.
Smith, Jeffrey (ed.), Sensous Worship. Jesuits and the Art of Early Catholic Reformation in Germany, Princeton etc. 2002. [several Bavarian churches]
Smith, Jeffrey, The Art of Salvation in Bavaria, in: O’Malley, John et al. (ed.), The Jesuits. Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts, Toronto 2000, 568-599.
Smith, Jeffrey, The Jesuit Church of St. Michaels in Munich: The Story of an Angel with a Mission, in: Reinhart, Max (ed.), Infinite Boundaries. Order, Disorder, and Reorder in Early Modern German culture (Early Modern German Studies 1), Kirksville 1998, 147-170.
Smith, Pamela H., Chemistry and Commerce: Johann Joachim Becher at the Court of the Elector in Munich, in: Frühsorge, Gotthard (ed.), Johann Joachim Becher (1635-1682) (Wolfenbütteler Arbeiten zur Barockforschung 22), Wiesbaden 1993, 143-158.
Smith, Pamela H., Curing the Body Politic: Chemistry and Commerce at Court, 1640-70, in: Moran, Bruce T. (ed.), Patronage and Institutions: Science, Technology, and Medicine at the European court 1500-1750, Rochester / N.Y. 1991, 195-209. [Johann Joachim Becher]
Smith, Pamela H., The Business of Alchemy. Science and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire, Princeton 1994. [Johann Joachim Becher]
Soergel, Philip M., Spiritual Medicine for Heretical Poison: The Propagandistic Uses of Legends in Counter-Reformation Bavaria, in: Historical Reflections 17 (1991), 125-149.
Soergel, Philip M., Wondrous in his Saints. Counter-Reformation Propaganda in Bavaria, Berkeley 1993.
Spring, Laurence, The Bavarian Army during the Thirty Years War, 1618-1648. The backbone of the Catholic League, Solihull 2017.
Strasser, Ulrike, Aut murus aut maritus? Women's Lives in Counter-Reformation Munich (1571-1651), PhD. University of Minnesota 1997.
Strasser, Ulrike, Bones of Contention: Cloistered Nuns, Decorated Relics, and the Contest over Women’s Place in the Public Sphere of Counter-Reformation Munich, in: Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 90 (1999), 255-288.
Strasser, Ulrike, Cloistering Women´s Past: Conflicting Accounts of Enclosure in a Seventeenth-Century Munich Nunnery, in: Rublack, Ulrike (ed.), Gender in Early Modern History, Cambridge 2002, 221-246.
Strasser, Ulrike, Missionary Men in the Early Modern World: German Jesuits and Pacific journeys, Amsterdam 2020. [Augsburg]
Strasser, Ulrike, State of Virginity: Gender, Religion, and Politics in an Early Modern Catholic State (Social history, popular culture, and politics in Germany), Ann Arbor 2007.
Thorne, Sydney, Mary Ward. First Sister of Feminism, Barnsley 2021.
Vignau-Wilberg, Thea, In Europa zu Hause - Niederländer in München um 1600 = Citizens of Europe: Dutch and Flemish Artists in Munich c. 1600, München 2005.
Walinski-Kiehl, Robert, "Godly States", Confessional Conflict and Witch-Hunting in Early Modern Germany, in: Levack, Brian P., New perspectives on witchcraft, magic, and demonology, Volume 2, New York etc. 2001, 483-494.
Walinski-Kiehl, Robert, Prosecuting Witches in Early Modern Germany, with Special Reference to the Bishopric of Bamberg: 1595-1680, Master Thesis Portsmouth 1981.
Walinski-Kiehl, Robert, The Devil's Children. Child Witch-Trials in Early Modern Germany, in: Levack, Brian P., New Perspectives on Witchcraft, Magic, and Demonology, Volume 2, New York etc. 2001, 413-431.
Walinski-Kiehl, Robert, Witch-Hunting and State-Building in the Bishoprics of Bamberg and Würzburg: c. 1570-1630, Dillinger, Johannes etc. (ed.), Hexenprozess und Staatsbildung (Hexenforschung 12), Bielefeld 2008, 245-264.
Wallace, David, Holy Amazon: Mary Ward of Yorkshire, 1585-1645, in: Ibid., Strong Women. Life, text, and territory 1347-1645, Oxford 2011, 133-200.
Wietfeldt, Willard James, The Emblem Literature of Johann Michael Dilherr (1604–1669): Important Preacher, Educator and Poet in Nürnberg (Nürnberger Werkstücke zur Stadt- und Landesgeschichte 15), Nürnberg 1975.
Wilks, Timothy, Plundered Art for the Collections of Charles I? The Capture of Munich in May, 1632, in: Wiegel, Hildegard - Vickers, Michael (eds.), Excalibur. Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor, Oxford 2013, 39-59.
Wolfart, Johannes C., Why was Private Confession so Contentious in Early Seventeenth-Century Lindau? In: Scribner, Bob et al. (ed.), Popular Religion in Germany and Central Europe 1400-1800, Basingstoke etc. 1996, 140-165.

18^th Century: Age of Enlightenment

Arnold, James R., Marengo and Hohenlinden: Napoleon´s Rise to Power, Barnsley 2005.
Baten, Jorg, Climate, Grain Production and Nutritional Status in Southern Germany during the XVIIIth Century, in: Journal of European Economic History 30 (2001), 9-47.
Bernard, Paul P., Joseph II and Bavaria. Two Eighteenth Century Attempts at German Unification, The Hague 1965.
Black, Jeremy, Britain and the Wittelsbachs in the Early Eighteenth Century, in: Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs 40 (1987), 92-127.
Black, Jeremy, The Problems of the Small State: Bavaria and Britain in the Second Quarter of the Eighteenth Century, in: European History Quarterly 19 (1989), 5-36.
Broline, Duane M. – Selig, Robert, Emigration and the "Safety-Valve" Theory in the Eighteenth Century: Some Mathematical Evidence from the Prince-Bishopric of Würzburg, in: Yearbook of German-American Studies 31 (1996), 137-155.
Burgard, Peter J., Desacralization of the Sacred: Caravaggio, Bernini, Asam, in: Rosen, Valeska von (ed.), Erosionen der Rhetorik? Strategien der Ambiguität in den Künsten der Frühen Neuzeit (Culturae 4), Wiesbaden 2012, 303-320.
Corpis, Duane J., Marian Pilgrimage and the Performance of Male Privilege in Eighteenth-Century Augsburg, in: Central European History 45 (2012), 375-406.
Doney, John Christopher, Reform and the Enlightened Catholic State. Culture and Education in the Prince-Bishopric of Wuerzburg, 1731-1795, PhD. Atlanta 1989.
Doney, John Christopher, The Catholic Enlightenment and Popular Education in the Prince-Bishopric of Würzburg 1765-95, in; Central European History 21 (1988), 3-30.
Garberson, Eric, Eighteenth-Century Monastic Libraries in Southern Germany and Austria. Architecture and Decorations (Saecula spiritalia 37), Baden-Baden 1998.
Häberlein, Mark, An Augsburg Pastor's Views on Africans, the Slave-Trade, and Slavery: Gottlieb Tobias Wilhelm's Conversations about Man (1804), in: Mallinckrodt, Rebekka - Köstlbauer, Josef - Lentz,Sarah (eds.), Beyond Exceptionalism: Traces of Slavery and the Slave Trade in Early Modern Germany, 1650-1850, Berlin 2021, 239-264.
Hager, Hellmut, Balthasar Neumann's Schönborn Chapel at Würzburg Cathedral and its Berninesque Prototype, in: Architectural History 26 (1983), 73-81.
Harries, Karsten, The Bavarian Rococo Church: Between Faith and Aestheticism, New Haven etc. 1983.
Hertel, Christiane, Pygmalion in Bavaria. The Sculptor Ignaz Günther and Eighteenth-Century Aesthetic Art Theory, University of Pennsylvania 2011.
Hitchcock, Henry Russel, German Rococo: The Zimmermann Brothers, London 1968.
Hitchcock, Henry Russell, Rococo Architecture in Southern Germany, London etc. 1968.
Hitchcock, Henry-Russell, The Brothers Asam and the Beginnings of Bavarian Rococo Church Architecture, Part 1: Through the Early 1720s, in: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 24 (1965), 186-228.
Hitchcock, Henry-Russell, The Brothers Asam and the Beginnings of Bavarian Rococo Church Architecture, Part 2: From the Early 1720s to the Mid-1730s, in: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 25 (1966), 3-49.
Hofmeister-Hunger, Andrea, Provincial Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire. The Franconian Margravates of Ansbach and Bayreuth, in: Hellmuth, Eckhard (ed.), The Transformation of Political Culture. England and Germany in the Late Eighteenth Century (Studies of the German Historical Institute London), Oxford etc. 1990, 149-164.
Hsia, Ronnie Po-Chia, Noble Patronage and Jesuit Missions. Maria Theresia von Fugger-Wellenburg (1690-1762) and Jesuit Missionaries in China and Vietnam (Societas Jesu: Monumenta historica Societatis Jesu - Series nova 2), Rom 2006.
Johnson, Trevor, Blood, Tears and Xavier-Water. Jesuit Missionaries and Popular Religion in the Eighteenth-Century Upper Palatinate, in: Scribner, Bob et al. (eds.), Popular Religion in Germany and Central Europe 1400-1800, Basingstoke etc. 1996, 183-202.
Johnson, Trevor, "Trionfi" of the Holy Dead. The Relic Festivals of Baroque Bavaria, in: Friedrich, Karin (ed.), Festive Culture in Germany and Europe from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century, Lewiston etc. 2000, 31-56.
Kägler, Britta, Baroque Building Sites. Links between Culture and Economy in 18th Century Germany, in: Schmale, Wolfgang (ed.), The Language of Continent Allegories in Baroque Central Europe, Stuttgart 2016, 45-55.
Kägler, Britta, Early Modern Musicians across Europe: A Close Look at Munich in the 18th Century, in: Katalinić, Vjera (Hg.), Music Migrations in the Early Modern Age: People, Markets, Patterns and Styles / Glazbene migracije u rano moderno doba: Ijudi, tržišta, obrasci i stilovi (Muzikološki Zbornic/Musicological Proceedings 18), Zagreb 2016, 65–101.
Klemenčič, Matej - Meke, Katra - Škarić, Ksenija (eds.), Tracing the Art of the Straub Family, Ljubljana 2019.
Kramer, Ferdinand, Bavaria and "Staatsintegration", in: Ingrao, Charles W. (ed.), Imperial Principalities on the Eve of Revolution: The Lay Electorates (German History, Special Issue), London 2002, 354-372.
Kramer, Ferdinand, Bavaria: Reform and Staatsintegration, in: German History 20 (2002), 354-372.
Kramer, Ferdinand, Piety at Court: The Wittelsbach Electors in Eighteenth-Century Bavaria, in: Schaich, Michael (ed.), Monarchy and Religion. The transformation of Royal Culture in Eighteenth-Century Europe, Oxford etc. 2007, 283-308.
Lehner, Ulrich, Enlightened Monks: The German Benedictines, 1740-1803, Oxford 2011 [among others: Kloster Banz]
Lepovitz, Helena Waddy, The Industrialization of Popular Art in Bavaria, in: Past & Present 99 (1983), 88-122 [Glass Painting]
Maerker, Anna, Political Order and the Ambivalence of Expertise: Count Rumford and Welfare Reform in Late Eighteenth-Century Munich, in: Osiris 25 (2010), 213-230.
Melanson, Terry, Perfectibilists: The 18th Century Bavarian Order of the Illuminati, Walterville 2009.
Midelfort, H.C. Erik, Exorcism and Enlightenment. Johann Joseph Gassner and the Demons of Eighteenth-Century Germany, New Haven etc. 2005. [Regensburg]
Münster, Robert, Courts and Monasteries in Bavaria, in: Buelow, George J. (ed.), The Late Baroque Era: from the 1680s to 1740, Basingstoke etc. 1993, 296-323. [History of Music]
Olson, Roberta, St. Benedict sees the Light: Asam's Solar Eclipses as Metaphor, in: Religion and the Arts 11 (2007), 299-329.
Orgad, Zvi, Eliezer-Zusman of Brody: The Early Modern Synagogue Painter and His World, Leiden / Boston 2022. [Synagogues in Franconia]
Otto, Christian F., Space into Light: The Churches of Balthasar Neumann (Architectural History Foundation/MIT Press series), New York etc. 1979.
Redlich, Fritz, Science and Charity: Count Rumford and his followers, in: International Review of Social History 16 (1971), 184-216.
Schauerte, Thomas, Growing Distance: The High Altars of the Augustinian Canon Churches in Dießen and Rohr, in: Ingersoll, Catharine - McCusker, Alisa - Weiss, Jessica (eds.), Imagery and Ingenuity in Early Modern Europe. Essays in Honor of Jeffrey Chipps Smith, Turnhout 2018, 247-259.
Schindler, Norbert, Dog Wars and Human Rights: Perceptions of Political Despotism at the End of the Ancien Régime, in: German History 24 (2006), 1-38.
Schlögl, Daniel, Cartography in the Service of Reform Policy in Late Absolutist Bavaria, c.1750-1777, in: Imago Mundi 49 (1997), 116-128.
Schumacher, Andreas - Gottdang, Andrea (eds.), Canaletto: Bernardo Bellotto Paints Europe, München 2014. [Views of Munich and Nympenburg]
Selig, Robert, The price of freedom: Poverty, Emigration and Taxation in the Prince-Bishopric of Würzburg in the Eighteenth Century, in: Yearbook of German-American Studies 26 (1991), 105-126.
Sokolow, Jayme A., Count Rumford and the Late Enlightenment Science, Technology and Reform, in: Eighteenth Century: Theory & Interpretation 21 (1980), 67-86.
Szczepaniak-Kroll, Agnieszka, The Problem of Emigration from Bamberg to Poland, Russia, and Hungary in the 18th Century, in: Ethnologia Polona 23 (2002), 85-109.
Thomas, Marvin E., Karl Theodor and the Bavarian Succession 1777-1778, Lewiston 1989.
Thomas, Marvin E., The Saxon Aspect of the Bavarian Allodial Succession 1777-1779. The history of a legal dispute, Lewiston 2015.
Timmermann, Achim, Calvary in Kitzingen: Dragging Your Cross through Eighteenth-Century Franconia, in: Material Religion 17 (2021), 317-354.
Volk, Peter, Franz Ignaz Günther's Christ at the Column, in: Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts 63 (1988), 5-15.
Walling, Thomas, Critical Monks: The German Benedictines, 1680-1740 (Scientific and learned cultures and their institutions 25), Leiden / Boston 2019. [Karl Meichelbeck, Anselm Desing etc.]
Wijaczka, Jacek - Kreczmar, Agnieszka, Franconia as Seen by Prince Stanislaw Poniatowski in 1784, in: Acta Poloniae Historica 90 (2004), 77-96.
Wimmler, Jutta, From Senegal to Augsburg: Gum Arabic and the Central European Textile Industry in the Eighteenth Century, in: Textile History 50 (2019), 4-22.
Wolfart, Philip Daniel, The Bishop's Peasants and the Lands below the Grünten: The Origins of Territoriality in the Late Eighteenth Century, PhD. Queens University 1997.
Yonan, Michael, The Wieskirche: Movement, Perception, and Salvation in the Bavarian Rococo, in: Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture 41 (2012), 1-25.

1806–1871: The Kingdom of Bavaria: Napoleon and the German Confederation

Baten, Jörg - Murray, John E., Heights of Men and Women in 19th-century Bavaria: Economic, Nutritional, and Disease Influences, in: Explorations in Economic History 37 (2000), 351-367.
Baten, Jörg - Murray, John E., Women's Stature and Marriage Markets in Preindustrial Bavaria, in: Journal of Family History 23 (1998), 124-135.
Baumann, Reinhard, The Walhalla: Bavarian Integration Monument, Germanic Hall of Fame, Expression of European Patronage, in: Beller, Manfred - Leersen, Joep (ed.), The Rhine. National Tensions, Romantic Visions, Leiden 2017, 168-181.
Bendix, Regina, Moral Integrity in Costumed Identity: Negotiating "National Costume" in 19th-Century Bavaria, in: The Journal of American Folklore 111 (1998), 133-145.
Bernsee, Robert, Delegitimation through Corruption: Legal and Administrative Changes in Bavaria and Prussia during the Napoleonic Era (1800-1820), in: Stred. Rasopis pro mezioborová studia Strední Evropy 19. a 20. století / Centre. Journal for Interdisciplinary Studies of Central Europe in the 19th and 20th Centuries 7 (2015), 9-33.
Bernsee, Robert, Interplay of Corruption and Bureaucratisation: The Administrative Reforms in Bavaria under Minister Montgelas (1799-1808); in: Engels, Jens Ivo - Monier, Frédéric - Petiteau, Natalie (eds.), La politique vue d'en bas: Éléments d'histoire européenne (19e-20e siècles), Paris 2012, 159-168.
Bernsee, Robert, Privatisation and Corruption in Historical Perspective: The Case of Secularisation in Bavaria and Prussia in the Early Nineteenth Century, in: Business History 60 (2018), 321-342.
Bidwell, James K., In the Service of the State: The Bavarian 'Volksschul' and Nation-Building, 1800-1871, PhD. Boston 2002.
Brantl, Sabine - Wilmes, Ulrich - Enwezor, Okwui (eds.), Histories in Conflict: Haus der Kunst and the Ideological Uses of Art, 1937-1955, München 2017.
Brescius, Moritz von, German Science in the Age of Empire. Enterprise, Opportunity and the Schlagintweit Brothers, Cambridge 2018.
Bouwers, Eveline G., Public Pantheons in Revolutionary Europe (War, Culture and Society), Basingstoke 2012. [Chapter: Walhalla]
Bunde, Peter et al., The Bavarian Army 1806-1813, Berlin 2018.
Buttlar, Adrian von, The Museum and the City. Schinkel's and Klenze's Contribution to the Automomy of Civic Culture, in: Bergvelt, Ellinoor (ed.), Napoleon's Legacy. The Rise of National Museums in Europe 1794-1830, Berlin 2009, 173-189.
Carpenter, Kim Newak, "Sechs Kreuzer sind genug für ein Bier!" The Munich Beer Riot 1844: Social Protest and Public Disorder in mid 19th century Bavaria, PhD. Washington DC 1998.
Collins, Mary, Sisters Professing Sisters: Retrieving a Lost Tradition, in: American Benedictine Review 47 (1996), 284-309. [Saint Walburga Eichstätt]
Conklin, Robert D., Politics and Politicians in Baden and Bavaria, 1815-1848, PhD. Kent State University 1972.
Coumbe, Arthur T., The Reputation of an Army: Foreign Opinion of the Bavarian Army in the Franco-German War. An ill. case study, PhD. Duke University 1985.
Cronenberg, Allen T. - Gray, Marion W. Jr., Montgelas and the Reorganization of Napoleonic Bavaria, in: Consortium on Revolutionary Europe 1750-1850: Proceedings 20 (1990), 712-719.
Davis, John R., Liberalisation, the Parliamentary System, and the Crown. The Role of the Coburg Dynasties in Nineteenth-Century Constitutional Debate, in: Kroll, Frank-Lothar – Munke, Martin (eds.), Hannover - Coburg-Gotha – Windsor. Probleme und Perspektiven einer vergleichenden deutsch-britischen Dynastiegeschichte vom 18. bis in das 20. Jahrhundert, Berlin 2015, 259-274.
Davis, John R., The Bamberg Conference of 1854. A Re-Evaluation, in: European History Quarterly 28 (1998), 81-107.
Davis, John R., The Coburg Connection: Dynastic Relations and the House of Coburg in Britain, in: Urbach, Karina (ed.), Royal Kinship Anglo-German Family Networks (Prinz-Albert-Forschungen4), München 2008, 97-115.
Donakowski, Conrad L. - Rock, Kenneth W., Enlightenment to Romanticism in Bavaria: Johann Michael Sailer and the Wunderhorn Circle, in: Consortium on Revolutionary Europe 1750-1850: Selected Papers, Tallahassee 1994, 123-133.
Eckert, Michael, Inspired by British Inventions: Joseph von Baader (1763–1835) - A Bavarian Engineer Fighting a Losing Battle, in: The International Journal for the History of Engineering and Technology 89 (2019), 216-237.
Embree, Michael, Too Little, too Late: The Campaign in West and South Germany, June - July 1866, Solihull 2015.
Ermischer, Gerhard, Early Industrialisation in a Typical German upland Region, in: Belfort, Paul et al. (ed.), Footprints of Industry. Papers from the 300th Anniversary Conference at Coalbrookdale (British archaeological reports / British series 523), Oxford 2010, 27-42. [Spessart]
Eyck, F. Gunther, Loyal Rebels. Andreas Hofer and the Tyrolean Uprising of 1809, Lanham 1986.
Farr, Ian, Medical Topographies in 19th Century Bavaria, in: Barona, Josep L. - Cherry, Steven (eds.), Health and Medicine in Rural Europe (1850-1945) (Scientia Veterum 11), Valencia 2005, 231-248.
Fink, Erwin, For Country, Court and Church: The Bavarian Patriots' Party and Bavarian Regional Identity in the Era of German Unification, in: Speirs, Ronald - Breuilly, John (ed.), Germany's two Unifications. Anticipations, Experiences, Responses (New perspectives in German Studies), Basingstoke 2005, 155-171.
Fodor, Stefan, What Kind of Nation? Political Associations in Bavaria during the Revolution of 1848-1849, PhD. San Diego 1992.
Frisch, Lutz - Schiffmann, Dieter, The Hambach Festival 1832. Cradle of German Democracy, Regensburg 2014.
Gottfried, Paul Edward, Catholic Romanticism in Munich 1826-1834, Diss. Yale University 1968.
Gottfried, Paul Edward, Conservative Millenarians: The Romantic Experience in Bavaria, New York 1979.
Hagen, Joshua, Architecture, Urban Planning, and Political Authority in Ludwig I's Munich, in: Journal of Urban History 35 (2009), 459-485.
Hagen, Joshua, Shaping Public Opinion through Architecture and Urban Design: Perspectives on Ludwig I and his Building Program for a "New Munich", in: Central European History 48 (2015), 4-30.
Harford, Lee S., The Bavarian Army under Napoleon 1805-1813, PhD. Florida State University 1988.
Harford, Lee S. Jr. - Holtman, Robert B., Carl Philip von Wrede: Bavarian General of the French Empire, in: Consortium on Revolutionary Europe 1750-1850: Proceedings 19 (1989), 659-674.
Harries-Schumann, Lisa, Between Orthodoxy and Reform, Revolution and Reaction: The Jewish Community in Ichenhausen, 1813-1861, in: Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 42 (1997), 29-48.
Harris, James F., Arms and the People: The Bürgerwehr of Lower Franconia in 1848 and 1849, in: Jarausch, Konrad (ed.), In Search of a Liberal Germany. Studies in the History of German Liberalism from 1789 to the Present, New York etc. 1990, 133-160.,
Harris, James F., Bavarians and Jews in Conflict in 1866: Neighbours and Enemies, in: Yearbook of the Leo Baeck Institute 32 (1987), 103-117.
Harris, James F., Public Opinion and the Proposed Emanciaption of the Jews in Bavaria 1849-1850, in: Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 34 (1989), 67-79.
Harris, James F., Rethinking the Categories of the German Revolution of 1848: The Emergence of Popular Conservatism in Bavaria, in: Central European History 25 (1992), 123-148.
Hausmann, Franz Joseph, A Soldier for Napoleon. The Campaigns of Lieutenant Franz Joseph Hausmann, 7th Bavarian Infantry. Transl. by Cynthia Joy Hausmann, London 1998.
Herbstritt, Helen - Hollermann, Ephrem, Record of a Journey: Mother Benedicta Riepp and Campanions Travel to North America, in: American Benedictine Review 64 (2013), 67-92 and 198-213.
Jackson, Myles W., Spectrum of Belief: Joseph von Fraunhofer and the Craft of Precision Optics, Cambridge / Mass. 2000.
Jelavich, Barbara, Russia, Bavaria and the Greek Revolution of 1862-1863, in: Balkan Studies 2 (1961), 125-150.
Kaiser, Michael, A matter of Survival: Bavaria becomes a Kingdom, in: Forrest, Alan (ed.), The Bee and the Eagle. Napoleonic France and the End of the Holy Roman Empire, New York 2009, 94-111.
Katz, Jacob, The Hep-Hep Riots in Germany of 1819: The Historical Background, in: Zion 38 (1973), 62-115.
King, David J., The Ideology Behind a Business Activity: The Case of the Nuremburg-Fürth Railway, in: Business & Economic History 20 (1991), 162-170.
Knoll, Martin, Urban Needs and Changing Environments: Regensburg's Wood Supply from the Early Modern Period to Industrialization, in: Zelko, Frank (ed.), From Heimat to Umwelt. New Perspectives on German Environmental History (Bulletin of the German Historical Institute: Supplement 3), Washington DC 2006, 77-101.
Lee, William Robert, Population Growth, Economic Development and Social Change in Bavaria 1750-1850, PhD. New York 1977.
Mayr, Norbert Joseph, Particularism in Bavaria: State Policy and the Public Sentiment, 1806-1906, PhD. Chapel Hill 1988.
Moran, Daniel, Toward the Century of Words. Johann Cotta and the Politics of the Public Realm in Germany 1795-1832, Berkeley etc. 1990.
Müller, Philipp, Using the Archive: Exclusive Clues about the Past and the Politics of the archive in Nineteenth-Century Bavaria, in: Storia della Storiografia 62 (2012), 27-53.
Murrman, Warren D., Gregory Scherr and Boniface Wimmer: United in Friendship across “Lands and Seas”, in: American Benedictine Review 68 (2017), 301-322.
Naser, Markus, Franconian, Bavarian or German? Regional Identity and National Concepts in 19th Century Franconia, in: Bindas, Kenneth J. - Ricciardelli, Fabrizio (eds.), Regional History as Cultural Identity, Roma 2017, 199-210.
Neufeld, Michael, German Artisans and Political Repression:The Fall of the Journeymen's Associations in Nuremberg, 1806-1868, in: Journal of Social History 19 (1986), 491-502.
Neufeld, Michael J., The Skilled Metalworkers of Nuremberg: Craft and Class in the Industrial Revolution, New Brunswick etc. 1989.
Ott, Martin, Crossing the Atlantic: Bavarian Diplomacy and the Formation of Consular Services Overseas, 1820-1871, in: Mößlang, Markus - Riotte, Torsten (ed.), The Diplomats' World. The cultural history of diplomacy (Studies of the German Historical Institute London), Oxford 2008, 381-405.
Ottosen, Morten Nordhafen, Religion and Secularization in Bavaria in the Age of Revolution, in: Banks, Bryan A. - Johnson, Erica (eds.), The French Revolution and Religion in Global Perspective. Freedom and Faith, Basingstoke 2017, 173-201.
Phayer, Michael J., Lower-Class Morality: The Case of Bavaria, in: Journal of Social History 8 (1974), 79-95.
Planert, Ute, From Collaboration to Resistance: Politics, Experience, and Memory of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in Southern Germany, in: Central European History 39 (2006), 676-705.
Plutschow, Herbert E., Philipp Franz von Siebold and the Opening of Japan. A Re-Evaluation, Folkestone 2007.
Pohlsander, Hans A., National Monuments and Nationalism in 19th century Germany, Oxford etc. 2008, 129-146 [Chapter VI: Ludwig I of Bavaria, the Walhalla, the Befreiungshalle, and Related Monuments]
Prutsch, Markus Josef, Making Sense of Constitutional Monarchism in Post-Napoleonic France and Germany, Basingstoke u.a. 2013.
Putz, Hannelore, Artistic Encounters: British Perspectives on Bavaria and Saxony in the Vormärz, in: Bulletin of the German Historical Institute London 34 (2012), 3-33.
Schleunes, Karl A., Schooling and Society. The Politics of Education in Prussia and Bavaria 1750-1900, Oxford u.a. 1989.
Schneider, Joanne F., An Historical Examination of Women´s Education in Bavaria. Mädchenschulen and Contemporary Attitudes about them, PhD. Brown University 1977.
Schneider, Joanne F., Enlightened Reforms and Bavarian Girls´ Education. Tradition through Innovation, in: Fout, John C. (ed.), German Women in the Nineteenth Century. A Social History, New York / London 1984, 55-71.
Schulte, Regina, Civil Society, State Law and Village Norm. Semantic Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Rural Germany, in: Crime, Histoire et Sociétés 1 (1997), 75-89.
Schulte, Regina, Poachers in Upper Bavaria in 1848: Crime or Conflict? in: Evans, Richard J. (ed.), The German Underworld. Deviants and Outcasts in German History, London etc. 1988, 141-158.
Schulte, Regina, The Village in Court. Arson, Infanticide, and Poaching in the Court Records of Upper Bavaria, 1848-1910, Cambridge etc. 1994.
Segal, Zef, Real, Actual and Imagined Borders - State Construction in the »Third Germany«, in: Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für Deutsche Geschichte 40 (2012), 21-43.
Segal, Zef, Communication and State Construction: The Postal Service in the Medium sized German States, 1815-1866, in: The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 44 (2013), 453-473.
Segal, Zef, Post and Railway ‘Right of Way’: Infrastructures as Delimitators of Voluntary Territorial Identities in Mid-Nineteenth Century Germany, in: Marklund, Andreas - Rüdiger, Mogens (eds.), Historicizing Infrastructure: History, Materiality and Human Agency in the Study of Infrastructure (Studies in History, Archives and Cultural Heritage 4), Copenhagen 2017, 51-82.
Segal, Zef, Regionalism and Nationalism in German Railway Cartography during the mid-Nineteenth Century, in: Imago Mundi 68 (2016), 46-61.
Segal, Zef, The Political Fragmentation of Germany: Formation of German States by Infrastructures, Maps, and Movement, 1815-1866, Cham (Schweiz) 2019.
Segal, Zef, The two Edged Sword: Capital Cities and the Limits to State Centralization in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Germany, in: The Journal of Historical Geography 60 (2018), 52-63.
Semrad, Alexandra, Modern Secondary Education and Economic Performance: The Introduction of the Gewerbeschule and the Realschule in Nineteenth-Century Bavaria, in: Economic history review 68 (2015), 1306-1338.
Sharfman, Glenn R., Bavarians and Jews: A Study in Integration and Exclusion during the Nineteenth Century, in: Journal of Religious History 19 (1995), 125-140.
Shorter, Edward L., Social Change and Social Policy in Bavaria 1800-1860, PhD. Cambridge / Mass. 1967.
Showalter, Denis, The Wars of German Unification, London etc. ²2015.
Stark, Heinz, An American Pioneer from Bavaria: The George Schramm Story, in: Yearbook of German-American Studies 41 (2007), 27-47.
Stauber, Reinhard, The Reorganization of Europe North and South of the Alps. Bavaria, Austria, and the Italian States, 1814–1816, in: Bavarian Studies in History and Culture [https://www.bavarian-studies.org/the-reorganization-of-europe-north-and-south-of-the-alps/]
Stolberg, Michael, National Statistics on the Causes of Death in nineteenth-century Bavaria, in: Journal of the History of Medicine & Allied Sciences 54 (1999), 210-225.
Stoneman, Mark R., The Bavarian Army and French Civilians in the War of 1870-1871: A Cultural Interpretation, in: War in History 8 (2001), 271-293.
Taylor, Richard S., German Auxiliaries in the American revolution. A Reevaluation of the Soldatenhandel as it Transpired in the Markgraftum of Ansbach-Bayreuth, Little Rock 1996.
Tannenbaum, William Z., A Town on the Volkach: The Acculturation of the Jews of Zeilitzheim in the Nineteenth Century, in: Yearbook of the Leo-Baeck-Institute 45 (2000), 93-117.
Tannenbaum, William Z., From Community to Citizenship: The Jews of Rural Franconia 1801-1862, PhD. Stanford 1989.
Trakas, William Samuel, Particularism in Bavaria and Württemberg, 1866-1870, PhD. Madison 1979.
Wagner, Bettina, "Duplum Bibliothecae regiae Monacensis". The Munich Court Library and its Book Auctions in the Nineteenth Century, in: The papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 111 (2017), 345-377.
Watkin, David, The Transformation of Munich by Maximilian I Joseph and Ludwig I, in: The Court Historian 11 (2006), 1-14.
Welch, Steven R., Revolution and Reprisal: Bavarian Schoolteachers in the 1848 Revolution, in: History of Education Quarterly 41 (2001), 25-57.
Welch, Steven R., Subjects or Citizens? Elementary School Policy and Practice in Bavaria, 1800-1918 (University of Melbourne History Monographs 26), Melbourne 1998.
Werner, George Stephen, Bavaria in the German Confederation, 1820-1848, Rutherford etc. 1977.
Werner, George Stephen, Travelling Journeymen in Metternichian South Germany, in: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 125 (1981), 190-219.
Wiita-Dillon, Janet A., Tourism Matters: The Rheinreise, the Cologne Cathedral, and the Walhalla, 1800-1850, PhD. State University of New York 2003.
Winter, Emma L., Between Louis and Ludwig. From the Culture of French Power to the Power of German Culture, c. 1789-1848, in: Scott, Hamish - Simms, Brendan (eds.), Cultures of Power in Europe during the Long Eighteenth Century, Cambridge 2009, 348-368.
Wright, Frank Deedmyer, The Bavarian Patriotic Party, 1868-1871, PhD. Urbana-Champaign 1975.
Ziblatt, Daniel, Structuring the State. The Formation of Italy and Germany and the Puzzle of Federalism, Princeton etc. 2006.

1871–1914: Bavaria in the German Empire

Abbott, John, Peasant Economic Calculation and the Household Economy in Imperial Germany, in: Essays in Economic & Business History 17 (1999), 37-47.
Allen, Ann Taylor, Satire and Society in Wilhelmine Germany: Kladderadatsch and Simplicissimus, 1890–1914, Lexington / Ky. 1984.
Allen, Ann Taylor, Sex and Satire in Wilhelmine Germany. „Simplicissimus“ looks at Family Life, in: Journal of European Studies 7 (1977), 19-40.
Anderson, Ben, Cities, Mountains and Being Modern in fin-de-siècle England and Germany, London 2020.
Balzer, Isabel, Exhibiting Unified Germany, 1871-1889: Bavaria, Prussia and Cultural Competition, PhD. Northwestern University 1997.
Baron, Frank, Albert Bloch and the Blue Rider: The Munich Years, Lawrence/Ka. 2014.
Blessing, Werner K., The Cult of Monarchy, Politcal Loyalty and the Workers´ Movement in Imperial Germany, in: Journal of Contemporary History 13 (1978), 357-375. [Situation in Bavaria]
Belchem, John, Large towns: Liverpool, Lyon and Munich, in: Robert, Jean-Louis et al. (ed.), The emergence of European trade unionism, Burlington 2001, 121-137.
Brown, John C. - Guinnane, Timothy W., Fertility Transition in a Rural, Catholic Population: Bavaria, 1880–1910, in: Population Studies 56 (2002), 35-50.
Brown, Peter D. G, Oskar Panizza and The Love Council. A History of the Scandalous Play on Stage and in Court, with the Complete Text in English and a Biography of the Author, Jefferson / NC etc. 2010.
Buschmann, Max, Between the Federative Nation and the National State. Public Perceptions of the Foundation of the German Empire in Southern Germany and Austria, in: Cole, Laurence (ed.), Different Paths to the Nation. Regional and national identities in Central Europe and Italy 1830-70, New York 2007, 157-179.
Campbell, Frederick F., The Bavarian Army, 1870-1918. The Constitutional and Structural Relations with the Prussian Military Establishment, PhD. Columbus 1973.
Caruso, Marcelo, Liberal Governance and the Making of Hierarchies: Oberlehrer in Munich's Elementary Schools (1871-1918), in: Journal of Educational Administration & History 41 (2009), 223-237.
Choberka, David M., Expressionism in a Discursive Bind. The Bridge, the Blue Rider, and the Cultural Politics of Modernity, in: Bulletin / Museums of Art and Archaeology, University of Michigan 2003, 5-31.
Cremer, Douglas J., The Limits of Maternalism. Gender Ideology and the South German Catholic Workingwoman´s Associations, 1904-1918, in: Catholic Historical Review. 87 (2001), 428-452.
Da Costa Mayer, Esther - Wassermann, Fred (eds.), Schoenberg, Kandinsky, and the Blue Rider, London etc. 2003.
Dickinson, Edward Ross, Altitude and Whiteness: Germanizing the Alps and Alpinizing the Germans, 1875-1935, in: German Studies Review 33(2010), 577-599.
Dickinson, Edward Ross, "Must we dance naked?": Art, Beauty, and Law in Munich and Paris, 1911-1913, in: Journal of the History of Sexuality 20 (2011), 95-131.
Dirscherl, Margit, Luminous Munich and Beyond: The "Schwabinger Bohème", in: Hibbit, Richard (ed.), Other Capitals of the Nineteenth Century. An Alternative Mapping of Literary and Cultural Space (Palgrave Studies in Modern European Literature), New York 2017, 223-245.
Farr, Ian, Farmers’ Cooperatives in Bavaria, 1880–1914: ‘State-Help’ and ‘Self-Help’ in Imperial Germany, in: Rural History 18 (2007), 163-182.
Farr, Ian, From Anti-Catholicism to Anticlericalism: Catholic Politics and the Peasantry in Bavaria 1860-1900, in: European Studies Review 13 (1983), 249-269.
Farr, Ian, In Search of Credit: Peasant Farmers, Credit Co-operatives and Rural Organisation in Bavaria at the Turn of the Century, in: Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte 2000, 113-132.
Farr, Ian, Peasant Protest in the Empire - The Bavarian Example, in: Moeller, Robert G. (ed.), Peasants and Lords in Modern Germany. Recent Studies in Agricultural History, Boston etc. 1986,, 110-139.
Fink, Erwin, Symbolic Representations of the Nation: Baden, Bavaria and Saxony, c. 1860-80, in: Cole, Laurence (ed.), Different Paths to the Nation. Regional and national identities in Central Europe and Italy 1830-70, New York 2007, 200-219.
Ford, Graham, In Search of Industrial Order: The Case of Nuremberg's Building Masters, 1887-1914, in: German History 19 (2001), 54-74.
Ford, Graham, Organisation and Conflict in the Nuremberg Building Trades 1878-1914, PhD. East Anglia 1992.
Ford, Graham, Positive Integration in Wilhelmine Germany: The Case of Nuremberg's Building Workers, 1899-1914, in: European History Quarterly 34 (2004), 215-244.
Fuhrmeister, Christian - Kohle, Hubertus - Thielemans, Veerle (eds.), American Artists in Munich: Artistic Migration and Cultural Exchange Processes (Veröffentlichungen des Zentralinstituts für Kunstgeschichte in München 21), Berlin etc. 2010.
Ghattas, Monika White, Patronage and Painters in Munich, 1870-1910, PhD. University of New Mexico 1986.
Greaves, Peter, In the Bavarian Highlands: Edward Elgar's German Holidays in the 1890s (Elgar Monographs 1), Rickmansworth 2001.
Gonon, Philipp, The Quest for Modern Vocational Education: George Kerschensteiner between Dewey, Weber and Simmel (Studien zur Berufs- und Weiterbildung 9), Bern etc. 2009.
Halgus, Joseph David, The Bavarian Soldier, 1871-1914: Efforts to Use Military Training as a Means of Strengthening a Consensus in Favor of the Existing Order, PhD. New York 1980.
Hamlin, Daniel, Water and Empire - Germany, Bavaria and the Danube in World War I, in: First World War Studies 3 (2012), 65-85.
Harris, James F., The People Speak! Anti-Semitism and Emancipation in Nineteenth-Century Bavaria, Ann Arbor 1994.
Has-Ellison, J. Trygve, Nobles, Modernism, and the Culture of fin de siécle Munich, in: German History 26 (2008), 1-23.
Has-Ellison, J. Trygve, `True Art Is Always an Aristocratic Matter': Nobles and the Fine Arts in Bavaria, 1890-1914, PhD. Memphis 2004.
Healy, Róisín, The Fall of the Jesuit Law: The Bavarian "Backdoor" of 1912, in: Ibid. (ed.), The Jesuit Specter in Imperial Germany, Boston / Leiden 2003, 203-211.
Hiles, Timothy W., Thomas Theodor Heine. Fin-de-siècle Munich and the Origins of "Simplicissimus" (Literature and the visual arts 9), New York etc. 1996.
Hollmann, Eckhard, The Blue Rider, München etc. 2011.
Howard, Thomas A., The Pope and the Professor: Pius IX, Ignaz von Döllinger, and the Quandary of the Modern Age, Oxford 2017.
Jelavich, Peter, Art and Mammon in Wilhelmine Germany: The Case of Frank Wedekind, in: Central European History 12 (1979), 203-236.
Jelavich, Peter (ed.), Munich and Theatrical Modernism: Politics, Playwriting, and Performance 1890-1914, Cambridge etc. 1985.
Jelavich, Peter, The Censorship of Literary Naturalism, 1890–1895: Bavaria, in: Central European History 18 (1985), 344-359.
Jelavich, Peter, Theater in Munich, 1890-1914. A Study in the Social Origins of Modernist Culture, PhD. Princeton 1982.
Jerram, Leif, Bureaucratic Passions and the Colonies of Modernity: an Urban Elite, City Frontiers and the Rural Other in Germany, 1890-1920, in: Urban History 34 (2007), 390-406.
Jerram, Leif, Germany's Other Modernity: Munich and the Making of Metropolis, 1895-1930, Manchester 2014.
Kandler, Robert, The Effects of Economic and Social Conditions on the Development of the Free Trade Unions in Upper Franconia, 1890-1914, PhD. Oxford 1986.
Kennedy, Katharine D., Regionalism and Nationalism in South German History Lessons, 1871-1914, in: German Studies Review 12 (1989), 11-33.
Kochmann, Adrienne, Russian Émigré Artists in Munich, 1890-1914. Cultural Mission and the Development of Artistic Identity, PhD. Chicago 1997.
Kultermann, Udo, The Idea of "Gesamtkunstwerk" - Lenbachhaus and Stuckvilla in Munich, in: Konsthistorisk Tidskrift. Journal of Art History 64 (1995), 163-176.
Large, David C., The Political Background of the Foundation of the Bayreuth Festival, 1876, in: Central European History 11 (1978), 162-172.
Lenman, Robin, A Community in Transition: Painters in Munich, 1886-1924, in: Central European History 15 (1982), 3-33.
Lenman, Robin, Art and Tourism in Southern Germany 1850-1930, in: Marwick, Arthur (ed.), The arts, literature, and society, London etc. 1990, 163-180.
Lenman, Robin, Artists and Society in Germany 1850-1914, Manchester etc. 1997.
Lepik, Andres - Bäumler, Katrin (eds.), The Architecture under King Ludwig II: Palaces and Factories, Basel 2018.
Makela, Maria M., The Munich Secession. Art and Artists in Turn-of-the-Century Munich, Princeton 1990.
Makela, Maria M., The Politics of Parody: Some Thoughts on the "Modern" in Turn-of-the-Century Munich, in: Forster-Hahn, Françoise (ed.), Imagining modern German Culture 1889-1910 (Studies in the history of art 53), Hanover etc. 1996, 185-207.
Malycheva, Tanja - Wünsche, Isabel (eds.), Marianne Werefkin and the Women Artists in her Circle (Avant-Garde critical studies 33), Leiden / Boston 2017.
Mayer, James Douglas, Bavarian Breweries and Brewmasters, 1871-1914: A Study of Mittelstandspolitik and German Economic Modernization, PhD. Cambridge / Mass. 1982.
Mayr, Norbert J., Catholic Church and Industrial Worker, Rejection or Ejection: Augsburg 1880-1900, in: German Studies Review 13 (1990), 225-242.
Müller, Frank Lorenz, Royal Heirs in Imperial Germany. The Future of Monarchy in Nineteenth-Century Bavaria, Saxony and Württemberg, London 2017.
Napachihi, Sebastian Wolfgang, The Relationship between the German Missionaries of the Congregation of St. Benedict from St. Ottilien and the German Colonial Authorities in Tanzania 1887-1907, Peramiho 1998.
Neunzert, Hartfried (ed.), Mansel Lewis & Hubert Herkomer: Wales, England, Bavaria. Deutsch - English (Kunstgeschichtliches aus Landsberg am Lech 22), Landsberg am Lech 1999.
Neve, Monica, Sold! Advertising and the Bourgeois Female Consumer in Munich, 1900-1914 (Studien zur Geschichte des Alltags 28), Stuttgart 2010.
Peters, Lisa N., “Youthful Enthusiasm under a Hospitable Sky”: American Artists in Polling, Germany, 1870s-1880s, in: American Art Journal 31 (2000), 56-91.
Rosenbaum, Adam T., Grounded Modernity in the Bavarian Alps: The Reichenhall Spa Culture at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, in: Central European History 47 (2014), 30-53.
Sackett, Robert E., Antimodernism in the Popular Entertainment of Modern Munich: Attitude, Institution, Language, in: New German Critique 57 (1992), 123-155.-
Sackett, Robert E., Popular Entertainment, Class, and Politics in Munich 1900-1923, Cambridge etc. 1982.
Schilling, Donald G., Politics in a New Key: The Late Nineteenth-Century Transformation of Politics in Northern Bavaria, in: German Studies Review 17 (1994), 33-57.
Segel, Harold B., Turn-of-the-Century Cabaret: Barcelona, Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Cracow, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Zurich, New York 1987.
Southern, Gilbert Edwin, The Bavarian Kulturkampf. A Chapter in Government, Church, and Society in the Early Bismarckreich, PhD. University of Massachusetts 1978.
Spiekermann, Uwe, The Retail Milk Trade in Transition: A Case-study of Munich, 1840-1913, in: Lysaght, Patricia (ed.), Milk and Milk products from Medieval to Modern Times, Edinburgh 1994, 71-93.
Stodolsky, Catherine Ekstein, Missionary of the Feminine Mystique: The Female Teacher in Prussia and Bavaria 1880-1920, PhD. New York 1987.
Umbach, Maiken, German Cities and Bourgeois Modernism 1890-1924, Oxford etc. 2009.
Wieber, Sabine, Eduard Grützner's Munich Villa and the German Renaissance, in: Intellectual History Review 17 (2007), 153-174.
Wieber, Sabine, Staging the Past: Allotria's ‘Festzug Karl V’ and German national identity, in: Rethinking History 10 (2006), 523-551.
Zimmer, Oliver, Urban Economies and the National Imagination: The German South, 1860-1914, in: Whyte, William (ed.), Nationalism and the reshaping of urban communities in Europe, 1848-1914, Basingstoke etc. 2011, 257-286.

1914–1933: The First World War and Bavaria under the Weimar Republic

Abbott, John, Peasants in the Rural Public. The Bavarian Bauernbund 1893-1933, Chicago 2000.
Ablovatski, Eliza Johnson, `Cleansing the Red Nest': Counterrevolution and White Terror in Munich and Budapest, 1919, PhD. Columbia University 2005.
Ablovatski, Eliza Johnson, The 1919 Central European Revolutions and the Judeo-Bolshevik Myth, in: European Review of History 17 (2010), 473-489.
Anheier, Helmut K. - Neidhardt, Friedhelm - Vortkamp, Wolfgang, Movement Cycles and the Nazi Party: Activities of the Munich NSDAP, 1925-1930, in: American Bevahorial Scientist 41 (1998), 1262-1282.
Anheier, Helmut K. - Neidhardt, Friedhelm, The Nazi Party and Its Capital: An Analysis of the NSDAP Membership in Munich, 1925-1930, in: American Bevahorial Scientist 41 (1998), 1219-1237.
Bakic, Dragan, Britain and Interwar Danubian Europe. Foreign Policy and Security Challanges 1919-1936, London u.a. 2017.
Bargain-Villéger, Alban, The Quest for Acceptability: The Socialists' May Days in Bavaria and Brittany, 1920-40, in: Canadian Journal of History 48 (2013), 63-86.
Biesinger, Joseph Anton, The Presidental Election in Bavaria in 1925 and 1932 in Relation to the Reich, PhD. New Brunswick 1972.
Bischoff, William Ludwig, Artists, Intellectuals and Revolution. Munich 1918-1919, PhD. Cambridge/Mass. 1970.
Bischoff, William Ludwig, The Action Committee of Revolutionary Artists in the Munich Revolution of 1918-1919, in: Studies in Modern European History & Culture 3 (1977), 7-35.
Boff, Jonathan, Haig's enemy. Crown Prince Rupprecht and Germany's war on the Western Front, Oxford 2018.
Braun, Helmut, Inflation 1914-1923, in: Historisches Lexikon Bayerns [URL: https://www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de/Lexikon/EN:Inflation,_1914-1923]
Brenner, Arthur David, Emil J. Gumbel. Weimar German Pacifist and Professor, Boston / MA 2001.
Brenner, Michael, Between Hermann Cohen and Karl Marx: The Jewish Dimension of Kurt Eisner's Revolution in Bavaria, 1918–19, in: Modern Judaism: A Journal of Jewish Ideas & Experience 40 (2020), 17-36.
Brockmann, Stephen, Nuremberg. The Imaginary Capital, Rochester 2006.
Bronner, Stephen Eric, Modernists in Power. The literati and the Bavarian Revolution, in: Ibid. (ed.), Modernism at the barricades, New York 2012, 119-134.
Burkhardt, Alex, A Republican Potential: The Rise and Fall of the German Democratic Party in Hof-an-der-Saale, 1918-1920, in: Central European History 50 (2016), 471-492.
Burkhardt, Alex, Democrats into Nazis: Middle Class Radicalisation in a single German town, 1918-1924, Newcastle upon Tyne 2019. [Hof an der Saale]
Burkhardt, Alex, Postwar ‘Existential Conflict’ and Right-Wing-Politics in Hof an der Saale, 1918-1924, in: German History 36 (2018), 522-543.
Clemens, Detlev, The "Bavarian Mussolini" and his "Beerhall Putsch": British Images of Adolf Hitler, 1920-1924, in: The English Historical Review 114 (1999), 64-84.
Clifford, Alexander, Hindenburg, Ludendorff and Hitler. Germany's Generals and the Rise of the Nazis, Barnsley 2021. [Ludendorff in Munich]
Collar, Peter, The Propaganda War in the Rhineland. Weimar Germany, Race and Occupation after World War I (International library of twentieth century history 57), London 2013.
Coppa, Frank J., The Policies and Politics of Pope Pius XII: Between diplomacy and mortality, New York etc. 2011. [Nuncio in Bavaria]
Cremer, Douglas J., `To Avoid a New Kulturkampf': The Catholic Workers' Associations and National Socialism in Weimar-era Bavaria, in: Journal of Church & State 41 (1999), 739-760.
Dillon, Christopher, 'We'll Meet Again in Dachau': The Early Dachau SS and the Narrative of Civil War, in: Journal of Contemporary History 45 (2010), 535-554.
Dorondo, David R., Bavaria and German Federalism. Reich to Republic: 1918-1933 / 1945-1949, Basingstoke u. a. 1992.
Douglas, Donald M., The Early Ortsgruppen. The Develpoment of National Socialist Local Groups 1919-1923, Lawrence / KS 1968.
Douglas, Donald M., The Parent Cell: Some Computer Notes on the Composition of the First Nazi Party Group in Munich, 1919-21, in: Central European History 10 (1977), 55-72.
Duffy, Eve, Oskar von Miller and the Art of the Electrical Exhibition: Staging Modernity in Weimar Germany, in: German History 25 (2007), 517-538.
Duffy, Eve, Representing Science and Technology: Politics and Display in the Deutsches Museum, 1903-1945, PhD. University of North Carolina 2002.
Ehlers, Carol Jean, Nuremberg, Julius Streicher and the Burgeois Transition to Nazism, 1918-1924, PhD. University of Colorado 1975.
Ellis, Robert, Ernst Toller and German Society. Intellectuals as Leaders and Critics, 1914-1939, Madison 2013.
Engstrom, Eric J. et al., Psychiatric governance, völkisch corporatism, and the German Research Institute of Psychiatry in Munich (1912–26), in: History of Psychiatry 27 (2016), 38-50 and 137-152.
Fontanella, Megan M., The Fallen Blue Rider: Franz Marc and the Great War, in: Bashkoff, Tracey - Ibid. (eds.), The Great Upheaval: Modern Art from the Guggenheim Collection, 1910-1918, New York 2011, 164-169, 171-197.
Garnett, Robert S., Lion, Eagle and Swastika. Bavarian Monarchism in Weimar Germany 1918-1933, New York 1991.
Gerwarth, Robert, Fighting the Red Beast: Counter-Revolutionary Violence in the Defeated States of Central Europe, in: Böhler, Jochen (Hg.), Legacies of violence: Eastern Europe´s First World War (EuropasOstenim 20. Jahrhundert 3), München 2014, 209-234.
Gerwarth, Robert, The Central-European Counter Revolution: Paramilitary violence in Germany, Austria and Hungary after the Great War, in: Past and Present 200 (2008), 175-209.
Geyer, Martin H., Munich in turmoil. Social Protest and the Revolutionary Movement 1918-19, in: Wrigley, Chris (ed.), Challenges of labour, London etc. 1993, 51-71.
Grau, Bernhard, Revolution, 1918/19, in: Historisches Lexikon Bayerns [URL: https://www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de/Lexikon/EN:Revolution,_1918/1919]
Grunberger, Richard, Red Rising in Bavaria, London 1973.
Gordon, Harold J., Hitler and the Beer Hall Putsch, Princeton 1972.
Ham, Paul, Young Hitler. The Making of the Führer, Sydney 2017.
Harsch, Donna, Codes of Comradeship. Class, Leadership, and Tradition in Munich Social Democracy, in: Central European History 31 (1998), 385-412.
Hastings, Derek, How “Catholic” Was the Early Nazi Movement? Religion, Race, and Culture in Munich, 1919-1924, in: Central European History 36 (2003), 383-433.
Hastings, Derek, Catholicism and the Roots of Nazism. Religious Identity and National Socialism, New York 2010.
Hastings, Derek, Nation, Race, and Religious Identity in the Early Nazi Movement, Religions 9/10 (2018), 1-14.
Hayward, Nicolas F., The First Nazi Town, New York 1988. [Coburg]
Heberle, Lauren Carola, Gender, Social Class, and Social Ties in Extremist Social Movements: The NSDAP in Munich, 1925-1929, PhD. Rutgers University 2003.
Herwig, Holger H., The Demon of Geopolitics: How Karl Haushofer "educated" Hitler and Hess, Lanham etc. 2016.
Hölzl, Richard, Nature Conservation in the Age of Classical Modernity: The Landesausschuss fürNaturpflege and the Bund Naturschutz in Bavaria 1905-1933, in: Scala, Stephen J. (ed.), From "Heimat" to "Umwelt": New Perspectives on German Environmental History (Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, Supplement 3), Washington DC 2006, 27-52.
Holmes, Kim M., The NSDAP and the Crisis of Agrarian Conservatism in Lower Bavaria. National Socialism and the Peasants Road to Modernity, New York 1991.
Hopkins, Nicholas S., Charisma and Responsibility: Max Weber, Kurt Eisner, and the Bavarian Revolution of 1918, in: Max Weber Studies 7 (2007), 185-211.
Hopwood, Robert F., Mobilization of a Nationalist Community, 1919-1923, in: German History 10 (1992), 149-176. [Kulmbach]
Ihrig, Stefan, "Ankara in Munich". The Hitler Putsch and Turkey, in: Ibid. (ed.), Atatürk in the Nazi imagination, Cambridge etc. 2014, 68-107.
Jablonsky, David, The Nazi Party in Dissolution. Hitler and the Verbotszeit 1923-1925, London u.a. 1989.
Jones, Larry E., Nationalism, Particularism, and the Collapse of the Bavarian Liberal Parties in the Early Weimar Republic, 1918-1924, in: JahrbuchzurLiberalismus-Forschung 14 (2002), 105-142.
Jones, Mark, Founding Weimar. Violence and the German Revolution of 1918/19, Cambridge 2016.
Jones, Mark, From "Skagerrak" to the Organization Consul. War Culture and the Imperial German Navy 1914–1922, in: Rowe, Laura - Miller, Alisa - Kitchen, James (eds.): Other Combatants, Other Fronts: Competing Histories of the First World War, Newcastle 2011, 249-274.
Jones, Nigel, A Brief History of the Birth of the Nazis, London 2004.
Kater, Michael H., The Nazi Party. A Social Profile of Members and Leaders, 1919-1945, Cambridge 1983.
Kauders, Anthony, German Politics and the Jews: Düsseldorf and Nuremberg 1910-1933, Oxford etc. 1996.
Kellog, Michael, The Russian Roots of Nazism. White Emigrés and the Making of National-Socialism, 1917-1945, Cambridge 2008.
King, David, The Trial of Adolf Hitler. The Beer Hall Putsch and the Rise of Nazi Germany, New York / London 2017
Koepp, Roy G., Conservative Radicals: The Einwohnerwehr, Bund Bayern und Reich, and the Limits of Paramilitary Politics in Bavaria, 1918-1928, PhD. Lincoln / Nebraska 2010.
Koepp, Roy G., Gustav von Kahr and the Emergence of the Radical Right in Bavaria, in: The Historian 77 (2015), 740-763.
Kurlander, Eric, Hitler’s Monsters: The Occult Roots of Nazism and the Emergence of the Nazi ‘Supernatural Imaginary’, in: German History 30 (2012), 528-549 [Thule Society]
Large, David Clay, Politics of Law and Order. A History of the Bavarian Einwohnerwehr 1918-1921, Philadelphia 1980.
Large, David Clay, Where Ghosts Walked. Munich's Road to the Third Reich, New York etc. 2017.
Lamb, Stephen, Intellectuals and the Challenge of power: The Case of the Munich "Räterepublik", in: Phelan, Anthony (ed.), The Weimar Dilemma: Intellectuals in the Weimar Republic, Manchester / Dover 1985, 132-161.
Layton, Roland V., The Völkischer Beobachter, 1920–1933: The Nazi Party Newspaper in the Weimar Era, in: Central European History 3 (1970), 353-382.
Liang, Oliver, The Biology of Morality: Criminal Biology in Bavaria, 1924-1933, in: Becker, Peter (ed.), Criminals and their Scientists: The history of Criminology in International Perspective, Cambridge etc. 2006, 425-446.
Madden, Paul, Some Social Characteristics of Early Nazi Party Members, 1919-23, in: Central European History 15 (1982), 34-56.
Magub, Roshan, Edgar Julius Jung, Right-Wing Enemy of the Nazis. A Political Biography, Rochester 2017. [Occupied Palatinate]
Marwell, David G., Unwanted Exile. A Biography of Ernst "Putzi" Hanfstaengl, PhD. Binghampton 1988.
Mayer, Hermann - Salmen, Brigitte - Coleman, Kathleen (eds.), James Loeb. Collector and Patron in Munich, Murnau and beyond, München 2018.
McGee, James H., The Political Police in Bavaria, 1919-1936, PhD. University of Florida 1980.
Memming, Rolf B., The Bavarian Governmental District Unterfranken and the City Burgstadt 1922-1939. A Study of the National Socialist Movement and Party-State Affairs, PhD. Lincoln 1974.
Menke, Martin, Multiple Caesars? Germany, Bavaria, and German Catholics in the interwar period, in: Budde, Michael L. (ed.), Beyond the borders of baptism (Studies in World Catholicism 1), Eugene 2016, 91-103.
Menze, Ernest A., War Aims and the Liberal Conscience: Lujo Brentano and Annexationism During the First World War, in: Central European History 17 (1984), 140-158.
Mitchell, Otis C., The Bavarian Paramilitary Scene (1919-1923), in: ders. (ed.), Hitler´s Stormtroopers and the Attack on the German Republic, Jefferson/NC 2008, 57-71.
Mitchell, Otis C., The Failed putsch, in: Ders. (ed.), Hitler´s Stormtroopers and the Attack on the German Republic, Jefferson/NC 2008, 72-82.
Mitchell, Otis C., The Munich Matrix of Right Radicalism, in: Ders. (ed.), Hitler´s Stormtroopers and the Attack on the German Republic, Jefferson/NC 2008, 38-45.
Morris, Douglas G., Justice Imperiled: The Anti-Nazi Lawyer Max Hirschberg in Weimar Germany, Ann Arbor 2005.
Mühlberger, Detlef, Hitler´s Voice. The Völkischer Beobachter 1920-1933, 2 Bde., Oxford 2004.
Munro, Gregory, Hitler's Bavarian Antagonist: Georg Moenius and the Allgemeine Rundschau of Munich 1929-1933, Lewiston/NY 2006.
Nastasă-Matei, Irina, A Chapter of Student Migration History: Romanians at the University of Munich before Second World War, in: Romanian Journal of Population Studies 12 (2018), 99-118.
Nelson, Otto M., “Simplicissimus” and the Rise of National Socialism, in: Historian 40 (1978), 441-462.
Orlow, Dietrich, The History of the Nazi Party: 1919-1933, Pittsburgh 1969.
Osmond, Jonathan, Rural Protest in the Weimar Republic. The Free Peasantry in the Rhineland and Bavaria, Basingstoke etc. 1993.
Pridham, Geoffrey, Hitler´s Rise to Power. The Nazi Movement in Bavaria, New York / London 1973.
Raim, Edith, The Rise of National Socialism in the Bavarian Highlands. A Microhistory of Murnau, 1919-1933, London / New York 2022.
Reiche, Eric G., The Development of the SA in Nürnberg, 1922-1934, Cambridge 1986.
Richter, Michaela W., Resource Mobilisation and Legal Revolution. National Socialist Tactics in Franconia, in: Childers, Thomas (ed.), The Formation of the Nazi Constituency, Totowa 1986, 104-130.
Rosenfeld, Gavriel D., Monuments and the Politics of Memory. Commemorating Kurt Eisner and the Bavarian Revolutions of 1918/19 in Postwar Munich, in: Central European History 30 (1997), 221-251.
Scheck, Raphael, Alfred von Tirpitz and German Right-Wing Politics 1914-1930 (Studies in Central European History), Atlantic Highlands 1998
Schröder, Wilhelm, Max Weber in Munich (1919/20). Science and Politics in the Last Year of his Life, in: Max Weber Studies 13 (2013), 15-37.
Schützeichel, Rainer, Expressing Politics in Urban Planning: Two Projects by Herman Sörgel for Munich between the Monarchy and Republic, in: Ruhl, Carsten - Dähne, Chris - Hoekstra, Rixt (eds.), The Death and Life of the Total Work of Art: Henry van de Velde and the Legacy of a Modern Concept, Berlin 2015, 105-127.
Seipp, Adam R., "An immeasurable sacrifice of blood and treasure": Demobilization, Reciprocity, and the Politics of the Streets in Munich and Manchester, 1917-1921, in: Reiss, Matthias (ed.), The Street as a Stage (Studies of the German Historical Institute London), Oxford etc. 2007, 127-145.
Seipp, Adam R.,'Scapegoats for a lost war': Demobilisation, the Kapp Putsch, and the Politics of the Streets in Munich, 1919-1920, in: War & society 25 (2006), 35-54.
Seipp, Adam R., The Ordeal of Peace. Demobilization and the Urban Experience in Britain and Germany 1917-1921, Farnham 2009.
Smith, Bradley F., Heinrich Himmler: A Nazi in the Making 1900-1926, Stanford 1971.
Stachura, Peter D., Gregor Strasser and the Rise of Nazism, London 1983.
Stehlin, Stuart A., Weimar and the Vatican 1919-1933. German-Vatican Diplomatic Relations in the Interwar Years, Princeton 1983.
Sutterlin, Siegfried H., Munich in the Cobwebs of Berlin, Washington, and Moscow: Foreign Political Tendencies in Bavaria 1917-1919 (Studies in Modern European History 12), New York u.a. 1995.
Urbach, Karina, Go-betweens for Hitler, Oxford 2015, 165-216.
Weber, Thomas, Bavaria's Seminal Catastrophe: The Revolution of 1918-19, in: Marshall, Alex - Steinberg, John W. - Sabol, Steven (eds.), The Global Impacts of Russia's Great War and Revolution / Book 1: The Arc of Revolution, 1917-24, Bloomington 2019, 177-212.
Weber, Thomas, Becoming Hitler. The Making of a Nazi, New York 2017.
Weber, Thomas, Hitler’s First War. Adolf Hitler, the Men of the List Regiment, and the First World War, Oxford etc. 2010.
Wenninger-Richter, Michaela, The National Socialist Electoral Breakthrough: Opportunities and Limits in the Weimar Party System. A Regional Case Study of Franconia, PhD. New York 1982.
Wiecki, Stefan, Undertakers of the Weimar Republic? The Nazification of Munich Professors, 1918-1933, in: Proceedings of the South Carolina Historical Association 2011, 73-88.
Winter, Christine, Looking after one's own: The Rise of Nationalism and the Politics of the Neuendettelsauer Mission in Australia, New Guinea and Germany (1921 - 1933) (Germanica Pacifica 9), Frankfurt am Main etc. 2012.
Zehetmair, Sebastian, Disputed memory: The Munich Council Republic and the KPD's Politics of History (Geschichtspolitik), in: Twentieth Century Communism 5 (2013), 41-64.
Ziegler, Walter, Beer Hall Putsch (Hitlerputsch), 8-9 November 1923, in: Historisches Lexikon Bayerns [URL: https://www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de/Lexikon/EN:Beer_Hall_Putsch_(Hitlerputsch),_8-9_November_1923]
Ziemann, Benjamin, War Experiences in Rural Germany 1914-1923 (The legacy of the Great War), Oxford 2007. [Focus on Bavaria]

1933–1945: Nazi Germany

Anderson, Dennis L., The Academy for German Law 1933-1944 (Modern European History 22), New York etc. 1987.
Bassoni, Nicola, Karl Haushofer as a "Pioneer" of National Socialist Cultural Diplomacy in Fascist Italy, in: Central European History 52 (2019), 424-449.
Becker, Winfried, The Nazi Seizure of Power in Bavaria and the Demise of the Bavarian People’s Party, in: Beck, Hermann - Jones, Larry Eugene (eds.), From Weimar to Hitler. Studies in the Dissolution of the Weimar Republic and the Establishment of the Third Reich, 1932-1934, New York / Oxford 2019, 111-140
Benz, Wolfgang (ed.), Dachau and the Nazi Terror 1933-1945. 2 Vol. Dachau 2002/2004.
Berrinberg, Elisabeth von, The City in Flames. A Child's Recollection of World War II in Würzburg, Germany, Minneapolis 2013.
Delaney, John Joseph, Rural Catholics, Polish Workers and Nazi Racial Policy in Bavaria, PhD. University of New York 1995.
Delaney, John Joseph, Social Contact and Personal Relations of German Catholic Peasants and Polish Workers (POWs, civilian, and forced laborers) in Bavaria's Rural War Economy, 1939-1945, in: Annali dell'Istituto Storico Italo-Germanico in Trento 28 (2002), 389-404.
Dillon, Christopher, Dachau and the SS. A schooling in violence, Oxford 2015.
Donohoe, James, Hitler's Conservative Opponents in Bavaria 1930-1945. A Study of Catholic, Monarchist, and Separatist Anti-Nazi Activities, Leiden 1961.
Dumbach, Annette E., Shattering the German Night: The Story of the White Rose, Boston etc. 1986.
Eiber, Ludwig, The Persecution of the Sinti and Roma in Munich 1933-1945, in: Tebbut, Susan (ed.), Sinti and Roma (Culture and society in Germany 2), New York etc. 1998, 17-33.
Fischer, Stefanie, Economic Trust in the "Racial State". A Case Study from the German Countryside, in: Bajohr, Frank - Löw, Andrea (eds.), The Holocaust and European societies, London 2016, 47-67. [Middle Franconia]
Fritz, Stephen G., “This is the way wars end, with a bang not a whimper”. Middle Franconia in April 1945, in: War and Society 18 (2000), 121-153.
Gellately, Robert, The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy, 1933-1945, New York 1990. [Würzburg, Unterfranken]
Gillespie, Willliam, Karl Ritter. His Life and "Zeitfilms" under National Socialism, Potts Point ²2014.
Gregor, Neil, A Schicksalsgemeinschaft? Allied Bombing, Civilian Morale, and Social Dissolution in Nuremberg, 1942-1945, in: The historical journal 43 (2000), 1051-1070.
Gregor, Neil, Beethoven, Bayreuth and the Origins of the Federal Republic of Germany, in: English Historical Review 126 (2011), 835-877.
Gregor, Neil, Listening as a Practice of Everyday Life. The Munich Philharmonic Orchestra and its Audiences in the Second World War, in: Thorau, Christian - Ziemer, Hansjakob (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Music Listening in the 19th and 20th Centuries, New York 2019, 123-141.
Gregor, Neil, Siegmund von Hausegger, the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra and Civic Musical Culture in the Third Reich, in: German History 36 (2018), 544-573.
Gregor, Neil, Vergangenheitspolitik, CSU-style: The Memory of Forced Labour in Nuremberg, in: Journal of Holocaust Education 10 (2001), 83-104.
Gundler, Bettina, Promoting German Automobile Technology and the Automobile Industry: The Motor Hall at the Deutsches Museum, 1933-1945, in: The Journal of Transport History 34 (2013), 117-139.
Guse, John Charles, The Spirit of the Plassenburg. Technology and Ideology in the Third Reich, PhD. Lincoln/Neb. 1981. [“School of German Technology” in Kulmbach]
Hagen, Joshua, Parades, Public Space, and Propaganda: The Nazi Culture Parades in Munich, in: Geografiska Annaler. Series B: Human Geography 90 (2008), 349-369.
Hagen, Joshua - Ostergren, Robert, Spectacle, Architecture and Place at the Nuremberg Party Rallies: Projecting a Nazi Vision of Past, Present and Future, in: Cultural Geographies 13 (2006), 157-182.
Hall, David Ian, Hitler's Munich. The Capital of Nazi Movement, Barnsley 2021.
Harrison, E. D. R., Gauleiter Bürckel and the Bavarian Palatinate, 1933-40, in: Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical & Literary Society: Literary & Historical Section 20 (1986), 271-291.
Harrison, E.D.R., The Nazi Dissolution of the Monasteries: A case-study, in: English Historical Review. 109 (1994), 323-355.
Helmreich, Ernst C., The Arrest and Freeing of the Protestant Bishops of Württemberg and Bavaria, September-October 1934, in: Central European History 2 (1969), 159-169.
Jucovy, Jon, The Bavarian Peasantry under National Socialist rule 1933-1945, PhD. New York 1985.
Kaplan, Thomas Pegelow, “In the Interest of the Volk…”: Nazi-German Paternity Suits and Racial Recategorization in the Munich Superior Courts, 1938–1945, in: Law & History Review. 29 (2011), 523-548.
Kater, Michael H., Composers of the Nazi Era: Eight Portraits, New York / Oxford 2000. [Hans Pfitzner, Richard Strauss, Carl Orff, Werner Egk, Karl Amadeus Hartmann]
Kedar, Binyamin Zeev, A Bavarian Historian Reinvents Himself: Karl Bosl and the Third Reich, Jerusalem 2011.
Kershaw, Ian, Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich: Bavaria 1933-1945, Oxford u.a. 2002.
Kuller, Christiane, The Demonstrations in Support of the Protestant Provincial Bishop Hans Meiser: A Successful Protest against the Nazi regime? In: Stoltzfus, Nathan – Maier-Katkin, Birgit (eds.), Protest in Hitler's "national community", Oxford 2016, 38-54.
Large, David Clay, Nazi Games: The Olympics of 1936, New York etc. 2007.
Link, Fabian - Hornburg, Mark W., "He Who Owns the Trifels, Owns the Reich": Nazi Medievalism and the Creation of the Volksgemeinschaft in the Palatinate, in: Central European History 49 (2016), 208-239.
Loiperdinger, Martin - Culbert, David, Leni Riefenstahl, the SA, and the Nazi Party Rally Films, Nuremberg 1933-1934: “Sieg des Glaubens” and “Triumph des Willens”, in: Historical Journal of Film, Radio & Television 8 (1988), 3-38.
Loval, Werner, We were Europeans. A personal History of a Turbulent Century, Jerusalem etc. 2010.
Marrus, Michael Robert, The Holocaust at Nuremberg, in: Yad Vashem Studies 26 (1998), 5-41.
Maurer, Hansjörg - Memming, Rolf B., A Dissident Nazi. Hans-Jörg Maurer's Würzburg Diary, in: Wisconsin Magazine of History 50 (1967), 347-391.
McDonough, Frank, Sophie Scholl. The Real Story of the Woman who Defied Hitler, Stroud 2009.
McManus, John C., Hell Before their very Eyes: American Soldiers Liberate Concentration Camps in Germany, April 1945, Baltimore 2015. [Dachau]
Megargee, Geoffrey P. (ed.), The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945. Volume I: Early Camps, Youth Camps, and Concentration Camps and Subcamps under the SS-Business Administration Main Office (WVHA), Bloomington 2009.
Middlebrook, Martin, The Nuremberg Raid, 30-31 March 1944, London 1973.
Middlebrook, Martin, The Schweinfurt-Regensburg Mission. The American Raids on 12 August 1943, Barnsley 2012.
Mitchell, Arthur, Hitler´s Mountain. The Führer, Obersalzberg and the American occupation of Berchtesgaden, Jefferson 2010.
Norton, Donald H., Karl Haushofer and the German Academy, 1925-1945, in: Central European History 1 (1968), 80-99.
Perekrestov, Elena, Alexander Schmorell: Saint of the German Resistance, New York 2017.
Peters, Olaf (ed.), Degenerate Art. The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany, 1937, Munich / London / New York 2014.
Philpott, Colin, Relics of the Reich: The Buildings the Nazis left Behind, Barnsley 2016.
Rushton, Alan R., Charles Edward of Saxe-Coburg: Tthe German Red Cross and the Plan to Kill "Unfit" Citizens 1933-1945, Newcastle upon Tyne 2018.
Ryback, Timothy W., Hitler's First Victims: The Quest for Justice, New York 2014.
Schlenker, Ines, Hitler's Salon. The Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung at the Haus der Deutschen Kunst in Munich 1937-1944 (German linguistic and cultural studies 20), Oxford etc. 2007.
Schneeberger, Michael, Memorbook Kitzingen. Yiskor: In the Memory of Kitzingen's Jews Murdered in the Shoah (Ma'ayan 5), Kitzingen 2011.
Schrafstetter, Susanna, Submergence into Illegality: Hidden Jews in Munich, 1941-1945, in: Ibid. - Steinweis, Alan E. (eds.), The Germans and the Holocaust. Popular responses to the persecution and murder of the Jews, New York / Oxford 2016, 106-128.
Siefken, Hinrich (ed.), Die Weiße Rose. Student Resistance to National Socialism 1942-1943. Forschungsergebnisse und Erfahrungsberichte. A Nottingham Symposion (University of Nottingham monographs in the humanities 7), Nottingham 1991.
Smith, Dana, Female Musicians and the „Jewish” Music in the Jewish Kulturbund of Bavaria, 1934-38, in: Gregor, Neil - Irvine, Thomas (eds.), Dreams of Germany. Musical Imaginaries from the Concert Hall to the Dance Floor (Spektrum 18), New York / Oxford 2019, 123-144.
Smith, Dana, Munich's Jewish Marionette Theater, Moses, and the Jewish Cultural League in Bavaria, in: Garbarini, Alexandra - Jaskot, Paul B. (eds.), New Approaches to an Integrated History of the Holocaust: Social History, Representation, Theory (Lessons and Legacies XIII), Evanston 2018, 13-35.
Smith, Dana, The Jewish Kulturbund in Bavaria, 1934-1938: Art and Jewish Self-Representation under National Socialism, PhD Queen Mary University London 2015.
Spiller, Harry (ed.), Prisoners of Nazis. Accounts by American POWs in World War II, Jefferson / NC 1998. [Camps Memmingen, Moosburg, Nuremberg]
Stratigakos, Despina, Hitler at Home, New Haven / London 2015. [History of the residences of Hitler]
Szejnmann, Claus-Christian - Umbach, Maiken, Heimat, Region, and Empire. Spatial identities under national socialism, Basingstoke etc. 2012.
Thamer, Hans Ulrich, The Orchestration of the National Community. The Nuremberg Party Rallies of the NSDAP, in: Berghaus, Gunter (ed.), Fascism and theatre. Comparative studies on the aesthetics and politics of performance in Europe, 1925-1945, Providence etc. 1996, 172-190.
Thomas, Donald E. Jr., Nazi “Coordination” of Technology: The Case of the Bavarian Polytechnical Society, in: Technology and Culture 31 (1990), 251-264.
Vahrenkamp, Richard, Constructing the Autobahn Munich-Salzburg, in: Ibid. (ed.), The German Autobahn, Lohmar etc. 2010, 197-222.
Vistrits, Robert, Weekend in Munich. Art, Propaganda and Terror in the Third Reich, London 1995.
Waddy, Helena, Oberammergau in the Nazi era. The Fate of a Catholic Village in Hitler's Germany, New York etc. 2010.
Walter, Lawrence D., "Young Priests" as Opponents: Factors Associated with Clerical Opposition to the Nazis in Bavaria, 1933, in: The Catholic Historical Review 65 (1979), 402-413.
Zeller, Guillaume, The Priest Barracks: Dachau, 1938-1945. Translated by Michael J. Miller, San Francisco 2017.

Bavaria after 1945

Ahonen, Pertti, The Curious Case of Werner Weinhold: Escape, Death, and Contested Legitimacy at the German-German Border, in: Central European History 45 (2012), 79-101.
Bauer, Yehuda, The Initial Organization of the Holocaust Survivors in Bavaria, in: Yad Vashem Studies on the European Jewish Catastrophe & Resistance 8 (1970), 127-157.
Bauridl, Birgit, From Grafenwoehr to ‘Graf’. A Transnational American Region in Bavaria, in: Lösch, Klaus – Paul, Heike – Zwingenberger, Meike (eds.), Critical Regionalism, Heidelberg 2016, 103-130.
Bauridl, Birgit M., Marching towards Kullman's Diner. Performing Transnational American Sites (of Memory) in Bavaria, in: Bak, Hans - Mehring, Frank - Roza, Mathilde (eds.), Politics and Cultures of Liberation: Media, Memory, and Projections of Democracy, Leiden / Boston 2018, 211-240.
Bauridl, Birgit M. - Gessner, Ingrid - Hebel, Udo J. (ed.), German-American Encounters in Bavaria and beyond, 1945-2015, Berlin etc. 2018.
Biddiscombe, Perry, Dangerous Liaisons: The Anti-Fraternization Movement in the U.S. Occupation Zones of Germany and Austria, 1945-1948, in: Journal of Social History 34 (2000/2001), 611-647.
Boehling, Rebecca L., A Question of Priorities. Democratic Reforms and Economic Recovery in Postwar Germany: Frankfurt, Munich, and Stuttgart under U.S. Occupation 1945-1949 (Monographs in German history 2), Providence etc. 1996.
Boehling, Rebecca L., German Municipal Self-Government and the Personel Policies of the Local U.S. Military Government in three Major Cities of the Zone of Occupation: Frankfurt, Munich, and Stuttgart, in: Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 25 (1985), 333-383.
Brown, Antje C., EU Environmental Politics in Subnational Regions: The Case of Scotland and Bavaria, Aldershot et al. 2001.
Brown-Fleming, Suzanne, The Holocaust and Catholic Conscience. Cardinal Aloisius Muench and the Guilt Question in Germany, Notre Dame/Ind. 2006.
Brown-Fleming, Suzanne, 'The worst enemies of a better Germany'. Postwar Antisemitism among Catholic Clergy and U.S. Occupation Forces, in: Holocaust and Genocide Studies 18 (2004), 379-401.
Burianek, Otto Bedrich, From Liberator to Guardian: The US Army and Displaced Persons in Munich 1945, PhD. Emory 1992.
Canoy, Jose Raymund, The Discreet Charm of the Police State: The Landpolizei and the Transformation of Bavaria 1945-1965 (Studies in Central European Histories 41), Leiden u.a. 2007.
Chaney, Sandra, Nature of the Miracle Years: Conservation in West Germany, 1945-1975 (Studies in German History 8), New York etc. 2008. [Chapter 7: Bavarian Forest National Park]
Cohen, Boaz, Representing the Experiences of Children in the Holocaust. Children’s Survivor Testimonies in “Fun Letsten Hurbn”, Munich, 1946-49, in: Patt, Avinoam - Berkowitz, Michael (eds.), “We are here”. New Approaches to Jewish Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany, Detroit 2010, 74-97.
Connor, Ian, The Attitude of the Ecclesiastical and Political Authorities in Bavaria to the Refugee Problem, 1945-50, PhD. Norwich 1983.
Connor, Ian, The Churches and the Refugee Problem in Bavaria 1945-49, in: Journal of Contemporary History 20 (1985), 399-421.
Connor, Ian, The Bavarian Government and the Refugee Problem 1945-50, in: European History Quarterly 16 (1986), 131-153.
Crago-Schneider, Kierra, Antisemitism or Competing Interests? An Examination of German and American Perceptions of Jewish Displaced Persons Active on the Black Market in Munich's Möhlstrasse, in: Yad Vashem Studies 38 (2010), 167-194.
Cummings, Richard H., The Ether War: Hostile Intelligence Activities Directed against Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, and the Emigré Community in Munich during the Cold War, in: Journal of Transatlantic Studies 6 (2008), 168-182.
Dastrup, Boyd L., Crusade in Nuremberg: Military Occupation 1945-1949 (Contributions in military studies 47), Westport 1985.
Davis, Joel, Rebuilding the Soul: Churches and Religion in Bavaria, 1945-1960, PhD. University of Missouri 2007.
Davis, Joel, The Confessional Peace in Light of the Ochsenfurt Sugar Factory Incident in June 1953, in: Jahrbuch für fränkische Landesforschung 65 (2005), 307-324.
Elzey, Christopher Clark, Munich 1972: Sport, Politics and Tragedy, PhD. Purdue University 2004.
Erlichmann, Camilo - KNOWLES, Christopher (eds.), Transforming Occupation in the Western Zones of Germany. Politics, Everyday Life and Social Interactions, 1945-55, London etc. 2018.
Farr, Ian - Ford, Graham, Bavaria's "German Mission": The CSU and the Politics of Regional Identity, 1949-c. 1962, in: Lancaster, Bill et al. (ed.), An Agenda for Regional History, Newcastle 2007, 165-179.
Ford, Graham, Constructing a Regional Identity: The Christian Social Union and Bavaria's Common Heritage, 1949-1962, in: Contemporary European History 16 (2007), 277-297.
Gaab, Jeffrey S., Justice Delayed: The Restoration of Justice in Bavaria under American Occupation, 1945-1949 (Studies in modern European History 35), New York 1999.
Gajek, Eva Maria, More than Munich 1972. Media, Emotions, and the Body in TV Broadcast of the 20th Summer Olympics, in: Historical Social Research 43 (2018), 181-202.
Gehring, Hansjörg, Educational Reconstruction of Bavaria under U.S. Occupation, in: Paedagogica Historica 33 (1997), 247-263.
Gienow-Hecht, Jessica C. E., Art is Democracy and Democracy is Art. Culture, Propaganda, and the Neue Zeitung in Germany, in: Diplomatic History 23 (1999), 21–43.
Gienow-Hecht, Jessica C., Transmission Impossible: American Journalism as Cultural Diplomacy in Postwar Germany, 1945-1955 (Eisenhower Center studies on war and peace), Baton Rouge 1999.
Goschler, Constantin, The Attitute towards Jews in Bavaria after the Second World War, in: Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 36 (1991), 443-458.
Greene, Joshua, Justice at Dachau: The Trials of an American Prosecutor, New York 2003.
Gregor, Neil, Haunted City: Nuremberg and the Nazi Past, New Haven etc. 2008.
Gregor, Neil, "Is he still alive, or long since dead?" Loss, Absence and Remembrance in Nuremberg, 1945-1956, in: German History 21 (2003), 183-203.
Gregor, Neil, Music, Memory, Emotion: Richard Strauss and the Legacies of War, in: Music & Letters 96 (2015), 55-76.
Gregor, Neil, "The Illusion of Remembrance": The Karl Diehl Affair and the Memory of National Socialism in Nuremberg, 1945-1999, in: The journal of modern history 75 (2003), 590-633.
Gunnlicks, Arthur B., The Länder and German Federalism, Manchester 2003.
Hagen, Joshua, Rebuilding the Middle Ages after the Second World War: The Cultural Politics of Reconstruction in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Germany, in: Journal of Historical Geography 31 (2005), 94-112.
Hagen, Joshua, Preservation, Tourism and Nationalism: The Jewel of the German Past (Heritage, Culture and Identity), Aldershot etc. 2006.
Handa, Rumiko, Presenting Difficult Pasts through Architecture. Converting National Socialist Sites to Documentation Centers, London / New York 2021.
Hartenian, Lawrence Raymond, Controlling Information in U.S. Occupied Germany 1945-1949. Media Manipulation and Propaganda (Studies in twentieth century American history 8), Lewiston etc. 2003.
Hasenöhrl, Ute, Postwar Perceptions of German Rivers. A Study of the Lech as energy source, nature preserve, and tourist attraction, in: Mauch, Christof (ed.), Rivers in History. Perspectives on waterways in Europe and North America (History of the Urban Environment), Pittsburgh 2008, 137-148.
Hepburn, Eve, Bavarian Defence of the Heimat in Europe, in: Ibid. (ed.), Using Europe. Territorial Part Strategies in Multi-Level System, Manchester 2010, 99-141.
Hickley, Catherine, The Munich Art Hoard: Hitler's Dealer and his Secret Legacy, London 2015. [Gurlitt Collection]
Höschler, Christian, The IRO Children’s Village Bad Aibling. A Refuge in the American Zone of Germany, 1948–1951, PhD. München 2017.
Holian, Anna Marta, Between Nationalism and Internationalism: Displaced Persons at the UNRRA University of Munich, in: Lachenicht, Susanne - Heinsohn, Kerstin (eds.), Diaspora Identities: Exile, Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism in Past and Present, Chicago 2009, 109-129.
Holian, Anna Marta, Displacement and the Post-War Reconstruction of Education. Displaced Persons at the UNRRA University of Munich, 1945-1948, in: Contemporary European History 17 (2008), 167-195.
Holian, Anna Marta, Jews, Foreigners, and the Space of the Postwar Economy: The Case of Munich's Möhlstrasse, in: Lässig, Simone - Rürup, Miriam (eds.), Space and Spatiality in Modern German-Jewish History (New German historical perspectives 8), New York / Oxford 2017, 263-279.
Hudson, Walter M., The US Military Government and Democratic Reform and Denazification in Bavaria 1945-1947, PhD. Fort Leavenworth 2001.
Hooper, Kathleen R., America Houses - The Buildings: Munich, in: Ibid. (ed.), Designing Democracy: Re-education and the America Houses (1945-1961), Frankfurt am Main etc. 2014, 241-255.
Jardim, Tomasz, The Mauthausen Trial. American Military Justice in Germany, Cambridge / Mass. 2012.
Jasmand, Stephanie - Maennig, Wolfgang, Regional Income and Employment Effects of the 1972 Munich Summer Olympic Games, in: Regional Studies. Journal of the Regional Studies Association 42 (2008), 991-1003.
Ischinger, Wolfgang - Bunde, Tobias (eds.), Towards Mutual Security. Fifty Years of Munich Security Conference, Göttingen 2014.
James, Peter, The Politics of Bavaria - an Exception to the Rule. The Special Position of the Free State of Bavaria in the New Germany, Aldershot etc. 1995.
Jaskot, Paul B., The Reich Party Rally Grounds Revisited: The Nazi Past in Postwar Nuremberg, in: Rosenfeld, Gavriel D. (ed.), Beyond Berlin. Twelve German Cities Confront the Nazi Past, Ann Arbor 2008, 143-162.
Jelinek, Yeshayahu A., Like an Oasis in the Desert: The Israel Consulate in Munich, 1948-1953, in: Studies in Zionism 9 (1988), 81-98.
Johnson, Ian, A Mosque in Munich: Nazis, CIA and the Muslim Brotherhood in the West, Boston etc. 2010.
Johnson, Jason B., Divided Village. The Cold War in the German Borderlands (Routledge studies in modern European history 44), London / New York 2017.
Johnson, Jason B., “Wild and Fearsome Hours”: The First Year of US Occupation of a Bavarian County, 1945-1946, in: German Studies Review 41 (2018), 61-79. [County Hof]
Kalb, Martin, Youth and Juvenile Delinquency in Munich, 1942-1973, New York 2016.
Kauders, Anthony, Catholics, the Jews and Democratization in post-war Germany, Munich 1945-65, in: German History 18 (2000), 461-484.
Kauders, Anthony, Democratization and the Jews: Munich, 1945-1965 (Studies in Anti-Semitism), Lincoln 2004.
Kauders, Anthony, Jews in the Christian Gaze: Munich's Churches before and after Hitler, in: Patterns of Prejudice 34 (2000), 27-47.
Kehoe, Thomas J., The Art of Occupation. Crime and Governance in American-Controlled Germany, 1944-1949, Athens/Ohio 2019.
Keßler, Katrin et al. (eds.), Synagogue and Museum (Schriftenreihe der Bet-Tfila-Forschungsstelle für Jüdische Architektur in Europa 10), Petersberg 2018. [Articles about Augsburg, Zell am Main, Arnstein]
Kißener, Michael, Building a Future out of the Ashes. The German Federal States after the Second World War, in: Bavarian Studies in History and Culture [https://www.bavarian-studies.org/building-a-future-out-of-the-ashes/]
Klimke, Vivenne, A Sustianable Life: Wolfgang E. Burhenne and the Development of Environmental Law, Hebertshausen 2015.
Könecke, Thomas - Schubert, Mathias - Preuß, Holger, (N)Olympia in Germany? An Analysis of the Referendum against Munich 2022, in: Sportwissenschaft. The German Journal of Sports Science 46 (2016), 15-24.
Kurtz, Michael J., American Cultural Restitution Policy in Germany during the Occupation, 1945-1949, PhD. Georgetown University 1982.
Lane, Stephen Kenneth, The Integration of the German Expellees: A Case Study of Bavaria, 1945-1969, PhD. Columbia University 1972.
Large, David Clay, Munich 1972. Tragedy, Terror, and Triumph at the Olympic Games, Lanham etc. 2012.
Leder, Harald Thomas, Americans and German Youth in Nuremberg 1945–1956. A Study in Politics and Culture, PhD. Louisiana University 1997.
MacDonald, Sharon, Difficult Heritage. Negotiating the Nazi Past in Nuremberg and beyond, London u.a. 2009.
Malaniak, Bohdan Z., The Ukrainian Gymnasium Regensburg, Germany, 1945-1949 = Ukraïins'ka gimnazija Regensburg, Nimeččyna, 1945-1949, New Jersey 2008.
Mandell, Richard D., The Olympics of 1972. A Munich Diary, Chapel Hill 1991.
Marcuse, Harald, Legacies of Dachau. The Uses and Abuses of a Concentration Camp, 1933-2001, Cambridge etc. 2001.
Melendy, Brenda D., Narratives, Festivals, and Reinvention: Defining the German Postwar Homeland in Waldkraiburg, in: Journal of Popular Culture 39 (2006), 1049-1076.
Merkl, Peter H., Small Town and Village in Bavaria. The Passing of a Way of Life, New York u.a. 2012.
Michelmann, Hans J., Federalism and International Relations. The Role of Subnational Units, Oxford 1990.
Milosch, Mark Stephen, Modernizing Bavaria. The Politics of Franz Josef Strauß and the CSU 1949-1969, New York u.a. 2006.
Modrey, Eva Maria, Architecture as a Mode of Self-Representation at the Olympic Games in Rome (1960) and Munich (1972), in: European Review of History 15 (2008),. 691-706.
Monod, David, Internationalism, Regionalism, and National Culture: Music Control in Bavaria 1945-1948, in: Central European History 33 (2000), 339-368.
Ostow, Robin, Creating a Bavarian Space for Rapprochement: The Jewish Museum Munich, in: Lässig, Simone - Rürup, Miriam (eds.), Space and Spatiality in Modern German-Jewish History (New German historical perspectives 8), New York / Oxford 2017, 280-297.
Papanastasiu, Nikos, The Bavarian Greek Radio Programme for Greek Migrants and its Impact on Greek-German Relations, 1967-1974, in: Klapsis, Antonis et. al. (eds.), The Greek Junta and the International System. A Case Study of Southern European Dictatorships, 1967-74, London / New York 2020, 58-70.
Pollock, Emily Richmond, Pride of Place: The 1963 Rebuilding of the Munich Nationaltheater, in: Gregor, Neil - Irvine, Thomas (eds.), Dreams of Germany. Musical Imaginaries from the Concert Hall to the Dance Floor (Spektrum 18), New York / Oxford 2019, 145-168.
Prontera, Grazia, Munich - City of Immigration? Integration Policies and Italian Active Participation in Munich Political and Social Life through Italian Organizations in the 1970s, in: Baumeister, Martin - Bonomo, Bruno - Schott, Dieter (eds.), Cities Contested. Urban Politics, Heritage, and Social Movements in Italy and West Germany in the 1970s, Frankfurt am Main / New York 2017, 147-168.
Puddington, Arch, Broadcasting Freedom. The Cold War triumph of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, Lexington 2000.
Puff, Helmut, Miniature Monuments: Modeling German History (Media and Cultural Memory 17), Berlin etc. 2014 [Frankfurt, Munich, Schwetzingen, Heilbronn]
Radchenko, Yuri, From Staryi Uhryniv to Munich: The First Scholarly Biography of Stepan Bandera, in: Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society 1 (2015), 429-458.
Rieder, Maximiliane, On the Boundary of Western Europe: The Marshall Plan and Economic Development in Bavaria, in: Bonoldi, Andrea – Leonardi, Andrea (eds.), Recovery and Development in the European Periphery (1945-1960), Bologna 2009, 281-310.
Rosenfeld, Gavriel D., Memory and the Museum. Munich`s Struugle to Create A Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism, Ibid. (ed.), Beyond Berlin. Twelve German cities confront the Nazi Past, Ann Arbor 2008, 163-184.
Rosenfeld, Gavriel D., Munich and Memory. Architecture, monuments, and the legacy of the Third Reich (Weimar and now 22), Berkeley 2000.
Ruisz, Dorottya, Social Education as Reeducation: The Implementation of US-American Policies in the English Language Classrooms of Bavaria (1945-1951), in: Gerund, Katharina et al. (eds.), Die amerikanische Reeducation-Politik nach 1945 (Histoire 55), Bielefeld 2015, 161-184.
Schiavon, Andrea, Five Rings and one Star: From Bergen-Belsen to Munich '72. The Story of Shaul Ladany, Edinburgh 2021.
Schiller, Kay, Death at the Munich Olympics, in: Confino, Alon et al. (eds.), Between Mass Death and Individual Loss: The Place of the Dead in Twentieth-Century Germany (Studies in German History 7), Oxford etc. 2008, 129-150.
Schiller, Kay, Social Climbing, Cultural Experimentation and Trailblazing Metrosexual: Franz Beckenbauer in the 1960s and 1970s, in: Elsey, Brenda - Pugliese, Stanislao G. (eds.), Football and the Boundaries of History. Critical Studies in Soccer, New York 2017, 205-226.
Schiller, Kay, The 1972 Munich Olympics and the Making of Modern Germany (Weimar and now 42), Berkeley etc. 2010.
Schroer, Timothy L., Recasting Race after World War II: Germans and African Americans in American-Occupied Germany, Boulder/Co. 2007.
Searle, Alaric, The Tolsdorff Trials in Traunstein: Public and Judicial Attitudes to the Wehrmacht in the Federal Republic, 1954–60, in: German History 23 (2005), 50-78.
Seipp, Adam R., Refugee town: Germans, Americans, and the uprooted in rural West Germany 1945-52, in: Journal of Contemporary History 44 (2009), 675-695.
Seipp, Adam R., Strangers in the Wild Place: Refugees, Americans, and a German town, 1945-1952, Bloomington etc. 2013. [DP-Camp Wildflecken]
Seipp, Adam R., "This Land Remains German": Requisitioning, Society and the US Army, 1945-1956, in: Central European History 52 (2019), 476-495 [Munich, Heidelberg]
Smyth, Craig Hugh, Repatriation of Art from the Collecting Point in Munich after World War II. Background and Beginnings, with reference especially to the Netherlands (Gerson lecture 3), Maarsen etc. 1988.
Stave, Bruce M. - Palmer, Michele (ed.), Witnesses to Nuremberg. An Oral History of American Participants at the War Crimes Trials, New York 1998.
Switzer, Andrew - Bertolini, Luca - Grin, John, Understanding Transitions in the Regional Transport and Land-Use System: Munich 1945–2013, in: Town Planning Review 86 (2015), 699-723.
Taylor, Lynne, In the Children's Best Interests. Unaccompanied Children in American-Occupied Germany, 1945-1952 (German and European Studies 27/28), Toronto / Buffalo / London 2017.
Tschoerner-Budde, Chelsea, Sustainable Mobility in Munich: Exploring the Role of Discourse in Policy Change (Studien zur Mobilitäts- und Verkehrsforschung 41), Wiesbaden 2019.
Turner, Matthew - Joel, Tony - Lowe, David, ‘Between Politics and Scholarship’: The First Decade of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, 1949–1958, in: European History Quarterly 49 (2019), 250-271.
Ulrich, Laura Christine, Roads to Europe: Heinrich Aigner and the Genesis of the European Court of Auditors, Luxembourg 2016.
Urban, Markus, Memorialization of Perpetrator Sites in Bavaria, in: Niven, William John (ed.), Memoralization in Germany since 1945, Basingstoke etc. 2010, 103-113.
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The Curse Tablets from the Roman Cohort Fort of Abusina/Eining

Defixionum tabellae Abusinenses (DT Abusina)

by Jürgen Blänsdorf
with a contribution by Bernd Steidl

translated by Ellen Yutzy Glebe

2022-03-21

You can cite this article e.g.
Jürgen Blänsdorf
with a contribution by Bernd Steidl, “The Curse Tablets from the Roman Cohort Fort of Abusina/Eining: Defixionum tabellae Abusinenses (DT Abusina)” in Bavarian Studies in History and Culture (2022) [originally published in German 2019], last modified 2022-03-21, https://www.bavarian-studies.org/2022-blaensdorf-steidl/.

This article is a translation and was originally published in German as:

Jürgen Blänsdorf mit einem Beitrag von Bernd Steidl: “Die Verfluchungstäfelchen aus dem Kohortenkastell Abusina/Eining. Defixionum tabellae Abusinenses (DT Abusina)”, in Bayerische Vorgeschichtsblätter 84 (2019), 229-242.

This text is open access and licensed under the terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Jürgen Blänsdorf
with a contribution by Bernd Steidl

The Curse Tablets from the Roman Cohort Fort of Abusina/Eining

Defixionum tabellae Abusinenses (DT Abusina)

translated by Ellen Yutzy Glebe

2022-03-21

This text is open access and licensed under terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Lead tablet DT Abusina 2, front

The Rhaetian Military Outpost in Eining and the Site Where the Tabellae Defixionum Were Found

At the very latest, the wooden cohort fort Abusina was erected on the high (southeastern) bank of the Donau in Eining during the reign of Emperor Titus (79–81 AD) as part of Governor C. Saturius’s efforts to fortify the Danube frontier by occupying the Ingolstadt basin.¹ It was here that the new route along the north bank of the Danube crossed the river, linking Abusina with the Roman forts to the west. Isolated artifacts suggest that there may well have been an older military outpost here, however, perhaps a small fort similar to that in Nersingen.² The oldest artifacts found date back to the Augustan Age;³ they could be relics of travel along the road from Augsburg along the Danube through the region around Regensburg, and from there to Bohemia—into the kingdom of Maroboduus.⁴

According to fragments of an inscription on the building, the camp, which covered 1.8 hectares (app. 4.5 acres), was built by a cohors Gallorum, generally assumed to have been the cohors IIII Gallorum. The relatively recently discovered military diploma AE 2007, no. 1782, however, provides evidence that the cohors II Gallorum was present in Rhaetia after 86 AD, and, taken together with the fragments of the inscription in Eining—of which the numerals are only partially extant—it is thus possible that the reference is in fact to this cohort. Between 107 and 116 AD, the cohors III Britannorum from Regensburg-Kumpfmühl moved into the castellum in Eining.⁵ During the first half of the second century AD, but after 125 AD, the fort was reinforced with stone.⁶ The Britannic cohort maintained their station in Eining even beyond the upheaval of the third century. During the tetrarchic period, significantly less expansive fortifications covered the southwestern corner of the mid-imperial quadrangle. According to the Notitia dignitatum, troops were still stationed in Eining in the fifth century AD. Gschwind suggested that the location had been abandoned around 430 AD,⁷ but more recent scholarship has estimated that this might not have occurred until somewhat later in the middle third of the fifth century AD.⁸

Image 1: Eining, Landkreis Kelheim.
The fort and the northern vicus, looking towards the north. The location where the tabellae defixionum were found is marked with a star.

A considerable vicus [civilian settlement]—at present known primarily from scattered finds and aerial photographs (image 1)—developed along the road that paralleled the Danube, which curved around the east side of the fort.⁹ With the narrow end perpendicular to the road, these long rectangular building complexes were primarily built along the eastern side; over time, some of these were built of stone or at least had stone foundation walls.

In the roughly triangular area defined by the northern side of the fort, the road to the east through the vicus, and the steep embankment down to the Danube, there were a number of large stone buildings, including a bath and a building referred to as a “villa” or “guesthouse” with hypocaust heating and apses. It can thus be concluded that it was in this part of the vicus, in front of the porta principalis sinistra, where the public buildings stood. At the northern end of this area, these may have included religious temples, which would correspond to the square foundations evident in some aerial photographs.¹⁰

The southern end of the encampment village is marked by a cemetery beginning some three hundred meters from the fort’s southern portal. The northern limits of the settlement, with increasingly scarce findings, were established in 1999 in rescue excavations related to new construction two hundred meters north of the fort’s northern gate.¹¹

The Location Where the Tabellae Defixionum Were Found

The lead curse tablets which are the subject of this study were found in the 1980s with the help of a metal detector in what was once the northern part of the vicus and was then a field used for agriculture.¹² The location at which they were found is to the east of the Roman road, only sixty meters east of the point at which the road from Pförring crossed the Danube, here went up and over the edge of the plateau to join the Danube Road (image 2.1).

Image 2: Eining, Landkreis Kelheim.
1) Abusina/Eining fort and vicus according to excavation finds and aerial photograph analysis. The area in which the curse tablets were found along the northern periphery of the settlement is marked with a star.
2) The complex of buildings discovered by P. Reinecke in 1915/16 east of the road in the northern part of the vicus.

In 1915–1916, Paul Reinecke conducted an excavation of the area around this intersection, just some thirty meters to the southwest of where the curse tablets were found. He reported briefly on the excavations in the autumn of 1915 which focused on the northern portions of this area in the Römisch-Germanisches Korrespondenzblatt.¹³ The succinct, unillustrated description of what they had excavated can only be understood when juxtaposed with later illustrations of the excavation (image 2.2). Reinecke’s interpretation of the excavated remains as a “small farmstead with agricultural character” hardly makes sense given its location which more recent research has definitively shown it to have been within the vicus belonging to the fort. The archeologist noted several phases of building evident in the floors of the excavated structures. Together with the southern wing, which was first excavated in 1916, the complex consists of a stone cellar which opens to the north; a narrow stone building (25 m long, 5 m wide) was attached on the south side. The western wall of this narrow wing was a particularly massive stone wall; the other walls were considerably thinner, and the building’s interior was divided by two internal walls. The cellar had a wooden floor, which, rather unusually, had been covered with a layer of mortar. The building that rested upon this foundation was certainly half-timbered construction, as evidenced in the debris from the fire that was dumped into the cellar. On the eastern side of the cellar, there is extant evidence of the floors of three additional rooms that had neither outer stone walls nor wall trenches. It can thus be presumed that the construction here rested on sleeper beams. To the north of this framework of the cellar and rooms, there were two separate but aligned sets of nearly square walls, approximately 7.5 x 6 m in size. Reinecke described their inner structure thus:

The second building with the living space displays in the back (to the east) a nearly square, walled room, the floor of which, for the sake of keeping it dry, was built over a hypocaust-type (without praefurnium) cellar (stone panels over ducts formed by low dry-pack walls). To the west lay a deeper room, the kitchen and praefurnium of the square living room to the west, two quarters of the floor of which could be heated (in two diagonally opposite corners) (a sort of duct heating, the channels of which were simply carved into the sand floor, only partially reinforced by poorly constructed dry-pack-wall-type stone piles).¹⁴

It is practically impossible to clarify the particulars of the archeological find based on this description.

To the north and west of the quadrangle, there was a courtyard paved with stone, but the outer limit of this courtyard was not found. The archeologist at the time thus considered the possibility of there having been a fence or hedge. An area leading up to the ancient road, just in front of the complex to the west and about ten meters wide, was covered in a light layer of gravel. According to the finds, which included the youngest coins minted by Gordian III and Philip the Arab,¹⁵ Reinecke dated the building complex to the third century AD.

The total character of the structures inventoried does not fit into the general pattern typical of Rhaetian settlements dominated by strip-house construction.¹⁶ The massive perpendicular stone wing extends over the width of several typical strip-house lots. For this reason, it seems beyond a doubt that this shape corresponds to an especial function of the not yet completely studied complex. The building’s location along the northern periphery of the vicus—and, even more so, the fact that the curse tablets were found nearby—can be read as additional evidence for this supposition. In regards to the massive transverse wing, but also in the many divisions of the complex and the courtyard area, this structure resembles the sacred site dedicated to Isis and Magna Mater in Mainz that was discovered and excavated between 1999 and 2001.¹⁷ There, too, a number of leaden curse tablets were found scattered throughout the entire area.¹⁸ According to the observations of the excavator, these tablets were not directly related to regular cultic rites. Instead, the relationship of these goddesses to sorcery and death likely made their religious site attractive for practicing forms of magic.

Image 3: Eining, Landkreis Kelheim.
Candleholder unearthed in P. Reinecke’s excavations in 1915/16 in the buildings in the northeastern part of the fort’s vicus. Scale 1:2.

This supposed religious character of the structure in Eining may be further evidenced in an unusual, elaborately formed bronze candleholder, which was the only artifact pictured in the context of Reinecke’s report (image 3). Whether or not the “assorted tin fibula” were found in numbers exceeding what one might expect or might suggest their having been left as sacrificial offerings is not clear, given the brevity of Reinecke’s account.¹⁹

The curse tablets, floor plan, and excavated artifacts do not provide conclusive evidence as to whether or not the building site that Reinecke excavated in part served a religious function, perhaps even as a sanctuary to Isis and/or Magna Mater. This remains, however, a distinct possibility, which future studies will hopefully help to clarify.

Bernd Steidl

The Lead Tablets

Due to the irregularity of the shape and size of the letters, the in some instances very shallow groove of the engraving, lacunae in the text due its fragmentation, and the advanced state of oxidation, it was exceedingly difficult to decipher the text of the lead tablets.²⁰ The disintegration of the metallic lead had already resulted in multiple yellow and red oxidation spots. The lead tablets were studied and documented with attention to the following characteristics: condition, dimensions, text, dating, peculiarities. The sketches were made by the author [J.B.].

The edition is organized in the following chapters:

literal transcription of the text as read (so-called “diplomatic transcription” that distinguishes between majuscule and minuscule letters); textual analysis. The critical characters used here include: […] spaces; <…> emendation, (…) the resolution of abbreviations.
edited transcription with spaces between words, punctuation, and capitalization of proper nouns, interpretive additions (…); translation; commentary on the contents and language used; interpretation of the contents. Incomprehensible text is indicated by capital letters.

DT Abusina 1

ASM Inv. 2006.2173. Width x height: 10.5 x 6.5 cm. Height of the letters: 6–8 mm

Lightly uneven as a result of having been folded; Surface unoxidized; missing fragment on left edge that does not affect the lettering. Small hole in the middle. Writing is preserved only on the verso (see below). In the right corner of the recto, the lead has begun to oxidize as evidenced in yellow and red spots.

Script

Older minuscule cursive with the typical shape of the letter e in which a double stroke leans to the left and long codae (horizontal strokes) in the letters q and r. The letters A, D, G, M, and N retain the majuscule form. The script resembles that of the curse tablets found within the sanctuary of Isis and Mater Magna in Mainz down to the very details.²¹ No doubling of consonants (i.e., gemination). Dated: Mid to late first century AD.

Additional Information

The analysis is based upon a recent flash photograph, older photographs, a previously completed sketch, and recent detail photographs. In some cases, the older pictures reveal more details than the newer ones. The sketch reproduced here combines the results of these various readings.

Diplomatic Transcription

1 quisquam mestitias
2 sustulit rogo [..]dim rogo [u]t cogatur
3 eum redemi si non rederit
4 sic idem fictum taqua
5 sucepu cum defictcsione

Textual Analysis

The words are separated by remarkable spaces.
Lacking double consonants: 3 redemi = redde mi(hi), rederit = reddiderit
5 sucepu: p is formed with a hasta (vertical stroke) and a downward-leaning second stroke similar to the manner found in some of the tablets from Mainz.

Edited Transcription

1 Quisquam m(a)estitias
2 sustulit? rogo, [i]d<e>m rogo, ut cogatur.
3 eum red(d)e mi. si non red(d)e<d>erit,
4 sic idem fictum, ta(m)qua(m)
5 susceptum cum defixione

Translation

“Has anyone endured (such) misery? I ask, just as I ask, that he might be compelled. Give him back to me. If he does not give him back, I will banish him, just as if he had been overcome by a curse.”

Commentary

The side which bears the text must have been the verso, for the text assumes the salutations addressed to the deity and the mention of the object stolen.
Characteristic of Vulgar Latin are the monophthongization from ae to e, the lack of gemination, the incorrect form fictum instead of fixum, and the exclusion of the nasal in taqua instead of tamquam.
Line 1: The use of the pronoun quisquam is grammatically correct, if a negated interrogative clause is assumed. One expects something like tales maestitias.
Line 2: [.]dim cannot be completed with a Latin term. Presumably, it is meant to read idem as in line 4. Particularly noticeable is the emphatic repetition of rogo… rogo. It is only line 5 that makes clear that the text refers to a male (sucepu = susceptum), but this must have been already clearly stated on the recto.
Line 3, which initially seems to read eum redemi (I have bought the freedom of…) is contradicted by the subsequent si non rederit. In addition, the clause ut cogatur would then be left without the necessary complement. A predicate for fictum, for example, faciam, is missing.
Line 4: idem is either to be understood as a substitute for ego quoque or as a grammatically false accusative instead of eundem.
Line 5: Even if we presume Vulgar Latin spelling, the classical pronunciation of the word cannot be determined with certainty. My preliminary suggestion is susceptum, which, together with cum defixione, forms a cogent phrase: “overcome by a curse.” The orthography of the classical word defixio is beyond the scope of the author’s knowledge: defictcsione.

Interpretation

The text on this side implies that the delinquent and his infraction have been named on the other side. This side must thus be the verso. The wording expresses more strongly than other extant curse tablets how the loss has taken an emotional toll on the author. It begins with the lamentation over the loss of the object, which cannot be more closely determined. The weight placed upon the lost suggests more that it is about a person than a material object. It is followed by the demand for the return and the threat of a curse, the extent of which is expanded in the grammatically incomplete added phrase. The author of this primarily Vulgar Latin text has insufficient language skills to use the expression properly.

DT Abusina 2

ASM E. No. 1981/22. Width x height: 9 x 3.5 cm. Height of the letters: 3–4 mm

Image 6: Eining, Landkreis Kelheim.
Lead tablet DT Abusina 2, back (verso). 1) Sketch; 2) Photograph. Scale 1:1.

The writing has been adapted to the irregular form along the upper, left, and right margins. A fragment of indeterminable size has broken off the right side. The tablet is broken and has been glued back together somewhat inexactly; some smaller pieces are missing. As a result, the right half of the line 3 has been shifted upward somewhat. The glue has obscured one or two letters in two spots.

Script

Older minuscule cursive like DT Abusina 1; thus a similar date, but rougher and mostly without spacing between words. The letter D has a majuscule form and an unzial shape open to the left; u and e are distinctively different. No gemination of consonants.

Additional Information

After writing three lines on the recto (3 lines), the author turned the originally strip-shaped tablet over along the long axis, so that the damage documented here is mirrored on the other side, as well.

Diplomatic Transcription

Recto:
1 quis qAui[…] quis[…
2 uttudominaaludiosluo[…
3 deueniant et quimeuml[…
4 conpilauit et rogodomina[…

Verso:
5 etpromito […]cesexempulo[…
6 prosuanabom[…]mumus[…

Textual Analysis

On the right end of the lines, so much text has been lost that it is impossible to conjecture the context. In line 6, the word division is uncertain.

Line 1: very large letters. The fact that quis is thrice repeated and the second u is turned backwards and then repeated correctly suggests a faulty mastery of writing.
Line 2: From this point, the letters are smaller and more regular in size, presumably written by another author. Only the d in domina is wrong. The l in ludio is uncertain due to advanced oxidation. Two vertical strokes have been determined after closer observation to be cracks in the lead. They are thus omitted from the sketch.
Line 3: The end of the word deueniant is somewhat misaligned due to the fragmentation of the lead tablet.

Edited Transcription

Recto:
1 quis quis quis […
2 ut tu, domina, a ludio SLUO[…
3 deveniant, et qui meum l[…
4 conpilavit, et rogo, domina[…

Verso:
5 et promit(t)o[…]CES exempulo […
6 pro sua NABOM[…]MVMUS […

Translation

Recto:
1 “Who, who, whoever […
2 that you, (my) lady, from the scoundrel […
3 they should arrive, and who my […
4 has stolen, and I ask, (my) lady […”

Verso:
5 “and I promise… (sacrificial offerings?) of the highest quality […
6 for his… […

Commentary

Line 1: The use of quis or quisquis is typical for curses directed at unknown delinquents.
Line 2: The phrase ut tu, domina marks the beginning of the appeal to the deity. This domina could refer to Victoria, who is known to have been worshiped in Abusina. Female deities referred to as domina include, among others, Mater Magna (Mainz), Isis (Baelo Claudia), and Terra (Carthage). The word ludius (player/actor, scoundrel) is more likely a deprecatory epithet than a proper name; a ludio can be interpreted as the wish to have something returned from the delinquent. No interpretation can be offered for SLUO. In Latin, only two consonants can follow the letter s, p, or t. Neither of these can be read in this instance.
Lines 3–4: The verb deveniant is associated with multiple negative connotations (in manus alienas, in potestatem), and thus refers here to the wish as to what should happen to the delinquents—in the plural here, which is often used to include a potential confidant to the infraction. The stolen object must have been named in the gap, the length of which is indeterminable, in et qui meum l[… / …]conpilavit.
Line 4: The verb conpilare (to steal, to plunder) is classical, but rare, and used here, as in other curses concerning theft, in place of furari, which Vulgar Latin typically avoids as a deponent. The phrase et rogo, domina repeats the request for help and could be completed along the lines of “that you grant my request before something is promised on the reverse side in return.”
Line 5: In et promito, the doubling of the consonant is missing; it should be promitto. The return offering should consist of multiple objects: ]ces. – exempulo: although etymologically correct, there is no established anaptyxis for exemplo, which could refer to the extraordinary value of the offering promised in return. The orthography of the consonant combination pl is uncertain. In addition to the common templum, there are three documented instances of tempulum or tempulinum (AE 1940.209; CIL VI.831, CIL XII.649). In discipulus, the anaptyxical form is the standard, in disciplina, the syncopated form is established; in addition, there is one documented instance of discipulina (CIL VIII.14464). If one were to suppose another division of the words, one might conjecture that pulo is pullo(s) (“boy” or “black”) with a lack of gemination and to be read with sex, but this leaves a senseless em between them. Another division results in sex empulo, but this, too, does not correspond to any known word. Other words that end with -ulo—like discipulo, epulos, famulo, manipulo, populo, scopulo, scrupulo, titulo, tumulo—are not fitting alternatives in regard to either orthography or meaning. Similarly, any attempts to infer shifts typical for Vulgar Latin (e.g., e = ae or the dropped h) failed.
Line 6: Aside from the easily read word pro, the line is indecipherable. In the middle of the line, the strokes preserved are not sufficient to support the fitting conjecture of ab om[nibus]. The same can be said for another guess: abominamur.

Interpretation

Despite the fragmentary nature of the object and the partly undecipherable text, all of the components of a curse in response to theft are present. A deity addressed as domina is asked for help; a delinquent is named, in this case with an epithet; the infraction is outlined along with a desire for revenge and the request that this revenge might be fulfilled, and an offering is promised in return.
Unlike DT Abusina 1, the text in this case is classical except for the lack of consonant gemination.

DT Abusina 3

ASM Inv. 2006.2172. Width x height: 5.5 x 5.0 cm. Height of the letters: 3 mm
Dr. Steidl has already presented the text on this tablet elsewhere.²²

Very well preserved. A few cracks on the left margin and lower section, a dent in the upper section, no loss of text.

Script

Majuscule letters, which—especially notable in the N—lean to the left, as is typical for retrograde script. The progressively smaller text and tighter line spacing from line 7 to line 1, along with the significantly tighter spacing of the letters at the end of the text (= left end of line 1), are evidence of the fact that this text is indeed a retrograde writing sample. Only a few letters are written in mirror image: S; the letter L is only upside down in line 2. It is not possible to date the object based on the script.

Additional Information

Retrograde writing to be read from the end of line 7 to the beginning of line 1. Except for lines 4–5, the word and syllable endings are observed.

Diplomatic Transcription

1 SOLAMSOTOVEDSOXIFEDSOL
2 LVNSORESIMSOLLIN
3 SVROLFSVTANOD
4 SVALFTNVRECEFEDV
5 ARFNIIVQTNVRELEFEF
6 MEDIFIMIVQTNIS
7 IXIFEDITOVED

Textual Analysis

Line 4: Fla(v)us: orthographical mistake or careless pronunciation.
Line 5: fefel(l)erunt, with lack of consonant gemination as in DT Abusina 1 and 2.
Line 6: mi: established classical abbreviation of mihi.

Edited Transcription

7 Devoti, defixi
6 sint, qui mi fidem
5 fefel(l)erunt, qui in fra-
4 ude fecerunt: Fla(v)us,
3 Donatus, Florus.
2 Nillos, miseros, nul-
1 los, defixos, devotos, malos

Translation

“Cursed, banished they should be, those who abused my trust, and who acted deceptively: Flavus, Donatus, Florus. (I curse) the nobodies, the miserable, the nobodies, the banished, the cursed, the malignant.”

Commentary

Line 7f: Rarely is the terminology of cursing so directly and thoroughly employed. It is repeated at the end of the text.
Lines 2–1: nillos … nullos: the negated pronoun is used as an adjective: “empty, worthless”; the accusative can be understood if a word like defigo has been elided.

Interpretation

The text, written in the retrograde method and intended to convey magical powers, is notable for a number of stylistic repetitions and alliterations; one might speak here of a popular rhetorical style. The text begins and ends by putting a curse upon three people, who are asyndetically named in the middle section of the text. The reason for the curse is disloyalty, which the text emphatically states twice—with both fidem fallere and fraudem facere. It does not, however, list any further details.

DT Abusina 4

ASM E. No. 1981/22. Width x height of large fragment: 11 x 9 cm. Height of the letters: 7–8 mm

Image 9: Eining, Landkreis Kelheim.
Lead tablet DT Abusina 4, back (verso). 1) Sketch; 2) Photograph. Scale 1:1.

Condition

The tablet is broken into three parts; the smallest piece has a broken edge that matches that of the largest, so that one might speak of two fragments. In addition, considerable pieces from the upper and right-hand margins are missing. Yellow and red oxidation spots have roughened the leaden surface.

Script

Majuscule lettering. Given the similarities with capitalis rustica, the text can be dated as relatively late, at least to the third century AD.

Additional Information

Four lines of text of decreasing height and line spacing.

Diplomatic Transcription

Recto
1 DC ET QV […
2 QVISQVIS.. E[…
3 ET.. FECIT […
4 Y

Textual Analysis

DC: indecipherable, perhaps it could be read as OC=hoc.

Edited Transcription

1 (hoc) et qu<is…[
2 quisquis… […
3 et… fecit […
4 Y

Translation

1 “this (?)… and who (whoever?)
2 whoever… […
3 and… has done […”
4 [.]

Commentary

Lines 1–3: The pronouns presumably introduce clauses that name the unknown delinquents and their infractions. The deed is characterized with fecit.

Verso
Four lines of single, indecipherable letters; majuscule script in lines 1–3, minuscule script in line 4.

Interpretation

Given the numerous parallels in texts that name unknown delinquents, it can be safely assumed that this artifact is also a curse tablet.

DT Abusina 5

ASM E. No. 1981/2. Width x height: 6 x 7.4 cm. Height of the letters: between 3.5 and 1.4 cm

Condition

Two fragments of a larger tablet that lack exact matching edges. The corner of one outer margin is preserved.

Script

Majuscule, date indeterminable.

Diplomatic Transcription

1 S X
2 V I R (?) N
3 X… I NISI
4 L (?) P

Text Analysis

The letters are written with considerable spaces between them.

Edited Transcription

1 SX
2 vir (?) N
3 X. I nisi
4 L (?) P

Translation

“Man… if not…”

Commentary

If the vir in line 2 is a reference to the delinquent, this text could be a curse directed at an unknown individual. Line 3: nisi: Parallel texts suggest the possibility that the curse was to be suspended if the stolen object were returned.²³

Interpretation

Even the scant remains of the inscription allow for identifying it as a curse.

Assessment

Magical rites, with which it was possible to call upon the gods and demons in order to acquire power over other individuals, to punish them for their behavior, or to eliminate them as potential competitors from professional situations, chariot races, or romantic affairs, had been imported into Greece from ancient Egypt and the Near East and from there had spread throughout all areas of the Roman Empire.

Evidence of these practices is provided by five lead tablets—only one of which is preserved completely—found near the civilian settlement (vicus) just outside the Roman fort Abusina and two curse dolls made of clay, which were pierced multiple times with needles to symbolize the curse. They resemble the more or less contemporary figures found within the sanctuary of Isis and Mater Magna in Mainz.

The lead tablets and the curse dolls can be dated to the period between the founding of the fort in 80 AD and the destruction of the vicus in 260 AD. They cannot, however, as stray finds be assigned to any particular settlement strata. As a result, the dating must be based on the form of the script, the orthography, and the language used. The texts written in minuscule certainly stem from the second half of the first or beginning of the second century AD. The majuscule texts can be dated to the second or third century AD based on their use of language.

All the texts incorporate the sort of deviations from standard Latin that are typical for areas on the periphery of the Roman Empire. One peculiarity is the lack of consonant gemination.

Based on the material of the tablets themselves and the text, there is no doubt that they all served to place a curse on one or several wrongdoers. Given the distinctive differences in the script and composition, it is clear that the texts were composed by different authors, all of whom had only a basic grasp of the typical characteristics of curse texts. Although one author was acquainted with the technique of retrograde script, none of the authors used the standard phrases associated with sorcery. Like the roughly contemporaneous curse tablets found in the sanctuary of Isis and Mater Magna in Mainz (DTM)—similarly situated along the periphery of the Roman Empire, the tablets found in Eining lack magical symbols or images. Apparently the authors were not priests, sorcerers, or professional scribes, but rather lay people. There is little to suggest whether they might have been male or female, free or enslaved. The intense emotion that implies a sense of powerlessness found in one of the texts (DT Abusina 1) suggests that this text might be most likely have been written by a woman.

The reasons given for the curses are kidnapping, theft, infidelity, and fraud. These infractions were all punishable under the law, assuming that the injured party was entitled to pursue litigation. The fact that the authors did not do so could mean that they were not Roman citizens or were women. The case of the unknown wrongdoer is a special case. In such an instance, appealing to a supernatural power was the first line of defense.

The contents of the texts do not refer at all to the military encampments or its residents. The only geographical reference is implied in the use of domina to appeal to a female deity, which could refer to Victoria, who was venerated together with Mars in a nearby temple. Steidl’s recent research on the circumstances surrounding these artifacts, however, also allows for the hypothesis that, as in Mainz, Mater Magna was venerated here and such ritual curses might have called upon her. Although the goddess Fortuna was venerated in Abusina, as well, the evidence of this cult is dated to a later period.

Sigla

AE: L’Année Épigraphique (Paris, 1888ff.)

ASM: Archäologische Staatssammlung München

CIL: Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum

IBR: F. Vollmer. Inscriptiones Baivariae Romanae: sive Inscriptiones Prov. Raetiae (Munich, 1915).

Illustration Credits

Image 1: Based on Walter Sölter, ed., Das römische Germanien aus der Luft (Bergisch Gladbach: Lübbe, 1981), 43 with additions.

Image 2.1: Based on Thomas Fischer and Konrad Spindler, Das römische Grenzkastell Abusina-Eining, Führer zu archäologischen Denkmälern in Bayern: Niederbayern 1 (Stuttgart: Theiss, 1984), with additions. Graphic: Dr. Gabriele Sorge, Archeological Collection of the Bavarian State, Munich.

Image 2.2: Ground plan from the archives of the Archeological Collection of the Bavarian State; adapted by Dr. Gabriele Sorge.

Image 3: Based on Reinecke, “Eining,” 14, image 14.

Images 4-10: Sketches by Jürgen Blänsdorf; photographs by Stefanie Friedrich; retouched by Dr. Gabriele Sorge, Archeological Collection of the Bavarian State, Munich.

Notes

Although Gschwind assumed that the route linking Stepperg and Hienheim to the north of the Danube was not built before the end of the 80s AD, more recent research incorporating dendrochronological data from Kösching has confirmed the earlier suggestion—based on the inscription IBR 257— that work on the military encampment began as part of the expansion initiated under C. Saturius. See Claus-Michael Hüssen, “Kosching, Burgheim, Nassenfels: Grenzsicherung in Raetien im 1. und frühen 2. Jahrhundert n. Chr.,” in Limes XX: XXth International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies, ed. Ángel Morillo Cerdán, Norbert Hanel, and Esperanza Martín, Anejos de Gladius 12 (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas : Instituto Histórico Hoffmeyer : Instituto de Arqueología de Mérida : Ediciones Polifemo, 2009), 970–72. Cf. Markus Gschwind, Abusina: das römische Auxiliarkastell Eining an der Donau vom 1. bis 5. Jahrhundert n. Chr., Münchner Beiträge zur Vor- und Frühgeschichte 53 (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2004), 270f. On the history of the fort itself, see Gschwind, Abusina. For a detailed description of the excavation and preservation efforts, see Renate Schiwall, “Konservierungsgeschichte und denkmalpflegerische Maßnahmen im Kastell Eining seit dem 19. Jahrhundert,” Bericht der Bayerischen Bodendenkmalpflege 49 (2008): 131–97. For a brief overview and popular portrayal, see Thomas Fischer and Konrad Spindler, Das römische Grenzkastell Abusina-Eining, Führer zu archäologischen Denkmälern in Bayern: Niederbayern 1 (Stuttgart: Theiss, 1984); Katharina Ramstetter, “Eining,” in Am Rande des Römischen Reiches: Ausflüge zum Limes in Süddeutschland, ed. Suzana Matešić and C. Sebastian Sommer, Beiträge zum Welterbe Limes, Special Issue 3 (Bad Homburg: Deutsche Limes-Kommission, 2015), 170–75; Thomas Fischer, Das Römerkastell Eining und seine Umgebung: Ein Führer (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 2016).↩︎
See the extensive discussion in Gschwind, Abusina, 266–68.↩︎
Bernd Steidl, “Einige Aspekte zur Verkehrsinfrastruktur und zu den Vici in Raetien.” in Römische Vici und Verkehrsinfrastruktur in Raetien und Noricum. Colloquium Bedaium Seebruck, 26.-28. März 2015. Schriftenreihe des Bayerischen Landesamtes für Denkmalpflege 15 (Munich: Volk, 2016), 72, footnote 31.↩︎
Steidl, 71f., image 4.↩︎
Stefan Sandbichler, “Neue Untersuchungen im mittelkaiserzeitlichen Auxiliarkastell Regensburg-Kumpfmühl,” Bayerische Vorgeschichtsblätter 74 (2009): 83.↩︎
Gschwind, Abusina, 275; Sandbichler, “Neue Untersuchungen,” 86f.↩︎
Gschwind, Abusina, 288f.↩︎
Michael Mackensen, “Archäologisch-historische Auswertung Submuntorium in der späten römischen Kaiserzeit,” in Der römische Militärplatz Submuntorium/Burghöfe an der oberen Donau: Archäologische Untersuchungen im spätrömischen Kastell und Vicus 2001–2007, ed. Michael Mackensen and Florian Schimmer, Münchner Beiträge zur Provinzialrömischen Archäologie 4 (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2013), 416–21.↩︎
Ramstetter, “Eining,” 170.↩︎
Fischer and Spindler, Abusina, 36 (image 12) and 93. In an unpublished magnetogram taken by the Bayerisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege (Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Historical Monuments) in 2010, the outline is not visible, but neither are those of other known stone structures in the area.↩︎
Bernward Ziegaus, Lucia Karrer, and Michael M. Rind, “Ein Silberdenarhort aus dem Baugebiet Eining, ‘Fürstenäcker,’” Das Archäologische Jahr in Bayern 1999, 2000, 70–72.↩︎
The author (B.S.) is grateful to E. Huber-Flotho for providing information regarding the location and situation in which the tablets were found.↩︎
Paul Reinecke, “Eining (Niederbayern): Ausgrabungen,” Römisch-Germanisches Korrespondenzblatt 9 (1916): 12–14, https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.25479.6.↩︎
Reinecke, 13.↩︎
Hans Jörg Kellner, Die Fundmünzen der römischen Zeit in Deutschland, I [Bavaria], 2: Niederbayern (Berlin: Mann, 1970), No. 146–147, 149.↩︎
An unpublished magnetogram from 2010 (see footnote 10) does not show any stone structures at the site or in the surrounding area, although aerial photographs do suggest otherwise. The contradiction in the findings could possibly be explained by an older, more typical vicus building pattern with wooden structures. Reinecke’s excavations found some evidence of this (see above). I am grateful to Josef Lichtenauer of the Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Historical Monuments for giving me access to the results of these geophysical studies. (B.S.)↩︎
Marion Witteyer, Göttlicher Baugrund: die Kultstätte für Isis und Mater Magna unter der Römerpassage in Mainz (Mainz: von Zabern, 2003), 5, image 3.↩︎
Jürgen Blänsdorf, Die Defixionum tabellae des Mainzer Isis- und Mater Magna-Heiligtums: Defixionum tabellae Mogontiacenses (DTM), ed. together with Pierre-Yves Lambert and Marion Witteyer, Mainzer Archäologische Schriften 9 (Mainz: Generaldirektion Kulturelles Erbe Rheinland-Pfalz, 2012).↩︎
Reinecke, “Eining.”↩︎
I am indebted to Dr. Amina Kropp of the University of Mannheim for first drawing my attention to the lead tablets from Abusina/Eining and providing photographic documentation of them along with a partial transcription. Dr. Steidl of the Archeological Collection of the Bavarian State made it possible for me to examine the tablets myself, while Stefanie Friedrich, also of the Archeological Collection of the Bavarian State, thankfully provided the original photographs. Dr. Marion Witteyer and U. Weichart of the General Directorate for Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate both provided valuable technical assistance. (J.B.)↩︎
Blänsdorf, Isis- und Mater Magna, 41–47.↩︎
Bernd Steidl, “Fluchtäfelchen: Verfluchung und Schadenszauber,” in Die Archäologische Staatssammlung München: Glanzstücke des Museums, ed. Rupert Gebhard (Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2010).↩︎
Compare Auguste Audollent, “Defixionum tabellae quotquot innotuerunt tam in Graecis orientis quam in totius occidentis partibus praeter Atticas in Corpore inscriptionum atticarum editas” (Paris, 1904), no. 137. Helenus eius nomen inferis mandat, stipem. strenam, lumen eius secum defert; ne quis eum solvat nisi nos, qui fecimus and many parallels in the defixions of Bath and Uley. See: Roger S. O. Tomlin, “The Inscribed Lead Tablets: An Interim Report,” in The Uley Shrines Excavation of a Ritual Complex on West Hill, Uley, Gloucestershire, 1977–79, ed. Ann Woodward and Peter E Leach, Archeological Report (English Heritage) 17 (London: English Heritage in association with British Museum Press, 1993), 113–30; Roger S. O. Tomlin, “The Curse Tablets,” in The Temple of Sulis Minerva at Bath, ed. Barry Cunliffe, vol. 2: The Finds from the Sacred Spring (Oxford: Oxford University Committee for Archaeology, 1988), 59–277.↩︎

Bibliography

Audollent, Auguste. “Defixionum tabellae quotquot innotuerunt tam in Graecis orientis quam in totius occidentis partibus praeter Atticas in Corpore inscriptionum atticarum editas.” Paris, 1904.

Blänsdorf, Jürgen. Die Defixionum tabellae des Mainzer Isis- und Mater Magna-Heiligtums: Defixionum tabellae Mogontiacenses (DTM). Edited together with Pierre-Yves Lambert and Marion Witteyer. Mainzer Archäologische Schriften 9. Mainz: Generaldirektion Kulturelles Erbe Rheinland-Pfalz, 2012.

Fischer, Thomas. Das Römerkastell Einig und seine Umgebung: Ein Führer. Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 2016.

Fischer, Thomas, and Konrad Spindler. Das römische Grenzkastell Abusina-Eining. Führer zu archäologischen Denkmälern in Bayern: Niederbayern 1. Stuttgart: Theiss, 1984.

Gschwind, Markus. Abusina: das römische Auxiliarkastell Eining an der Donau vom 1. bis 5. Jahrhundert n. Chr. Münchner Beiträge zur Vor- und Frühgeschichte 53. Munich: C. H. Beck, 2004.

Hüssen, Claus-Michael. “Kosching, Burgheim, Nassenfels: Grenzsicherung im Raetien im 1. und frühen 2. Jahrhundert n. Chr.” In Limes XX: XXth International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies, edited by Ángel Morillo Cerdán, Norbert Hanel, and Esperanza Martín. Anejos de Gladius 12. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas : Instituto Histórico Hoffmeyer : Instituto de Arqueología de Mérida : Ediciones Polifemo, 2009.

Kellner, Hans Jörg, and Joachim Gorecki, eds. Die Fundmünzen der römischen Zeit in Deutschland. I [Bavaria], 2: Niederbayern. Berlin: Mann, 1970.

Mackensen, Michael. “Archäologisch-historische Auswertung Submuntorium in der späten römischen Kaiserzeit.” In Der römische Militärplatz Submuntorium/Burghöfe an der oberen Donau: archäologische Untersuchungen im spätrömischen Kastell und Vicus 2001–2007, edited by Michael Mackensen and Florian Schimmer, 396–426. Münchner Beiträge zur Provinzialrömischen Archäologie 4. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2013.

Ramstetter, Katharina. “Eining.” In Am Rande des Römischen Reiches: Ausflüge zum Limes in Süddeutschland, edited by Suzana Matešić and C. Sebastian Sommer, 170–75. Beiträge zum Welterbe Limes, Special Issue 3. Bad Homburg: Deutsche Limes-Kommission, 2015.

Reinecke, Paul. “Eining (Niederbayern): Ausgrabungen.” Römisch-germanisches Korrespondenzblatt 9 (1916): 12–14. https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.25479.6.

Sandbichler, Stefan. “Neue Untersuchungen im mittelkaiserzeitlichen Auxiliarkastell Regensburg-Kumpfmühl.” Bayerische Vorgeschichtsblätter 74 (2009): 39–130.

Schiwall, Renate. “Konservierungsgeschichte und denkmalpflegerische Massnahmen im Kastell Eining seit dem 19. Jahrhundert.” Bericht Der Bayerischen Bodendenkmalpflege 49 (2008): 131–97.

Sölter, Walter, ed. Das römische Germanien aus der Luft. Bergisch Gladbach: Lübbe, 1981.

Steidl, Bernd. “Einige Aspekte zur Verkehrsinfrastruktur und zu den Vici in Raetien. 15 (München 2016) 68-83.” In Römische Vici und Verkehrsinfrastruktur in Raetien und Noricum. Colloquium Bedaium Seebruck, 26.-28. März 2015., 68–83. Schriftenreihe des Bayerischen Landesamtes für Denkmalpflege 15. Munich: Volk, 2016.

———. “Fluchtäfelchen: Verfluchung und Schadenszauber.” In Die Archäologische Staatssammlung München: Glanzstücke des Museums, edited by Rupert Gebhard. Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2010.

Tomlin, Roger S. O. “The Curse Tablets.” In The Temple of Sulis Minerva at Bath, edited by Barry Cunliffe, 2: The Finds from the Sacred Spring:59–277. Oxford: Oxford University Committee for Archaeology, 1988.

———. “The Inscribed Lead Tablets: An Interim Report.” In The Uley Shrines Excavation of a Ritual Complex on West Hill, Uley, Gloucestershire, 1977–79, edited by Ann Woodward and Peter E Leach, 113–30. Archeological Report (English Heritage) 17. London: English Heritage in association with British Museum Press, 1993.

Witteyer, Marion. Göttlicher Baugrund: die Kultstätte für Isis und Mater Magna unter der Römerpassage in Mainz. Mainz: von Zabern, 2003.

Ziegaus, Bernward, Lucia Karrer, and Michael M. Rind. “Ein Silberdenarhort aus dem Baugebiet Eining, ‘Fürstenäcker.’” Das Archäologische Jahr in Bayern 1999, 1999, 70–72.

This article is a translation and was originally published in German as:

‘Mountains have names!’

On the history of how mountain names became established

by Martin Scharfe

translated by Sarah Swift and Ellen Yutzy Glebe

2021

You can cite this article e.g.
Martin Scharfe, “‘Mountains have names!’: On the history of how mountain names became established” in Bavarian Studies in History and Culture (2021) [originally published in German 2018], last modified 2021, https://www.bavarian-studies.org/2021-scharfe/.

This article is a translation and was originally published in German as:

Martin Scharfe, “’Berge heißen!’ Zur Geschichte der Bergnamen-Etablierung” in Bayerisches Jahrbuch für Volkskunde (2018), 15-34.

This text is open access and licensed under the terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Martin Scharfe

‘Mountains have names!’

On the history of how mountain names became established

translated by Sarah Swift and Ellen Yutzy Glebe

2021

This text is open access and licensed under terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

'Großglockner', painting by Edward Theodore Compton 1918

1 Giving Mountains Names

This article does not aim to unravel the meaning of the names of any particular peaks and mountains; this is not a work of etymology or nomenclature. My goal is instead to uncover some clues as to the motivation for and purpose of naming mountains. Why must mountains be given names at all? And why (this is my second question) do they have the specific names that are familiar to us today and facilitate unambiguous communication? How did our mountain names make it on to maps and thereby become sacrosanct? I am interested in the (often curious) history of mountain names and not in their linguistic origins.

My questions appear so trivial that historians of Alpine exploration have hardly even registered their existence. They appear trivial to us today because mountains everywhere received their names so long ago in a process that is also familiar to us from other contexts—as per Hans Blumenberg’s famous definition of the modern age as the epoch that finally found a name for everything.¹ In the case of the mountain names, we can pin Blumenberg’s “modern age” down to a quite specific timespan: it was first in the nineteenth century that mountains, especially the highest peaks, received their names—apparently forever.

Indeed, naming goes back to the dawn of humanity. The Biblical myth of the first humans, as narrated in the second story of creation, depicts name-giving in a charming scene: God brings all the animals to the first human being “to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name” (Gen. 2:19, NIV). Bestowing names was—and is not—a task for God, it seems, but for humans—what we might, in modern diction, call a matter of culture: “So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky, and all the wild animals” (Gen. 2:20). This business of assigning names went on for a long time, of course, as we can well discern from the jittery activity of early Alpinists in the new field of mountain botany in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Dozens, or indeed hundreds, of previously unheard, freshly devised names were found for and attached to newly discovered plants in accordance with Linnaean taxonomy. Rocks and minerals were given similar treatment, and why should the mountain peaks have been exempted? The more attention peaks attracted—as newly discovered individuals, so to speak—from all with an interest in the Alps, the more pressing the need to find appropriate names for them became.

The problem that arises here (and may not be entirely obvious to people nowadays) is captured evocatively in two scenes in Johanna Spyri’s Heidi, and taking up this wildly popular yet oft-derided bestseller here affords me an opportunity to shed some light on my essay title, which may initially have appeared somewhat obscure. In the third chapter of Heidi: Her Years of Wandering and Learning (called “In the Pasture”), the girl—das Heidi in German, grammatically neutral rather than feminine—is spellbound, shocked even, by the alpenglow on the rock faces in the evening the first time she accompanies the goatherd Peter to the higher pasture above her grandfather’s alm: “Look, look! the highest peak is glowing. Oh, the beautiful fire!” Heidi asks for an explanation, but Peter says only that “It is always like that, but it is no fire,” and that it “comes of itself.” Heidi cannot take her eyes off the wondrously illuminated mountains and cries out excitedly: “just this minute it is all as red as roses. Look at the snow and those high, pointed rocks! What are they called?” Peter’s answer is characteristically taciturn: “Mountains have no names.”² Before delving any further into the substance of this terse and initially rather peculiar-seeming answer, I will describe a second scene from later in this chapter that essentially mirrors this first one. Heidi directs the answer given by the goatherd Peter to her grandfather as a question: “But why have the mountains no names?” Her grandfather replies that they do have names and promises to tell her the name of a mountain if she can describe one to him so that he recognizes it.³ Heidi describes two mountains and her grandfather promptly tells her their names: Falkniss and Scesaplana⁴ (Illustration 1). So did the mountains “have names” after all? In this case, Spyri was a keen observer. The mountains the local population saw every day, the ones whose appearance was known and could be described, did have names. But the more distant mountains that were of interest to mountain travelers and Alpinists (the higher mountains, hidden from view by others in front of them) were mostly unknown (“Mountains have no names” as the goatherd Peter tells us!)—and this fact created an enormous problem for anyone trying to become oriented in the area.

2 Without Names, Orientation Is Impossible

One of the most thoughtful early mountain travelers, Hans Conrad Escher from Zurich (who we also know, not coincidentally, as a keen producer of unerring and meticulously labeled panoramic drawings⁵), pointed repeatedly to the importance of being able to “definitively name and label distant areas and mountains where one has never set foot” when orienting oneself in unfamiliar terrain and in the mountains.⁶ Escher highlighted in particular the problem of locations that were “hidden” from sight by perspective.⁷ He used the example of the Finsteraarhorn to illustrate this point, suggesting that this peak had “had the fate of being somewhat overlooked by our forebears, even though its true height is greater than that of all the surrounding peaks (as careful measurements have revealed) because it modestly hides in dark remoteness behind masses that more brashly catch the eyes of those accustomed to focusing only on what is closest.” Furthermore, Escher noted with fine irony, the peak had been “unconcerned” since time immemorial as to “whether it was noticed by the playful human race and adopted into the ranks of the most exalted and visible bodies or regarded as nonexistent.”⁸

The “playful human race” Escher spoke of had, however, recently become divided, for a previously unknown theoretical curiosity⁹ had taken hold of certain humans—“mountain travelers”—who were now attempting to ascend to precisely those summits in the high mountains that their forebears had previously avoided. A lack of geographical clarity endangered their endeavor. Prominent landmarks had not been surveyed and there were no maps of the “dark remoteness.” Designated names that allowed unequivocal identification of mountain peaks were unknown, and there were no locals who had sought and found routes to these high peaks. A case from the exploration of the Pyrenees provides a good starting point, although the story has not attracted much attention here in the Germanophone countries.

2.1 Mont Perdu: The Lack of an Overview

The diplomat and scientist Louis Ramond (baron de Carbonnières), a resident of Strasbourg, had been attempting to climb one of the highest mountains in the Pyrenees with an entourage of porters and guides since the 1790s. Modern measurements attribute a height of 3,355 meters to Mont Perdu (or Monte Perdido, which was located on Spanish territory back then and still is today). At the time, it was considered the highest mountain in the Pyrenees and referred to as the “Mont Blanc of the Pyrenees.” Ramond’s undertaking was complicated by a lack of information:

Nowhere in the entire surrounding area could anyone who knew of the mountain be found, much less someone who had already ascended to its peak and could have served as a guide. The unusual location of this mountain may have been part of the problem; it is visible only from a few locations and may well have gained its name from this very characteristic. As one enters the Estaubé valley, the peak can be seen poking up from above the walls of rock that surround the valley. As one advances into the valley, however, it soon disappears again.¹⁰

As is so often said, good advice is hard to come by. Two Spanish shepherds whom Ramond and his companions encountered along their way were unable to help. A smuggler (contrebandier) they met was familiar with clandestine routes through the mountains, but he had not ascended to the summit of Mont Perdu (what could he have hoped to find up there?). The disoriented men persisted, climbing over ice and rocks until they finally discovered two peaks, one of which must have been Marboré and the other Mont Perdu—but which was which? The guides, according to the report, “insisted on identifying the cylinder of Marboré as Mont Perdu and confusing both in this way.”¹¹

As this case of mistaken identities clearly highlights, local people bestowed quasi-magical names on prominent peaks protruding from mazes of high mountains, despite the fact that in some cases nobody had ever been up there, and these names were not yet affixed to precise topographical locations. With the locations not yet securely identified by names, hazardous cases of mistaken identity could arise. It was not by chance that Mont Perdu—i.e., Monte Perdido—in the Pyrenees became known as a “lost mountain.”¹² The syndrome of lost or hidden mountains (also addressed in Escher’s reference to the Finsteraarhorn’s “dark remoteness”) has a characteristic symptom: the molehill style of older maps. By depicting mountainous landscapes in a perspective view from a diagonal angle, they created panoramas that hid what was directly behind mountains from view (Illustration 2). This problem of perspective made it enormously difficult for travelers to orient themselves. This explains the switch from molehill maps to maps providing a complete bird’s eye view—to maps, in other words, that depict terrain as a satellite or the eye of God might see it—that took place so enormously rapidly and so curiously quietly in or around the year 1800.¹³ This shift not only represented a giant leap forward on the path toward objective knowledge; it was also a symptom of efforts to surmount the illusions created by the perspective of molehill maps. The successes of early Alpinism can be seen as sporting successes—as athletic achievements—but they should not be reduced to this (often unsatisfactorily narrow) perspective. They can and must also be regarded as intellectual achievements, as part of a struggle to gain an overview of previously unconnected knowledge.

*Illustration. 2: The molehill style of old maps did not yet permit a view of what was behind the mountains. Pen lithograph 1828.*

2.2 Monte Rosa: A Dearth of Names

It is just such an aha moment (as we say today)—when bits of what was known before suddenly became connected in consciousness—that is preserved in the name of a striking feature in the Monte Rosa group (slightly to the west of the Lysjoch) that is still known today as Entdeckungsfels, the “rock of discovery.”¹⁴ In the summer of 1780, the mining entrepreneur Nicolas Vincent from Gressoney Valley in North Piedmont climbed to this point for the third time, having already reached it twice before with a group of chamois hunters (in 1778 and 1779). On both occasions, they had seen a glowing green valley to the northwest, behind massive glaciers, and identified it as the fabled Hohenlauben, which, as the legend had it, had been buried under glaciers to punish the wickedness of the shepherds.¹⁵ On their third visit to this lofty location with its impressive views, however, the daring mountaineers were struck by the idea—or they looked down from their high vantage point and discovered—that they were not looking at a mythical valley, but at the real Matter valley.¹⁶

This scene at the so-called “Rock of Discovery” has already brought me into the thick of my second story, which is about the discovery of the highest peaks in the Monte Rosa massif in the early 1820s. Ludwig von Welden, an officer from Württemberg in Austrian imperial service who had wound up in occupied upper Italy, took it upon himself (or was instructed) to link the network of triangulation points that French engineers had created from the Atlantic to the Savoy with the Adriatic network created by Austrian military surveyors that now extended as far as Sesia in Piedmont. The peaks of the Monte Rosa massif struck him as an eminently suitable target for advancing this endeavor.

In order to take measurements and make the connections needed to gain an objective overview of the mountains, von Welden naturally required clearly identifiable points, normally peaks—points, that is to say, that could be and had been named. In this respect, however, he had every reason to lament: “On my first journey to Monte Rosa in 1821, I already had the greatest difficulties orientating myself.” He perceived rightly that the problem lay in the “lack of proper names” that “such a large mountain range needs to be described.” Every major peak he asked for the name of on a circular tour lasting several hours was “Monte Rosa,” he continues, claiming that he “could get nothing else out of my guides.”¹⁷ When he asked people north of the massif for the name of the highest peak visible from the Matter Valley in the Valais, the answer he got was “Monte Rosa.” When he asked in the south, in the Piedmontese Valsesia or in Valle Anzasca, about the highest peak visible from there, he was given the same answer. “And yet,” as he noted in despair, “it was a completely different” peak, “maybe three or four hours from the previous one”: ¹⁸ “The entire massif stretching two hours from south to north and four hours from east to west was called Monte Rosa, and Mont Cervin was the first new name that appeared in this direction.”¹⁹ To come back to the wisdom of the goatherd Peter, the tall icy domes of Monte Rosa had “no names” (Illustration 3).

*Illustration 3: Not every mountain was named yet: the Großglockner area around 1800. Copperplate engraving, 1800.*

To bemoan a “dearth of names” ²⁰ was one thing. To resolve the problem by assigning names to the most prominent peaks in this extensive zone of high Alpine terrain was quite another. This was what von Welden accomplished, and names he invented and supplied reasoning for—Nordend, Zumsteinspitze, Signalkuppe, Parrotspitze, Ludwigshöhe, Vincentpyramide—have remained in use until the present day and can be found on maps in both Italian and German²¹ (Illustration 4).

Illustration 4: The new names for Monte Rosa. Pen lithograph 1824.

At the very least, this story suggests two important insights:

One is that naming requirements clearly had a cultural dimension that differed depending on the groups people belonged to. The names needed by local people in the mountains were typically connected to their economic interests—their desire to survive and eke out a living—and that explains, for instance, why the ibex and chamois hunters knew and used names that were different from those used by the shepherds. For the same reason, the areas covered by ice and snow year round remained unnamed or, as Colonel von Welden lamented, named only in the vaguest terms.²² If the French anthropologist Marc Augé had not chosen to apply the term “non-places” to other phenomena of our times, it would have been a wonderful descriptor for the highest zones in the Alps before the advent of Alpinism.²³

The second insight related to the namelessness of Monte Rosa’s peaks and the ensuing naming campaign is that von Welden’s report plainly highlights the extent to which assigning names is a cultural gesture of dominion: names mark the end of the wilderness. “To equip the world with names means to divide up and classify the undivided, to make the intangible tangible, though not yet comprehensible.”²⁴ Recognizing (and explaining!) this early on, in good time before Alpinism took off, was the merit of such German intellectuals as Johann Gottfried Herder or Friedrich Schiller.²⁵ Naming things makes them usable. It marks them. It highlights them and makes them visible, so conspicuously so that Friedrich Nietzsche could muse on whether as-yet unnamed things can be seen at all: “As people are usually constituted, it is the name that first makes a thing generally visible to them.”²⁶ This can only hold true, of course, when names are unambiguously linked to particular entities—and when multiple entities (such as mountains) are not designated with one and the same name. This problem of surplus or repetitive names was likewise not infrequent in early Alpinism—alongside the problem of a dearth of names—and it could throw up severe and even fatal hazards for orientation. The problem can be illustrated vividly—as a sequel to the stories of Mont Perdu and Monte Rosa—in a third vignette. The incident I have in mind took place during an 1841 expedition to the Jungfrau.

2.3 A Chaos of Names—Too Many Names for “the Jungfrau” in 1841

A group of international researchers directed by Louis Agassiz, then a professor at the Academy of Neuchâtel, had been carrying out meteorological, glaciological, and geological studies on the Unteraar glacier for weeks in the summer of 1841 when they hatched a plan to ascend the rest of the way to the Jungfrau summit. The group of twelve men (six researchers and six guides, some from Grindelwald and others from the Valais) stocked up on provisions at the Grimselhospiz guesthouse and set off. Their route took them up to the Oberaar glacier and through the cols known today as Oberaarjoch and Grünhornlücke before they descended to a point on the glacier that they called Ruheplatz, “resting place”; today it is known as Konkordiaplatz. Only once they had progressed this far did the question arise as to which of the icy peaks was actually Jungfrau! According to a report by an expedition participant, the geology professor Eduard Desor:

A lively dispute over which summit was the Jungfrau broke out among the guides. The Valasian […] pointed to a summit on our right, claiming that it was at least the peak known as ‘Fraueli-Horn’ (the Valasian name for the Jungfrau); the other guides, especially Jakob [Leuthold] wanted to identify the highest summit on our left as the Jungfrau. They all put their own opinions forward vehemently. But when I was leaning toward the Valasian’s viewpoint, Jakob went into a rage, threw his load down onto the ground, and declared himself insulted at his knowledge of the mountains being doubted. He knew the Jungfrau even if he had not been up there, and he would leave us on the spot if we started climbing toward the poor summit proposed by the Valasian. We finally decided to follow our old Jakob²⁷ wherever he would lead us, as Agassiz suggested, and soon we saw that he was indeed correct and that the peak shown to us by the Valasian as the Frauelihorn was only a lower peak south of Mönch belonging to the Grünhorn massif. We gave it the name Trugberg [“deceptive mountain”], because of the confusion it had caused. But that Jakob knew the Jungfrau is proven by the flag fluttering on its summit.²⁸ (Illustration 5).

*Illustration 5: Jungfrau and Trugberg (the “true” and the “false” Jungfrau). KOMPASS hiking map, 2004.*

The disparaging name “Trugberg” has stuck to this day and taken its place on maps. It is a remarkable stone monument to the once so fluid and now petrified history of mountain names, and an illustration that name-giving always depends, among other factors, on power²⁹: the almost childish scene the guide Jakob Leuthold made—throwing down his pack, stamping his foot, and issuing verbal threats—hints at old animosities between residents of the Hasli Valley and the Upper Valais (as well as Jakob’s sheer bossiness) that are now preserved on maps for all time. It could have been acknowledged at the time that the issue was scarcely one of knowing or not knowing, of being competent or incompetent, but plainly a cultural misunderstanding: the inhabitants north and south of the Jungfrau area simply used the word Jungfrau to describe different peaks. Such practices created inevitable problems—a culturally determined “Alpine hazard”—when mountain travelers appeared on the scene with their pressing desire for unambiguous route descriptions.³⁰

3 A Surfeit of Names

3.1 Local Reason

The example narrated by our reporter, Eduard Desor, shows how difficult it was for mountain travelers to cope with this problem.³¹ Desor, too, participated in the ethnocentric game of “right” and “wrong” names even though he knew full well that people in different valleys used different names for one and the same mountain: “Practically every valley,” he acknowledged, “gives different names to the mountains visible from that valley. The Schreckhorn is called Lauter-Aarhorn in Hasle; even the Finsteraarhorn is known as Schwarzhorn in Upper Valais.”³²

The “dearth of names” that was the subject of so much and such verbose lamentation was thus complemented, rather paradoxically, by a surfeit of names that had already been described almost half a century earlier (on the occasion of a journey on foot through the Bernese Oberland) by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, at that point still an unsung private tutor in Bern who would go on to become a famous philosopher. Hegel noted

that every valley gives names that are also found in other valleys to the surrounding mountains. There is thus a Lauterbronn Wetterhorn, a Schreckhorn, a Lauterbronn Jungfrau and Scheidegg; names that the Grindelwalders also give to certain mountains in their valley. […] If one has heard certain mountains that can be seen from Bern called by these names, and one asks about these same names in the valleys, one is shown a different mountain called by this name in every valley.³³

Hegel thus refers, entirely logically, to a view of “one face of that Jungfrau which is called thus in Bern.”³⁴

The problem to which Alpinist authors pointed to as “utter confusion” in the “nomenclature”³⁵ and “bewildering”³⁶ was, of course, both as widespread³⁷ as it was long-standing by this point. As far back as 1485, an official charged with establishing the course of the border between the Allgäu and the Tyrolean part of the Lech Valley had complained that he could not determine the names of the mountains, “presumably because the farmers at one end seem to call them something different than those at the other.”³⁸ Diligent comparisons of panorama drawings of the Bernese Oberland have shown that four names each were in use for Eiger and Jungfrau (and a whopping seven for Mönch!) in the decade and a half between 1775 and 1790 alone;³⁹ original drawings in which the names of peaks have been “crossed out and rewritten, or replaced with entirely different ones” again and again bear ample testament to the difficulties that illustrators of mountain panoramas faced. One nineteenth-century scholar noted that: “Some points bear two or three names alongside and on top of each other.”⁴⁰

None of this seems to have caused any major problems for the inhabitants of the Alps while the exchange of people, goods, and ideas continued along well-established routes. Eighteenth-century intellectuals—Enlightenment philosophers like Georg Christoph Lichtenberg or Justus Möser—anticipated subsequent developments and elaborated the concepts of local philosophy or local reason to explain the old state of affairs. They believed that provincial or local cultural ensembles could have their own coherent systems of logic and reason that ought not to be willfully vandalized by newfangled thinking (as Möser put it). Lichtenberg saw superstition as a kind of Lokal-Philosophie that could be quite logical within a specific cultural context.⁴¹ Möser considered examples from farming:

The forest might have to be protected in one place, while in another trees can be felled. Letting animals range in the forest might be destructive in one location but necessary for higher reasons elsewhere. Pigs might need to be herded, fenced in, or housed in some places, but could be turned out to range freely in others. Who could make a general ordinance for a forest or a district with general permissions and prohibitions without harming private property and the true purpose of every forest or of all a district’s inhabitants?⁴²

Möser pointed out, in defense of local reason, that it was “a general complaint of the current century” (the eighteenth) “that too many general ordinances” were issued and “too many things forced under one rule” in a fashion that stripped away the richness of nature (or, as we would phrase it today, of culture!).⁴³

The plurality of names that had emerged under the conditions of local reason could not continue to be experienced as a form of cultural wealth in the new “age of comparison” (as Friedrich Nietzsche called the modern era at the end of the nineteenth century)⁴⁴: they inevitably struck the mountain travelers and Alpinists of the new era as frustratingly confusing and dangerously chaotic—the results of the old local reason had become unreasonable in the context of the new era and its strivings.

3.2 Flitting Will’ o the Wisps

There were other reasons, too, for the unruly muddle of mountain names, although their influence may have been less significant. I will mention only three of these trends that flitted about like will o’ the wisps here, and I will treat all three with the necessary brevity: the historical game of intellectual fashions, irony, and simple linguistic misunderstandings.

A substantial number of the mountain names that are familiar to us today probably resulted from simple misunderstandings—misheard or mistranscribed, mistakes that went unnoticed at the time. The fact that the surveyors (whose work supplied the basis for the earliest precise maps, complete with their inventories of names) had to be admonished time and again to take care when noting down names hints at the extent to which such errors arose.⁴⁵ The issue was complicated further by the prevalence of dialects and according variances in pronunciations,⁴⁶ and the widespread skepticism of locals about surveying projects can hardly have helped surveyors to register names more accurately.⁴⁷ Even without such special circumstances to potentially complicate the situation, however, the risk of corruption—of misunderstandings that distorted names⁴⁸—was considerable. The practically grotesque situation of the notable (but also quite deaf) surveyor Peter Anich from Perfuß near Innsbruck can be taken as an apt symbol for the situation of every surveyor and recorder of names. The unfortunate Anich lost his hearing quite early on, “and finally became so deaf that one had to shout every word slowly and clearly, directly into his ears, if one wanted him to understand.” Furthermore, a contemporary reported:

His deafness caused him more than a little trouble (as can easily be deduced) in his geometric work, especially because of the many names of the places he measured and the rivers and districts he described. He had to research all these special words by asking the inhabitants repeated and persistent questions they could only answer with loud shouts, and he often understood the answers poorly.⁴⁹

This organic hearing loss is only a particularly drastic example of what we might call the “cultural deafness” of the mountain name inventory takers. And they may have been particularly confused when misunderstandings were played with systematically, as it were (if this apparent contradiction can be tolerated momentarily). When we think about it, irony is, in fact, just such a systematic game which plays with misunderstandings: one says something—and means quite the opposite. The principle of ironic naming has long been acknowledged by research into place names,⁵⁰ and early mountain travelers (in the final decades of the eighteenth century) encountered it, too. David Herrliberger commented that the Rheinwald valley in Grisons was a “dreadful wilderness and a horror-filled place where one could freeze to death in the hottest summer. But it is called Paradise,” he registered with astonishment, attributing the name to an “inverted way of speaking.”⁵¹ Sigismund von Hohenwart was annoyed by the “ridiculous” name of “garden” for a spot in the Alps around Reichenau an der Rax because he could hardly conceive of “a lonelier and more horrible spot” than “this wilderness.”⁵²

These were admittedly examples of detectable irony—of what we might call “regulated irony.” It is, however, likely that there are many more cases to which we remain oblivious in retrospect. Hundreds of names that have found their way onto maps and into guide books describing Alpine tours must have resulted from the desire of local guides to satisfy the hunger of mountain travelers and Alpinists for names (“What is that peak up there called?”) and, at the same time, to put one over on them in a field where the competence of locals was beyond doubt. Mountain travelers—and we modern historians—were left with only inklings that mischievous inventions of names on the part of the locals must have played a prominent role. Some early Alpinists clearly suspected at times that a “clash of cultures” with a clandestine dimension was underway in the middle of Europe. Anton von Ruthner distrusted the name Herzogshut [“duke’s hat”], for example, musing that “one or another flamboyant discoverer of similarities” must have come up with it.⁵³ Friedrich Simony believed that some names “justified” the suspicion “that here, as so often, a son of the Alps who did not treat the naming of peaks scrupulously” had “improvised” a name that would be better extinguished; it was known, after all, “that the most seasoned guides were also the most inventive christeners of mountains.”⁵⁴ Carl Gsaller, too, registered the significant role played by “rogues and jokers” who served “lies” up to urbanites curious to discover what mountains were called.⁵⁵ (Illustration 6)

Curious tourists inquiring about mountain names–and the guide’s reply. [British explorer: What mountain is that there? Guide: Oh, you know, that’s one of those old mountains the name of which no one knows anymore.] Chalk lithography 1859.

The locals in the Alps were not the only ones who played with the names of mountains; citizens beguiled by the thrilling early nineteenth-century fashion for Alpinism engaged in such games, too. Early on, complaints arose that “strangers” (as we hear from Switzerland) had “taken the liberty of giving mountains names in their texts” that differed from the established names, “which could eventually lead to a muddle.”⁵⁶ The imposing ridge above the northern Monte Rosa glaciers overlooking the Rhône valley was once simply called—like everything else in the neighborhood, as von Welden had already complained!—“Monte Rosa.” It was christened Silberbart [“silver beard”] later on and finally received the name by which it is known today and designated on maps: Lyskamm⁵⁷—and absolutely nobody can say how it came to be thus. Attentive contemporary observers did note some suspicions from which we can glean insights into the mysterious workings of the naming scene. In 1806, Escher described his puzzlement over the unexplained question of how Jungfrau had gotten its name: “The current name of this Jungfrau [”virgin“] with a heart of stone does not seem to have been known to our rugged forefathers, although they could hardly have missed this imposing edifice.” Instead, the mountain had been known as Großhorn [lit., “grand peak”]—“a typical name,” Escher commented, “that nobody wants to hear much about now.” He mused that the “more chivalrous new world” must have given the old Großhorn “the poetic name of Jungfrau” and, to top it all, gone on to “plant” Mönch [“the monk”] next to her “as a triumphant and dangerous neighbor” where previously the “inner Eiger” had stood. Escher also mentions the example of Mont Blanc in the western Alps and its “promotion from a cursed mountain [Mont Maudit], as the locals had called it, to a white mountain.”⁵⁸ We can also recall another prominent example from the eastern Alps: the romantic and mysterious name Venediger [Venetian] seems to have displaced the older and more practical-prosaic name Sulzbacher with ease, again in the late eighteenth century.⁵⁹ Escher, a watchful observer of the latest trends in the Alps, noted in 1806 that the “muddling and confusion of names” was “getting out of hand” and specifically added that people were “playing with it”; “the names of the mountains and their celebrity” had to “tolerate revolutions,” as Escher put it, mainly because “the sweeter world of the present time generously bestows nicer names on things.”⁶⁰ It is a testament to Escher’s astonishing clear-sightedness that his cultural diagnosis of the history of mountain names could still be confirmed in the mid-twentieth century with reference to tendencies both “to exaggerate splendor”⁶¹ and to evoke the sentimental-folkloristic ambiance of “the glow of the Alps and the poetry of Alpine roses” to borrow a phrase from Gottfried Keller.⁶²

4 The Mountain Names Are (and Become) Established

Alas, this entire wild history of lacking and superfluous mountain names was soon no longer of interest to anybody: people recalled neither the fashionable jesting that seemed so arbitrary (but was driven by powerful undercurrents of the times) nor the “revolution” of names to which Escher had drawn attention. In 1885, a young doctor of medicine, Emil Zsigmondy, published a handbook on the hazards of the Alps that became a near-instant classic. Although it dealt with rock falls and slippery grassy slopes, avalanches and treacherous cornices, glacier crevasses, weather conditions that could change in the blink of an eye, darkness that could descend suddenly at night, and the dangers of overconfidence in mountaineers, there is no mention of the challenges names presented for earlier Alpinists. That missing or confusing mountain names had ever complicated or even precluded proper orientation, and that the originally chaotic “nomenclature” (as Alpine historians soon called it) had initially been among the greatest “hazards of the Alps”—that had already been entirely forgotten by 1885.⁶³ Otherwise thoughtful and renowned nineteenth-century historians of Alpinism, such as Ludwig Purtscheller or Eugen Guido Lammer, did not acknowledge that the confusing profusion of names had been a source of fatal danger within a generation or two before they were writing⁶⁴—and that clarifying and resolving these problems consequently ought to be seen as one of the most significant contributions to the original aims and purposes of the Alpenverein [Alpine Club] and specifically to its goal of making “traveling” in the Alps “easier.”⁶⁵

That such a considerable portion of the history of Alpinism was simply “forgotten” can surely also be seen as an indicator that this chaotic naming phase was regarded as something of an embarrassment. A second indicator for an evidently insatiable urge to impose instrumental rationality⁶⁶ on the landscape of the Alps can be seen in the curious belief that the motley muddle of names that had ultimately arisen in quite a disordered fashion could be ordered following the all-too-simple principle that names were either “correct” or “wrong”⁶⁷—although it ought to have been plain for all to see that chance had played a huge role and that opportunities to influence the literature had been unevenly distributed, with those who could not write and publish in Alpine media having little hope of launching new names. Carl Gsaller from Innsbruck was able to boast that he had proposed two hundred “correct” names within the space of a few years in one limited area alone (in the areas around Karwendel, Stubai, and Mieming),⁶⁸ and he developed a method of his own for such “rectifications,” as he called them.⁶⁹ It expressly included a strategy to ensure that proposed “rectified” or “correct” names would find acceptance. Gsaller called this the principle of “literature names”⁷⁰—and what he meant by this was simply that new names mentioned in descriptions of an Alpine area subsequently spread as if of their own accord “with the help of streams of tourists” and soon also entered the “common parlance” of locals.⁷¹ Gsaller, whose style is otherwise very dry, underscored his point with a lively description of a rather revealing scene: During their surveying work in the Stubai Alps in 1863, the Alpinists and scientists Ludwig Barth (von Barthenau) and Leopold Pfaundler (von Hadermur) had climbed a snowy ridge that the locals knew by only one name, Wilder Pfaff [“wild parson”]. But now, we read, “as they sat on the narrow icy ridge, a need for specialization arose, and they named the lofty seat they had taken Pfaffenschneide [‘parson’s blade’], the culmination point of the [previous] Wilder Pfaff became Zuckerhütl [‘little sugarloaf’], and the last ice block on the east of the ridge became Oestlicher Pfaff [‘eastern parson’].”⁷² These names, Gsaller reports with pleasure at seeing his method of establishing nomenclature confirmed, “went from mouth to mouth in Stubai until most people believed they had always spoken thus.”⁷³

This is one pithy takeaway from the story of how the name Zuckerhütl was invented in 1863 out of the clear blue sky. The other illuminating aspect of the story is that the two inventors of the name reported that they had invariably heeded the naming expertise of their “best guides, especially the chamois hunters.”⁷⁴ In this case, that was certainly not what had happened, but their inventions exuded the comforting “Alpine roses” mood that is seemingly so irresistible to us all, thus practically guaranteeing their success.

The act of giving names is, as we know, accompanied by a thrill of clandestine pleasure. This pleasure shimmers revealingly through many accounts of the act of name-giving—and becomes all the more visible when it attempts to hide behind a semi-troubled conscience. The pioneering Alpine explorer and monk Placidus Spescha, writing in 1812, noted that he had, because he was “so unfamiliar with the names of the mountains,” been compelled to furnish “the same with an invented name” and that his “lack of knowledge” had made it necessary for him to “christen the highest mountains.”⁷⁵ More often, admittedly, the paradisaical pleasure of giving names and lording over nature (with the “borrowed” authority visible in the biblical story of creation) was indulged exultantly—and with elaborate ceremony, too, where aristocratic-baroque manners still held sway, as during the first ascent of the Großglockner in 1800: the Apostolic Field Vicar Sigismund von Hohenwart, who had initiated and organized the entire enterprise, gave a speech in front of the new hut below the Glockner, just ahead of the glacier, in which he called on the expedition’s financial backer, Count Franz Xaver of Salm, the prince-bishop of Gurk, to propose a name for the hut and the surrounding area. Salm, who is described as having been “uncommonly merry,”⁷⁶ came up with the name Hohenwarte [lit., “high observatory”] and had liberal quantities of Tokaji wine served to the party—wine that “peasants” from the parish of Heiligenblut had carried up the mountain in barrels with great effort.⁷⁷

Other naming initiatives will not have been celebrated with quite the same degree of ceremony, but the sense of pleasure felt by sons of Adam with less exalted status is also impossible to overlook. The names Warte [“look-out point”] and Freudenhöhe [“joyous height”] that the theology student Valentin Stanič bestowed upon points on the mountain Hoher Göll documented the pleasure he felt at reaching both points.⁷⁸ Colonel Ludwig von Welden’s Monte Rosa survey yielded the names Signalkuppe [“signal dome”] and Zumsteinspitze [“at the stony peak”], Nordend [“north end”] and Vincentpyramide [“Vincent’s pyramid”], Schwarzhorn [“black mountain”] and Parrotspitze [“parrot peak”] and finally even Ludwigshöhe [“Ludwig’s summit”], named for von Welden himself.⁷⁹ The well-read mountaineers who made the first ascent of Großvenediger must also have been pleased by their name choices (Schaurige Vorhalle [“spooky antechamber”], Bleidächer von Sulzbach [“lead roofs of Sulzbach”] and Türkische Zeltstadt [“Turkish encampment”]), which were clearly inspired by Romanticism⁸⁰ (Illustration 7). The person who first visited or climbed a mountain was generally seen as entitled to choose a name for it—or, to put it more accurately, naming rights were seen as the prerogative of those who discovered gaps on the map in need of names.⁸¹

*Illustration 7: Imaginative names on Venediger. Pen lithograph based on a sketch by Ignaz von Kürsinger, 1841.*

Nobody will be surprised to hear that this old right of Adam was sometimes constrained by bureaucratic corsets—as, for example, when the name of the Simony peaks (in the Venediger group) was chosen at a meeting of the Austrian Alpine Club in 1865 or when the name Dufourspitze [“Dufour peak”] was chosen to replace von Welden’s Höchste Spitze [“highest peak”] on Monte Rosa in 1863 by no less an institution than the Swiss Federal Council.⁸² Legal niceties aside, the names that mattered in the end were always the names printed on maps.⁸³ Maps bear witness to the names that were established—in the double sense of being discovered and of becoming established and being perceived as definitive, sanctioned, and unchangeable (Illustration 8). The name “Trugberg” on the map of the Jungfrau area is a remarkable (albeit hardly remarked upon) monument to the process of rectifying, establishing, standardizing, and canonizing mountain names. It is also a reminder that countless hundreds of other “deceitful mountains” bore names that were extinguished to create a uniform nomenclature—in a process that undeniably bore imperialist traits.⁸⁴ This brings Möser’s lament from the final decades of the eighteenth century to mind and his point that enforcing a single uniform rule on everything would rob local culture of its “wealth.”⁸⁵

*Illustration 8: The map establishes names and removes all doubts as to “correct” names. Illustration by Ernst Platz, 1909.*

5 Celebrating Names

When we speak of sanctioned (and essentially: sanctified) names—of a canon of names, a names dogma, and even, as is conventional, of christenings—we know (and we can feel) that we are moving in an exalted cultural sphere, in a space marked by ceremony and a rarefied cultural ambiance that is actually rather surprising. Initially it may have seemed that the world of mountain names was smoothed out for purely rational reasons, especially to satisfy the need for secure navigation on mountain routes. But on closer inspection, it transpires that mastering the new world of names demands a courageous look into depths of the soul—a somewhat unexpected imperative. I would like to demonstrate this briefly—all too briefly! —with reference to three issues: a change in how views were perceived, the gesture of pointing, and the transformation of mountains into mountain faces.

To imagine that past travelers experienced views as we experience them today—with a feeling of panoramic expansiveness and a sensation that the world is lying at our feet—would be to deceive ourselves. “Views” seem to have become one of our highest cultural values in these complex and changing times (as evidenced by modern-day holiday apartment brochures!), as gaining an overview has become progressively more difficult. The accounts of the mountain travelers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries allow us to recognize that they were not only surprised to find that the views from above could reward them for the difficulties of ascents, but that they also knew or at least had some inkling that this had not always been thus. Looking down into the depths and into the far distance (when people dared to do it at all) had been characterized (and mostly: prevented) for thousands of years by fear of the bottomless void, horror, and a bad conscience—it was regarded as an impudent appropriation of the perspective of God. Looking into the distance had to be learned, with difficulty,⁸⁶ and this emancipation process eventually led to preliminary investigations into the psychology of views undertaken by, for example, Hans Conrad Escher, who wrote in 1808:

What is it that drives some people to the breakneck endeavor of climbing to heights that do not seem to be made for their element and that offer the tired traveler nothing more to savor than a chance to look down on their fellow human beings for a moment and to domineer over a wide area! There must be something magical in this looking down, in this dominion wielded from above!⁸⁷

The experience of wresting pleasure from views is thus a cultural achievement of modern times, but another experience followed hot on its heels: recognition that this pleasure could be boosted by knowledge, specifically knowledge of mountain names—or, to look at this the other way around, recognition that the pleasure to be had from views was much reduced when one could not recognize the mountains by name. Reports of ascents in the eastern Alps from the mid-nineteenth century are full of laments about the lack of interest and knowledge shown by guides in relation to names⁸⁸ (in complete contrast to Swiss guides!): “As a result,” Anton Ruthner complained about his view from Similaun in 1842, “I lost more than half the pleasure of this view”[!].⁸⁹

Tourists were mocked from quite early on for their interest in names (on Mount Rigi, for example) and described as recipients of “a list of the names of all the mountains in front of them that they use to while away time and satisfy an idle kind of curiosity” even though “every nomenclature” only weighed down “one’s memory with superfluous verbiage.”⁹⁰ Nevertheless, an entire literary genre emerged around this time that assuredly does not belong among the pinnacles of German prose: seemingly unending and scrupulously precise descriptions of views from particular points were prepared that named all the mountains visible from each point and went on for many pages. In 1840, Peter Karl Thurwieser spent almost eight hours on Ahornspitze in the Zillertal Alps writing down names for his panorama. The resulting description stretches over almost six pages in print,⁹¹ and Anton von Ruthner’s literary panoramas describing the likes of the Wildspitze or Wiesbachhorn each take up seven printed pages.⁹² These texts were the product of disciplined, methodical work with maps and binoculars. Ruthner sharply criticized an alternative “sanguine” (i.e., more hot-blooded) approach driven by “an excited mood”⁹³—the author’s enjoyment and his reward ought, he believed, to come from the satisfaction of matching names and silhouettes and thereby making them accessible to the world, since they were now identified and could be pointed out.

The old gesture of pointing with an outstretched arm and outstretched hand, and perhaps also an outstretched index finger, took on an entirely new meaning once a canon of “established” names existed. Anthropologists long attributed a significant place in the cultural development of humanity to this pointing gesture.⁹⁴ With this development, however, the openness of gazing into the distance and receiving challenging and stimulating input was suddenly channeled into a narrow and mundane equivalence between a mountain pointed out and a name heard: “And that one up there is the ‘Watzmann.’” Numerous depictions of this pointing gesture—especially in prestigious locations—remind us of its new but nevertheless also quasi-iconic status (Illustration 9).

*Illustration 9: The mountain names are pointed out. Wood engraving from around 1880 based on a work by Josef Wopfner.*

Another picture genre inspired by the “established” canon of names also took off and enjoyed success: the mountain faces that were so enormously popular—especially as postcards—from the 1890s onward. It was inevitable that depictions would be produced that took mountain names literally and showed Jungfrau as a virgin and Mönch as a monk, and such images duly circulated from 1870 onward, at the latest.⁹⁵ Emil Hansen, the artist who subsequently called himself Emil Nolde, gave this trend enormous impetus⁹⁶—it has survived, at any rate, until the present day. One can disagree on whether these images merit criticism as shallow bourgeois representations of the sublime (the “majesty of the mountains”⁹⁷) or praise as ironic commentary on the sanctity awarded to the mountain nomenclature ⁹⁸ (Illustration 10).

*Illustration 10: Mountain names become mountain faces: Mönch [“monk”] and Jungfrau [“virgin”]. Woodcut from 1870.*

6 Shaking the Dogma

In this latter view, the mountain faces could be seen as part of an entire series of mostly recent, or indeed current, attempts to unseat the dogma of the “rectified nomenclature”—and I would like to mention these attempts briefly in conclusion because they shed light on the stability of a cosmos of mountain names that has largely existed only since the nineteenth century.

It is impossible to overlook the attempts to correct names based on modern political ideologies and critical reappraisals of history. Mountain huts have been renamed (the Wolayersee Refuge in the Carnic Alps, for instance, which was previously known for eighty years as Eduard-Pichl-Hütte⁹⁹) and so have routes (Cyprian Granbichler Weg instead of Titzenthaler Weg¹⁰⁰). The “Démonter Louis Agassiz” campaign striving to have the Agassizhorn in the Bernese Alps renamed (because Agassiz, the Swiss glacial science researcher, was also a proponent of scientific racism), has thus far not achieved its objective. It is, in any case, somewhat doubtful that simply extinguishing a name from memory is productive (even a name that has become offensive!)—and drastic language (“history exorcism” or “history as a feelgood zone”) has recently been used to draw attention to this problem.¹⁰¹

Bestowing names has always been a gesture of dominion. Names chosen for political purposes made this especially obvious—and in the hothouse of late capitalism, the nexus between names and power is also too conspicuous to overlook. The planned sale of two peaks in East Tyrol in 2011 (Große Kinigat and Rosskopf) by the Austrian Federal Real Estate Institute (Bundesimmobiliengesellschaft, BIG) attracted considerable attention—especially as rumors quickly grew that the mountains would be given new names by their purchasers for advertising purposes.¹⁰² The sale and renaming of these mountains did not go ahead in the form originally planned (not least, presumably, because of the protests and the objections raised in political committees), but efforts to block the village of Prägraten from selling another mountain, the Mullwitzkogel¹⁰³ in the Venediger area, were unsuccessful, and the village authorities resolved to rename the mountain Wiesbauerspitze after its purchaser, the sausage maker Wiesbauer, in 2007.¹⁰⁴ Such developments should not engender any surprise;¹⁰⁵ the advertising sections in mountaineering and hiking journals have been filled with creative deployments of mountains as ideal advertising spaces from their very beginnings¹⁰⁶ (Illustration 11).

*Illustration 11: Mountains as advertising space. A soap advertisement dating from prior to 1913. [Central text: At the highest peak of perfection stands Hobbyhorse Lily Milk Soap.]*

A third source of motivation to alter names also deserves a brief mention and may rear its head more often in the future. It could be seen—rather disparagingly—as tinged with the rosy glow of Gottfried Keller’s rosy cliffs and Alpine roses, but we ethnologists would call it a folkloristic trend—a conscious resurrection and re-adoption of local or regional cultural traditions that have been submerged for some time. A grassy mountain in the Kitzbühel Alps had acquired some significance in the early phase of ski tourism in Alpbach Valley. After the Munich student Rudolph Joel was buried by an avalanche and lost his life there in February 1909, a stone cairn was erected locally in memory of the tragic accident. This must had led to the name “Joel” subsequently being applied to the mountain as a whole and eventually also making its way onto maps. When a commemorative bronze plaque was affixed to the restored monument two years ago, however, a second name appeared alongside that of Joel—Ackerzint—which seems to have re-emerged from local memory.¹⁰⁷ If the tour reports I see on the Internet are indeed an accurate reflection of usage, this old/new name is now gaining ground and becoming increasingly popular (Illustration 12).

Illustration 12: Plaque (1997) commemorating the death of Rudolph Joël on the mountain Joel, which incorporates the name “Ackerzint,” which had been forgotten but has recently been used more often again.

Such observations and the stories gathered here suggest to me that the tangled history of how mountain names became established could be an additional key to understanding the processes underlying the opening up of the Alps—not least because rational and irrational elements are so closely intertwined and the characteristics of purposeful and instrumentally rational action are covered in a patina of sepia or even obscured by dark shadows of fairy-tale proportions. While people are prone to dismiss names as mere sound and smoke, as devoid of deeper meaning, the cultural history of our mountain names shows us that quite the opposite is true.

Notes

Hans Blumenberg, Arbeit am Mythos (Frankfurt am Main, 1996), 45. Also available in English translation: Hans Blumenberg, Work on Myth, trans. by Robert M. Wallace (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1990).↩︎
Johanna Spyri, Heidi, her years of wandering and learning: A story for children and those who love children (New York, 1884), 81–82, http://archive.org/details/heidiheryearsofw00spyrrich. This is an early translation (published in 1884) of Spyri’s text from 1880, which is cited in the original German version of the present article. See: Martin Scharfe, “‘Berge heißen!’ zur Geschichte der Bergnamen-Etablierung,” Bayerisches Jahrbuch für Volkskunde (2018), 15–34.↩︎
Spyri, Heidi, her years of wandering and learning, 86.↩︎
Ibid., 86–87. For more on the figure of Heidi as it developed over time, see Georg Escher, “Berge heissen nicht: Geographische, soziale und ästhetische Räume im Heidi-Roman,” in Heidi—Karrieren einer Figur, ed. by Ernst Halter (Zürich, 2001), 277–289. See also other essays in the same volume.↩︎
For more on this, see Susanne Grieder, ed., Augenreisen: Das Panorama in der Schweiz (Bern, 2001). The indefatigable Escher later received “von der Linth” as an honorable addition to his name in recognition of his contribution to drying out the swamps of the Linth valley. As he features prominently in this essay, the classic Escher biography by J. J. Hottinger merits mention: Johann Jakob Hottinger, Hans Conrad Escher von der Linth: Charakterbild eines Republikaners (Zürich, 1852; Glarus 1994).↩︎
[Hans Conrad Escher], “Bergreischen auf den Niesen: Den 26 und 27 Juli 1805,” Alpina: Eine Schrift der genauern Kenntniss der Alpen gewiedmet 3 (1808), 249–307, here 249–307, here 275.↩︎
Ibid., 255.↩︎
[Hans Conrad Escher], “Kleine Bergreise auf die Sul oder Suleck: Donnerstag den 18 Juli 1806,” Alpina: Eine Schrift der genauern Kenntniss der Alpen gewiedmet. 3 (1808), 192–248, here 224.↩︎
On the history of theoretical curiosity, see Hans Blumenberg, Die Legitimität der Neuzeit, 2nd ed. (Frankfurt am Main, 1999). See Part 3, in particular, for more on the process of theoretical curiosity: Ibid., 263–528. For the English translation, see the parallel texts in Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (Cambridge, MA, 1983).↩︎
This was how Franz Freiherr von Zach paraphrased Louis Ramond’s description, which had appeared in Paris in 1801, in the journal he edited: Franz Freiherr von Zach, “Voyages au Mont-Perdu et dans la partie adjacente des Hautes-Pyrenees,” Monatliche Correspondenz zur Beförderung der Erd- und Himmelskunde 5 (1802), 345–356, here 347↩︎
Ibid., 353↩︎
Military strategists even attempted, on occasion, to confuse their enemies with “deliberately distorted maps” that purposely mislabeled mountains. See Heinrich Hartl, “Die Aufnahme von Tirol durch Peter Anich und Blasius Hueber. Mit einem Anhange: Beiträge zur Kartographie von Tirol. Eine historisch-geographische Studie,” Mittheilungen des K. u. K. Militärgeographischen Instituts Wien 5 (1885), 106–184, here 106–184, here 163. (Footnote referring to “Correspondenz-Nachrichten aus Ungarn: Zu Ende Febr. 1804,” Monatliche Correspondenz zur Beförderung der Erd- und Himmelskunde 9 ([1804]), 400–404, here 400); see also Josef Röger, Die Geländedarstellung auf Karten: Eine entwicklungsgeschichtliche Studie (Munich, 1908), 22, and the footnote on the same page.↩︎
See Martin Scharfe, Berg-Sucht: Eine Kulturgeschichte des frühen Alpinismus 1750–1850 (Vienna, Cologne, Weimar, 2015), 236–237.↩︎
Following a suggestion in Joseph Zumstein, “Beschreibung der fünf Reisen auf die Spitzen des Monte-Rosa, ausgeführt in den Jahren 1819 bis 1822, durch Joseph Zumstein (dit de la Pierre aus Gressonay),” in Der Monte-Rosa: Eine topographische und naturhistorische Skizze, nebst einem Anhange der von Herrn Zumstein gemachten Reisen zur Ersteigung seiner Gipfel, ed. by Ludwig Freiherr von Welden (Vienna, 1824), 95–166, here 123. The name has stuck to this day, and Italian maps even refer to the nearby mountain pass as Colle della Scoperta [“pass of discovery”].↩︎
For more on this legend found throughout the Alps, see, especially, Gotthilf Isler, Die Sennenpuppe: Eine Untersuchung über die religiöse Funktion einiger Alpensagen (Basel, 1971).↩︎
Zumstein, “Beschreibung der fünf Reisen,” 124.↩︎
Ludwig Freiherr von Welden, ed., Der Monte-Rosa: Eine topographische und naturhistorische Skizze, nebst einem Anhange der von Herrn Zumstein gemachten Reisen zur Ersteigung seiner Gipfel (Vienna, 1824), 30–32.↩︎
Ibid., 32.↩︎
Ibid., 33.↩︎
Ibid., 32.↩︎
Von Welden explained his choice of German names with reference to language history and ethnography and explained that “all of Monte Rosa” was “surrounded by Germans on all sides” (i.e. by the speakers of Walser German in the valleys). Ibid., 33.↩︎
The military engineer Ludwig August Fallon, aide-de-camp to the Austrian Archduke Johann, described this necessary lack of interest shown by mountain people in connection with his 1804 ascent of the Ortler: “[…] how could measuring or climbing such a mountain kindle or satisfy the quest for profit that motivates most human actions? What could one possibly gain up there? Only in the direst emergencies do smugglers make hazardous crossings of ice and snow fields that take many hours. Deer and chamois hunters prefer to lie in wait for their prey around the foot of glaciers. Treasure hunters do not believe the gold they seek will be up so high. Only deep appreciation for sublime natural scenes, passionate curiosity, can inspire humans to undertake such adventures and give them the courage and strength for them.” Ludwig August Fallon, “Nachricht über eine naturhistorische Reise in Tyrol, und die Besteigung der Orteles-Spitze, der höchsten Bergspitze im Lande,” Monatliche Correspondenz zur Beförderung der Erd- und Himmelskunde 11 (1805), 293–306, here 294.↩︎
See Marc Augé, Nicht-Orte, trans. by Michael Bischoff (Munich, 2010). Originally published in French in Paris in 1992 under the title Non-Lieux and subsequently published in English as Marc Augé, Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, trans. by John Howe (London/New York, 1995).↩︎
Blumenberg, Die Legitimität der Neuzeit, 49. English translation cited from: Blumenberg, Work on Myth, 42.↩︎
For instance, Herder’s inspired theory of language and culture that anticipated so much later thinking highlighted (in 1770!) how humans feel compelled to discern “characteristic marks” as they perceive the world and to incorporate these features into “characteristic words” (such as names.) See Johann Gottfried Herder, Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache, ed. by Hans Dietrich Irmscher (Stuttgart, 1993), esp. 32 and 36. Schiller, in his debate with Kant, highlighted that humans moved from being “slaves” of nature to being “her lawgiver” through reflection on nature. See Friedrich Schiller, “Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen, in einer Reihe von Briefen: Fünfundzwanzigster Brief [1795],” in Schillers Werke, vol. 7, ed. by Ludwig Bellermann (Leipzig), 265–392, here 371. For an English translation, see the twenty-fifth letter in Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man, in a Series of Letters, trans. by Elisabeth M. Wilkinson and L. A. Willoughby (Oxford, 1968).↩︎
Friedrich Nietzsche, “Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (Second ed. 1887),” in Sämtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe, vol. 3, ed. by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, 2nd ed. (Munich, 1988), 517: (§ 261: “Was ist Originalität? Etwas sehen, das noch keinen Namen trägt, noch nicht genannt werden kann, ob es gleich vor Aller Augen liegt. Wie die Menschen gewöhnlich sind, macht ihnen erst der Name ein Ding überhaupt sichtbar.—Die Originalen sind zumeist auch die Namengeber gewesen.”—Nietzsche’s emphasis). For an English translation of this passage, see Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Joyful Wisdom [The Gay Science],” in Complete Works, trans. by Thomas Common (Bexhill-On-Sea, 2015): “Originality. What is originality? To see some thing that does not yet bear a name, that cannot yet be named, although it is before everybody’s eyes. As people are usually constituted, it is the name that first makes a thing generally visible to them. Original persons have for the most part also been the namers of things.”)↩︎
“He is a man in his thirties now,” noted Carl Vogt, Desor’s German translator, in his list of Leuthold’s skills as a guide: Edouard Desor, Die Besteigung des Jungfrauhorns durch Agassiz und seine Gefährten, trans. by Carl Vogt (Solothurn, 1842), 53, see footnote.↩︎
Ibid., 58–59. The report was also incorporated into: Edouard Desor, Agassiz [sic] geologische Alpenreisen, trans. by Carl Vogt (Frankfurt am Main, 1844), and Edouard Desor, Agassiz’ und seiner Freunde geologische Alpenreisen in der Schweiz, Savoyen und Piemont, ed. by Carl Vogt, 2nd ed. (Frankfurt am Main, 1847). Agassiz was also involved in the preparation of the former, and Agassiz, Studer, and Carl Vogt all had a hand in the latter.↩︎
Nietzsche spoke of the bestowing of names as a “seigneurial right.” Friedrich Nietzsche, “Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887),” in Sämtliche Werke: kritische Studienausgabe, vol. 5, ed. by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, 2nd ed. (Munich, 1988), 260.↩︎
See Emil Zsigmondy, Die Gefahren der Alpen: Praktische Winke für Bergsteiger (Leipzig, 1885).↩︎
Desor belonged to a Huguenot family and multiple spellings of his name are found: Eduard/Edouard, Desor/Désor. He grew up in Friedrichsdorf, Hesse, and later lived and worked mainly in Neuchâtel.↩︎
Desor, Besteigung des Jungfrauenhorns, 30, see footnote. This comment was actually added by the translator Carl Vogt, but Vogt was also a member of the expedition party (the expedition doctor) and the names problem was common knowledge at the time.↩︎
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, “Reisetagebuch Hegel’s durch die Berner Oberalpen 1796,” in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegels Leben, ed. by Karl Rosenkranz ([1844]; Darmstadt, 1963), 470–490, here 473.↩︎
Ibid., 474.↩︎
Ludwig Purtscheller, Über Fels und Firn, vol. 1: Ostalpen (Munich, 1987), 100. See the comparative name tables for the Gosau mountains on p. 103.↩︎
Karl Gsaller, “Ueber alpine Nomenclatur und ihre Festsetzung,” Zeitschrift des Deutschen und Oesterreichischen Alpenvereins 16 (1885), 131–158, here 134.↩︎
Johann Gottfried Seume also cites an incredibly diverse range of names for Mount Etna in Sicily. See Johann Gottfried Seume, Spaziergang nach Syrakus im Jahre 1802, 4th ed. (Munich, 1995), 176.↩︎
Cited from: Otto Stolz, “Anschauung und Kenntnis der Hochgebirge Tirols vor dem Erwachen des Alpinismus: Teil I,” Zeitschrift des Deutschen und Österreichischen Alpenvereins 58 (1927), 8–36 and Otto Stolz, “Anschauung und Kenntnis der Hochgebirge Tirols vor dem Erwachen des Alpinismus: Teil II,” Zeitschrift des Deutschen und Österreichischen Alpenvereins 59 (1928), 14–66, here 54.↩︎
See Adolf Wäber, “Die Bergnamen des Berner Oberlandes vor dem 19. Jahrhundert,” Jahrbuch des Schweizer Alpenclub 28 (1893), 235–263, here 256 (footnote 1).↩︎
See the discussion of draft panorama drawings produced by Gottlieb Siegmund Studer from Bern [1761–1808]) in ibid., 255.↩︎
For more on this, see Martin Scharfe, “Wider-Glaube: Zum kulturellen Doppelcharakter der Superstition, und Superstition als Gebärde einer rationalen Tendenz in der Kultur,” in Kulturtechnik Aberglaube: Zwischen Aufklärung und Spiritualität. Strategien zur Rationalisierung des Zufalls, ed. by Eva Kreissl (Bielefeld, 2013), 107–122, here 111.↩︎
Justus Möser, “Der jetzige Hang zu allgemeinen Gesetzen und Verordnungen ist der gemeinen Freiheit gefährlich,” in Patriotische Phantasien. Ausgewählte Schriften, ed. by Wilfried Ziegler (Leipzig, 1986), 98–102, here 101. Möser’s “patriotic fantasies” appeared between 1774 and 1786.↩︎
Ibid., 102.↩︎
Friedrich Nietzsche, “Menschliches, Allzumenschliches I (1878),” in Sämtliche Werke: kritische Studienausgabe, vol. 2, ed. by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, 2nd ed. (Munich, 1988), 9–366, here 44 (§ 23: Zeitalter der Vergleichung).↩︎
“All mountains, rivers, streams, woodlands, and solitary houses have their own names, and the engineer will take care to discover their exact names and record them accurately.” Alfons Habermeyer, Die topographische Landesaufnahme von Bayern im Wandel der Zeit (Stuttgart, 1993), 191: (“Anhang 4: Richtlinien für die Geländeaufnahme vom 30. Juni 1801”).↩︎
Gsaller sardonically registered the problem this presented for many Austro-Hungarian surveying officers: how could officers from “Bohemia’s mountains” or even the “Hungarian Puszta” be expected, for example, to record Tyrolean names accurately? Gsaller, “Ueber alpine Nomenclatur,” 133.↩︎
Countless notes registered the rebelliousness of rural populations who often saw surveyors as spies or government officials tasked with cheating them. Peter Anich’s biography contains revealing examples from Tyrol: Anich encountered “bitterness” and had to listen to “many mocking expressions” and “much barbed speech.” He was threatened “with blows, even with death.” [Joseph Sterzinger], Lebensgeschichte des berühmten Mathematikers und Künstlers Peter Anichs eines Tyrolerbauers: Verfasset von einer patriotischen Feder (Munich, 1767), 28–29. Similar reports are known from the Valais; see, for example, Heinrich Dübi, “Bergreisen und Bergsteigen in der Schweiz vor dem Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts,” Jahrbuch des Schweizer Alpenclub 36 (1901), 210–232, here 231. People with such hostile attitudes will hardly have been keen to disclose names.↩︎
See Martin Scharfe, “Das Mißverständnis als Phänomen und Problem der Kultur,” in Signaturen der Kultur: Studien zum Alltag und zu seiner Erforschung (Marburg, 2011), 59–82.↩︎
[Joseph Sterzinger], Lebensgeschichte des berühmten Mathematikers und Künstlers Peter Anichs, 49 and 52.↩︎
See, for example, Walter Keinath, Württembergisches Flurnamenbüchlein, 2nd ed. (Tübingen, 1929), 31.↩︎
David Herrliberger, Neue und vollständige Topographie der Eydgenoßschaft, vol. 3 (Zürich, 1773), 60.↩︎
[Sigismund von Hohenwarth], “Tagebuch einer Reise nach den Reichenauer Alpen: Im Jahre 1782,” in Fragmente zur mineralogisch und botanischen Geschichte Steyermarks und Kärnthens. 1. Stück (Klagenfurt, Laibach, 1783), 3–18. Well before von Hohenwarth, Petrarch had already discovered that mountains could be named “by antiphrasis”: Francesco Petrarca, Die Besteigung des Mont Ventoux, ed. by Kurt Steinmann (Stuttgart, 1995), 17.↩︎
Anton von Ruthner, “Ersteigung des Johannisberges auf der Pasterze,” in Berg- und Gletscher-Reisen in den österreichischen Hochalpen: Aus den Tauern (Vienna, 1864), 193–217. Ruthner’s report originally dates from 1859.↩︎
Friedrich Simony, “Aus der Venedigergruppe,” Jahrbuch des Oesterreichischen Alpen-Vereines 1 (1865), 1–32, here 5–6 (footnote).↩︎
Gsaller, “Ueber alpine Nomenclatur,” 132.↩︎
This was the lament of the artist Franz Niclaus König, Reise in die Alpen (Bern, 1814), IX.↩︎
Gottlieb Studer, Ueber Eis und Schnee: Die höchsten Gipfel der Schweiz und die Geschichte ihrer Besteigung. Zweite Abteilung: Walliser-Alpen (Bern, 1870), 63.↩︎
[Hans Conrad Escher], “Kleine Bergreise auf die Sul oder Suleck,” 231–232. I have disregarded Escher’s emphasis on topographic features.↩︎
See Ignaz von Kürsinger and Franz Spitaler, Der Groß-Venediger in der norischen Central-Alpenkette, seine erste Ersteigung am 3. September 1841 und sein Gletscher in seiner gegenwärtigen und ehemaligen Ausdehnung (Innsbruck, 1843), 4. On the replacement of the old name of the mountain Frakmünt (Frakmont) with Pilatus, see Peter Xaver Weber, Der Pilatus und seine Geschichte (Lucerne, 1913), esp. 87–108. And also Heinrich Dübi, “Drei spätmittelalterliche Legenden in ihrer Wanderung aus Italien durch die Schweiz nach Deutschland,” Zeitschrift des Vereins für Volkskunde 17 (1907), 42–65, 143–160, 249–264, here esp. 62.↩︎
[Hans Conrad Escher], “Kleine Bergreise auf die Sul oder Suleck,” 232. [Emphasis added.]↩︎
Paul Zinsli, Grund und Grat: Die Bergwelt im Spiegel der schweizerdeutschen Alpenmundarten (Bern, 1945), 244.↩︎
See the reference to an “Alpine rose” ambiance in Paul Zinsli, “Flurnamen und Volksleben: Vornehmlich dargestellt nach Materialien der Bernischen Ortsnamensammlung,” Jahresbericht “Berner Heimatschutz” (1969), 33–48, here 47. Translator’s note: “The glow of the Alps and the poetry of the Alpine roses” is cited from a translation of the first version of Keller’s novel “Der Grüne Heinrich” quoted in Georg Lukács, German Realists in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, MA, 2000), 167: “The glow of the Alps and the poetry of the Alpine roses soon grow stale, and odes to the few great battles do not take long to sing. And to our shame, all the toasts, mottoes and inscriptions used at our public ceremonies still have to be borrowed from Schiller's William Tell, as this is still the best source for such occasions.”↩︎
See Zsigmondy, Die Gefahren der Alpen.↩︎
See, for instance, Ludwig Purtscheller, “Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des Alpinismus und der alpinen Technik,” Zeitschrift des Deutschen und Oesterreichischen Alpenvereins 25 (1894), 95–176; Eugen Guido Lammer, Wie anders ist das Besteigen der Alpen geworden! (Vienna, 1937). One of the exceptions: Wäber, “Die Bergnamen des Berner Oberlandes,” e.g. 261.↩︎
Cited following the statutes valid until 1908 from Josef Moriggl, Verfassung und Verwaltung des Deutschen und Österreichischen Alpenvereins, 4th ed. (Munich, 1928), 3.↩︎
This key term for all modernization history was coined by Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie, ed. by Johannes Winckelmann, 4th ed. (Tübingen, 1956), 17 (in the famous chapter on "basic sociological terms").↩︎
Countless examples of such apodictic judgements are found in, for example, excursion reports prepared by the likes of Anton von Ruthner or Ludwig Purtscheller.↩︎
See Gsaller, “Ueber alpine Nomenclatur,” 131 (footnote).↩︎
Ibid..↩︎
Ibid., 138.↩︎
Ibid., 141.↩︎
“Wilder Pfaff,” the original name, has since been reinstated.↩︎
Gsaller, “Ueber alpine Nomenclatur,” 158. I have ignored emphasis on names. It can be deduced that the name “Zuckerhütl” was seen as having appeared rather mysteriously from a remark that the name is not found on old maps and only appears in Alpine literature from the 1860s onwards. See Otto Stolz, “Zur Geschichtskunde des Ötztales,” in Ötztaler Buch, ed. by Raimund Klebelsberg (Innsbruck, 1963), 183–247, here 231.↩︎
Gsaller, “Ueber alpine Nomenclatur,” 158.↩︎
Iso Müller, Pater Placidus Spescha, 1752–1833: Ein Forscherleben im Rahmen der Zeitgeschichte (Disentis, 1974), 30.↩︎
This is narrated by one of the participants, a jurist and educator who was Salm’s librarian: Franz Michael Vierthaler, Meine Wanderungen durch Salzburg, Berchtesgaden und Österreich, vol. 2 (Vienna, 1816), 263.↩︎
This scene is documented in multiple reports; the most detailed of them is given by the participating priest Franz Joseph Orrasch, “[Reise auf den Glockner im Jahre 1800],” in Marianne Klemun: ... mit Madame Sonne konferieren: die Großglockner-Expeditionen 1799 und 1800 (Klagenfurt, 2000), 273–361, here 344.↩︎
See Valentin Stanig, “Meine Erfahrungen bei den Exkursionen auf den hohen Göhl (1801): Mit Notiz über die erste Watzmann-Ersteigung,” Zeitschrift des Deutschen und Oesterreichischen Alpenvereins 12 (1881), 386–400, here 389.↩︎
Welden, Der Monte-Rose, 34–38.↩︎
See Kürsinger and Spitaler, Groß-Venediger in der norischen Central-Alpenkette, 30–31.↩︎
It seems appropriate to make this qualification, as we must assume in many cases that the ‘first ascents’ made and claimed by bourgeois Alpinists and mountain travelers were merely the first documented ascents; locals must surely have reached many summits much earlier. On this, see also Scharfe, Berg-Sucht, for instance, 84–85 and 253.↩︎
See Eduard Richter, ed., Die Erschliessung der Ostalpen, vol. 3 (Berlin, 1894), 149, and Max Senger, Wie die Schweizer Alpen erobert wurden (Zürich, 1945), 132–133.↩︎
For the situation in Switzerland, Senger noted that: “The final determining instance is [...] not the Swiss Alpine Club, but the Federal Office of Topography in Bern, which decides on the names to be entered on maps.” Similar procedures were followed in Austria and Germany, he comments, with various name proposals being “accepted by all the relevant entities and the established names coming to be used on maps accordingly.” Senger, Wie die Schweizer Alpen erobert wurden, 214. See also Heinrich Hess, “Die Oetzthaler Gruppe,” in Die Erschliessung der Ostalpen, vol. 2, ed. by Eduard Richter (Berlin, 1894), 245–376, here 341.↩︎
This is illustrated drastically by the naming of the point of highest elevation on Kilimanjaro (in what was then the German colony of German East Africa) as Kaiser-Wilhelm-Spitze in 1889. See Ludwig Purtscheller, Über Fels und Firn, vol. 2: Westalpen und außereuropäische Fahrten (Munich, 1987), 330. I am inclined to incorporate distant traces of language history into such reflections—such as the increasing predominance of the north German term for peak, Spitze (a feminine form) over the autochthonous (and grammatically male) south German form Spitz.↩︎
Möser, “Der jetzige Hang,” 102.↩︎
For some notes on this historic process, see, for instance, Scharfe, Berg-Sucht.↩︎
[Hans Conrad Escher], “Kleine Bergreise auf die Sul oder Suleck,” 233.↩︎
Josef Kyselak found harsh words for “men with knowledge of the area” who knew “less about overlooks [i.e. locations offering views] and heights” than “about where to find good quarry to shoot” with the result that no information could be gleaned from them: Josef Kyselak, Skizzen einer Fussreise durch Österreich, ed. by Gabriele Goffriller (1829, Salzburg; Vienna, 2009), 287.↩︎
Anton Ruthner, “Aus dem Hochgebirge: Von Meran in das Schnalsertal – Ersteigung Der Similaunspitze,” Wiener Zeitschrift für Kunst, Literatur, Theater und Mode (1844), 1371 (no. 165-174, esp. 172).↩︎
David Heß, “Kunstgespräch in der Alpenhütte,” in Alpenrosen, ein Schweizer-Taschenbuch auf das Jahr 1822, ed. by Gottlieb Jakob Kuhn, Johann Rudolf Wyss, and Ludwig Meisner (Bern, [1821]), 111–166, here 153.↩︎
Peter Karl Thurwieser, “Die Ahornspitze im Zillerthale,” Neue Zeitschrift des Ferdinandeums für Tirol und Vorarlberg 7 (1841), 68–92, here 82–87.↩︎
Anton von Ruthner, “Aus dem österreichischen Hochgebirge: Ersteigung der hohen Wildspitze im Oetzthale,” Mittheilungen der Kaiserlich-Königlichen Geographischen Gesellschaft in Wien 6 (1862), 216–243, here 231–237; Anton von Ruthner, Berg- und Gletscher-Reisen in den österreichischen Hochalpen: Aus den Tauern (Vienna, 1864), 79–85.↩︎
Ruthner, “Aus dem österreichischen Hochgebirge,” 237.↩︎
See, especially, Ludwig Klages, “Vom Zeigen [On Pointing],” in Grundlegung der Wissenschaft vom Ausdruck, 11th ed. (Bonn, 2001), 264–270.↩︎
Schultze und Müller in der Schweiz: Humoristische Reisebilder [1870] (Leipzig), 30.↩︎
See Magdalena M. Moeller, ed., Emil Nolde: Die Bergpostkarten (Munich, 2006); Ulrich Luckhardt and Christian Ring, eds., Emil Nolde: Die Grotesken (Berlin, 2017).↩︎
See the series: Alpine Majestäten und ihr Gefolge: Die Gebirgswelt der Erde in Bildern, vol. 1–4 (Munich, 1901–1904), for example vol. 4.↩︎
Franz von Kobell’s poem “Berg-Name” in Upper Bavarian dialect is an early literary example: Franz Kobell, “Berg-Name,” in Gedichte in oberbayerischer Mundart, 6th ed. (Munich, 1862), 69–70, http://mdz-nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb10112701-0.↩︎
See Robert Peters and Sepp Lederer, Mauthen im Gailtal (Innsbruck, 2013), here 42–43, 50, and 52. And also Hannes Schlosser, Vent im Ötztal (Innsbruck, 2012), 65 (on the naming history of the Samoarhütte/Hermann-Göring-Hütte/Martin-Busch-Hütte).↩︎
Schlosser, Vent im Ötztal, 80–81.↩︎
Marc Tribelhorn, “Streit um Denkmäler: Geschichte ohne Friktion ist nicht mehr als ein Mythos.” Neue Zürcher Zeitung, September 23, 2017, https://www.nzz.ch/meinung/geschichtsexorzismus-ld.1318010. The problem would, incidentally, never have arisen in the first place if the critics who objected to naming mountains after people had their way. See Senger, Wie die Schweizer Alpen erobert wurden, 133 and 204; Zinsli, “Flurnamen und Volksleben,” 47.↩︎
See stories in the Süddeutsche Zeitung of 11./12. 6. 2011 and 22./23.6.2011 and the Frankfurter Rundschau of 18./19. 6. 2011, including: Daniela Dau, “Berge günstig abzugeben.” Süddeutsche Zeitung, June 10, 2011, https://www.sueddeutsche.de/reise/alpen-osttirol-berge-guenstig-abzugeben-1.1107331-0; “Es hat sich ausgegipfelt.” Süddeutsche Zeitung, June 14, 2011, https://www.sueddeutsche.de/reise/oesterreich-verkauf-von-bergen-es-hat-sich-ausgegipfelt-1.1108545.↩︎
In the ninth (2007) edition of the hiking map “Alpenvereinskarte 36,” the mountain bears the name Mullwitzkopf. “Alpenvereinskarte 36. Venedigergruppe” (Innsbruck, 2007).↩︎
For a general treatment of legal issues arising in connection with such renamings, see Michael Kreuzmair, “Vom Microsoft-Kogel zum Google-Glockner? Rechtsfragen zur Umbenennung von Tiroler Berggipfeln,” Spektrum der Rechtswissenschaft 1 (2011), 40–48; Gerhard Rampl, “Bergnamen als identitätsstiftende Sprachzeichen?,” in Berg & Leute: Tirol als Landschaft und Identität, ed. by Ulrich Leitner (Innsbruck, 2014), 354–368.↩︎
An early Swiss example (“Piz Berta,” named for the daughter of a tourist with deep pockets) is treated in Zinsli, Grund und Grat, 243.↩︎
See Alfred Steinitzer, Der Alpinismus in Bildern (Munich, 1913), 453 (illustration no. 640).↩︎
I was pointed towards this illuminating story by Martin Achrainer, “Der Joel: Die Anfänge des Wintertourismus und die ungewöhnliche Geschichte eines Bergnamens,” in Tiroler Heimat. Jahrbuch für Geschichte und Volkskunde Nord-, Ost- und Südtirols, vol. 77, ed. by Josef Riedmann and Richard Schober (2013), 171–194. I am also grateful to Martin Achrainer and Veronika Raich, both at the Austrian Alpine Club in Innsbruck, for other valuable tips.↩︎

This article is a translation and was originally published in German as:

Martin Scharfe, “’Berge heißen!’ Zur Geschichte der Bergnamen-Etablierung” in Bayerisches Jahrbuch für Volkskunde (2018), 15-34.

The Local Face of Global Trade

Augsburg Cotton Imports from the United States in the Long Nineteenth Century

by Karl Borromäus Murr

translated by Andrew Godfrey and Ellen Yutzy Glebe

2020-12-28

You can cite this article e.g. Karl Borromäus Murr, “The Local Face of Global Trade: Augsburg Cotton Imports from the United States in the Long Nineteenth Century” in Bavarian Studies in History and Culture (2020) [originally published in German 2013], last modified 2020-12-28, https://www.bavarian-studies.org/2020-murr/.

This article, including all quotations from non-English sources, was translated from the German. It originally appeared as:

Karl Borromäus Murr: “Welthandel vor Ort. Der Augsburger Baumwollimport aus den Vereinigten Staaten im 19. Jahrhundert”, in Philipp Gassert, Günther Kronenbitter, Stefan Paulus, and Wolfgang E. J Weber, eds., Augsburg und Amerika: Aneignungen und globale Verflechtungen in einer Stadt (Augsburg, 2013), 102-155.

This text is open access and licensed under the terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Karl Borromäus Murr

The Local Face of Global Trade

Augsburg Cotton Imports from the United States in the Long Nineteenth Century

translated by Andrew Godfrey and Ellen Yutzy Glebe

2020-12-28

This text is open access and licensed under terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Detail of postcard, 1907: “Way down south in the land of cotton”(Source: Augsburg Textile and Industry Museum)

The author wishes to thank Bernhard Gissibl (Mainz) for his helpful suggestions and comments.

When Adolf Waibel, the director of the Augsburg cotton company SWA (Mechanische Baumwollspinnerei und Weberei Augsburg), attended a conference of the International Cotton Federation in Atlanta, Georgia, from October 7 to 9, 1907, he was especially struck by the local cotton farmers, whose “sunburnt features and wiry frames gave the meeting its distinctive character.”¹ Any time a speaker gave voice to the American farmers’ concerns, Waibel reported, they erupted into paroxysms of “thunderous applause,” making him “think involuntarily of the Wild West.”² For Waibel, the conference in Atlanta was the highlight of an extended fact-finding mission.³ A delegation from the Old World had spent almost three weeks travelling by chartered train around the Cotton Belt in the southern states, covering a total distance of over 7,500 kilometers. Although the Augsburg textile industry had been importing cotton from the USA since at least the 1840s, Waibel (fig. 1) was the first Augsburg businessman to meet in person with American farmers and representatives of the cotton exchanges, cotton presses, and railway, shipping, and insurance companies that dealt with the coveted commodity.

Although Waibel’s trip only took him to the transatlantic stations of the global cotton trade, it does illustrate how Augsburg’s textile industry was enmeshed in a complex international network. From the 1840s onwards, the city’s exponentially rising demand for cotton had seen it become one of Germany’s leading centers for textile manufacturing, with almost a million spindles (nearly 10 percent of Germany’s entire spinning capacity) by the eve of the First World War.⁴ It was only able to achieve this status due to its access to cheap US cotton. How did Augsburg textile businesses, whose annual cotton demand grew to some twenty-five thousand metric tons by 1914, organize exports of the commodity from the USA? How did the global cotton trade, long dominated by the British Empire, manifest itself in the Bavarian city? How did local businesses compete in the global market for what Sven Beckert has described as “the most important commodity of the nineteenth century”?⁵

*Fig. 1: Adolf Waibel, commercial director of SWA (1909–1911), in: Hundert Jahre Mechanische Baumwoll-Spinnerei und Weberei Augsburg (Augsburg, 1937), 113.*

Methodology: Global History

In order to formulate these questions more precisely, it is helpful to consider the methodologies of the school of “world” or “global history” that developed in the 1990s.⁶ Whereas German historiography had long focused primarily on the expanding mesh of relationships between nation-states, this new perspective on global history explores the growing interaction and integration of a transnational, intercontinental, worldwide network of economics, society, politics, and culture in a manner unconstrained by Eurocentric theories of modernization.⁷ Global historians view the economy as a key driver of developments in these other areas, though without subscribing to any form of economic reductionism. In a global history of the nineteenth century, nation-states and individual German states such as Bavaria, Prussia, and Saxony recede into the background as historical actors; instead (assuming we do not wish to abstract away from specific places altogether and adopt an absolutely global perspective), greater importance is accorded to local non-state actors such as the Augsburg cotton industrialists, whose business activities spanned the globe but nevertheless remained rooted in their particular local context.

The methodological aim of the present study is to investigate the history of globalization through the lens of Augsburg’s cotton imports. In the context of worldwide circulation of commodities, goods, capital, and information, there is value in examining international interactions and relationships at the level of this local industry, which prospered in competitive national and international markets throughout the nineteenth century. Augsburg may have been hundreds of miles away from the ports of entry, but its mass import of American cotton meant that the city was undeniably part of a global market. Augsburg’s textile entrepreneurs also served as officials of various national and international associations, which attempted to “govern” global processes; that is to say, to control and manage them with the involvement not just of the state but also private enterprises and advocacy groups.⁸ Studying the situation in Augsburg between 1840 and 1914, the period of the first historical wave of globalization,⁹ allows us to describe how globalization unfolded in concrete terms, tracing its rhythms of acceleration and retardation rather than simply presenting the story of linear progress as so often told.

To what extent did Augsburg’s cotton businesses actively shape and precipitate the accelerated globalization processes of this period, and to what extent were they themselves passively shaped or domineered by these processes? Driven by the profit motive characteristic of industrial capitalism,¹⁰ Augsburg’s factory directors were primarily concerned with purchasing cotton as cheaply as possible. This raises a host of questions: Where did these industrialists buy cotton and with what strategies? What information did they have about global market affairs? What sort of communication network(s) did they have? In what kinds of activities were they involved? What structural factors did the local cotton industry have to deal with when importing its “white gold”? How did import practices in Augsburg develop and change over the decades as the market became more complex and increasingly susceptible to international crises, due to increasing global integration? The high volatility of cotton prices,¹¹ which depended on a whole array of unpredictable factors, constantly forced the Augsburgers to take economic risks despite their best efforts to minimize the inherent hazards.

This study may also highlight the potential of an agent-based perspective, using the cotton trade in Augsburg to illustrate how variable the levels of agency enjoyed by participants of this mercantile chain could be and how the internal logic of the global market sometimes reduced them to complete passivity.¹² The analysis explores the dialectical tensions between local and global action, micro- and macrostructures, individual episodes and structural factors, even while keeping the nation-state context in mind (there is, after all, no eo ipso contradiction between the concepts of globalization and nation).¹³

The Rise of Augsburg’s Cotton Industry in a Global Context

In the late eighteenth century, the American inventor Eli Whitney’s groundbreaking cotton gin, a machine that separated cotton fibers from their seeds,¹⁴ paved the way for the USA, with its mass monoculture plantations, to become the world’s largest cotton producer by the early nineteenth century, leaving India and Egypt far behind. Thus began the unrivaled domination of King Cotton in the southern states, interrupted only by the American Civil War. That war highlighted the inhuman price of this economic success, for the industry relied on the exploitation of African American slaves.¹⁵ While the United States is estimated to have produced just three thousand bales annually in 1790, it had surpassed a million by around 1835. Production continued rising: to almost 4.5 million by 1861, 8.5 million by 1890, ten million by 1894, and over sixteen million by 1914.¹⁶ This made raw cotton the USA’s most important export. In 1912, foreign cotton sales were worth 565 million dollars, about 26 percent of all US exports. The USA’s near-monopoly on global cotton production was reflected in a 70.37 percent share of the global cotton crop in 1911/1912.¹⁷

This surge in American cotton production was driven by high demand, especially from the European markets, which in the nineteenth century were primarily served by the British textile industry. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, Britain used its colonial power (with devastating effects) to supplant India as the world’s leading producer of cotton textiles.¹⁸ The emergence of industrial textile manufacturing ushered in a wholly new chapter in world economic history, marked by the “great divergence”¹⁹ between Europe and Asia. A flourishing industry, centered in Manchester and Liverpool, sprang up in the imperial “motherland of industrialization” and went on to dominate the global market in the first half of the nineteenth century.²⁰ The liberal idea of free trade provided the economic framework for unfettered market activity. Both in Britain and on the continent, however, the industrial revolution did not gain full momentum until the invention of steam trains and steamboats revolutionized transportation and vastly reduced freight costs.²¹ The telegraph also played a role, ushering in a communication revolution,²² only to be later superseded by the invention of the telephone.²³ Alongside these developments, which brought about a compression of space and time,²⁴ the gradual establishment of an international gold standard system facilitated the increasing integration of the world market.²⁵

While England’s cotton industry blazed the trail that global economic history would follow, in continental Europe its attentive student Germany became the largest consumer of cotton, albeit only many years further down the line.²⁶ Between 1836 and 1840, the German Customs Union imported just 8,917 metric tons of raw cotton per year; by 1871–1875 the figure stood at 116,390, and by 1912 at 506,891 metric tons.²⁷ The German cotton industry’s growing consumption is attributable not least to a sharp rise in per capita cotton consumption, from 0.74 kilograms in 1834 to 2.47 kilograms in 1877 to 6.98 kilograms in 1909,²⁸ as cotton largely replaced older fibers such as flax and wool. Although Germany continued importing Indian and Egyptian cotton in the nineteenth century, a steadily growing proportion came from the USA, with American imports accounting for 77.7 percent of total German consumption by 1911/12.²⁹

The first cotton factories were built in the Kingdom of Bavaria during the Vormärz period, thanks to the stimulus brought by the German Customs Union. Augsburg, which as a former imperial city had a long history as a commercial and financial center, took a leading role.³⁰ The sweeping generalization that Bavaria only underwent “limited industrialization”³¹ makes it easy to overlook the fact that highly industrialized, internationally connected centers of industry developed there, too, in cities such as Augsburg, which perfectly exemplifies the historical thesis that industrialization was usually concentrated in specific regions with semi-autonomous economies.³² For Augsburg, this region was Bavarian Swabia, which for a time had more active ties to Vorarlberg, Switzerland, and Alsace than to closer territories such as Lower Bavaria and the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin.

In the present context, it is not necessary to delve further into the structural factors behind the rise of Augsburg’s cotton industry, which benefited from a productive combination of a ready supply of energy, capital, and commodities; a transnational transfer of knowledge, technology, and expertise; and, following the railway connection in 1840, a good transportation infrastructure.³³ Its success was also driven by an innovative circle of businessmen and bankers, who used stock shares as their main financing instrument, and willing laborers from the surrounding countryside, who submitted to the demands of the machine age. The founding of SWA in 1837 marked the start of a wave of new cotton mills and factories in the area, which continued up until the late 1860s. By the First World War, around twenty textile businesses had been established, variously producing yarn, thread, woven fabrics, and printed textiles. Although only spinning mills and sewing-thread factories purchased raw cotton, the businesses involved in further processing were equally dependent on the commodity price, which was more or less passed along through the production chain.

Prior to the First World War, some twelve thousand people in and around Augsburg depended on the local textile industry for their livelihoods, with SWA alone employing almost 2,700 workers in 1900. From around 1900 to 1908/09, SWA operated the German Empire’s largest weaving mill (with almost three thousand looms) and one of the largest spinning mills³⁴ (with 127,000 spindles; a local rival, the Stadtbach mill, had 189,000 spindles, which made it the third-largest spinning mill in the empire³⁵). In 1908/09, Augsburg accounted for 5.5 percent of all cotton spindles and 4.2 percent of all cotton looms in Germany. Given the fragmented nature of industry in the empire, the German cotton industry (whose annual cotton demand—roughly estimated—rose to over one hundred thousand bales by 1908) was thus highly concentrated in Augsburg, and the city’s cotton businesses enjoyed great success despite the disadvantageous distance from the ports. Even in the face of economic downturns, right up until the First World War they regularly paid out handsome dividends, generally between 10 and 20 percent.³⁶

Cotton as a Commercial Good

Not all cotton is created equal. Its quality varies according to staple (i.e. fiber) length, fineness, uniformity, preparation (smoothness), color, purity, and fragrance.³⁷ American producers grew two main botanical varieties: long-staple Sea Island (Pima) cotton, similar in quality to Egyptian Mako cotton, and shorter-staple upland cotton, which was much more widely planted.³⁸ While high-quality Sea Island cotton (alongside Mako cotton) was primarily used in Augsburg for sewing-thread production, the spinning mills tended to buy upland varieties, which were preferred to short-staple Indian cotton due to their quality. The Liverpool Cotton Association categorized American cotton into five territorial groupings: Sea Island, Florida Sea Island, Upland, Texas, and New Orleans. Until the First World War, these territorial designations were paired with seven quality grades: ordinary, good ordinary, low middling, middling, good middling, middling fair, and fair.³⁹ Middling Orleans, later middling American(s), was often used as a benchmark for measuring price movements on the cotton markets.

Augsburg spinners wanted to get the right grades of cotton for the types of yarn they produced, so reliable standards were crucially important. However, according to William H. Hubbard, the different exchanges and markets defined these standards differently: “For example, middling in Savannah meant one thing, and in Augusta not one hundred and fifty miles away, meant something entirely different.”⁴⁰ The Augsburg mills therefore paid close attention to cotton classes and their standardization; because the spinning machines were quite sensitive, the quality of the raw cotton needed to be as consistent as possible.

While they managed to attain a degree of assurance about the quality of cotton, the biggest headache for the spinners’ business planning was the highly volatile price of American cotton, which, in the period under consideration here, usually also determined the price of cotton from other sources. The reason this was such a concern was that commodity and energy costs often accounted for well over half of spinning mills’ expenditures.⁴¹ A confounding factor was that rises in the commodity price were not always matched by a rise in the sale prices of the finished products (yarns, woven fabrics, etc.), meaning that profit margins were squeezed.

Imports were also subject to a host of other risks, which could lead to large and unpredictable price fluctuations.⁴² Since cotton is a natural product, crop yields were at the mercy of the weather. Continuous expansion and sometimes partial reduction of cultivated acreage in the Cotton Belt in the USA also influenced prices, as did political events and crises like the American Civil War. The more integrated the global economy became over the course of the nineteenth century, the greater the effects of individual economic, banking, and financial crises on the global cotton market. Market manipulation and financial speculation also strongly affected prices. The phenomenon of stock market speculation meant that getting timely information about market affairs was a crucial challenge for the mills in Augsburg. Over the course of time, the ever more integrated global market was increasingly dominated by internationally versed market experts, whose mercantile experience allowed them to dictate the terms of cotton purchases, including in provincial Augsburg. Last but not least, cotton prices fluctuated due to the consumption of cotton textiles. Since global spinning capacity expanded in line with demand, raw cotton was notoriously scarce.

It is unclear whether the textile entrepreneurs in Augsburg were aware, when they began purchasing cotton from abroad for industrial processing in the 1830s, of just how many intermediate stages the commodity passed through between the plantation and the spinning mill in Augsburg. Depending on the period, a whole host of intermediaries and “service providers” took a cut from the sale of cotton: starting with landowners, tenant farmers, and farmhands, followed by the ginning, pressing (cotton intended for export was generally pressed twice), and baling factories. Then there were the middlemen, the trading companies and international merchants. To prepare the cotton for resale, the farmers’ products had to be classified and samples had to be taken. Both in the USA and Europe, cotton was transported by railway and sometimes by river barge. If cotton was purchased from Liverpool or another European port, that added another stage of transport. Shipping companies were responsible for transporting cotton over the sea; further fees went to harbor yards and warehouses. There were also insurance companies that insured sea and land shipments, especially against fire; the American, British, and German banks involved in financing the cotton trade; and, last but not least, various trading agents and brokers and the cotton exchanges themselves, which arbitrated any disputes over the quality of cotton. Later on, there were local cotton agents in Germany, too, who represented import companies selling raw cotton. Post and telegraph offices handled domestic communications.

Historical Phases of Augsburg’s US Cotton Imports

The history of Augsburg’s cotton imports is not just the history of the physical movement of a commodity, but also a history of communication, information, knowledge, perception, networks, trade routes, transport, trading hubs, banking and finance, and industry advocacy groups, with all these various strands converging in an increasingly globalized market. This section will seek to develop a micro-perspective on local cotton purchases with particular reference to SWA, a major firm whose archives have been preserved largely intact in the Augsburg City Archives. These archives not only allow us to reconstruct SWA’s well-documented import activities, but also provide instructive insights into contemporary perceptions of globalized economic affairs by the company management. To provide an expanded perspective on the regional cotton industry, references are also made to reports of the Chamber of Commerce for Swabia and Neuburg (Handels- und Gewerbekammer für Schwaben und Neuburg), which was dominated by Augsburg textile industrialists.

The Early Years up to 1860

The first cotton purchased by SWA (in 1837, three years before the mill actually began production) came not from the USA, but from Egypt. This purchase is of interest because it illustrates certain key structural features of the contemporary cotton trade. The (then) Austrian city of Trieste, at the northern tip of the Adriatic Sea, was the central trading place for Egyptian cotton. SWA appointed a businessman and cotton trader there, Ignaz Hagenauer,⁴³ as their representative, issuing him precise instructions by mail about their purchasing interests and intentions. SWA’s speculative enquiry to Hagenauer reveals only limited knowledge of the Trieste cotton market, which may have been acquired via personal contacts or the press. To make up for the gaps in its knowledge, SWA requested “a comprehensive report on your cotton market.”⁴⁴ Not long afterward, the company sent the businessman Gustav Frommel from Augsburg to Trieste as their agent for cotton purchasing, so as to ensure better representation of its interests. Frommel kept an “attentive eye on the local cotton market”⁴⁵ and apparently also made purchases on SWA’s behalf. It was probably this special knowledge of the cotton trade that secured Frommel’s later promotion to SWA’s commercial director on March 30, 1839. In the pre-telegraph age, SWA entrusted people like Frommel to represent the company’s interests in person. This sort of personal connection would continue to play an important role in future international business transactions, despite the revolution in communication brought about by the telegraph. It is no longer possible to establish whether SWA’s first shipment of cotton went via Venice or directly from Trieste to Augsburg. What is known is that a businessman from Innsbruck, Martin Tschurtschenthaler, transported the cotton bales by horse and cart over the Alps and from there via Füssen to Augsburg in a journey lasting around a month.

SWA continued to buy most of its cotton from Egypt until the end of the 1830s. In the 1840s, it made its first purchases of cotton from the United States. While Indian cotton was mainly imported through London at that point, American cotton was sourced from ports such as Rotterdam, Le Havre, and, above all, Liverpool, which, with its enormous cotton warehouses, was long the world’s leading hub for trade in the coveted commodity and served as the barometer for cotton prices right up to the age of the German Empire. English and German spinning mills had very different buying strategies. While the English mills clustered in and around Manchester relied on weekly “spot sales” in nearby Liverpool to cover their requirements, German cotton businesses were forced to buy ahead, usually needing enough stock to last for months or even a year. This had two significant consequences for the German spinning mills’ business planning and costings: Firstly, buying ahead tied up a large amount of capital, which meant they lost a lot of interest on money that could not be invested elsewhere. Secondly, given the large quantities of cotton involved, the mills had to approach purchasing decisions with great caution, as minimal differences in price became very expensive when multiplied. This meant it was vital for SWA to closely monitor the English and then also the American markets.

To this end, SWA corresponded extensively with foreign trading companies in Rotterdam, Le Havre, and Liverpool, who kept the Augsburg management updated on market trends.⁴⁶ SWA’s correspondence reveals a growing awareness of the complex global market. One example can be seen in an exchange from late November 1842 with two traders in Liverpool, William Preller and Hermann Frommel, about the current prospects for British exports to China and India, which would relieve pressure on the German market.⁴⁷ That said, in the 1840s, the SWA managers still sometimes displayed ignorance about the commodity from the far-off USA, despite their network of correspondents. For instance, in a letter dated August 20, 1844, SWA’s representative remarked, blissfully unaware of meteorological conditions in the American Cotton Belt, that “we have observed that the American cotton harvest coincides exactly with the grain harvest in Germany, which this year was exceptionally abundant, so that we expect to be able to buy at even lower prices next spring.”⁴⁸

Despite occasional naivety, in the early years SWA proved to have a knack for choosing the right time to buy American cotton cheaply, though it sometimes still had to weather price spikes. In 1847, for instance, a poor harvest in the USA drove up commodity prices by 50 to 60 percent, meaning SWA had to spend around 93,000 gulden more on cotton than in the preceding year.⁴⁹ Even a fall in cotton prices could be bad news, since, if the company had failed to buy cotton at the lowest price, the losses would have to be written off in the annual accounts. In the early decades, purchasing decisions were generally made on the basis of cotton samples (and hence on the basis of very specific batches) sent from the import markets of Liverpool or Le Havre.

In 1840, SWA purchased just 34.9 metric tons of American cotton; this rose to 271 metric tons by the following year, and from 1845 to 1860 oscillated between 500 and 600 metric tons, peaking at 604 metric tons in 1857 (see chart 1). From 1843 to 1852, the Augsburg company purchased its cotton exclusively from the USA. In 1853, it began importing small quantities of cotton from India, but this accounted for barely more than 10 percent of total annual consumption prior to the American Civil War.

*Chart 1: SWA cotton imports in kilograms by source country (1840–1919), Source: StadtAA, SWA Archiv, no. 190,4.*

During the early years, when the companies from Augsburg bought cotton in Liverpool, this normally involved not just the trader who actually imported the cotton, but also a buying and a selling broker, each with their own fees. For this reason, as the decades passed, it became increasingly imperative for the German spinners to free themselves from the British-dominated Liverpool market.⁵⁰

SWA’s initial purchases in the 1840s were of cotton already stored in European warehouses, but, in late March 1847, the company decided to buy the commodity directly from the USA for the first time (albeit with an importer still acting as intermediary).⁵¹ In general, only companies with lots of capital could afford to import cotton directly, due to the many uncertainties involved. Two considerations spoke in favor of direct imports: Firstly, it eliminated the commission and brokers’ fees charged at the European ports. Secondly, a direct link to the country of origin gave better access to the desired cotton grades, which were often unavailable in Europe. SWA was ahead of the curve with this innovative buying strategy, which many other German spinning mills only adopted decades later.

After the opening of the Augsburg–Munich line in 1842, cotton was increasingly transported by railway. A rail line between Augsburg and Nuremberg followed in 1849, and two years later the Ludwig South-North Railway connected Munich to Berlin via Hof. In the 1850s, the railway network expanded right across the continent, allowing cotton to be transported by rail all the way from the Atlantic entry ports. From 1851 onward, SWA increasingly relied on the telegraph for its international communications, alongside traditional postal correspondence. In 1866, the transatlantic telegraph cable was laid, shortening the time needed to relay messages from days to a few minutes and revolutionizing intercontinental business dealings.⁵² The cable removed barriers to interaction, and made world trade easier and much faster.

Domestic politics hindered the development of business in German territories during the revolutions of 1848/49, while in the 1850s it was international events that were unfavorable, as wars and crises drove up food prices and dampened consumer spending. The Crimean War (1853–1856) significantly drove up the price of cotton, with sharp fluctuations rippling through to Augsburg in 1855. The cotton price rose rapidly again after the Treaty of Paris in 1856, soaring from 5.5 to 9.5 pence per English pound (lb), before falling back to 5.5 pence the following year. The global economic crisis that began in the USA in August 1857⁵³ spread to Europe in fall of that year and caused a “universal trade crisis.”⁵⁴ Augsburg companies that had concluded large sales of textiles early enough reaped a handsome profit. SWA, for instance, achieved record profits that year of almost 270,000 gulden. In 1859, the Second Italian War of Independence caused a “slump in business”⁵⁵ even north of the Alps, prompting SWA to cut working hours between May and August. In 1860, an exceptional cotton harvest in the USA resulted in very low prices; of the almost six hundred metric tons processed by SWA that year, no less than 584.6 came from America.

The Impact of the American Civil War (1861–1865)

While the Augsburg cotton companies weathered the crises of the 1850s relatively well, the American Civil War, which broke out in 1861 over the issue of slavery, posed new and unfamiliar challenges for the local textile industry.⁵⁶ The blockade of Confederate ports ordered by President Abraham Lincoln brought cotton exports to a virtual standstill,⁵⁷ with grave consequences. The Lancashire textile industry, which depended almost exclusively on American cotton, was hit especially hard; the “Cotton Famine” resulted in mass unemployment and the closure of many companies.⁵⁸ The small quantities of American cotton that were available rose dramatically in price, with the cost of Middling Americans in Liverpool increasing almost fivefold from 6 1/4 pence per English pound (lb) in 1860 to 27 1/2 pence (briefly peaking at 31 pence) in 1864.⁵⁹

What effect did the cotton scarcity have on the textile industry in Augsburg? Initially, the companies’ policy of buying large quantities ahead of time reaped dividends; in the first year of the war, they were able to continue production without any significant cutbacks. However, the Chamber of Commerce for Swabia and Neuburg gave a far more critical assessment of the following year, 1862:

The continuation of the American Civil War, which has led to steady price increases of many commodities, especially cotton, is weighing heavily on German industry, and its disruptive influence is especially palpable in our region, which has many cotton mills.⁶⁰

If they wanted to continue production at the same level, these businesses had to source cotton from outside of the USA. Like much of the industry, SWA mainly attempted to make up for the shortfall in American cotton by buying from India. Imports from the Indian subcontinent shot up from thirteen metric tons in 1860 to 254 metric tons in 1865 (see chart 1). Other replacement cotton was sourced from Italy and the Levant. During the war, SWA managed to more or less satisfy the demand, with the biggest shortfall coming in 1863, when supply fell by around 16 percent compared with prewar levels. However, purchasing cotton from other countries created serious problems for the spinning machines, which had been precisely calibrated for American cotton. The short-staple Indian cotton could only be used to make lower-quality textiles, and overall production declined. The Stadtbach mill did better than SWA at sourcing replacement cotton, and, with its increased spinning capacity, even managed to increase its cotton consumption from 12,257 bales in 1860 to 15,610 bales in 1865.⁶¹ However, this probably represented an exception rather than the rule in Augsburg.

Some local companies, meanwhile, became veritable war profiteers, using a portion of their abundant cotton reserves for highly profitable speculation rather than actual production. The wildly fluctuating yarn market also offered frequent opportunities to buy low and sell high.⁶² Both the Stadtbach mill and SWA witnessed exceptional profits between 1861 and 1863. Paradoxically, SWA achieved its “highest ever”⁶³ profits to date in 1862, when the price of American cotton doubled relative to the previous year. These results were dependent, however, on temporary market conditions, and when the pendulum swung the other way in 1864, the Stadtbach mill was forced to cut back its production. Hopes of economic recovery were not glimpsed until 1865, “when the great political drama in North America came to a temporary conclusion.”⁶⁴

What lessons did the Augsburg cotton companies take from the American Civil War? Being forced to branch out to other sources of cotton created a general awareness that the American monopoly was no longer an absolute given. SWA continued buying a lot of Indian cotton even after the American Civil War. The Chamber of Commerce for Swabia and Neuburg expressed concern about the future of cotton production in the American South following the abolition of slavery:

We are not yet able to precisely assess […] what effect the emancipation of slaves that has now begun will have, and how their willingness to cultivate cotton as free laborers will affect cotton production in the southern states of North America this year and in the years to come.⁶⁵

No evidence has survived of what spinners in Augsburg thought about the connection between cotton production and slavery. However, the Augsburger Lassalleaner, an early social democratic newspaper founded in March 1864, was sympathetic to President Lincoln and his commitment to “the great task of abolishing slavery.”⁶⁶ Apart from that, there are scattered references in the Augsburg press to slavery, which was closely tied up with cotton cultivation.⁶⁷

The USA recovered slowly from the devastating civil war, which had placed its cotton industry on a new and initially very fragile footing. It took until 1879/80, almost two decades, for American cotton exports to return to prewar levels.⁶⁸ Although slavery had now been abolished, cotton production remained reliant on African American laborers, who still lacked full rights and independence. Back in Germany, the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 briefly had a negative impact on the Augsburg textile industry, followed by a period of exceptionally good business that allowed SWA to pay out lavish dividends. The next slump did not come until the Franco-Prussian war in 1870, when production was cut back.

The Emergence of National Advocacy Groups: From 1870 to the Turn of the Century

The founding of the German Empire in 1871 is generally associated with the economic boom of the Gründerzeit. But the unification of the empire was rather less of a blessing for the German textile industry, since the incorporation of Alsace-Lorraine and its strong textile industry greatly increased domestic competition. The total number of cotton spindles and looms in Germany rose by 56 and 88 percent, respectively. The expansion of spinning and weaving capacity in the preceding years had outstripped growth in consumption, which led to unprecedented competition at the national and international levels. For the first time, the problem of overproduction reared its head.

The Panic of 1873 triggered a worldwide economic depression, and also brought home once again the enormous risks the rapidly growing global market posed for Augsburg’s industrialists.⁶⁹ There was growing opposition to free trade, with a particular focus on establishing a counter to the economic power of Britain, which dominated global textile production thanks to the industrial center of Lancashire and the influential cotton market in Liverpool. Augsburg’s local chamber of commerce therefore published a statement on German trade and customs policy that called—“with particular reference to the textile industry in our region”—for “the cosmopolitan trade policy pursued hitherto, which has driven the country to impoverishment and ruin thanks to decades of unfavorable trade balances, to be replaced by a truly national trade policy dedicated solely to German interests.”⁷⁰ These calls for Germany to impose limits on a global economic liberalism that mainly benefited Britain (due to its considerable geographic advantages) must be understood as a national response to an unequal international playing field.⁷¹ In the challenging economic climate, German cotton entrepreneurs banded together in various institutions and organizations to ensure better representation of their economic and political interests. Augsburg textile industrialists were at the forefront of these processes of institutionalization.⁷²

Fig. 2: Theodor (von) Haßler, director of the Stadtbach spinning mill in Augsburg (1868–1889) in: Friedrich Haßler, “Theodor Ritter von Haßler,” in Lebensbilder aus dem bayerischen Schwaben, vol. 9, ed. by Götz Pölnitz and Wolfgang Zorn (Munich, 1966), 352–383, here 367.

Association of South German Cotton Industrialists

The founding of the Industrial Exchange Association (Industriebörsenverein) in Augsburg in 1859 paved the way for the Association of South German Cotton Industrialists (Verein süddeutscher Baumwollindustrieller, VSBI), which was formally constituted on July 4, 1870. The association was intended to represent the interests of the cotton industry of Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden, and parts of Saxony with respect to foreign trade, customs, economic regulation, social policy, and the development and regulation of transportation (in particular railways). As well as reaching agreements on influencing the market, limiting production, and regulating prices, one of the new association’s functions was the compilation of statistics on cotton.⁷³ It also cooperated with national and international cotton industry organizations. If the founding of the VSBI is viewed in the context of the global textile chain, which at that time spanned from overseas cotton farming to domestic sales of yarn and woven fabrics, then it can be understood as an attempt to better manage the international trade flow, initially within the association’s immediate sphere of influence in Germany, and thereby amplify the agency of the textile industrialists involved in the association. For a long time, Augsburg-based companies called the shots in the VSBI.⁷⁴ Theodor Haßler (fig. 2), the director of the Stadtbach mill from 1868 to 1889, served as vice president of the VSBI for ten years and then as president from 1882 to 1899.⁷⁵ Under his leadership, the VSBI relocated its headquarters to Augsburg. Ferdinand Groß (SWA director from 1893 to 1907) served as president of the VSBI after Haßler’s tenure, while Albert Frommel (SWA director from 1872 to 1893) represented the association on the permanent committee of the German Trade Association (Deutscher Handelstag).⁷⁶

The VSBI was especially active in campaigning against the imperial government’s free trade policy, and managed to successfully mobilize public opinion. This paved the way for the establishment of the Central Association of German Industrialists (Centralverband deutscher Industrieller, CVDI),⁷⁷ which was founded in Berlin on February 15, 1876. Haßler was initially appointed vice president of the CVDI, and then in 1880 president. Under his influence, Otto von Bismarck decided, following the severe economic depression of 1877/78, to move away from the free trade policy that the empire had followed until that point. Preparations for this change of direction, which was formalized by the Customs Tariff Act of July 15, 1879, were made by the Imperial Inquest on Behalf of the Cotton and Linen Industry (Reichs-Enquete für die Baumwollen- und Leinen-Industrie) set up in 1878, on whose committee Haßler served and which consulted other Augsburg factory directors as industry experts.⁷⁸

Direct Imports

The inquest committee is of particular interest for the present study because it provides considerable insight into the import activities of the Augsburg cotton companies (as well as German cotton companies more generally), which continued to rely primarily on American cotton. According to the experts the inquest consulted, German spinners were, at that point in time, buying a far greater proportion of their cotton (between 30 and 60 percent of their annual requirements) directly from the countries of production than they had prior to the 1870s.⁷⁹ One of those surveyed was Prosper de Rudder, the director of the Senkelbach spinning mill in Augsburg, who remarked, “In 1877, we bought most of our American, East Indian, and Egyptian cottons from the countries of origin, and, due to the unfavorable market conditions, only a small proportion from England and other foreign and German markets.”⁸⁰ Those looking to import cotton directly from America had a choice between the markets of New Orleans (Louisiana), Galveston (Texas), Mobile (Alabama), Savannah (Georgia), and Charleston (South Carolina). The transit port was generally Rotterdam or Bremen.

De Rudder’s remark reflects a fundamental shift in the buying policy of German cotton spinners, who were increasingly reducing their dependency on the Liverpool market. This tendency can also be seen in the declining imports of cotton from Britain to Germany after the American Civil War, which fell nearly 70 percent between 1867 and 1877, from 919,782 to 284,207 centners. De Rudder gave a rundown of the different fees levied on cotton purchases at the main European markets. While Liverpool demanded 3.5 percent of the purchase price, Le Havre and Bremen charged just 2.75 percent.⁸¹ A. Dollfus, an Alsatian cotton spinner, was blunt in his criticism of British commerce: “The English want to sell cotton at far more than it’s actually worth.”⁸²

Direct imports, on the other hand, generally offered a favorable purchase price; in 1877/78, this price normally already included all fees,⁸³ which came to around 5 percent. Importing cotton directly also opened up a far greater choice of varieties and grades. Since one area SWA had chosen to focus on was “producing special grades,” the company felt “compelled to only use very good raw material, and in some source countries this can only be procured at the places of production when the harvest is coming in.”⁸⁴ Since the cotton grades required by the Augsburg businesses were either not available at all at the European markets or “only at exorbitant prices,” SWA began “regularly buying up a whole year’s supply” of “certain varieties” from the USA.⁸⁵ This was a major financial challenge, even for the wealthiest companies,⁸⁶ and SWA, despite its solid financial footing, sometimes had to take out large loans of up to a million marks to buy ahead in this way.⁸⁷ Companies with less capital were unable to buy direct from overseas for a long time. Moreover, having so much working capital tied up in this way meant German companies often responded slowly and inflexibly to changes in cotton prices or demand.

Payments to the USA were made using “sight drafts.”⁸⁸ Sight drafts with a term of sixty days were standard for cotton imported directly from the USA.⁸⁹ The challenge for the Augsburg spinners, and all other German mills, was that these drafts, which US exporters insisted on, could only be drawn at British banks for a long time.⁹⁰ This meant that payments for cotton deals had to be made abroad, and businesses in Augsburg had no choice but to conduct their transactions in pound sterling through British banks, generally in London, which earned a cut off each payment. Dealing in foreign currency also entailed an exchange loss. Added up, these factors put German businesses at a structural disadvantage compared with their international competitors. The experts interviewed by the inquest frequently criticized the lack of trust shown to German banks and the German currency by exporters from the American South.⁹¹

The Bremen Cotton Exchange

Although German spinners were long forced to import cotton on less favorable terms than their English counterparts, the growth in direct imports from the USA was a first step toward emancipation from British hegemony. Heinrich Spörry, who owned a spinning mill in Mühlhausen, estimated that in 1878 German spinners paid 11.52 marks more per 100 kilograms of American cotton than English spinners.⁹² The cost of shipping imported cotton from Liverpool to Augsburg at that time was 5.15 to 5.68 marks per 100 kilograms, which was far more expensive than the three to four marks that textile-producing cities along the Rhine had to pay.⁹³

If the German cotton industry wanted to compete successfully on the international market despite these disadvantages, it needed to liberate its European trading activities from the dominant influence of the British market. This could be achieved only through institutional and physical expansion of a German port for American cotton imports. The obvious candidate was Bremen,⁹⁴ which was already active in the import business. There was growing interest among merchants there in attracting trade away from Liverpool, Le Havre, and Rotterdam.⁹⁵ They wanted to make sure, furthermore, that they were not left entirely empty-handed by the increasing tendency for German spinners to import directly and cut out the middlemen. A new institution, the Bremen Cotton Exchange, promised a solution to this problem.

The basis for the exchange was laid in 1872 with the foundation of the Committee for the Cotton Trade (Comité für den Baumwollhandel), which brought together importers, traders, and brokers. Regulations governing the Bremen cotton trade (the Bremer Baumwoll-Usancen, replaced in 1875 by the Bestimmungen für den Bremer Baumwollhandel)⁹⁶ established legal certainty and standards not dependent on the British market; Bremen now adopted new standard samples for the different cotton varieties rather than relying on those used in Liverpool. This independent classification and arbitration of the quality, and hence the value, of imported cotton was a key factor behind Bremen’s meteoric rise as a trading hub. In 1877, merchants there founded the logistics company Bremer Lagerhaus-Gesellschaft with a view to expansion of the cotton trade. Later that same year, the Bremen Cotton Exchange itself was founded. Like its precursor, the Committee for the Cotton Trade, the exchange brought together a variety of players in the cotton market: importers, brokers, agents, freight carriers, and bankers. The exchange’s breakthrough as an internationally competitive trade association came when the German cotton industry came on board. The first of the cotton mill associations to join was the VSBI, in 1886. Its then president, the Augsburg industrialist Haßler, was in favor of establishing closer ties with “the maritime trade and the rest of the world,”⁹⁷ and welcomed the invitation from Bremen to bring the south German textile industry “a step nearer to the sea.”⁹⁸ Striking an almost imperialist tone, he declared that “We also want to ensure that Bremen, as a German port, attains the status as a cotton market that it deserves.”⁹⁹ Five other German cotton spinning associations followed the example of the VSBI, and similar organizations from Austria (1894) and Switzerland (1906) later followed suit. Haßler himself was elected to the expanded committee of the Bremen Cotton Exchange as the representative of the VSBI, and SWA Director Groß later served on the committee as well.

Despite the name, the Bremen Cotton Exchange was not an exchange in the strict sense; that is to say, it was not a cotton-trading institution in its own right, with fixed trading hours, listings, and stock trader meetings.¹⁰⁰ It was merely an association that offered stakeholders in the cotton market an organizational framework to facilitate their business and alleviate legal uncertainties.¹⁰¹ Obtaining legal certainty was deemed especially important given the increasing direct imports of cotton from the USA, as maintaining the consistent quality of the supply was a great challenge. An independent quality check with its own standards, a recognized arbitration process, and tribunals to decide on disputes secured Bremen’s rise to a new European cotton center. The exchange helped establish a German passage alongside the other transatlantic trade routes and created a vital new hub in the expanding global market. The exchange, an unlikely association of traders and spinners, can only be properly understood in the context of the desire to reduce Germany’s dependence on Britain. Buyers and sellers only put aside their economically opposing interests for the sake of greater collective trading power. The Bremen Cotton Exchange represented its members beyond Germany’s borders at international conferences on regulation of the cotton trade.¹⁰²

The success of the Bremen Cotton Exchange, which almost exclusively imported American cotton, is documented by the steady rise in import figures after its initial founding as the Committee for the Cotton Trade, from 157,630 bales in 1870 to 206,300 in 1875.¹⁰³ The boost that the exchange received when the German cotton spinning associations joined in 1886 can be seen in the rise from 457,700 to 658,400 bales between 1885 and 1887. When it surpassed 493,000 bales in 1886/87, Bremen overtook Le Havre as the continental port with the highest volume of cotton imports. Imports passed the million bales mark for the first time in the first half of the 1890s, and peaked in 1911/12 at 2,870,000 bales. Shortly before the First World War, Bremen’s cotton imports rivaled Liverpool’s, with the Hanseatic port supplying Scandinavia, Poland, Russia, Austria, Switzerland, and other countries.

The actual business of buying cotton was dealt with by specialist import companies, which were either founded in Bremen or opened branches there as the Bremen Cotton Exchange became increasingly established on the continental European market. These companies, which were often represented in the centers of the German spinning trade by local commercial agents, were the intermediary between the buying spinners and the selling exporters. Between 1876 and 1913, address directories for Augsburg list a constant tally of around ten cotton agents,¹⁰⁴ who represented not just German import companies but also British and American ones, who were equally eligible to join the Bremen Cotton Exchange.

Dealing with Uncertainty: SWA between 1870 and 1900

A micro-perspective on SWA shows that, despite the Panic of 1873, competing tendencies towards free trade and protectionism, and strong competition from Britain, and many economic ups and downs, there was an enormous expansion in the production of cotton textiles in Augsburg between 1870 and 1900. While SWA’s annual cotton consumption stagnated in the first half of the 1870s between 670 and 758 metric tons, this figure rose markedly after 1876 (908 metric tons), and more than doubled in the course of the 1880s (1880: 1,213 metric tons; 1889: 3,116 metric tons); by 1900, cotton consumption had soared to 5,351 metric tons (see chart 2). In addition to the American cotton it favored, SWA also used a lot of Indian cotton. Buying cotton from India (which between 1883 and 1885, when SWA’s need for cotton rose sharply, made up over 50 percent of its total consumption) made the company less dependent on American imports alone. However, when American cotton prices were low, SWA purchased more cotton from the USA, as in 1899 and 1900, when the company only sourced around 10 percent of its annual cotton requirements from outside America.

Analyzing the development of American cotton prices between 1870 and 1900 reveals a steady decline as the market recovered from the Civil War, from 10 9/16 pence per English pound (lb) of Middling Americans (by Liverpool classification) in 1871/72 to a historic low of 3 13/16 pence in 1898/99.¹⁰⁵ Although this fall in prices appears linear from a longer-term perspective, in the interim SWA had to wrestle with constant price fluctuations. It attempted to buy at the cheapest point in time, always hoping that prices would not fall further so that it would not have to write down any purchases that had already been made in the annual accounts. It was not uncommon to wonder, as in an 1885 report, “how much further the commodity will depreciate.”¹⁰⁶

If prices rose again, this created an opportunity for profit; in 1880 SWA Director Frommel laconically remarked that the company’s profits were attributable not to its production “but solely to fortunate speculation in cotton.”¹⁰⁷

*Chart 2: SWA cotton imports in kilograms by source country (1870–1900), Source: StadtAA, SWA Archiv, no. 190,4.*

The SWA management was constantly seeking to get a handle on the volatile cotton prices, often deploying ingenious reasoning. The uncertainties included both objective factors, like the actual cotton yields, and subjective ones, like having better information, which allowed some spinning mills to predict movements on the market faster than their competitors; market manipulation also contributed to the uncertainty, as will be discussed further below. Given the geographic remoteness of the American cotton plantations, it was impossible to observe them directly; SWA had instead to utilize all the information it could get from its communication network to try and accurately estimate crop yields and make purchasing decisions accordingly, since the expected yield of the upcoming harvest also affected the value of remaining stock from the previous season. If a poor harvest was followed by a good one, an abundance of cotton would drive down prices. Two good harvests in succession, on the other hand, as in 1890/91 and 1891/92, threatened to “ruin business” altogether.¹⁰⁸ As Frommel reported to a general meeting of SWA, “This business year […] has been one of the most calamitous for our industry in its whole existence. Even the wars of 1870 and 1866, the crises of 1859 and 1857, yes even the great revolutionary year of 1848 had less deleterious consequences, because a steep fall in prices was followed by a recovery.”¹⁰⁹ The Chamber of Commerce for Swabia and Neuburg likewise pinned most of the blame for the worst financial results “for as long as the cotton industry has existed in our region” on the “gigantic harvest” of 1890/91 and the “monster harvest” of 1891/1892.¹¹⁰

Accurate predictions of market fluctuations were vital, and so companies in Augsburg consulted up-to-date yield estimates, weather reports warning of storms or a “killing frost,”¹¹¹ and predictions of insect plagues—all of which could also be tainted by misinformation, which competitors sometimes even deliberately spread. During this period, the Augsburg companies got their latest news about the precious commodity via telegraph, telephone (SWA was hooked up to the network in 1886¹¹²), newspapers, and specialized publications, such as Alfred B. Shepperson’s Cotton Facts (New York),¹¹³ John Jones’s Handbook for Daily Cable Records of American Cotton Crop Statistics (Liverpool),¹¹⁴ and the various reports by the influential Neill Brothers.¹¹⁵ The Bavarian spinners were also kept informed by their contacts in the main European cotton centers, and received the latest harvest forecasts from the Augsburg cotton agents. Finally, the Bremen Cotton Exchange and VSBI published statistical records of past cotton harvests and prices, with which companies could gain a basic grasp of the volatile cotton market.¹¹⁶ Compared with the naivety of the pre-1848 years, Augsburg’s cotton industrialists were now far better informed about production conditions in the USA.¹¹⁷

Despite the perils of unexpected price drops, SWA hoped for cheap cotton prices in the long run “due to the great expansion of cotton cultivation in the United States in recent times.”¹¹⁸ When the Augsburg cotton spinners were caught off-guard by the bumper harvest of 1891/92, there were suspicions “that this result is likely attributable to an expansion of cotton plantations that we were unaware of and that the Americans in all probability concealed from us.”¹¹⁹ However, when the American cotton farmers later attempted to shift cotton prices in their favor by reducing the area under cultivation, they came in for criticism from SWA Director Groß.¹²⁰

The many imponderable factors that determined cotton prices were exacerbated by deliberate speculation on the cotton exchanges that began to spring up in the 1870s, especially those, like the exchanges in Liverpool, New York, New Orleans, and Le Havre, that allowed trading in futures.¹²¹ Futures, which could be obtained equally quickly in the USA and Europe thanks to the transatlantic telegraph, initially served the very practical purpose of allowing companies to hedge their own cotton purchases or sales against price volatility.¹²² However, while some used them to protect their businesses, others used them as a very profitable form of financial speculation; SWA Director Frommel reported that there had been “unprecedented speculation in American cotton in Liverpool” between July and September 1881.¹²³

Futures trading in a natural commodity always brought with it the risk of market manipulation. SWA, with its cautious buying policy, long steered clear of futures, with the supervisory board chair, Paul Schmid, declaring to the new director, Groß, in 1893 that “the futures business” could “no longer be countenanced.”¹²⁴ Observers in Augsburg took a dim view of the growing stock market speculation in the final years of the nineteenth century, which saw investors betting on whether cotton prices would rise or fall. The Chamber of Commerce for Swabia and Neuburg first voiced general concerns about the issue in 1897: “It makes matters very difficult for good, sound industry that cotton prices are no longer determined by supply and demand, but primarily by the manipulations of speculators in New York and Liverpool.”¹²⁵

Stock market speculators were also accused of manipulating the media, going so far as to spread fake news about cotton growth or weather conditions:¹²⁶

Through their agents in Germany, especially Hamburg, they influence the newspapers. The newspapers are offered cable reports from New York, which they reprint in the belief that they are doing their readers a great service, without realizing how much damage they are doing to business and how dubious their sources are.¹²⁷

The local chamber of commerce was especially appalled that Augsburg’s newspapers also allowed themselves to be used for these sorts of manipulations, which “have had a disruptive effect on virtually the whole German industry.”¹²⁸ Systematic stock market speculation, which caused rapid price fluctuations previously unseen in the cotton trade, made the already difficult trading conditions even more challenging.¹²⁹ And so the chamber took some pleasure in the news of the collapse of “exorbitant speculative enterprises in New Orleans”¹³⁰ in 1895 and of “New York speculation”¹³¹ in 1900.

It was not just speculative market risks that affected cotton prices, but also social and political events. For instance, a strike by English laborers in Lancashire prompted SWA Director Groß to hope for “lower cotton prices,” which he planned to “take advantage of by buying up cotton”;¹³² however, this hope was not fulfilled. The Augsburg cotton industry always kept a close eye on its British rivals, who had various competitive advantages and tended toward overproduction. Whenever British sales to India and the rest of Asia slumped, this exposed the German market to the risk of having to compete on unequal terms with exports of textile products from Britain.

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, Augsburg’s textile industrialists were far more sensitive to the cotton market’s entanglements in global political and economic affairs, which increasingly eluded simplistic notions of cause and effect. As their horizons widened, they became aware of a complex cluster of global economic factors that could affect the price of cotton even from the other end of the world, as with the Sino-French War of 1883.¹³³ The political conflicts were frequently accompanied by global banking and economic crises. For instance, in 1893 the chamber of commerce noted the impact on cotton prices of “unfavorable news from America” and “payment defaults in Liverpool and Australia.”¹³⁴ The same year also saw prices affected by a dangerously “falling silver price,”¹³⁵ which, in combination with dwindling gold reserves, sparked a panic on the US capital markets in May, resulting in the collapse of many American banks and businesses. Consequently, even as it looked ahead to 1894, the chamber of commerce complained of “the still unsatisfactory business conditions in the United States.”¹³⁶

Professionalization of Augsburg’s Industrialists

Keeping pace with the increasing demands of the global cotton market required more specialized personnel. While in the first half of the nineteenth century Augsburg’s leading businessmen learned their trade in Austria, Italy, and Switzerland,¹³⁷ in later decades prospective factory directors headed to the key European markets for American cotton.¹³⁸ Groß and Waibel became acquainted with the workings of the international cotton trade in Le Havre, Bremen, and Liverpool,¹³⁹ while Otto Lindenmeyer, who succeeded Waibel as SWA’s director in 1911, gained international experience in Lausanne, Basel, Liverpool, and the Balkans, where he represented English spinning mills.¹⁴⁰
Frommel’s formative years took him to Havana. Schmid, the influential longstanding chair of the SWA supervisory board (fig. 3), began his career in Geneva, London, and Frankfurt, while his uncle, Paul Schmid, Sr., worked in New York.¹⁴¹ Consequently, by the time of the German Empire, SWA’s senior ranks were filled with quintessential international businessmen, fluent in multiple languages and au fait not just with the transatlantic markets but also, thanks to the trade in Indian and Egyptian cotton, those of Asia and Africa.¹⁴²

*Fig. 3:* *Paul Schmid, banker and chair of the SWA supervisory board (source: Augsburg Textile and Industry Museum (on loan))*

The Emergence of International Advocacy Groups: From 1900 to World War I

As the twentieth century dawned, the globally expanded horizons of Augsburg’s textile industrialists were increasingly reflected in the language that they used. The chamber of commerce’s annual reports were now sprinkled with terms like “global economy” (Weltwirtschaft),¹⁴³ “world peace” (Weltfriede),¹⁴⁴ “global consumption” (Weltverbrauch),¹⁴⁵ the “state of the world” (Weltlage),¹⁴⁶ “global market conditions” (Weltkonjunktur),¹⁴⁷ and “world market” (Weltmarkt).¹⁴⁸ SWA paid growing attention to total “global demand” (Weltbedarf)¹⁴⁹ for cotton and to “global consumption” (Weltkonsum)¹⁵⁰ of the commodity. This rhetoric of “world” and “global” was reflected in practice by a new, almost cybernetic feel for cotton demand, the probability of satisfying that demand, and resultant prices, with global demand always calculated based on expected or actual American crop yields.

The main challenge for the market was that global demand for cotton was rising faster than production.¹⁵¹ Conditions on the global market were exacerbated by the vast rise in US domestic consumption; by 1895, America had a spinning capacity of over sixteen million spindles. In the face of these pressures on the supply of cotton, Augsburg’s factory managers were constantly engaged in making more or less hypothetical estimates of cotton prices for the next American harvest.¹⁵² The local spinning mills incorporated every new piece of meteorological or statistical information into their calculations, especially official information published by American government bodies such as the Department of Agriculture’s Weather Bureau and its Division of Statistics and, later on, the Department of Commerce and Labor’s Census Bureau (founded in 1903).¹⁵³

Augsburg’s demand for cotton also rose significantly in the years leading up to the First World War. SWA’s annual consumption rose from 5,351 metric tons in 1900 to a peak of 7,277 metric tons in 1913. The proportion of Indian cotton ranged from between 20 and somewhat more than 30 percent. Whereas the tail end of the nineteenth century had seen a linear decline in the price of cotton, which fell as low as 3 13/16 pence per pound (lb) in 1898/99,¹⁵⁴ it began to rise again in 1900, albeit with far greater fluctuations than before, at points temporarily almost tripling in price.¹⁵⁵

New Heights of Stock Market Speculation

The constant fluctuations of cotton prices in the years leading up to World War I were largely the result of speculation on the New York Mercantile Exchange, which rose to unprecedented heights in the new century.¹⁵⁶ The chamber of commerce’s annual reports complain nonstop about the often turbulent cycles of bull and bear markets. The author of one report from early 1901 was incensed by a “cotton corner in New York” that “drove the price of cotton up to twelve cents.”¹⁵⁷ Alongside rampant stock market speculation, the growth in US domestic demand meant that, despite the expansion of American plantations, the USA was able “to dictate prices for the cotton-consuming world.”¹⁵⁸ There was much contemporary criticism of a “New York bull clique”¹⁵⁹ that temporarily ramped up cotton prices in 1902/03, creating great “uncertainty about whether there would be a sufficient supply of cotton to meet global demand.”¹⁶⁰ In 1904, there was then an “unbridled bullish movement,”¹⁶¹ which critically threatened the interests of the European cotton industry.¹⁶² This rapid price rise was associated mainly with the “cotton king”¹⁶³ and “arch-speculator”¹⁶⁴ Daniel J. Sully. Beginning in late 1903, Sully “bulled” the price of cotton up to as high as seventeen cents,¹⁶⁵ resulting in “heavy losses upon spinners and […] the closing of many mills.”¹⁶⁶ Only after the spectacular collapse of “the bull clique’s leading member”¹⁶⁷ on March 18, 1904, did the price gradually come down again. A price plunge at the end of the year made the European dependence on the speculative American market all the more starkly apparent. Charles W. Macara, president of the influential British Federation of Master Cotton Spinners’ Associations, complained in 1904 that the rise in American cotton prices had brought the vast industry to the brink of complete paralysis.¹⁶⁸

In Augsburg, meanwhile, industry experts were increasingly doubtful that they could rely on information about cotton from the USA. In September 1903, Schmid, the chair of the SWA supervisory board, expressed anger at the “arbitrariness of American speculators” who “even manipulate news about the state of the harvest as they see fit.”¹⁶⁹ In a review of 1904, the chamber of commerce observed that claims about the enormous damage to the cotton harvest caused by the feared boll weevil likewise distorted the facts.¹⁷⁰ The chamber was critical not just of private speculators, but now also of reports from official sources, writing for instance that “the official report by the Washington bureau was also grossly unreliable.”¹⁷¹ Schmid also condemned the “knowingly false official information published by the American Department of Agriculture.”¹⁷² In addition to financial investors’ manipulation of the market, a very different sort of speculation was now emerging: American cotton farmers were increasingly organizing into trusts that sought to influence cotton prices in their favor. Thus, speculators “were able, using new, quintessentially American means, to gradually drive up prices by a significant degree despite the exceptional harvest.”¹⁷³

The International Cotton Federation

The British cotton industry, which was the worst affected by speculation, led the way in the European response to American market manipulation.¹⁷⁴ Macara initiated an international congress of the European cotton industry that took place in Zurich in March 1904.¹⁷⁵ This congress laid the foundations for a new, transnational body: the International Federation of Master Cotton Spinners and Manufacturers’ Associations (International Cotton Federation), which Macara presided over for many years from Manchester. Augsburg was represented on the new international federation’s board by Groß, who served as honorary treasurer.

The federation aimed primarily to oppose American speculation via international laws, make the transatlantic cotton trade less unpredictable, and open up alternative cotton-growing regions around the world. In the following years, it pushed for reforms not just to the trade in cotton but also to agricultural production in the USA itself, with the goal of increasing harvest yields. The federation also produced reliable statistics about worldwide cotton reserves, demand, and consumption. The overarching goal of its members was to bring about greater standardization of the cotton trade.¹⁷⁶

The reformers therefore turned their attention to many different aspects of the cotton trade, some of which seem relatively peripheral. They sought to standardize the pressing, baling, storage, weight, units of measurement, quality standards, moisture levels, transport, bills of lading, insurance, stock exchange rules, contractual forms, and so on, to give commodity buyers in Europe greater legal certainty in their international business dealings. The International Cotton Federation’s sphere of influence quickly expanded to America, Asia, and Africa.

The federation’s central forum was its annual congress, which took place in various European cities in the years leading up to the First World War, and was attended by industrialists from Augsburg.¹⁷⁷ At the congress held in Manchester and Liverpool in 1905, SWA Director Groß (fig. 4) pushed for the introduction of the metric system in international cotton trading, which until now had been dominated by British imperial units.¹⁷⁸ Groß himself presided over the third international congress, hosted in Bremen in 1906. The main topics of discussion were international cotton exchanges, regulation of the global cotton supply, and efforts to establish cotton growing in European colonies. In his opening address, Groß emphatically supported not just the principle of competition but also efforts to “remove the ill feeling sometimes apparent in the competition between nations,” since “the first consideration for the welfare of all industry is the peace of the world, and the lasting good-will of the nations.”¹⁷⁹

Fig. 4: Ferdinand Groß, director of SWA (1893–1907), with other members of the International Cotton Federation board at the federation’s congress in Manchester/Liverpool 1905 (sitting second from the right; source: Augsburg Textile and Industry Museum)

Just as the VSBI and Bremen Cotton Exchange had done at the national level in Germany, the International Cotton Federation now represented a European-centric association whose members put aside their competing interests for the sake of greater collective trading power. Groß expressed the belief that a forum like the Bremen congress could secure harmony between individual nations’ conflicting interests by promoting “mutual respect shown everywhere and at all times.”¹⁸⁰ He formulated the utopian vision of a transnational community coming together to “further the welfare and prosperity of an industry equally important for all countries”¹⁸¹ Groß clearly shared the same view of the federation’s historic mission as Macara, whose “idea of internationalism” consisted in trying “to see things in their worldwide relations.”¹⁸² Macara saw the founding of the federation not simply as “the birth of a new international idea in industry,” but, far more momentously, as “the birth of a League of Nations.”¹⁸³ The idea of a transnational league went far beyond the purely economic dimension of the International Cotton Federation. The Bremen congress of 1906 also dipped its toes in political waters by seeking an audience with Kaiser Wilhelm II, who received a deputation from the federation on his yacht.¹⁸⁴

*Fig. 5: Loading of cotton at the port of Savannah, 1907 (source: Augsburg Textile and Industry Museum)*

The 1907 Atlanta Conference

Another Augsburg cotton industrialist who rose to prominence in the International Cotton Federation was Waibel, who succeeded Groß as SWA’s commercial director following the latter’s death in early March 1907. Waibel served on the federation’s Cotton Contract Commission, whose duty was to “collect information on the baling, handling, marketing, and shipping [fig. 5] of American cotton, and consult with the authorities of the various Cotton Exchanges and the associations of spinners and American cotton planters, with a view to drafting new contracts.”¹⁸⁵ Just a year later, the commission was able to report its first success, when the Liverpool exchange accepted its proposals and introduced a new contract that reduced the price of international trade.¹⁸⁶

Leading representatives of the American cotton industry attended one of the annual congresses for the first time in Vienna in 1907. They invited members of the European federation to come to a conference in Atlanta, Georgia, in order to foster closer future cooperation and break down transatlantic divides.¹⁸⁷ The German delegation that set off in fall 1907 had twenty members, of whom no fewer than five were from Augsburg.¹⁸⁸ Among them was Waibel, the freshly appointed director of SWA, whose supervisory board had authorized him to attend the Atlanta conference because “this fact-finding mission will undoubtedly afford him valuable experiences that will also benefit our company.”¹⁸⁹ The SWA director’s long journey—nearly eight thousand kilometers—mainly took him through the Cotton Belt (fig. 6) in the southern states. The visit gave Augsburg’s industrialists unprecedented access to those involved in cotton growing on the other side of the Atlantic. For the first time, they were able to witness and learn about the Americans’ production and marketing at first hand. They had ample opportunity to visit cotton farms and cotton exchanges and speak with representatives of the cotton growing industry and the newly established American associations, as well as politicians and officials, including government ministers, state governors, congressmen, and presidents of chambers of commerce.¹⁹⁰ The first main consequence of this expanded access to the American market was improved communication and closer (or in many cases entirely new) networks connecting the stakeholders along the cotton commodity chain.

*Fig. 6: “Way down south in the land of cotton,” postcard, 1907 (source: Augsburg Textile and Industry Museum)*

The highlight of the European delegation’s trip was the congress in Atlanta from October 7 to 9, 1907. With its vast array of attendees—the European delegation alone had over a hundred members—it seemed as if the congress had brought together the entire global cotton industry under a single roof in a way never before witnessed: “In terms of the number of attendees, the scale, and the variety of invested capital, there has certainly never been an assembly like this before, nor will there likely be one to rival it any time soon.”¹⁹¹ As with the industry advocacy groups in the German and European context, the Atlanta congress sought to put aside the competing interests of different segments (for structural reasons, cotton farmers, exporters, exchanges, and spinners were diametrically opposed on many issues) and create a new organization capable of collective action.

At the congress, the American farmers attempted to circumvent the intermediaries and commodity exchanges by establishing direct links with the European cotton spinners.¹⁹² In his report on the congress, Waibel, as an advocate of the industry, rejected the farmers’ plan: “It is a utopian fantasy to imagine that trade could be entirely eliminated and that planters could sell directly to spinners.”¹⁹³ The SWA director laconically remarked that speculation would “always exist in one form or another.”¹⁹⁴ Waibel was especially opposed to jettisoning the futures market, which, as a “fine measurer of value” and “cheap reinsurance organization,”¹⁹⁵ allowed businesses to secure their transactions. While not uncritical of the excesses of futures trading, the Augsburg industrialist wrote with sober pragmatism that

What may be prohibited in one country by special legislation will simply continue unperturbed elsewhere. Nothing whatsoever can be achieved by laws confined to one country, and the prospect that all countries in the cotton trade would uniformly legislate against the futures exchanges will not be deemed likely or feasible even by their fiercest opponent.¹⁹⁶

Waibel was more critical of the independently organizing American farmers themselves, who were calling for guaranteed minimum prices for their cotton. The Augsburg director believed that, if the planters’ intention was to “systematically hold back their cotton and force prices up,” such demands would amount to speculation “on the grandest scale” and of “the most dangerous sort.”¹⁹⁷ The American farmers’ “price-fixing cartel” would, in Waibel’s view, be as damaging as “artificial manipulations of the cotton market.”¹⁹⁸ The 1907 chamber of commerce report was even more critical of the Atlanta farmers’ demands, claiming they—backed by “paid agitators” and “powerful organizations”—were only interested in “getting the highest possible prices for cotton.”¹⁹⁹ It was feared there could be a dire scarcity of cotton if the farmers made good on their threat to drive up prices by reducing the acreage under cultivation. The farmers could instead, the report claimed, achieve far higher yields by expanding and intensifying cotton growing. However, the “great labor shortage in the southern states” and (in the racist view of the report writer) “idleness of the negro population”²⁰⁰ would prevent a rapid increase in cotton production.

The chamber of commerce’s skeptical attitude overlooks the European spinners’ many successes at the Atlanta conference, where they were able to successfully negotiate a “better selection of seed,” “more careful picking and ginning,” and “improved baling, pressing, storage, and transportation of cotton.”²⁰¹ There were encouraging signs that transatlantic communication could now develop into transatlantic cooperation, words into action, promising progress for intercontinental trade.²⁰² However, what the Atlanta congress failed to do was establish a completely new international organization that brought together the American farmers and European cotton industrialists.²⁰³

The “Baumwollkulturkampf”: Cultivating Cotton in the Colonies

Another prominent topic at the International Cotton Federation’s annual conferences concerned efforts to develop cotton growing in colonial territories so as to provide an alternative source and break the American monopoly. New organizations sprung up to support these efforts. The first was the British Cotton Association, founded in 1902 to promote cotton farming in the British colonies. The Augsburg industrialist Haßler had already pushed for the cultivation of cotton in the German colonies during his tenure as president of VSBI in the 1880s, and his Stadtbach mill provided support to the Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Plantagen-Gesellschaft, a company founded in 1886 to establish plantations in Germany’s East African colonies.²⁰⁴ The “cotton question,”²⁰⁵ which escalated into a “cotton emergency”²⁰⁶ or “cotton-growing struggle”²⁰⁷ (Baumwollkulturkampf), was also one of the main concerns of the Colonial Economic Committee, established in 1896 as a spin-off of the German Colonial Society founded in 1887.²⁰⁸ Founding member Karl Supf, a native of Nuremberg, spent years advocating cotton production in the German colonies.²⁰⁹

In 1900, SWA contributed one thousand marks for an “expedition to establish local cotton cultivation in the German colony in Togo.”²¹⁰ It was thus directly involved in the German Empire’s expansion into colonial cotton production. In 1904, the supervisory board discussed providing funding to a plantation company in Togo (Pflanzungsgesellschaft Kpeme).²¹¹ In March 1907, a donation of five thousand marks was made to the Colonial Economic Committee to promote cotton production in the German colonies.²¹² The VSBI raised 150,000 marks for the committee between 1907 and 1912.²¹³ Despite the enthusiasm of the colonial authorities and some promising early successes, Germany’s African cotton yield (produced by local populations living and working in very poor conditions) fell short of the high expectations.²¹⁴ In 1912, the German colonies produced a total of eleven thousand bales of cotton, enough to cover at best a tenth of Augsburg’s annual demand at the time.²¹⁵ Looking beyond the German colonies, SWA also took an interest in cotton growing in Mesopotamia, but this did not lead to any appreciable results.²¹⁶ When the committee of the International Cotton Federation met in Berlin in October 1911, the expansion of cotton cultivation in countries outside the United States was likewise high on the agenda.²¹⁷

An Increasingly Virtual Market: The Situation in Augsburg in the Period up to 1914

Despite all efforts to find alternatives, the Augsburg mills remained primarily dependent on American cotton up until 1914, during which time cotton prices continued to fluctuate sharply. Between 1907 and 1913, the price for a kilogram of Middling Americans (loco Bremen) averaged between 110 and 155 pfennigs, reaching extremes of 89.5 pfennigs in December 1908 and 160.5 pfennigs in June 1911. The strongest movement came between September and December 1911, when the price plunged by 40 percent. Previously, in 1908, it had fallen (albeit more slowly) by 30 percent. During this time, there was a renewed surge of speculation.²¹⁸ Although weather conditions caused considerable variation in American harvest yields—ten million bales in 1909, over 15.5 million in 1911, over sixteen million in 1914—commodity speculation remained very tempting to financial investors, who sought to capitalize on uncertain crop forecasts, whether by selling short or buying long. The Chamber of Commerce for Swabia and Neuburg observed in 1906 that the “global cotton business” appeared to be “temporarily healthy,”²¹⁹ but this state of health proved to be very temporary indeed, even though the financial and banking crisis that broke out in the USA in 1907 briefly reined in cotton speculation. Prices consequently rose that year, gradually leading to a shortage of money that meant “bullish speculators were unable to take full advantage,”²²⁰ despite a relatively low cotton harvest, and so the “outrageous prices”²²¹ that the cotton planters hoped for failed to materialize. In 1908, the VSBI attempted to counter the economic downturn caused by the American crisis by cutting business activity by 14 percent, but the other German cotton associations did not back the measure.²²²

In the years leading up to the First World War, the Augsburg spinners also realized that the rapid expansion of worldwide spinning capacity had undermined the automatic connection that used to exist between a plentiful harvest and a fall in cotton prices. In 1909, American speculation returned with a vengeance, and, in combination with reports of a poor harvest, drove commodity prices to “extraordinary heights.”²²³ Two years later, in 1911, cotton prices collapsed in the last quarter of the year. This took a heavy toll on Augsburg’s businesses, which had to record significant losses in the year’s balance sheets: SWA—whose annual cotton account between 1900 and 1914 ranged from 2.8 to 7.2 million marks²²⁴—reported a loss of nine hundred thousand marks. The following year, 1912, speculators once again managed to manipulate commodity prices,²²⁵ and in 1913 the price of Middling Americans (loco Bremen) lurched between 121 and 147 pfennigs per kilogram. Despite the volatile prices, SWA, which had opened a fourth factory in 1909/10, continued increasing its production capacity up until 1914, and its demand for raw cotton rose accordingly (see chart 3).

*Chart 3: SWA cotton imports in kilograms by source country (1901–1919), Source: StadtAA, SWA Archiv, no. 190,4.*

Augsburg’s textile industrialists adopted various strategies to counteract the structural uncertainty of cotton prices, which was exacerbated by speculation and unpredictable economic fluctuations. Initially, they strictly followed a “hand to mouth”²²⁶ buying policy where they only bought as much cotton as they needed for existing yarn or cloth orders. Consequently, the required cotton was generally purchased less far in advance, something made possible by modern communication technology. The cotton agents in Augsburg made bids by telephone and telegram, based on the weekly price updates from New York.²²⁷ These agents could represent up to a dozen cotton importers, though sometimes they acted solely on behalf of a single broker in Bremen, who in turn acted as a sales representative for an American cotton exporter.

Through such intermediaries, SWA did business with over twenty cotton companies between 1900 and 1914. Although it made some import deals directly with US trading companies, including the famous Alexander Sprunt & Son in Wilmington (North Carolina),²²⁸ most of its transactions went through Bremen-based firms, agencies, or brokers. SWA’s business partners in Bremen included German importers such as Heineken & Vogelsang, Gebrüder Plate, and H. Bischoff & Co., as well as British and American importers such as Pferdmenges, Preyer & Co., Inman Akers & Inman, and McFadden Bros. & Co.²²⁹ The latter company alone, which had owned a subsidiary in Bremen (McFadden Zerega and Bros.) since 1892, imported over two hundred thousand bales a year to Europe through the Hanseatic port.²³⁰ SWA still also made occasional purchases via Liverpool.²³¹ Just how smoothly the Augsburg cotton imports generally went is made clear by the rare cases where serious problems occurred along the long import chain. For instance, in summer 1910, SWA fell victim to fraud by the cotton company Steele, Miller & Co., and had to swallow a loss of 162,000 marks²³² after the American firm went bankrupt.

In the 1910s, the real economy became increasingly virtual. Various trading companies now moved to selling cotton not just for the short term, but for several years ahead. SWA, which had been purchasing certain cotton grades for immediate delivery for decades, was initially resistant to this new form of speculative commodity buying. The growing risks of an increasingly fast-paced market, however, forced even this company into futures trading in the end. Lindenmeyer, who was appointed commercial director on January 1, 1911, and had learned the art of hedging cotton in Liverpool,²³³ paved the way for the company to protect its cotton transaction against significant price fluctuations using futures.²³⁴ The supervisory board was very reluctant “to depart from the principle followed hitherto” of refraining from active market speculation, but concluded that “the exceptional present circumstances justify such a step.”²³⁵ Consequently, SWA was cautiously active on the futures market until World War I, profiting on occasion from favorable price developments.²³⁶ Right up until 1914, Lindenmeyer felt obliged to stress that futures “were by no means speculative in character,”²³⁷ but rather that “it was no longer possible to protect our inventories against loss” without the “safety valve of hedging.”²³⁸ In a departure from his previous conservatism, the supervisory board chair, Schmid, supported Lindenmeyer’s new course, which “is now the modern way of thinking.”²³⁹ The Bremen Cotton Exchange also moved with the times and began futures trading in 1914, though this was then suspended again during the First World War.²⁴⁰

The First World War and the Return of Politics

Political events, especially wars, had often negatively impacted the development and expansion of the global cotton market over the course of the long nineteenth century. The Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 now brought the threat of war ever closer to Germany. At SWA too, “fears of becoming entangled in further wars” were “straining tempers.”²⁴¹ The economic paralysis triggered by the threat of war prompted the south German and Alsatian cotton mills once again to agree upon a mutual cutback of business in spring 1914, this time of 17 percent. However, the outbreak of the First World War, which soon saw the British naval blockade preventing the import of American cotton to Germany, meant that normal economic activity was largely suspended, despite the temporary and modest wartime boom from commissions to make materials for uniforms and zeppelins. Augsburg cotton businesses’ attempts to circumvent the blockade using neutral ports such as Genoa yielded only limited results, as did the representative they dispatched to the USA to look after their interests. The war condemned the Augsburg companies to unprecedented passivity.

Since the 1840s, globalization had seen the world economy make impressive advances, but now the First World War forcefully reasserted the primacy of politics in the global context.²⁴² The German military administration confiscated the cotton reserves of the mills in Augsburg in the national interest. A “struggle between nations […] more violent and bloody than any before seen in history”²⁴³ not only had a devastating material impact on the warring nations, but also destroyed the vital network of a highly globalized economy. The war rapidly undid the preceding seventy years of global economic integration in the German cotton industry; a process of “deglobalization” tore apart international economic activities and advocacy groups at the seams.²⁴⁴ In 1916, the SWA spinning mill only produced 7.5 percent of its peacetime output. Switching to Indian and Egyptian suppliers was not enough to make up for the loss of American cotton. The global structures and economic relations that had grown up over the course of decades atrophied, and Augsburg’s cotton industry was reduced to national rather than international stature.²⁴⁵ It was not until the Wirtschaftswunder of the 1950s that the local textile industry returned to prewar levels of productivity.

Augsburg at the Intersection between Local and Global

The history of cotton imports to Augsburg between 1840 and 1914 shows clearly that the city could not have become one of Germany’s leading textile centers without the extensive imports from America. Although there were times when the local spinning mills purchased up to 50 percent of their cotton from India, there was far greater commercial focus on US suppliers and markets. During the period under consideration here, Augsburg-based companies did not merely passively profit off a globally expanding and consolidating cotton market, but actively helped to shape it, with the aim of securing cotton on the most favorable terms.

It would be an exaggeration to present Augsburg’s entrepreneurs as major drivers of globalization or as multinational business magnates.²⁴⁶ When it came to organizing production and exports of its products, the Swabian textile industry acted at a local rather than a global level; but when it came to buying cotton, it was very much operating on international terrain. From the 1830s onward, it branched out further and further into this terrain and navigated it with growing assurance, buying cotton in the Netherlands, France, Britain, or directly from the USA. Through its involvement in trade associations like the Bremen Cotton Exchange, it helped to expand this terrain, establish new connections, and exert greater control over commodity flows, thus reshaping the geography of the European cotton trade.

The great, often imponderable complexity of the global cotton market presented a unique challenge for Augsburg’s textile entrepreneurs. The factory directors’ main priority was to make cotton—which as a natural commodity was exposed to many uncertainties—less volatile, more predictable, and easier to manage in their own interests. One way to improve their grasp of the market and its peculiarities was to professionalize its personnel, ideally recruiting people with experience of the key European cotton markets of Le Havre and Liverpool. Greater professionalism at senior management level helped businesses expand their networks of commercial contacts, an informal yet crucial communicative resource that previous studies have overlooked.²⁴⁷

Another way to reduce the uncertainties of the global cotton market was to band together in trade associations that advocated for the industry’s interests. Initially, Augsburg’s industrialists organized at the regional level in south Germany (VSBI) and at national level (CVDI, imperial inquest committee). Later, they branched out to the international port of Bremen (Bremen Cotton Exchange), before finally bridging the gap between Europe and the USA (International Cotton Federation). Step by step, they progressed from regional advocacy groups representing their own local interests to a federation that included the country where the cotton was actually grown. This transatlantic expansion of the German spinners’ interests was made manifest by SWA Director Waibel’s 1907 trip to America. German industrialists used member organizations and trade associations as a way to expand their agency.

The transnational scope of the International Cotton Federation was without precedent at the time. During the period of the German Empire, Augsburg entrepreneurs became increasingly involved in trade organizations, which allowed them in turn to exercise governance over distances not previously possible.²⁴⁸ This greater agency came at the cost of setting aside (at least in theory, though often not in practice) structurally opposing interests between groups such as spinners and cotton traders so as to increase their collective influence.

Augsburg industrialists also supported greater standardization of the global cotton trade as a strategy to increase calculability.²⁴⁹ The more globally integrated the market became, the greater the need for standardized, regulated trading conditions in terms of product quality, legal matters, units of measure, currencies, insurance, bills of lading, baling standards, and so on. There were also efforts to standardize the compilation and publication of market information such as statistical data, while reliable legal standards increased confidence by helping to resolve any disputes that arose in the course of international trade or, even better, prevent them from occurring in the first place. However, the choice of standards for things like units of measure and currency was often based on market actors’ interests rather than on merit. One example of this was the dispute over whether to introduce a metric system for yarn numbering, which was eventually settled in favor of the market-dominant British. Britain’s preeminent role in the global economy meant the German spinning mills faced all sorts of structural disadvantages, some of which continued right up until the First World War.

The private, locally rooted commercial actors acted primarily in their own business interests, unlike political bodies, such as governments, that represented the interests of entire regions. The state did not normally stipulate or determine commercial activities, which were motivated by profit. The true actors in the field of foreign trade were not whole economies but individual companies;²⁵⁰ these did not operate as atomistic units, however, but formed associations to advance their mutual interests.

In terms of agency, the present study of entrepreneurs in Augsburg’s cotton industry reveals a diverse range of activities and forms of participation in the international market. These frequently demanded great flexibility, and actors were often put on the defensive or condemned to passivity. The concept of action familiar from classical political history, which is premised on the idea of sovereign decision-makers, is inadequate to describe the many varieties of entrepreneurial activity at the intersection between structures and events, fixed conditions and variable means, macro- and microeconomics. The fields of action that emerged between these poles are best understood in terms not of one-dimensional, monocausal subject–object relations, but rather of systemic, multilateral, and polycentric structures.

A closer analysis of the Augsburg cotton industrialists’ business activities shows that they were primarily communicative in nature. Large quantities of information were exchanged through extensive communication networks: constantly updated bids, inquiries, weather reports, statistical news, commodity orders, and so forth. Technological advances changed not just the modes of communication that were used (for instance, new inventions like the telegraph and telephone), but also the intensity and volume of communication, and vastly accelerated action and reaction times on the market. In combination with new modes of transportation, these new media compressed both time and space, and forced the now-synchronized entrepreneurs on both sides of the Atlantic to act ever more quickly while simultaneously processing ever more information. However, more information, even statistical data that bore the seal of scientific rigor, did not automatically provide a better basis for decision-making, as there was also an increased risk of deliberate misinformation being spread.

Another aspect of the Augsburg textile industrialists’ business practices was the emphasis on instrumental rationality. Their choice of means was motivated primarily by the end of maximizing profits (the characteristic motive of industrial capitalism). However, residues of value-rational behavior still lingered, such as SWA’s longstanding reservations about investing in futures despite it making perfect sense from an economic point of view. These reservations suggest a moral aversion to a market instrument that was regarded as highly speculative and increasingly detached from the real economy. Furthermore, all capitalist number-crunching notwithstanding, Augsburg’s industrialists continued to attach great value to trust in their business partners.²⁵¹

The example of futures trading, which ushered in the phenomenon of deliberate market speculation, makes clear that the history of Augsburg cotton imports cannot be adequately described solely in the terms of a classical economic history, but must also take account of historical subjects’ knowledge and perceptions. Having better information often entailed an economic advantage. However, since this information never provided an objective guide to action but always had to be interpreted, it was constantly being transformed into subjectively colored perceptions of market possibilities. The faster that commerce became after the invention of the telegraph and telephone, the more quickly purchasing decisions had to be made, and the riskier they became for those who were unwilling to protect their transactions using futures. Companies that did not seize the initiative at the right time could easily become passive victims of merciless market mechanisms. The need to become active on futures markets, which extended the credit-driven economy ever further into the future, raises a fundamental theme of modern economics: namely, that global economic expansion inevitably involves increased risk-taking. Companies hungry for profit had to accept a whole host of contingencies, imponderables, and uncertainties, even as they sought to minimize these risks.²⁵² This high-risk way of doing business brought with it a constant pressure to modernize as well.

It was the allure of profits that finally coaxed Augsburg’s entrepreneurs into riskier international trade so as to obtain the cotton that they needed. Although this meant that south German companies were now operating in a global framework, their activities were still rooted in Augsburg. The Bavarian city remained the local point of departure for economic activities with a global geographic reach, the vantage point from which the meaning and purpose of these activities were framed, the hub around which economic space, with its regional, national, and global spheres of action, was concentrically arranged. Global value creation orbited around local profitmaking. The present study of global trade in a particular location thus reveals both the global dimensions of the local and the local conditions of the global.²⁵³

The global history perspective adopted here has also demonstrated the fruitfulness of an approach that situates global economic phenomena within specific local contexts, thereby contributing to a topography of a globe-spanning economy that is always also a social topography of economic relations. It would be a tempting challenge to use Augsburg as a test case for whether the concept of “glocalization”—as popularized by Roland Robertson— can be applied historically.²⁵⁴ The choice to examine globalization from Augsburg’s perspective has in any case shown that the global economic integration of the long nineteenth century was not an anonymous process of consolidation, but involved a host of local processes of adaptation that gave concrete expression to globalization, which was only ever manifested in a situated, context-bound form. Situating global phenomena within a specific local context reveals the fine-grained differences in how globalization progressed in different places, with distinctive rhythms, dynamics, phases, scopes, and histories. Studying a localized instance of globalization could help to shed light on the “multiple modernities” that existed even within Western society.²⁵⁵

However, the focus on the phenomena of globalization investigated here should not be taken to imply that the economic activities of the textile industry in Augsburg can be reduced to a simple interplay of local and global factors, or that these companies’ transnational operations were unaffected by the politics of nation-states and individual German states. After all, it was the Bavarian and German governments that determined the framework within which these companies operated, by establishing chambers of commerce, customs tariffs, trade and labor laws, and so on.²⁵⁶ Leading textile industrialists in Augsburg were in turn often closely involved in municipal, regional, and national politics.²⁵⁷ Just as local, national, and global perspectives should be seen as complementing rather than competing with one another, it would be misguided to treat the economic and political spheres as completely separate. Ultimately, what allowed Augsburg cotton companies to flourish on the fiercely competitive markets right up until the First World War was a dialectical interplay between local, regional, national, and global factors.

Notes

Adolf Waibel, “Bericht über die Atlanta-Konferenz,” in Offizieller Bericht des fünften Internationalen Kongresses der Baumwoll-Industrie: Veranstaltet zu Paris Salle des ingénieurs civils de France, 1, 2, u. 3 Juni 1908 (Manchester, 1908), 96–99, here 96.↩︎
Ibid., 97. In the present context, “American” always refers to the United States of America. Where other North and South American countries are meant, this is made explicit.↩︎
Official Report: Second International Conference of Cotton Growers, Spinners, and Manufacturers, Held at Atlanta, Georgia, U. S. A., October 7th, 8th and 9th, 1907 (Manchester, 1908).↩︎
See Otto Reuther, Die Entwicklung der Augsburger Textil-Industrie: Gewerbegeschichtliche Studie (Diessen, 1915), 3.↩︎
Sven Beckert, “Cotton: A Global History,” in Interactions: Transregional Perspectives on World History, ed. by Jerry H. Bentley, Renate Bridenthal, and Anand A. Yang (Honolulu, 2005), 48–63, here 49.↩︎
See for instance: Philip Pomper, Richard H. Elphick, and Richard T. Vann, eds., World History: Ideologies, Structures, and Identities (Malden, MA; Oxford, 1998); Bruce Mazlish and Ralph Buultjens, eds., Conceptualizing Global History (Boulder, 1993); Paul Hirst, Grahame Thompson, and Simon Bromley, Globalization in Question (Cambridge; Malden, MA, 2009); Kevin H. O’Rourke and Jeffrey G. Williamson, Globalization and History: The Evolution of a Nineteenth-century Atlantic Economy (Cambridge, MA; London, 1999); Richard H. Tilly, Globalisierung aus historischer Sicht und das Lernen aus der Geschichte (Cologne, 1999); Knut Borchardt, Globalisierung in historischer Perspektive, 1st ed. (Munich, 2001); Jürgen Osterhammel, Geschichtswissenschaft jenseits des Nationalstaats: Studien zu Beziehungsgeschichte und Zivilisationsvergleich, 2nd ed. (Göttingen, 2001); Michael D. Bordo, Alan M. Taylor, and Jeffrey G. Williamson, eds., Globalization in Historical Perspective, new edition ed. (Chicago, 2005); Patrick Manning, Navigating World History: Historians Create a Global Past (New York, 2003); Jürgen Osterhammel and Niels P. Petersson, eds., Geschichte der Globalisierung: Dimensionen, Prozesse, Epochen (Munich, 2003); Bruce Mazlish and Akira Iriye, eds., The Global History Reader (New York; London, 2005); Gunilla Budde, Sebastian Conrad, and Oliver Janz, eds., Transnationale Geschichte: Themen, Tendenzen und Theorien (Göttingen, 2006); Sebastian Conrad and Jürgen Osterhammel, eds., Das Kaiserreich transnational: Deutschland in der Welt 1871–1914 (Göttingen, 2004); Sebastian Conrad, Andreas Eckert, and Ulrike Freitag, eds., Globalgeschichte: Theorien, Ansätze, Themen (Frankfurt, 2007); Peter E. Fäßler, Globalisierung: Ein historisches Kompendium (Cologne, 2007); Jürgen Osterhammel, Die Verwandlung der Welt: Eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Munich, 2009).↩︎
See the distinctions drawn by Sebastian Conrad and Andreas Eckert, “Globalgeschichte, Globalisierung, multiple Modernen: Zur Geschichtsschreibung der modernen Welt,” in Globalgeschichte: Theorien, Ansätze, Themen, ed. by Sebastian Conrad, Andreas Eckert, and Ulrike Freitag (Frankfurt; New York, 2007), 7–49.↩︎
On the textile industry, see, for example, Tony Porter, Technology, Govern.ance and Political Conflict in International Industries (London; New York, 2002), 24–48↩︎
Kevin H. O’Rourke and Jeffrey G. Williamson, “When did globalisation begin?,” European Review of Economic History 6 (2002), 23–50; Fäßler, Globalisierung: Ein historisches Kompendium, 74–97.↩︎
Joyce Appleby, The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism, reprint edition ed. (New York, 2011).↩︎
Kurt Apelt and Ernst Ilgen, “Die Preisentwicklung der Baumwolle,” in Die Preisentwicklung der Baumwolle und Baumwollfabrikate (Munich; Leipzig, 1914), 1–38.↩︎
Alex Callinicos, Making History: Agency, Structure, and Change in Social Theory (Cambridge, 1989); Philip Pomper, “Historians and individual agency,” History and Theory 35 (1996), 281–308; Margaret Archer, Being Human: The Problem of Agency (Cambridge; New York, 2000); Kent Heyer, “Between Every ‘Now’ and ‘Then’: A Role for the Study of Historical Agency in History and Citizenship Education,” Theory & Research in Social Education 31 (2003), 411–434; Margaret S. Archer and Andrea Maccarini, eds., Engaging with the World: Agency, Institutions, Historical Formations (London, 2013).↩︎
Cornelius Torp, Die Herausforderung der Globalisierung: Wirtschaft und Politik in Deutschland 1860–1914 (Göttingen, 2005); Saskia Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton, 2008); Sebastian Conrad, Globalisierung und Nation im deutschen Kaiserreich (Munich, 2006).↩︎
Angela Lakwete, Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America (Baltimore, 2003).↩︎
Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves (Cambridge, MA; London, 2003), 159–270; Brian D. Schoen, The Fragile Fabric of Union: Cotton, Federal Politics, and the Global Origins of the Civil War (Baltimore, 2009); Gene Dattel, Cotton and Race in the Making of America: The Human Costs of Economic Power (Chicago, 2009) .↩︎
United States Bureau Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: 1789–1945, a Supplement to the Statistical Abstract of the United States (Washington, 1949), 108–109. For a long time, the size and weight of bales were not standardized, much to the annoyance of spinning mills. Moritz Schanz gives a figure of 312 pounds for an American bale in 1825, which went up to 477 pounds by 1861. The weight of bales then appears to have settled at 230 kilograms. By contrast, prior to the war Egyptian bales weighed 340 kilograms and Indian bales 180 kilograms. Moritz Schanz, “Baumwoll-Anbau, -Handel und -Industrie in den Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika,” Beihefte zum Tropenpflanzer 6 (1915), 513–645, here 516; Statistisches Jahrbuch für das Deutsche Reich, no. 34 (Berlin, 1913), 24*.↩︎
Statistisches Jahrbuch für das Deutsche Reich, no. 34 (1913), 24*.↩︎
Giorgio Riello and Tirthankar Roy, eds., How India Clothed the World: The World of South Asian Textiles, 1500–1850 (Leiden; Boston, MA, 2009); Stephen N. Broadberry and Bishnupriya Gupta, Cotton Textiles and the Great Divergence: Lancashire, India and Shifting Competitive Advantage, 1600–1850 (2005). See also Giorgio Riello and Prasannan Parthasarathi, eds., The Spinning World: A Global History of Cotton Textiles, 1200–1850 (Oxford, 2009).↩︎
Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton, 2009); Prasannan Parthasarathi, “The Great Divergence,” Past & Present (2002), 275–293; Jeffrey G. Williamson, “Globalization and the Great Divergence: Terms of trade booms, volatility and the poor periphery, 1782–1913,” European Review of Economic History 12 (2008), 355–391.↩︎
Douglas A. Farnie, The English Cotton Industry and the World Market, 1815–1896 (Oxford, 1979).↩︎
Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Geschichte der Eisenbahnreise: zur Industrialisierung von Raum und Zeit im 19. Jahrhundert (München, 1977); Mark Casson, The World’s First Railway System: Enterprise, Competition, and Regulation on the Railway Network in Victorian Britain (Oxford, 2009); Ralf Roth and Karl Schlögel, Neue Wege in ein neues Europa: Geschichte und Verkehr im 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt, 2009).↩︎
Jorma Ahvenainen, “The Role of Telegraphs in the 19th Century Revolution of Communications,” in Kommunikationsrevolutionen: die neuen Medien des 16. und 19. Jahrhunderts, ed. by Michael North (Cologne, 1995), 73–80; Roland Wenzlhuemer, Connecting the Nineteenth-Century World: The Telegraph and Globalization (Cambridge, 2012).↩︎
Claude S. Fischer, America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940 (Berkeley, 1992); Horst Wessel, “Die Rolle des Telefons in der Kommunikationsrevolution des 19. Jahrhunderts,” in Kommunikationsrevolutionen: die neuen Medien des 16. und 19. Jahrhunderts, ed. by Michael North (Cologne, 1995), 101–127; Wolfgang Kaschuba, Die Überwindung der Distanz: Zeit und Raum in der europäischen Moderne (Frankfurt, 2004), 66–179.↩︎
See also Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880–1918 (Cambridge, MA, 1983)↩︎
Osterhammel, Die Verwandlung der Welt: Eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts, 1038–1047; Steven Topik and Allan Wells, “Warenketten in einer globalen Wirtschaft,” in Geschichte der Welt 1870–1945: Weltmärkte und Weltkriege (Munich, 2012), 589–814, here 607–610, 625–627; Appleby, The Relentless Revolution, 273–274.↩︎
Günter Kirchhain, “Das Wachstum der deutschen Baumwollindustrie im 19. Jahrhundert: Eine historische Modellstudie zur empirischen Wachstumsforschung.” (Ph.D. diss., University of Münster, 1973).↩︎
Statistisches Jahrbuch für das Deutsche Reich, no. 16, vol. 16 (Berlin, 1895), 138; Statistisches Jahrbuch für das Deutsche Reich, no. 34 (1913), 175.↩︎
Reichs-Enquete für die Baumwollen- und Leinen-Industrie, Bericht (Berlin, 1879), 70; Statistisches Jahrbuch für das Deutsche Reich, no. 31 (Berlin, 1910), 273.↩︎
Statistisches Jahrbuch für das Deutsche Reich, vol. 34 (Berlin, 1913), 24. At that time, Britain was consuming over twice as much raw cotton as the German Empire, and the proportion of US cotton was even higher at 87.37 percent.↩︎
Karl Borromäus Murr, “Ein ‘deutsches Manchester’? Augsburgs Textilindustrie im 19. Jahrhundert,” in Industrielle Revolution: Regionen im Umbruch: Franken, Schwaben, Bayern, ed. by Wolfgang Wüst and Tobias Riedl (Erlangen, 2013), 163–191.↩︎
Karl Bosl, “Die ‘geminderte’ Industrialisierung in Bayern,” in Aufbruch ins Industriezeitalter, ed. by Claus Grimm (Munich, 1985), 22–39. See also Paul Erker, “Keine Sehnsucht nach der Ruhr: Grundzüge der Industrialisierung in Bayern 1900–1970,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 17 (1991), 480–511↩︎
Sidney Pollard, ed., Region und Industrialisierung (Göttingen, 1980); Hubert Kiesewetter, Region und Industrie in Europa 1815-1995 (Stuttgart, 2000)↩︎
Murr, “Ein ‘deutsches Manchester’?,” 168–178.↩︎
Hubert Kiesewetter, Industrielle Revolution in Deutschland: Regionen als Wachstumsmotoren (Stuttgart, 2004), 174 and 176.↩︎
Wilhelm Rieger, Verzeichnis der im Deutschen Reiche auf Baumwolle laufenden Spindeln und Webstühle (Stuttgart, 1909), 24–25.↩︎
For instance, the Stadtbach mill’s dividends only once fell below the 10 percent mark (in 1878, when they dropped to 7 percent) and from 1871 to 1876 ranged between 20 and 27.5 percent. See the figures for 1853/54 to 1903 in Baumwollspinnerei am Stadtbach in Augsburg 1853–1903: Bericht über die Gründung 1851 und den 50 jährigen Betrieb 1853–1903 (Augsburg, n.d.), unpaginated.↩︎
On the topics discussed in this section, see Schanz, “Baumwoll-Anbau, -Handel und -Industrie in den Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika,” 547–553.↩︎
On the complex environmental history of cotton, see, for instance, Carolyn Merchant, The Columbia Guide to American Environmental History (New York, 2002), 39–58; Alf Hornborg, “Footprints in the cotton fields: The Industrial Revolution as time–space appropriation and environmental load displacement,” Ecological Economics 59 (2006), 74–81; Christopher Morris, The Big Muddy: An Environmental History of the Mississippi and Its Peoples, from Hernando de Soto to Hurricane Katrina (Oxford, 2012).↩︎
On the development of these classes into the nine universal standards, see Walter Schmölder, Die Bedeutung der amerikanischen Baumwolle für die kontinentale Textilindustrie: Unter bes. Berücks. d. Funktionen d. Bremer Baumwollbörse für d. Baumwollhandel (Cologne, 1931), 34–42.↩︎
William Hustace Hubbard, Cotton and the Cotton Market (New York; London, 1927), 79.↩︎
Karl Schmid, Die Entwicklung der Hofer Baumwoll-Industrie, 1432–1913 (Leipzig; Erlangen, 1923), 152.↩︎
For a general account, see Sven Beckert, “Das Reich der Baumwolle: Eine globale Geschichte,” in Das Kaiserreich transnational: Deutschland in der Welt 1871–1914, ed. by Sebastian Conrad and Jürgen Osterhammel (Göttingen, 2004), 280–301; Sven Beckert, “Homogenisierung und Differenzierung,” WerkstattGeschichte 45 (2007), 5–12.↩︎
Ethbin Heinrich Costa, Der Freihafen von Triest, Oesterreichs Hauptstapelplatz für den überseeischen Welthandel (Vienna, 1838), 126; Der Freihafen Triest und die Österreichische Industrie (Vienna, 1850).↩︎
SWA to Hagenauer, copy, June 23, 1837, in SWA Archiv, no. 190,4 (Municipal Archive Augsburg).↩︎
SWA to G. Frommel, copy, August 10, 1837, in SWA Archiv, no. 190,4 (Municipal Archive Augsburg).↩︎
Hundert Jahre Mechanische Baumwoll-Spinnerei und Weberei Augsburg (Augsburg, 1937), 89–90↩︎
SWA to Preller and Frommel, copy, November 29, 1842, in SWA Archiv, no 190,4 (Municipal Archive Augsburg).↩︎
Letter by SWA, copy, August 20, 1844, in ibid.↩︎
Report by G. Frommel to the committee, January 26, 1848, in SWA Archiv, no. 194,1 (Municipal Archive Augsburg).↩︎
For accounts of the European cotton markets, see Thomas Ellison, The Cotton trade of Great Britain, including a history of the Liverpool cotton market and of the Liverpool cotton brokers’ association (London, 1886); Gero Schulze-Gaevernitz, The cotton trade in England and on the Continent (London, 1895).↩︎
Chronological table (entry for 1847) in Hundert Jahre Mechanische Baumwoll-Spinnerei und Weberei Augsburg, unpaginated.↩︎
Robert Boyce, “Submarine Cables as a Factor in Britain’s Ascendency as a World Power,” in Kommunikationsrevolutionen: die neuen Medien des 16. und 19. Jahrhunderts, ed. by Michael North (Cologne, 1995), 81–99.↩︎
James L. Huston, The panic of 1857 and the coming of the Civil War (Baton Rouge, LA, 1987); Charles W. Calomiris and Larry Schweikart, “The Panic of 1857: Origins, Transmission, and Containment,” Journal of Economic History 51 (1991), 807–834.↩︎
Report by G. Frommel to the board of directors, copy, January 13, 1858, in SWA Archiv, no. 190,4 (Municipal Archive Augsburg).↩︎
Report by G. Frommel to the board of directors, copy, January 17, 1860, in ibid.↩︎
Udo Sautter, Der Amerikanische Bürgerkrieg 1861–1865 (Darmstadt, 2009).↩︎
Sven Beckert, “Emancipation and Empire: Reconstructing the Worldwide Web of Cotton Production in the Age of the American Civil War,” American Historical Review 109 (2004), 1405–1438.↩︎
Mary Ellison, Support for secession: Lancashire and the American Civil War (Chicago, 1972).↩︎
Baumwollspinnerei am Stadtbach, unpaginated.↩︎
Jahres-Bericht der Kreis-Gewerbe- und Handelskammer für Schwaben und Neuburg pro 1863 (Lindau, n.d.), 4.↩︎
Baumwollspinnerei am Stadtbach, unpaginated.↩︎
Ibid., 7.↩︎
Minutes of committee meeting, January 15, 1863, in SWA Archiv, no. 194,1 (Municipal Archive Augsburg).↩︎
Jahresbericht der Kreis-Gewerbe- und Handelskammer für Schwaben und Neuburg für 1865 (Augsburg, n.d.), 4.↩︎
Ibid., 5.↩︎
Social-Demokrat, no. 68 (June 4, 1865) Cf. Karl Borromäus Murr and Stephan Resch, eds., Lassalles “südliche Avantgarde”: Protokollbuch des Allgemeinen Deutschen Arbeitervereins der Gemeinde Augsburg, 1864–1867 (Bonn, 2012).↩︎
“Sklaverei oder Freiheit in den Vereinigten Staaten Nordamerika’s,” Sonntagsbeilage zum Augsburger Anzeigblatt, no. 19 (May 13, 1866); “Sklaverei oder Freiheit in den Vereinigten Staaten Nordamerika’s,” Sonntagsbeilage zum Augsburger Anzeigblatt, no. 20 (May 20, 1866).↩︎
Alwin Oppel, Die Baumwolle nach Geschichte, Anbau, Verarbeitung und Handel, sowie nach ihrer Stellung im Volksleben und in der Staatswirtschaft (Leipzig, 1902), 174.↩︎
Hans Willibald Rosenberg, Grosse Depression und Bismarckzeit: Wirtschaftsablauf, Gesellschaft und Politik in Mitteleuropa (Berlin, 1967) See also Niels P. Petersson, “Das Kaiserreich in Prozessen ökonomischer Globalisierung,” in Das Kaiserreich transnational. Deutschland in der Welt 1871-1914, ed. by Jürgen Osterhammel and Sebastian Conrad (Göttingen, 2004), 49–67, here 49–67↩︎
Denkschrift der Handels- und Gewerbekammer für Schwaben und Neuburg über die deutsche Zoll- und Handels-Politik mit specieller Bezugnahme auf die Textil-Industrie des Kammerbezirkes (Augsburg, 1879), 10.↩︎
Cornelius Torp, “Erste Globalisierung und deutscher Protektionismus,” in Das deutsche Kaiserreich in der Kontroverse, ed. by Sven Oliver Müller and Cornelius Torp (Göttingen, 2009), 422–440; Torp, Die Herausforderung der Globalisierung: Wirtschaft und Politik in Deutschland 1860–1914, 147–177.↩︎
Edgar Kast, “Entstehung und Wandlungen der Zielsetzungen, der Struktur und der Wirkungen von Fachverbänden der Textilindustrie von ihrer Gründung bis zum Jahre 1933.” (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, 1966).↩︎
Ibid., 56–58.↩︎
Ibid., 36–107.↩︎
Haßler, “Theodor Ritter von Haßler,” 352–83; Gerhard Lux, “Theodor von Haßler – Unternehmer und Verbandspolitiker,” in Unternehmer – Arbeitnehmer: Lebensbilder aus der Frühzeit der Industrialisierung in Bayern, ed. by Rainer Müller, 2nd ed. (Munich, 1987), 200–205, here 200–205.↩︎
See the profiles of Frommel and Groß in SWA Archiv, no. 190,4 (Municipal Archive Augsburg).↩︎
Hartmut Kälble and Gerhard Albert Ritter, Industrielle Interessenpolitik in der Wilhelminischen Gesellschaft: Centralverband Deutscher Industrieller 1895–1914 (Berlin, 1967); Thomas Nipperdey, “Interessenverbände und Parteien in Deutschland vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg,” Politische Vierteljahresschrift 2 (1961), 262–280; Fritz Blaich, Staat und Verbände in Deutschland zwischen 1871 und 1945 (Wiesbaden, 1979).↩︎
Reichs-Enquete für die Baumwollen- und Leinen-Industrie, Stenographische Protokolle (Berlin, 1879), xviii; Der Zolltarif-Entwurf nach den Beschlüssen des Bundesraths: mit einer vergleichenden Zusammenstellung der neu beantragten und der jetzt bestehenden Zollsätze (Berlin, 1879); Max Weigert, Die deutsche Textil-Industrie und die neue Zollpolitik (Berlin, 1881).↩︎
Reichs-Enquete, Bericht, 23. The proportion of cotton that German spinners imported directly from the USA ranged from around 30 to 60 percent. See Reichs-Enquete, Stenographische Protokolle, 97 and 171.On direct imports, see Oppel, Die Baumwolle, 196–198.↩︎
Reichs-Enquete, Stenographische Protokolle, 87↩︎
There are slight variations between the fees reported by the consulted experts, but they all give the same proportions as de Rudder. Ibid., passim↩︎
Ibid., 288.↩︎
Ibid., 180.↩︎
Appendix to minutes no 110, copy, January 28, 1891, in SWA Archiv, no. 190,4 (Municipal Archive Augsburg).↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
Reichs-Enquete, Stenographische Protokolle, 90↩︎
Ibid., 90 and 180↩︎
Ibid., 492–494↩︎
Ibid., 493↩︎
Ibid., 358↩︎
Reichs-Enquete, Bericht, 24.↩︎
Franz Joseph Pitsch, Die wirtschaftlichen Beziehungen Bremens zu den Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Bremen, 1974), 157–163; Ludwig Beutin and Eduard Schmitz-Rode, Von 3 Ballen zum Weltmarkt. Kleine Bremer Baumwollchronik 1788 bis 1872 (Bremen, 1934).↩︎
Das Buch der Bremischen Häfen: The Book of the Bremen Ports (Bremen, 1953), 217–224; Alfred Lörner, Bremen im Welthandel: Handbuch der Zweigstelle des Auswärtigen Amtes für Aussenhandel Bremen (Bremen, 1927), 8–12; Ludwig Beutin, Bremen und Amerika: Zur Geschichte der Weltwirtschaft und der Beziehungen Deutschlands zu den Vereinigten Staaten (Bremen, 1953), 98–102. Hamburg, meanwhile, was the main transit port for German imports of Indian cotton.↩︎
Bestimmungen der Bremer Baumwollbörse, Revidirt am 28. Januar 1892 (Bremen, 1892).↩︎
Cited in Andreas Wilhelm Cramer, Bremer Baumwollbörse 1872/1922 (Bremen, 1922), 32.↩︎
Cited in ibid., 31.↩︎
Cited in ibid., 32.↩︎
Schmölder, Die Bedeutung der amerikanischen Baumwolle, 19. On the different modes of buying at the Bremen Cotton Exchange, see Rudolf Sonndorfer and Klemens Ottel, Die Technik des Welthandels: Ein Handbuch der internationalen Handelskunde, vol. 2 (Vienna; Leipzig, 1912), 112–120; Hermann Siemer, “Die Bremer Baumwollbörse als Institution des Baumwollhandels.” (Ph.D. diss., Heidelberg University, 1936).↩︎
Cramer, Bremer Baumwollbörse 1872/1922, 19–22; Richard Martin Rudolph Dehn, The German cotton industry: A report … (Manchester, 1913), 52–59; Alonzo B Cox, Marketing American cotton on the continent of Europe (Washington, 1928), 3–46; Alston Hill Garside, Cotton goes to market: A graphic description of a great industry; with forty-nine reproductions from photographs and seventeen graphic charts and an index (New York, 1935), 121–124 .↩︎
Verbatim Report of the 1891 Cotton Conference held in Liverpool (Liverpool, 1891), 34, 36, 42–43 and 48.↩︎
On what follows, see Helmut Hüsener, Baumwollhafen Bremen: Cotton-Port Bremen (Bremen, 1951), 56 and 58.↩︎
Neuestes Adreßbuch der k.b. Kreishauptstadt Augsburg (Augsburg, 1876), 32–33; Adreß-Buch der Stadt Augsburg nebst Häuser-Verzeichniß 1888 (Augsburg, 1888), 33–34; Adreß-Buch der Stadt Augsburg: 1895, vol. 3 (Augsburg), 41–42; Adreß-Buch von Augsburg für das Jahr 1901, vol. 3 (Augsburg), 51–52; Adressbuch der Stadt Augsburg für das Jahr 1913, vol. 3 (Augsburg), 60ff.↩︎
Baumwollspinnerei am Stadtbach, unpaginated.↩︎
Report by A. Frommel to the supervisory board on the 1885 financial year, copy, in SWA Archiv, no. 190,4 (Municipal Archive Augsburg).↩︎
Report by A. Frommel to general meeting, copy, March 23, 1880, in ibid.↩︎
Report by A. Frommel to general meeting, March 8, 1892, in ibid.↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
Jahresbericht der Handels- und Gewerbekammer für Schwaben und Neuburg 1891 (Augsburg, 1892), 3. See also Jahresbericht der Handels- und Gewerbekammer für Schwaben und Neuburg 1892 (Augsburg, 1893), 3.↩︎
Minutes no. 158, October 22, 1902 and minutes no 164, October 27, 1903, in SWA Archiv, committee meeting minutes, no. 190,2 (City Archive Augsburg).↩︎
SWA was connected to the telephone network in 1886. See chronological table (entry for 1886) in Hundert Jahre Mechanische Baumwoll-Spinnerei und Weberei Augsburg, unpaginated↩︎
Augsburg State and City Library holds the issues from 1892 to 1900.↩︎
The full title is Handbook for Daily Cable Reports of American Cotton Crop Statistics; Also East Indian, Egyptian, and Brazilian Statistics; Together with Much Useful Information for the Cotton Trade. Augsburg State and City Library holds the issues from 1889/90 to 1899/1900.↩︎
See the reference to the Neill Brothers’ harvest estimates in Jahresbericht der Handels- und Gewerbekammer für Schwaben und Neuburg 1893 (Augsburg, 1894), 2 Jamie L. Pietrouska describes Henry M. Neill as the “most renowned and most vilified cotton forecaster” of the 1890s. Jamie L Pietruska, “‘Cotton Guessers’: Crop Forecasters and the Rationalizing of Uncertainty in American Cotton Markets, 1890–1905,” in American Cotton Markets: The Rise of Marketing and Market Research, ed. by Hartmut Berghoff, Philip Scranton, and Uwe Spiekermann (New York, 2012), 49–72, here 49↩︎
Kast, “Entstehung und Wandelungen,” 56–58 and 99↩︎
See the two letters from Knoop, Frerich & Co. to Gebr. Plate, December 1, 1885 and Neill Brothers to A. Frommel, September 5, 1885, in SWA Archiv, no. 190,5 (City Archive Augsburg).↩︎
Report by A. Frommel to general meeting, March 30, 1881, in SWA Archiv, no. 190,4 8 (City Archive Augsburg).↩︎
Jahresbericht der Handels- und Gewerbekammer für Schwaben und Neuburg 1891, 3.↩︎
Report by vice president to general meeting, copy, February 21, 1893, in SWA Archiv, no. 190,4 (Municipal Archive Augsburg).↩︎
Carl Kühlmann, Der Termin-Handel in nordamerikanischer Baumwolle (Leipzig, 1909); Theodor Bühler, Baumwolle auf Zeit: Die Grundlagen des Bauwolltermingeschäftes (Nuremberg, 1931); A. W. B. Simpson, “The Origins of Futures Trading in the Liverpool Cotton Market,” in Essays for Patrick Atiyah, ed. by Peter Cane, Jane Stapleton, and Patrick S. Atiyah (Oxford, 1991), 179–208.↩︎
Cramer, Bremer Baumwollbörse, 41–54.↩︎
Report by A. Frommel to general meeting, copy, March 7, 1882, in SWA Archiv, no. 190,4 (City Archive Augsburg).↩︎
Committee meeting minutes, vol. 6: 1893–1906, minutes no. 121, February 19, 1893, in SWA Archiv, no. 194,2 (Municipal Archive Augsburg).↩︎
Jahresbericht der Handels- und Gewerbekammer für Schwaben und Neuburg 1896 (Augsburg, 1897), 3.↩︎
Ibid., 1 and 3.↩︎
Ibid., 3.↩︎
Ibid..↩︎
Ibid., 2.↩︎
Jahresbericht der Handels- und Gewerbekammer für Schwaben und Neuburg 1895 (Augsburg, 1896), 1.↩︎
Jahresbericht der Handels- und Gewerbekammer für Schwaben und Neuburg 1900 (Augsburg, 1901), 1.↩︎
Committee meeting minutes, vol. 6, no. 122, May 16, 1893, in SWA Archiv, no. 194,2 (City Archive Augsburg).↩︎
Jahresbericht der Handels- und Gewerbekammer für Schwaben und Neuburg 1884 (Augsburg, 1885), 1–2.↩︎
Jahresbericht der Handels- und Gewerbekammer für Schwaben und Neuburg 1893, 1.↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
Peter Fassl, “Wirtschaftliche Führungsschichten in Augsburg 1800–1914,” in Wirtschaftsbürgertum in den deutschen Staaten im 19. und beginnenden 20. Jahrhundert Büdinger Forschungen zur Sozialgeschichte 1987 und 1988, ed. by Karl Möckl (Munich, 1996), 217–250, here 227.↩︎
On the context of the internationalization of British trade, see Stanley D. Chapman, “The International Houses: The Continental Contribution to British Commerce, 1800–1860,” Journal of European Economic History 6 (1977), 5–48.↩︎
See the profiles in SWA Archiv, no. 190,4 (Municipal Archive Augsburg).↩︎
See the profile of Otto Lindenmeyer in ibid. See also Otto Lindenmeyer’s personal memoirs 'Ein Kaufmannsleben um die Jahrhundertwende', esp. pp. 13–14 for an account of how he started out in his career. I am very grateful to Prof. Christoph Lindenmeyer (Munich) for allowing me to view these memoirs.↩︎
Friedrich Schmid, “Jakob Friedrich, Paul Schmid,” in Lebensbilder aus dem Bayerischen Schwaben, vol. 4, ed. by Adolf Layer, Götz Pölnitz, and Wolfgang Zorn (Munich, 1955), 360–380, here 371–372.↩︎
For a general account of the professionalization of factory managers, see Jürgen Kocka, “Industrielles Management: Konzeption und Modelle in Deutschland vor 1914,” Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 56 (1969), 332–372.↩︎
Jahresbericht der Handels- und Gewerbekammer für Schwaben und Neuburg 1902 (Augsburg, 1903), 2.↩︎
Ibid., 1.↩︎
Jahresbericht der Handels- und Gewerbekammer für Schwaben und Neuburg 1903 (Augsburg, 1904), 3.↩︎
Jahresbericht der Handels- und Gewerbekammer für Schwaben und Neuburg 1907 (Augsburg, 1908), xiv.↩︎
Ibid., xv.↩︎
Jahresbericht der Handels- und Gewerbekammer für Schwaben und Neuburg 1908 (Augsburg, 1909), 9.↩︎
Committee meeting minutes, vol. 6, no. 163, September 23, 1903 and no. 165, November 20, 1903, in SWA Archiv, no. 194,2 (Municipal Archive Augsburg).↩︎
Committee meeting minutes, vol. 6, no. 187, November 27, 1907, in ibid.↩︎
Schanz, “Baumwoll-Anbau, -Handel und -Industrie in den Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika,” 518.↩︎
“For some time now, terms prefixed with ‘world’ [Welt-] have been in common parlance. A person enjoys world fame [Weltruhm], wishes for world peace [Weltfrieden], has a worldview [Weltanschauung] or seeks to attain one, is a man of the world [Weltmann], and so forth,” observed cotton expert Alwin Oppel in 1914.See Alwin Oppel, Der Welthandel: Seine Entwicklung und gegenwärtige Gestaltung (Frankfurt, 1914), 1.↩︎
Moritz Schanz, “Die Baumwolle in den Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika,” Beihefte zum Tropenpflanzer 12 (1908), 1–62, here here 9-11; Schanz, “Baumwoll-Anbau, -Handel und -Industrie in den Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika,” 582–585.↩︎
Baumwollspinnerei am Stadtbach, unpaginated.↩︎
Schanz, “Baumwoll-Anbau, -Handel und -Industrie in den Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika,” 623.↩︎
Apelt and Ilgen, “Die Preisentwicklung der Baumwolle,” 24.↩︎
Jahresbericht der Handels- und Gewerbekammer für Schwaben und Neuburg 1901 (Augsburg, 1902), 2.↩︎
Jahresbericht der Handels- und Gewerbekammer für Schwaben und Neuburg 1902, 9↩︎
Ibid., 10.↩︎
Jahresbericht der Handels- und Gewerbekammer für Schwaben und Neuburg 1903, 3↩︎
Jahresbericht der Handels- und Gewerbekammer für Schwaben und Neuburg 1904 (Augsburg, 1905), 1.↩︎
Henry Clews, Fifty Years in Wall Street (New York, 1915), 166–167.↩︎
New York Times, March 19, 1904; April 30, 1904; June 22, 1904. Cf. Apelt and Ilgen, “Die Preisentwicklung der Baumwolle,” 28–30.↩︎
Charles Wright Macara, Recollections by Sir Charles W. Macara Bart (London; New York, 1922), 37.↩︎
Apelt and Ilgen, “Die Preisentwicklung der Baumwolle,” 28–30.↩︎
Clews, Fifty Years in Wall Street, 167.↩︎
Jahresbericht der Handels- und Gewerbekammer für Schwaben und Neuburg 1904, 1.↩︎
Charles Wright Macara, “Die Baumwoll-Industrie: Geplanter internationaler Congress,” Revue Economique internationale (1904), 1–51, here 11.↩︎
Committee meeting minutes, vol. 6, no. 163, September 23, 1903, in SWA Archiv, no. 194,2 (Municipal Archive Augsburg).↩︎
Jahresbericht der Handels- und Gewerbekammer für Schwaben und Neuburg 1904, 2 and 4. Cf. James C. Giesen, “‘The Truth about the Boll Weevil’: The Nature of Planter Power in the Mississippi Delta,” Environmental History 14 (2009), 683–704; James C. Giesen, Boll weevil blues: Cotton, myth, and power in the American South (Chicago; London, 2011).↩︎
Jahresbericht der Handels- und Gewerbekammer für Schwaben und Neuburg 1905 (Augsburg, 1906), 2. For criticisms of the official US statistics, see Schanz, “Die Baumwolle,” 10–11; Schanz, “Baumwoll-Anbau, -Handel und -Industrie in den Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika,” 583–584.↩︎
Committee meeting minutes, vol. 6, no. 175, January 23, 1906, in SWA Archiv, no. 194,2 (Municipal Archive Augsburg).↩︎
Jahresbericht der Handels- und Gewerbekammer für Schwaben und Neuburg 1905, 6↩︎
Macara, Recollections, 36–37↩︎
Macara, “Die Baumwoll-Industrie”; Official Report of the Proceedings of the First International Congress of Delegated Representatives of Master Cotton Spinners’ and Manufacturers’ Associations Held at the Tonhalle, Zürich, May 23 to 27, 1904 (Manchester, 1904)↩︎
Beckert, “Homogenisierung und Differenzierung,” 5–12.↩︎
On internationalism in the period around 1900, see Martin H. Geyer and Johannes Paulmann, eds., The mechanics of internationalism: culture, society, and politics from the 1840s to the First World War (London; Oxford; New York, 2008); Akira Iriye, Cultural internationalism and world order (Baltimore, 1997); Akira Iriye, Global community: The role of international organizations in the making of the contemporary world (Berkeley, 2002); Madeleine Herren-Oesch, Internationale Organisationen seit 1865: Eine Globalgeschichte der internationalen Ordnung (Darmstadt, 2009); Johannes Paulmann, “Reformer, Experten und Diplomaten: Grundlagen des Internationalismus im 19. Jahrhundert,” in Akteure der Aussenbeziehungen: Netzwerke und Interkulturalität im historischen Wandel, ed. by Christian Windler and Hillard Thiessen (Cologne, 2010), 173–197.↩︎
On the case made for the metric system, see Ferdinand Groß, Einführung einer internationalen Garn-Nummerierung auf Grundlage des metrisch-dezimalen Systems; A Paper read at the Second International Congress of Cotton Spinners and Manufacturers (Manchester, 1905). For the opposing case, see John R. Byrom, The Metric System. Would its universal adoption be advantageous to the Cotton Trade or otherwise? A Paper read at the Second International Congress of Cotton Spinners and Manufacturers (Manchester, 1905); Thomas Roberts, A Cotton Cloth Manufacturer’s Case against the Metric System: A Paper read at the Second International Congress of Cotton Spinners and Manufacturers (Manchester, 1905).↩︎
The Third International Congress of Delegated Representatives of Master Cotton Spinners’ and Manufacturers’ Associations, Held in the Large Hall, Künstlervereinshaus, Domsheide, Bremen, June 25th to 27th, 1906 (Manchester, 1906), 12.↩︎
Ibid., 7–8, citation p. 8.↩︎
Ibid., 12. Groß also kept the German Foreign Ministry updated on the International Cotton Federation’s congress in Bremen. See Groß to Dernburg, Foreign Ministry Colonial Affairs Division, December 31, 1906, R 1001/8262 (Federal Archives of Germany, Berlin-Lichterfelde).↩︎
Macara, Recollections, 34.↩︎
Ibid., 41–42.↩︎
Ibid., 80–84; Neue Preußische Zeitung, evening edition, no. 297, June 28, 1906.↩︎
The Fourth International Congress of Delegated Representatives of Master Cotton Spinners’ and Manufacturers’ Associations: Held in the Halls of the University, Barcelona, May 8th, 9th, 1911 (Manchester, 1911), 107.↩︎
The Fifth International Congress of Delegated Representatives of Master Cotton Spinners’ and Manufacturers’ Associations, Held in the Salle Des Ingeniéurs [!] Civils de France … Paris, June 1st, 2d & 3d, 1908 (Manchester, 1908), 64.↩︎
Back in 1906, the Lancashire Private Cotton Investigation Commission had undertaken a smaller-scale visit to the American cotton-growing regions. See Manufacturers’ Record, March 29, 1906, and April 12, 1906.↩︎
Official Report: Second International Conference of Cotton Growers, Spinners, and Manufacturers, Held at Atlanta, Georgia, U. S. A., October 7th, 8th and 9th, 1907, xxix. The German delegation was supported by the imperial consulate in Atlanta; see Zoepffel to Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow, copy, September 6, 1907, in R 1001, 8262 (Ferderal Archives of Germany, Berlin-Lichterfelde).↩︎
Committee meeting minutes, vol. 6, no. 185, June 12, 1907, in SWA Archiv, no. 194,2 (Municipal Archive Augsburg).↩︎
Jahresbericht der Handels- und Gewerbekammer für Schwaben und Neuburg 1907, 10.↩︎
Waibel, “Bericht über die Atlanta-Konferenz,” 96.↩︎
Ibid., 96–97.↩︎
Ibid., 97.↩︎
Ibid., 98.↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
Ibid. Emphasis in original.↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
Ibid., 99. Cf. the skeptical report on the Atlanta congress by the German consul in Atlanta: Zopffel to Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow, copy, October 1, 1907, in R 1001/8262 (Federal Archives of Germany, Berlin-Lichterfelde).↩︎
Jahresbericht der Handels- und Gewerbekammer für Schwaben und Neuburg 1907, 4 .↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
Waibel, “Bericht über die Atlanta-Konferenz,” 97.↩︎
See the resolutions adopted by the Atlanta conference: Official Report: Second International Conference of Cotton Growers, Spinners, and Manufacturers, Held at Atlanta, Georgia, U. S. A., October 7th, 8th and 9th, 1907, 145–148.↩︎
Waibel, “Bericht über die Atlanta-Konferenz,” 99. The European delegation’s visit to America in 1907 may have prompted the official fact-finding missions by Bernhard Dernburg, director of the Imperial Colonial Office, and the agriculturalist Hans Migdalski, who visited American cotton farms in 1909 to see what lessons could be learned for cotton enterprises in the German colonies. See Werner Schiefel, Bernhard Dernburg 1865-1937. Kolonialpolitiker und Bankier im wilhelminischen Deutschland (Zurich; Freiburg im Breisgau, 1974), 97–99; “Bericht über meine Beobachtungen während meines Aufenthaltes auf verschiedenen Baumwollfarmen in Texas,” copy, 1909, in R 1001/8252 (Federal Archives of Germany, Berlin-Lichterfelde.↩︎
Berliner Politische Nachrichten, May 23, 1887.↩︎
Thaddeus Sunseri, “The Baumwollfrage: Cotton Colonialism in German East Africa,” Central European History 34 (2001), 31–51.↩︎
Die Baumwollfrage: Denkschrift über Produktion und Verbrauch von Baumwolle; Massnahmen gegen die Baumwollnot (Jena, 1911).↩︎
“Der Baumwollkulturkampf,” Beiträge zur Kolonialpolitik 7 (1905), 906–914.↩︎
Imre Josef Demhardt, Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft 1888–1918: Ein Beitrag zur Organisationsgeschichte der deutschen Kolonialbewegung (Wiesbaden, 2002), 67–73.↩︎
Karl Supf, “Deutsch-koloniale Baumwoll-Unternehmungen,” Beihefte zum Tropenpflanzer 12 (1908), 134–184; Moritz Schanz, Baumwollbau in deutschen Kolonien (Berlin, 1910). On the VSBI’s involvement with the Colonial Economic Committee, see Kast, “Entstehung und Wandelungen,” 92–93.↩︎
Committee meeting minutes, vol. 6, no. 150, July 12, 1900, in SWA Archiv no. 194,2 (Municipal Archive Augsburg). On Germany’s efforts to develop cotton production in Togo, see Sven Beckert, “Von Tuskegee nach Togo: Das Problem der Freiheit im Reich der Baumwolle,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 31 (2005), 505–545; Andrew Zimmerman, Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German empire, and the globalization of the new South (Princeton, 2010), 112–172↩︎
See also the strictly classified report on the German colony of Togo from 1905 in SWA Archiv, no. 196,6 (Municipal Archive Augsburg).↩︎
Committee meeting minutes, vol. 6, no. 180, March 1, 1907, in SWA Archiv, no. 194,2 (Municipal Archive Augsburg).↩︎
Jahresbericht der Handels- und Gewerbekammer für Schwaben und Neuburg 1913 (Augsburg, 1914), 104 According to a 1909 report, the VSBI was contributing 85,000 marks annually to cotton production in the German colonies. In 1907, 22,000 marks was pledged in south Germany alone for a planned African cotton company. See Supf to Dernburg, September 4, 1909, in R 1001, 8253 (Federal Archives of Germany, Berlin-Lichterfelde).↩︎
See the dispassionate report “Förderung des Baumwollanbaues in den deutschen Kolonien” (supporting cotton growing in the Germany colonies) in the minutes of the Augsburg Chamber of Commerce public meeting of March 14, 1913. The report can be found on p. 6ff.↩︎
Ibid., p. 103.↩︎
See the relevant correspondence of Ferdinand Groß in SWA Archiv, no. 196,6 (Municipal Archive Augsburg).↩︎
Macara, Recollections, 84–91 See also R 1001/8262 (Federal Archives of Germany, Berlin-Lichterfelde); Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, October 10, 1911; Manchester Guardian, October 10, 1911; October 11, 1911; October 12, 1911.↩︎
Apelt and Ilgen, “Die Preisentwicklung der Baumwolle,” 30–31.↩︎
Jahresbericht der Handels- und Gewerbekammer für Schwaben und Neuburg 1906 (Augsburg, 1907), 3.↩︎
Jahresbericht der Handels- und Gewerbekammer für Schwaben und Neuburg 1907, 8↩︎
Ibid., 3.↩︎
Kast, “Entstehung und Wandelungen,” xii, 5–6.↩︎
Ibid., xiii See also in ibid., 1, 6, 9 and 12.↩︎
See the annual accounts in SWA Archiv, no. 210, 1 (Municipal Archive Augsburg).↩︎
Jahresbericht der Handels- und Gewerbekammer für Schwaben und Neuburg 1912 (Augsburg, 1913), 2.↩︎
Jahresbericht der Handels- und Gewerbekammer für Schwaben und Neuburg 1910 (Augsburg, 1911), 4.↩︎
Dehn, The German cotton industry, 52–64.↩︎
John R. Killick, “The Transformation of Cotton Marketing in the Late Nineteenth Century: Alexander Sprunt and Son of Wilmington, N. C., 1884–1956,” Business History Review 55 (1981), 143–168.↩︎
John R. Killick, “Specialized and General Trading Firms in the Atlantic Cotton Trade, 1820–1980,” in Business history of general trading companies, ed. by Shiníchi Yonekawa and Hideki Yoshihara (Tokyo, 1987), 239–266; Tammy Galloway, The Inman family: An Atlanta family from Reconstruction to World War I (Macon, GA, 2002). For a general account, see Geoffrey Jones, Merchants to multinationals: British trading companies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Oxford, 2000); Stanley D. Chapman, Merchant enterprise in Britain: From the Industrial Revolution to World War I (Cambridge, 1992).↩︎
Killick, “Specialized and General Trading Firms,” 251.↩︎
SWA did business with companies including S. Marshall Bulley & Son, L. F. Bahn, E. Spingmann & Co., Gassner & Co., Strauss & Co., and Arthur Clason & Co. See SWA Archiv, no. 199 (Municipal Archive Augsburg).↩︎
Committee meeting minutes, vol. 6, no. 202, June 2, 1910, in SWA Archiv, 194,2 (Municipal Archive Augsburg). On the scandal, see New York Times (May 18, 1910); New York Times (May 19, 1910).↩︎
Lindenmeyer, “Ein Kaufmannsleben um die Jahrhundertwende” (personal memoirs).↩︎
Committee meeting minutes, vol. 6, no. 203, January 27, 1911 and no. 204, July 18, 1911, in SWA Archiv, no. 194,2 (Municipal Archive Augsburg).↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
Committee meeting minutes, vol. 6, no. 210, November 13, 1912, in SWA Archiv, no. 194,2 (Municipal Archive Augsburg).↩︎
Committee meeting minutes, vol. 6, no. 214, January 22, 1914, in ibid.↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
Cramer, Bremer Baumwollbörse, 53–54.↩︎
Bericht und Bilanz für das Geschäftsjahr 1913 (Augsburg, February 19, 1914).↩︎
For the sake of simplicity, I have treated politics and economics as if they were neatly separate, whereas in fact they were intertwined in complex ways.↩︎
Bericht und Bilanz für das Geschäftsjahr 1914 (Augsburg, February 24, 1915).↩︎
Christof Dejung, “Deglobalisierung? Oder Enteuropäisierung des Globalen? Überlegungen zur Entwicklung der Weltwirtschaft in der Zwischenkriegszeit,” in Aufbruch ins postkoloniale Zeitalter: Globalisierung und die außereuropäische Welt in den 1920er und 1930er Jahren, ed. by Sönke Kunkel and Christoph Meyer (Frankfurt, 2012), 37–61.↩︎
See Rudolf Westphäling, “Die Entwicklung des Bremer Baumwollmarktes nach dem Kriege (1919-1923).” (Ph.D. diss., Kiel University, 1925).↩︎
Mira Wilkins, “Mapping Multinationals,” in The Global History Reader, ed. by Bruce Mazlish and Akira Iriye (New York, 2005), 79–90.↩︎
In relation to the British cotton industry, Porter, Technology, Governance and Political Conflict, 27–30 and 34, emphasizes the role of informal social connections.↩︎
Since the Second World War, international coordination and organization of the cotton industry has tended to be led by governments rather than private market actors. See Ibid., 42–48.↩︎
Beckert, “Homogenisierung und Differenzierung,” 5–12, notes that there were limits on how much standardization was possible for a natural product like cotton.↩︎
Paul Krugman, “Import Protection as Export Promotion: International Competition in the Presence of Oligopoly and Economies of Scale,” in Monopolistic competition and international trade, ed. by Henryk Kierzkowski (Oxford, 1984), 180–193.↩︎
Hartmut Berghoff, “Vertrauen als ökonomische Schlüsselvariable: Zur Theorie des Vertrauens und der Geschichte seiner privatwirtschaftlichen Produktion,” in Die Wirtschaftsgeschichte vor der Herausforderung durch die New Institutional Economics, ed. by Karl-Peter Ellerbrock and Clemens Wischermann (Dortmund, 2004), 58–71. For a general account, see Ute Frevert, ed., Vertrauen: Historische Annäherungen (Göttingen, 2003).↩︎
Peter Sloterdijk, Im Weltinnenraum des Kapitals: Für eine philosophische Theorie der Globalisierung (Frankfurt, 2006), 84–86.↩︎
Bruce Mazlish, “The Global and the Local,” Current Sociology 53 (2005), 93–111.↩︎
Roland Robertson, “Globalization or Glocalization?,” Journal of International Communication 1 (1994), 33–52; Roland Robertson, “Glocalization: Time-Space and Homogenity-Heterogenity,” in Global modernities, ed. by Roland Robertson, Mike Featherstone, and Scott Lash (London; Thousand Oaks, 1995), 25–44; Victor Roudometof, “Glocalization, Space, and Modernity,” European Legacy 8 (2003), 37–60; Victor Roudometof, “Transnationalism, Cosmopolitanism and Glocalization,” Current Sociology 53 (2005), 113–135. In this connection, see also the instructive discussion of “transregionality” in Johannes Paulmann, “Regionen und Welten: Arenen und Akteure regionaler Weltbeziehungen seit dem 19. Jahrhundert,” Historische Zeitschrift 296 (2013), 660–699.↩︎
Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt, Multiple modernities (New Brunswick, NJ, 2002); Dominic Sachsenmaier, Jens Riedel, and Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt, eds., Reflections on multiple modernities: European, Chinese, and other interpretations (Leiden; Boston, MA, 2002).↩︎
Beckert, “Cotton,” 60–61; Torp, Die Herausforderung der Globalisierung: Wirtschaft und Politik in Deutschland 1860–1914; Conrad, Globalisierung und Nation.↩︎
On the relationship between German politics and the cotton industry, see R 1001/8262 (Federal Archives of Germany, Berlin-Lichterfelde).↩︎

This article, including all quotations from non-English sources, was translated from the German. It originally appeared as:

From Upper Italy to Swabia

A fourteenth-century case of geographical shifts in production and the structural evolution of an economic sector

by Rolf Kießling

translated by Sarah Swift and Ellen Yutzy Glebe

2020-10-28

You can cite this article e.g.Rolf Kießling, “From Upper Italy to Swabia: A fourteenth-century case of geographical shifts in production and the structural evolution of an economic sector” in Bavarian Studies in History and Culture (2020), last modified 2020-10-28, https://www.bavarian-studies.org/2020-kliessling/.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.48357/BSHC/2020.2

This text is open access and licensed under the terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Rolf Kießling

From Upper Italy to Swabia

A fourteenth-century case of geographical shifts in production and the structural evolution of an economic sector

translated by Sarah Swift and Ellen Yutzy Glebe

2020-10-28

DOI: https://doi.org/10.48357/BSHC/2020.2

This text is open access and licensed under terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Image: Stadtbibliothek im Bildungscampus Nürnberg, Nuremberg, Amb.317.2°,f.4v

In a recent essay, Philipp Robinson Rössner pleads “for the economic history of the early modern period to be integrated into or restored as part of the history of modern capitalism.” His appeal to overcome the epochal boundary of 1750 is buttressed by his observation that “market thinking and market behavior” did not suddenly emerge in modern times but were instead present in a broad discourse that unfolded significantly earlier.¹ This is certainly true for the early modern period, but the question becomes thornier in regard to the High and Late Middle Ages, due to our reliance on circumstantial evidence. Scholars have been laying the groundwork for such analysis for years by exploring the viability of applying the concept of “economic policy” to Staufer and Welf rule,² reconstructing the system of fairs and markets throughout Europe³ to study how these were planned, and examining the agrarian history of the late medieval period to trace how farmers increasingly adapted to the commercial demands of local markets.⁴If such adaptations to the market are understood as intentional attempts to exploit economic opportunities and develop long-term strategies for producing and selling goods, it is worth examining the manufacturing landscapes (Gewerbelandschaften) that developed in southern Germany from the late medieval period onward. The textile industry that developed in Upper Swabia beginning in the thirteenth century and remained the region’s leading industry well into the modern age, undergoing multiple transformations along the way, is certainly a case in point.⁵

One of these major adaptations was the introduction of Barchent (fustian), a mixed fabric with linen thread in the warp and cotton in the weft that became the mainstay of the Swabian textiles sector from the late medieval period until shortly before the Thirty Years War. Fustian was more comfortable than pure linen and easier to dye, a significant factor given the contemporary craze for colorful clothing. It was also relatively inexpensive and rapidly became established in European cloth markets thanks to its mass affordability. Wolfgang von Stromer explored the beginnings of the cotton industry in central Europe as early as 40 years ago in his salient work on the subject. He dated the emergence of the sector to the 1360s and addressed the question of what led to this innovation in upper Germany. What caused the production of fabric for export that was so well-established in upper Italy, especially in Lombardy and the Veneto, to cross the Alps and take root in southern Germany even though one of its two raw materials, the cotton, still had to be imported from the eastern Mediterranean?⁶ This was no minor development: the production and distribution of the new fabric sparked an economic boom in Upper Swabia that lasted for almost two and a half centuries⁷ and gave Augsburg and the Upper Swabian imperial cities the means to surpass most of their southern German rivals.⁸ Some of von Stromer’s answers to questions thrown up by this development naturally remained vague or speculative. How did this innovation unfold? What were the prerequisites for its success and the characteristics of the ensuing boom? The discussion below seeks to show how findings from more recent research can contribute to answering these questions.

I. Phases of Innovation

Von Stromer assembled an impressive body of data for his study.⁹ A few key data points can be outlined here. The Augsburg merchant Lukas Rem notes (in the diary he kept from 1494 to 1541) that his grandfather Hans Rem “converted his entire fortune, worth 500 florins, to silver [i.e., liquidated his assets] in 1357, and increased it to 7,200 within ten years via trade with Venice .”¹⁰ The connection to innovative developments in the textiles sector only comes to light in an additional remark made by Lukas: Als ich von meim vatter selig gehort hab, hatt er die / erst bomwoll / heraus gefiertt /und darmit selch reichtong erobertt. (As I heard from my late father, he imported the first cotton and won such a fortune with it.)¹¹. Von Stromer points out that the year given is hardly plausible, as a Venetian embargo against the upper German imperial cities was in force at the time due to an economic war between Venice, on one side, and Louis I of Hungary and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV on the other. The oft-cited evidence for Hans Fugger’s arrival in Augsburg in 1367—a terse note in the tax register stating Fucker advenit—also proves little. While Hans Fugger was evidently a rural weaver, we have no records of what sort of cloth he wove.¹²

We do, however, have some concrete indications in the historical record. The Augsburg Baumeisterbücher (Building Master Ledgers) contain detailed notes on the city’s expenditures, and von Stromer appears to have overlooked multiple entries under the heading of ‘Mills’ for 1378 that are related to the production of fustian: 2 lb 2 ß h Zu den Nuiwen stempfflachen Zu den Barchanden (2 pounds 2 shillings heller for the new stamping mill for fustians); a little later 2 ½ lb 8 ß 3 d Zu den Nuiwen stempfflachen Zu den Barchanden (2½ pounds 8 shillings 3 pence for the new stamping mill for fustians); somewhat later again 6 ß d vmb II pavmlach zu dem Barchant stempflach (6 shillings pence toward a second axle fitting); and then, once again, 16 ß d Zu den Barchat stempfflachen (16 shillings for the fustian stamping mill). The pieces of fustian were processed in a stamping mill before bleaching—and this finishing step clearly demanded significant investment.¹³ The first evidence for the use of a lion as a Parchant Zaichen,¹⁴ an export quality mark such as was used in Venice, to label the finished cloth is from 1390. There is also evidence that the Nuremberg merchant Hermann Kraft transported fustians from Augsburg and Milan to Prague in 1388.¹⁵ Even earlier, however, in 1385, the indirect tax revenue (Ungeld) from fustian production in Augsburg amounted to 402 Augsburg pounds and 98 Regensburg pounds, a tax yield suggesting that some 12,000 pieces of cloth must have been produced.¹⁶ Production was evidently fully established by this point: the technology had been mastered, and a quality mark had been put in place to facilitate exports. What is not clear is the amount of lead-up time that had been required to reach this point. The chronicle of the weavers’ guild produced by Clemens Jäger makes reference to a fustian inspection taking place as early as 1372—-es wirt dis jars der panck, zu den barchatdiechern zu geschauen, auf das Rathaus von neuem gemacht (The table on which the fustian cloth is inspected at city hall will be refurbished this year).¹⁷— and states that the Ungeld was collected from 1377 on. While this chronicle was not written until the 1540s, Jäger may have had access to comprehensive records that were subsequently lost.¹⁸

It thus seems highly likely that fustian production took root in Augsburg in the early 1370s—and evidence from other cities shows that Augsburg was in no way an isolated case. Records for the city of Ulm suggest that fustian was inspected there in 1389, resulting in a considerable tax yield of 1,257 pounds pence,¹⁹ and an ordinance pertaining to an Ulm weight tax, referred to in Frankfurt am Main in 1381, states that the duty payable on a fardel of fustian, a bale of 45 pieces of cloth, comprised one schilling heller, while a hundredweight of raw cotton attracted a tax of 4 shillings heller.²⁰ In Ulm, too, it seems that the new system was already established and running smoothly by around this time. A cotton purchase made in Milan by a certain Johannes Vol in 1375 provides further confirmation.²¹ The historical record also shows that Biberach an der Riß exported fustian to Prague in 1386, and a legal provision in Ravensburg from 1379 demonstrates that linen and fustian were being produced by means of a putting-out (Verlag) system there. There is also a reference from 1382 for Constance, and the upper Rhine region around Basel was involved in the 1370s. In Vienna, a 1373 notation regarding a textor from Nördlingen presumably refers to a fustian weaver, and a 1375 reference in Landshut tells a similar story. The Runtinger trading company in Regensburg is recorded as having purchased cotton in Venice in 1383, and the company’s famous ledger records more than 1,400 contracts relating to fustian production in the putting-out system.

These key facts serve as our departure point. While the evidence is far from homogeneous, it is broad enough, especially in light of the typically patchy evidence we have for this period, to date the establishment of the new industry in southern Germany to the 1370s with some confidence.

Map of upper German fustian production (Rights: Institut für vergleichende Städtegeschichte)

But why was it possible for this innovation to take root so successfully despite its dependence on cotton, a raw material that was not available locally and had to be imported from across the Alps before it could be processed with the help of new techniques?

II. The Prerequisites for Transferring Technology

The techniques for producing fustagne had long been known in upper Italy, where cotton imports from the eastern Mediterranean to Venice and Genoa were part of the Levant trade. Since the twelfth century, Venice and the cities of Lombardy, in particular, had acquired the techniques of fustian production from the Arab lands that produced the cotton. Fustian-producing centers were clustered close together in an area stretching from Pavia, Piacenza, and Cremona to Verona, Padua, and Bologna.²² By the first half of the century, fustian was already “the most important product exported from Lombardy to Europe north of the Alps.” Fustian from Milan was particularly sought after by companies in Nuremberg and in Ulm, and this demand continued into the 1420s.²³ Beginning in the early fourteenth century, trading in cotton had become more lucrative for Italian merchants than cloth production itself. Luciana Frangioni found a drop in production that she attributes to an imbalance between town and country: the exploitation of the peasantry had cut demand for cotton products in rural areas and affected the potential profitability for producers and the merchants running the putting-out system.²⁴ A gap was already developing that posed an incentive for others to move into this segment. Exporting large quantities of cotton for processing on the far side of the Alps may have represented a route out of these difficulties, but the question of how and why it came about has remained unaddressed by research on the Italian side. As Maureen F. Mazzaoui comments: “The circumstances under which the techniques of cotton manufacture came to be diffused in southern Germany are obscure.”²⁵

Von Stromer mulled over several different combinations of factors in his efforts to solve this puzzle. He pondered economic consequences that might have arisen from marriages between South German royalty, especially the Wittelsbach dynasty, and daughters of the Lord of Milan, Barnabo Visconti: Duke Stephen III of Bavaria-Ingolstadt married Taddea Visconti in 1364; Duke Frederick of Bavaria married Magdalena Visconti in 1381; Duke Ernest of Bavaria-Munich married Elisabetta Visconti in 1395; Elisabeth of Bavaria married Marco Visconti in 1367; Viridis Visconti married Duke Leopold III of Austria in 1365; and, finally, Antonia Visconti married Count Eberhard III of Württemberg, in 1380. The fustian technology might, von Stromer thought, have played a role as a dowry of sorts in these numerous liaisons.²⁶ It is certainly plausible that these dynastic connections could have led to some specialist craftsmen migrating to pursue work opportunities elsewhere after the downturn in previous hotspots of upper Italian fustian production. But only two of the cities north of the Alps that were “early adopters” were among the possessions of these rulers: Vienna, where two fustian makers (parchantmacher) were recorded in 1373, and Landshut, where the historical record mentions two fustian masters (Parchantmeister) in 1375 and 1382. Neither city was exactly a hotbed of innovation. The fact that the cities in Württemberg were not involved and that the Wittelsbach towns on the upper Danube were slow starters seems rather striking. The town of Lauingen, for example, only embarked on its own fustian production in 1412. Merchants there had been involved in the putting-out system in Nördlingen since 1394, together with entrepreneurial families from Augsburg, Ulm, and Nuremberg to whom they were linked by many family connections.²⁷ In this light, it is more plausible that merchants in the upper German imperial cities were the main drivers of the technology transfer: they had more contact with cloth production, and they had already mastered trade with upper Italy.

It is generally accepted that the modalities of transalpine trade became well-established during the fourteenth century. The early pioneers of this trade included a certain Bernardus Teutonicus, from a Regensburg-Munich family, who “sold large quantities of German copper and silver in Venice and ‘made a fortune’ in the process” in the years around 1200,²⁸ and a Burcardus Teutonicus, who sold copper in Genoa in 1190,²⁹ as well as the Upper Swabian cloth merchants who crossed the Grisons passes to reach the western parts of upper Italy, especially Genoa.³⁰ At the end of the fourteenth century, the Runtinger merchants from Regensburg mainly crossed the Tauern Alps to reach Venice.³¹ Between these two options, we find the pass routes generally utilized by the Eastern Swabian merchants.

Both major axes of the old Via Claudia Augusta led from Augsburg to Venice. One could take the “high road” over the Reschen pass or the “low road” over the Brenner pass. Increasing numbers of upper German merchants frequented the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, the house of the German merchants on the Canale Grande in Venice in the early-fourteenth century.³² These pass routes were gradually upgraded to accommodate a higher volume of traffic and trade. The amount of work done on the ascent up to the Brenner pass from Hall to Matrei and on the Eisack Gorge by Heinrich Kunter, a merchant based in Innsbruck and Bozen, around 1314 was particularly striking—although the trickier passages continued to be suitable only for pack trains.³³ Cotton transport along these routes was viable: the “Rodfuhr” system of stage transport was in place and systematically expanded in parallel with the upgrading of the routes.³⁴

III. The Black Death as a Trigger

None of these factors explain what triggered the process of technology transfer. On its own, the allure of investing in a mode of production that had proved profitable in upper Italy would hardly have been a major draw, given the significant cost factor for South German entrepreneurs. We can estimate from the accounts kept by the Runtinger company that the expense involved in bringing cotton from Venice to Regensburg must have added some 27–30 percent to its cost.³⁵ But this factor cannot have been decisive, as transporting finished fustians from Lombardy was also an expensive business. The first challenge for those interested in establishing the new cloth as a mass market item north of the Alps was to mobilize the labor and capital needed to produce it. Looking at the background conditions that changed drastically around and after the mid-fourteenth century, due to the Black Death and its demographic effects, brings us closer to the nub of the issue for the first factor, labor.

Here, too, Wolfgang von Stromer’s analysis provides a starting point. He saw the plague as a significant trigger of innovation. Assuming that central Europe was affected by a pandemic in 1348/49, he noted that the “clean slate of the plague disaster was simultaneously an important condition required for an overall climate of innovation,” because the new situation demanded a “new generation of weavers who necessarily had to adapt to new working conditions and a new market environment but were also more easily able to adapt.” He adds that the “looms burned because of the infection risk they presented needed to be replaced, and weaver households impoverished by the deaths of breadwinners could scarcely have achieved this using only their own resources […]. The putting-out system supplied the necessary apparatus.” This is conjecture, of course—von Stromer himself commented that information about the specific impacts of the various plague waves was still lacking: “We would possibly have a criterion to go by if we knew, at the very least, which waves of the plague reached the linen-producing and subsequently fustian-producing areas in the Lake Constance/Danube region and which waves were the most severe.”³⁶

This—identifying the areas hit by the Black Death—is exactly where we need to start, but we can reverse von Stromer’s cause and effect mechanism by postulating that what induced the geographical shift in technology was not the plague, but rather its absence. While the plague is often, right up to the present day, imagined as all-pervasive and ubiquitous—maps tend to show the sense of helplessness its progress induced rather than actual evidence of its actual geographical spread—Manfred Vasold cast doubt quite some time ago on the idea that vast swathes of southern Germany were uniformly affected. There are, admittedly, large gaps in the evidence he marshalled. He can only offer roughly plausible conjectures for some cities, and he does not address rural areas at all due to a perceived dearth of sources.³⁷ Regional history in Augsburg has taken this research further, and it can now be stated definitively that large swathes of Old Bavaria and eastern Swabia were, in fact, unaffected by the Black Death.³⁸ Initial research on the Augsburg tax registers show that the population of Augsburg actually increased significantly during the period in question between 1346 and 1351.³⁹ Analysis of the Liber taxationis, with its precise account of taxes collected by the diocese of Constance in 1353,⁴⁰ and local research in Memmingen and Kempten subsequently established that the spread of the plague over the Alps came to a halt roughly at the Iller river. For Bavaria, an edition of the accounts of the Benedictine monastery, Scheyern Abbey, that covered the years in question yielded “not one statement […] about losses directly attributable to plague. Even indirect indicators, such as monastery leaseholdings rapidly changing hands or monastery income from leases dramatically declining, are not evident for 1349 or subsequently.”⁴¹ More recently, an examination of the oldest accounts of Aldersbach Abbey, a Cistercian foundation near Passau in Lower Bavaria, also revealed “no indicators for a severe drop” in the revenue generated from the monastery’s possessions.⁴²

Analysis of further accounts and land registers (Urbars) confirms this picture for eastern Swabia. The accounts of Cistercian nuns prepared in the run-up to a visit by the Abbot of Kaisheim do not show a spectacular drop in rents paid in money or in grain for Oberschönenfeld, to the west of Augsburg, in the years between 1348 and 1353. The Cistercian Abbey in Zimmern in the Nördlinger Ries also shows continuity in its economic affairs and does not seem to have been affected by any major upheaval.⁴³ Closer to Nuremberg and Middle Franconia, normality also seems to have persisted, as we can discern from the records of Heilsbronn Abbey. With his analysis of local grain markets, Walter Bauernfeind suggested that the possessions of this abbey—distributed over a huge area from the Nördlinger Ries to the environs of Nuremberg—were not decisively affected by the plague until the later waves starting around 1370/80.⁴⁴

With its rich urbarial sources, the major Cistercian abbey of Kaisheim represents a major “missing link” between the area around Augsburg and the Ries. In addition to the land registers from the 1320s with postscripts reaching into the mid-century, now edited,⁴⁵ an almost continuous series of further registers exists that list the abbey’s possessions. A full register from 1353 is followed by various others, covering specific areas in the 1360s.⁴⁶ It is clear from these sources that no major changes took place in the abbey’s extensive possessions between the 1320s and the 1380s. A partial register from 1380/83 does not show any significant changes for the Propstei Baiern rechts der Donau, the priory district in Bavaria to the right of the Danube (i.e. between Augsburg on the Lech und Donauwörth on the Danube). Various names changed in the lists of who held which farm, whether smallholding, tillage field or meadow—as was to be expected with the passing of time—and only two holdings were listed as vacant (vacat). This finding is hardly surprising, since agrarian expansion in the center of East Swabia can also be discerned from the fact that the clearing of meager top lands and the founding of new settlements continued until past the midpoint of the fourteenth century.⁴⁷

The dots can thus now be joined between the two Franconian cities of Würzburg and Nuremberg—where the situation has long been clear—and the “blank spot” of Augsburg. Old Bavaria, too, or at least its western parts, can now be added to the picture gleaned. How far south this area stretched—from eastern Swabia down toward the Allgäu—remains to be clarified by further research. What is already obvious, however, is that the old idea that the Black Death caused the population to crash in the mid-fourteenth century—with a quarter or even a third of the population dying, as many estimates suggested—is no longer tenable for southern Germany and especially not for eastern Swabia. It must be revised not merely selectively but completely.

Likewise in need of reevaluation, therefore, is the proposition that the transfer of fustian production from upper Italy to southern Germany was due to upheavals related to the plague. Historians must reconsider the demographic factors involved: if the plague spared large swaths of territory in the years in question, these areas were then likely overpopulated relative to the regions that had in fact been devastated by the plague. That would mean that they now had a possible labor surplus, or, to put it more positively, that small farmers there could now augment their income by processing flax and cotton and weaving this innovative cloth.

While the Black Death does appear to have spared eastern Swabia in 1348/49, this does not mean that the region was unaffected by later outbreaks. Various issues with the sources make the interpretation of some details difficult, but Swabia clearly suffered epidemics after 1380. It is known, for example, that Augsburg saw epidemics with a severe mortality impact in 1380, probably experienced a less severe episode in 1389, and was hit again in 1398 and 1407. The number of tax-paying households dropped from 5,202 in 1363 to 3,621 in 1382 and then to 2,957 in 1408.⁴⁸ But the first fustian boom was well underway by 1380 and even reached a first peak in the first half of the fifteenth century despite the drop in population, according to the amounts of Ungeld collected.⁴⁹ In addition to the situation within the city walls, scholars would do well to pay more attention than they have thus far to the wider area and the extensive labor pool available in more rural areas.

Cloth production in Augsburg 1400–1804 (Rights: Anke Sczesny)

IV. Factors Driving the Shift in Production

The Black Death clearly led to a drastic decline in population in Italy. In Venice alone, the population is assumed to have been cut in half,⁵⁰ and many cities in Lombardy suffered a similar fate—although Milan was most likely spared from the first wave and then hit severely by the second wave in or around 1361.⁵¹ This steep drop in population had various effects, not the least of which was structural economic change. A process of structural transformation that had been underway since the early-fourteenth century accelerated due to the 1348 pandemic and subsequent plague waves. Labor shortages and falling grain prices led to changes in agrarian production, and the impact of labor shortages on cities was severe. The textile industry shifted production to luxury items like silk and fine woolen cloth, and the overall quantities produced declined.⁵² This created momentum for cotton weaving to move across the Alps to Southern Germany.

A precise picture of the situation in Venice can be reconstructed from a 1373 capitulary for the Fondaco dei Tedeschi describing the situation. It states that it had recently become usual for Germans to “purchase […] cotton from overseas” and “bring it to Germany and have fustian produced from it there.” Although this fustian was not of the fineness and quality of the Venetian fustagni, the document continues, they were marked with the symbols of the Venetian masters to give them the appearance of merchandise from Venice, “the better to be able to sell them alongside the ‘original wares.’”⁵³ As noted for Augsburg above, the early Swabian fustian did indeed bear the Venetian quality marks of an ox or a lion, the symbols of the Evangelists Luke and Mark. Venice reacted by enacting prohibitions on the export of cotton yarns. They were not very effective and mainly seem to have resulted in German merchants—especially those from Nuremberg, the Stromers in particular—making their purchases in Genoa rather than Venice for some time, as Marco Veronesi recently ascertained.⁵⁴

This was the wider environment in which the southern German merchants entered the picture as “founding entrepreneurs” alongside the urban and rural textile laborers. A large number of textile workers were available. These were not, however, people from “the social category with the lowest standing and […] lowest level of education, enthralled in the bonds of prejudice and unable to look beyond the horizons of their church towers,” as von Stromer believed.⁵⁵ They were, rather, people who had to combine their vocational skills with a knowledge of standards applicable to export production and a feel for market developments. Rural weavers must be considered as well as guild weavers in cities: studies have shown that rural weavers around Constance and Augsburg were already playing a significant role in linen production by the late thirteenth century.⁵⁶

This is not to exclude the possibility that some specialists may have been involved in introducing the new technology, as well. Fustian production demanded a new, more sophisticated weaving technique. The simple weave previously created on four-shaft looms was replaced with a new diagonal twill pattern produced using the pedals of foot-treadle-operated horizontal looms. An illustration from a well-known Nuremberg manuscript, the House Book of the Mendel Twelve Brothers Foundation (Mendel’sche Zwölfbrüderstiftung) shows a weaver working at such a loom.

Weaver: Depiction from the Mendelsche 12-Brüderstiftung (House Book of the Mendels’ Twelve Brothers Foundation), from Stromer, Baumwollindustrie, p. 67 (Rights: Stadtbibliothek im Bildungscampus Nürnberg, Nuremberg, Amb.317.2°,f.4v.)

Some weavers do seem to have come from Italy—fustian weavers going by the name of Mailand (Milan) are recorded in the 1390s in Nördlingen and Regensburg, at least.⁵⁷ The initial steps toward technological innovation, however, had been taken before fustian production in Swabia got off the ground at all. Around 1300, a weavers’ ordinance in Augsburg mentions Zwillich (drill) as well as linen,⁵⁸ and drill was a precursor of fustian in technical terms. Plausible reasons underlying the changeover from linen to fustian looms can, at any rate, be identified without invoking the dramatic scenes depicted by von Stromer. It is not necessary to assume that the house contents of plague victims were burned, including their looms, and that this made possible the purchase of new and improved replacements that only merchant-entrepreneurs could afford.

It has already been noted that, from as early as the thirteenth centuh2 of obligations has survived that opens, rather revealingly, with a list of putting-out contracts relating to local fustian production in 1392. The first entry made for the year 1392 reads: Utz Ristinger, Fritz Kungund, Haintz Kranck, Haintz Ristinger und Gall Huggenler und ir erben sullen Hainrich Fuchslin von Nürenberg und sinen erben unverschaidenlich 55 1/2 barchantuch, halb ochsen und halb lew, und sullen im die bezalen, wan diu erst blaich hie abget, ane gnade. (Utz Ristinger, Fritz Kungund, Haintz Kranck, Haintz Ristinger and Gall Huggenler and their heirs inseparably owe Hainrich Fuchslin of Nuremberg and his heirs 55 1/2 barchent cloths, half ox and half lion, and must provide him with them, without any grace period, at the end of the first bleaching period.)⁵⁹ The five weavers clearly undertook to deliver a certain quantity of fustian meeting ox and lion quality standards by the end of the bleaching period. They had already received the necessary supply of cotton, as can be inferred from other entries, and they would have been able to come by the flax themselves, since it was a local agrarian product sold in urban and rural markets.

Alongside merchants from Nuremberg, merchants from Augsburg soon began to play a dominant role in Nördlingen. The records list four merchants producing 494 pieces through the putting-out system in 1393 and nine merchants producing 978 1/2 pieces in 1394. A single merchant managed to produce 396 1/3 cloths in 1395. Merchants from Ulm and Lauingen got in on the act later, together with families from Nördlingen.⁶⁰ Augsburg merchants were behind more than three-quarters of the total cloth production listed in this source and appear to have been important for getting the innovation off the ground in these early years in Nördlingen. They also sustained their involvement over the long-term, unlike the merchants from Nuremberg who were initially involved but quickly dropped out.

The brothers Karl and Lorenz Egen, as well as Hans Brun, Hans Rapold, and Ulrich Tott were all prominent Augsburg merchants involved in putting-out, as were Konrad and Heinrich Tierhaupter (Dyrhaupter), Konrad Wiser, Hans Rem, Hans Lang, and Peter Bach. Delving into the status of these merchants as burghers in Augsburg reveals that most of them belonged to the Augsburg merchants’ guild (namely, Egen, Rem, Tott, Brun, Tierhaupter). One belonged to the salt guild (Wiser), and two were patricians (the Herren Bach and Lang). They were almost all among the city’s fifty wealthiest burghers, with only the Tierhaupter coming in lower (ranked at position 117). Most of them held—as has long been known—the most important offices in the city.⁶¹ For our purposes, however, the family relationships shaping the make-up of the trading companies are more important. The brothers Lorenz and Karl Egen⁶² were probably the nephews and successors of the influential merchant Peter Egen (I). Lorenz’s brother-in-law, Hans Brun, and his half-brother, Bartholomäus Welser (III), were involved in the Egens’ company but founded a trading company of their own a few years later, in or around 1411.⁶³ Lorenz was also one of the heirs of the wealthy Selind Dachs. From 1385 onwards, a wealth of references link him to Venice and indicate that he visited the city on multiple occasions. With their combined might, these merchants wielded a considerable amount of capital for potential investments. It seems plausible to see their company among the pioneers driving the establishment of fustian production in Swabia.

An additional connection stretching even further back can be reconstructed in the case of Hans Rem and Peter Bach. Hans Rem presumably worked together with his uncle Sebastian in Treviso before going on to establish his own trading company, one of the leading movers in Augsburg’s Italian trade. He then moved to Ulm, Swabia’s second center of fustian production, in 1398, remaining there for several years.⁶⁴ This was the very Hans Rem who had put his fortune in cotton in a spectacular 1357 purchase according to his grandson Lukas—although the date Lukas assigned the event seems rather dubious. Rem had family ties with the old patrician family Bach, as becomes clear in another context. Peter Bach, like other old patricians, participated in the acquisition of rural properties.⁶⁵ In 1362, he and his father Heinrich took over the market town of Zusmarshausen —located near Augsburg and with many rural weavers among its population—from the Langenmantel family with whom they were related by marriage. After Heinrich Bach had divested himself of his share, the entire property gradually came into the hands of Hans Rem, who was married to a Katharina Bach, and Hans Rem in turn sold it in its entirety to the bishop of Augsburg for 1,930 Hungarian florins in 1395.⁶⁶ This conversion of land ownership to liquid capital probably served to free up resources for the kind of investment in the fustian business that is evident in the Nördlingen book of obligations dating from around this time. The fact that records in Italy exist for the Bachs as well as for the Rems makes this conjecture all the more plausible: Heinrich Bach was one of the Augsburg merchants who already had goods stored in the Fondaco dei Tedeschi in 1371.⁶⁷ Similar instances of land ownership being converted into capital were not rare; multiple cases can be observed.

While this evidence is merely circumstantial, it does point to an overall picture of entrepreneurial thinking leading southern German and especially Swabian merchants to raise the capital required to take over the fustian production previously established in upper Italy by tapping into family connections and liquidating landed property. Other cases will presumably have unfolded in a similar way.

Nuremberg was undoubtedly in a strong starting position at the beginning of this process, as the Nördlingen book of obligations indicates, but Nuremberg was not able to capitalize on its strong initial position and set a process of widespread innovation in motion as the Swabian cities did. Asking why this was the case leads back to the question of the prerequisites for innovation. As has become clear above, Upper Swabia had already become established as a major hub of textile production with broad and deep expertise by exporting Tele de Alemannia—“Swabian linen”—from the thirteenth century onward.

It appears to be important—and the significance of this factor has probably been severely underestimated up to now—that both “town” and “country” were involved in manufacturing this export product. Processing regionally grown flax was rural work, but by 1300, this rural sector had already expanded to encompass several steps of the process including the production of raw cloth of a quality required to meet the inspection standards of finished cloth. This related not least to the production of drill.⁶⁸ That gave this region an edge when it came to scaling up fustian production to create a product for the masses. As merchant-entrepreneurs could not rely on urban weavers alone, they also drew on labor from rural areas. With the introduction of fustian, rural workers were tasked with spinning imported cotton and producing raw fustian.

The rural weavers (Gäuweber ) listed in the putting-out books of urban entrepreneurs from the turn to the fifteenth century onward show that the weaving of raw fustian was performed, at least in part, in the countryside. For Memmingen, a putting-out contract from 1406 with a rural weaver has survived.⁶⁹ In Augsburg, the weavers’ guild managed to have weaving prohibited within three German “miles” of the city (i.e., within a radius of 22.5 km) after 1411. Specifically, all transactions with weavers outside the town were banned, regardless of whether they involved supplying weavers with cotton or yarn das zu den barchatten gehöret (that belongs to fustian) or taking delivery of fabric not marked with trademarks.⁷⁰ Contemporaneous developments in Ulm went in exactly the opposite direction. In 1403, the city council deemed fustian “a foreign knit [!]” (fremdes Gewirk) that did “not belong to any guild at all … but had, from the beginning, been under the authority, regulation, and protection of the council and the city.” Rural weavers were permitted to bring their wares to the town inspection.⁷¹ It can be assumed, then, that the rural workforce continued to be an important factor in eastern Swabia’s production environment as fustian weaving expanded. Rural weavers were deployed during cyclical highs and lows, as a sort of buffer against unsteady demand, as they were evidently able to work more cheaply than urban guild members due to combining weaving with small-scale agricultural cultivation. Analysis of demographic trends has shown that a sufficient number of peasants depended on such extra work. Over the decades that followed, competition between urban and rural areas over fustian production continued to gain momentum, prompting an intensive search for solutions not only in imperial cities, but also in territorial towns like Lauingen, Waldsee, and Wurzach.⁷²

The structures that existed in Upper Swabia around 1400 enabled the enormously rapid increase in production to which the production figures for Augsburg and Ulm attest. It seems to have been decisive that these structures were already in place here and that merchant-entrepreneurs were able to tap into them. Entrepreneurs in Nuremberg, on the other hand, do not seem to have been able to draw on labor from a well-established textiles sector in their direct environs. Metalwork had already become dominant there in those years—in a similarly structured proto-industrial network with a similar level of production.⁷³

IV. Summary and Outlook

As the fustian story continued to unfold, two striking developments took place. The area producing fustian contracted more and more until it covered only the Swabian heartlands. Within the core region where it persisted, however, fustian production went hand-in-hand with long-term economic advancement. While Nuremberg continued to trade in fustian, the city did not seek to regain a foothold in its production until quite a bit later, and even then, it was a sporadic effort. Regensburg stopped producing fustian for export after the Runtingers. Other economic sectors dominated in Cologne, Basel, and Vienna⁷⁴—and this left Swabia from Lake Constance to the Nördlinger Ries. Even here, a process of geographical concentration set in. Over the course of the half-century between 1420 and 1470/80, many fustian-producing towns abandoned fustian in favor of producing other types of cloth. Nördlingen made Loden, for example, a thick, water-resistant woolen material, and Lauingen made Golschen, a blended linen cloth. What remained was the pentagon connecting Augsburg, Ulm, Biberach, Memmingen, and Kaufbeuren and enclosing the rural areas and small towns in between.⁷⁵

The key factor accounting for the shift of fustian production from upper Italy to southern Germany, and to eastern Swabia in particular, appears to have been the non-appearance of the plague in Swabia. While cities in upper Italy coped with labor shortages by producing more upmarket fabrics, the relative overpopulation in Upper Swabia and the availability of an urban and rural workforce there meant that this area had sufficient workers to meet the demands of mass producing fustian profitably and, indeed, lucratively and had gained skills in the course of linen production for export that could be adapted to produce fustian. The “barchent boom” in the late fourteenth century laid down foundations for eastern Swabia’s emergence as a consolidated region of production that retained this structure until the early seventeenth century and even, with some modifications, until the onset of industrialization in the nineteenth century.

As the analysis above has sought to clarify in detail, a considerable number of upper German merchant-entrepreneurs embraced innovation and established widespread fustian production. They purchased large quantities of cotton, arranged for its transport over the Alps, and organized putting-out systems. Raising the necessary capital through trading companies based heavily around family connections was possible, but the significance of selling rural landholdings to mobilize investment capital should probably also not be underestimated. Was this a fourteenth-century example of strategic market thinking on a grand geographical scale? The arguments in favor of recognizing it as such are strong—although it must be admitted that this hypothesis is not supported by direct first-person statements or contemporary theoretical reflections, but only by circumstantial evidence. Many pieces of the puzzle are still missing.

Notes

h2>Notes

Philipp Robinson Rössner, “Historia magistra vitae ad acta oder ad nauseam?” Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 45, no. 4 (2018), 651–714, 691–92.↩︎
Ulf Dirlmeier, “Heinrich der Löwe und ’die Wirtschaft’,” in Heinrich der Löwe: Herrschaft und Repräsentation, ed. Johannes Fried and Otto G. Oexle (Stuttgart, 2003), 293–309; Johannes Fried, “Die Wirtschaftspolitik Friedrich Barbarossas in Deutschland,” Blätter für deutsche Landesgeschichte 120 (1984), 195–239.↩︎
Peter Johanek and Heinz Stoob, eds., Europäische Messen und Märktesysteme in Mittelalter und Neuzeit (Cologne, 1996).↩︎
See, for instance, Rolf Kießling, “Zur Kommerzialisierung ländlicher Regionen im 15./16. Jahrhundert: Das Beispiel Ostschwaben,” Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologie 59 (2011), 14–36.↩︎
Rolf Kießling and Helmut Flachenecker, eds., Wirtschaftslandschaften in Bayern: Studien zur Entstehung und Entwicklung ökonomischer Raumstrukturen vom Mittelalter bis ins 19. Jahrhundert (Munich, 2010); Rolf Kießling, “Wirtschaftslandschaften und (De)Industrialisierung: Oberschwaben,” in Handbuch Landesgeschichte, ed. Werner Freitag, Michael Kißener, Christine Reinle, and Sabine Ullmann (Oldenbourg, 2018), 375–91.↩︎
Wolfgang Stromer, Die Gründung der Baumwollindustrie in Mitteleuropa: Wirtschaftspolitik im Spätmittelalter (Stuttgart, 1978).↩︎
Claus-Peter Clasen, Die Augsburger Weber: Leistungen und Krisen des Textilgewerbes um 1600 (Augsburg, 1981); Claus-Peter Clasen, Textilherstellung in Augsburg in der frühen Neuzeit (Augsburg, 1995).↩︎
Rolf Kießling, Die Stadt und ihr Land: Umlandpolitik, Bürgerbesitz und Wirtschaftsgefüge in Ostschwaben vom 14. bis ins 16. Jahrhundert (Cologne, 1989), esp. 714–741.↩︎
For more on this and for further evidence, see Stromer, Gründung der Baumwollindustrie, 29–42.↩︎
Ibid., 32.↩︎
Benedikt Greiff, ed., “Lukas Rehm: Tagebuch aus den Jahren 1494,” Jahres-Bericht des historischen Kreis-Vereins im Regierungsbezirke von Schwaben und Neuburg 26 (1860), 1–110, esp. 1–2.↩︎
From the large body of research on the Fugger family, see, for instance: Max Jansen, Die Anfänge der Fugger bis 1494 (Leipzig, 1907), 8–23.↩︎
Dieter Voigt, Die Augsburger Baumeisterbücher des 14. Jahrhunderts (Augsburg, 2017), vol. 2, 458–59.↩︎
Ibid., 568.↩︎
Stromer, Gründung der Baumwollindustrie, 36.↩︎
Kießling, Die Stadt und ihr Land, 723.↩︎
Historische Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, ed., Die Chroniken der schwäbischen Städte: Augsburg, vol. 9 (Göttingen, 1929), 219.↩︎
For more on Clemens Jäger, see Gregor Rohmann, ’Eines Erbaren Raths gehorsamer amptman’: Clemens Jäger und die Geschichtsschreibung des 16. Jahrhunderts (Augsburg, 2001).↩︎
Stromer, Gründung der Baumwollindustrie, 37, although the reference there to fl. (Gulden) is incorrect.↩︎
Friedrich Bothe, Die Entwickelung der direkten Besteuerung in der Reichsstadt Frankfurt bis zur Revolution 1612 (Leipzig, 1906), 94. Dr. Peter Geffcken, Munich, kindly brought this source to my attention.↩︎
This detail and the following evidence is supplied by Stromer, Gründung der Baumwollindustrie, 30–31 and 38–42.↩︎
See the map on page 62 of Wolfgang Stromer, “Gewerbereviere und Protoindustrien in Spätmittelalter und Frühneuzeit,” in Gewerbe- und Industrielandschaften vom Spätmittelalter bis ins 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Hans Pohl (Stuttgart, 1986), 39–111, esp. 62.↩︎
Stromer, Gründung der Baumwollindustrie, 26–27.↩︎
Luciana Frangioni, “Sui modi di produzione e sul commercio dei fustagni milanesi alla fine del Trecento. Problemi economici e giuridici,” Nuova Rivista Storica 61 (1977), 493–554 See also

Maureen Fennell Mazzaoui, The Italian Cotton Industry in the Later Middle Ages, 1100 (Cambridge, 1981).↩︎
Ibid., 139.↩︎
Stromer, Gründung der Baumwollindustrie, 130–33.↩︎
Ibid., 30, 43–44.↩︎
Natalie M. Fryde and Wolfgang Stromer, “Hochfinanz, Wirtschaft und Politik im Zeitalter der Kreuzzüge,” in Venedig und die Weltwirtschaft um 1200 (Stuttgart, 1999), 21–52, esp. 43–50.↩︎
Marco Veronesi, Oberdeutsche Kaufleute in Genua, 1350: Institutionen, Strategien, Kollektive (Stuttgart, 2014), 29.↩︎
Hektor Ammann, “Die Anfänge der Leinenindustrie des Bodenseegebiets,” Alemannisches Jahrbuch 1 (1953), 251–313; Werner Schnyder, Handel und Verkehr über die Bündner Pässe im Mittelalter zwischen Deutschland, der Schweiz und Oberitalien (2 vols., Zurich, 1973–1975).↩︎
For a detailed account, see Wiltrud Eikenberg, Das Handelshaus der Runtinger zu Regensburg: Ein Spiegel süddeutschen Rechts-, Handels- und Wirtschaftslebens im ausgehenden 14. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1976).↩︎
See the still-valuable contribution by Otto Stolz, Geschichte des Zollwesens, Verkehrs und Handels in Tirol und Vorarlberg von den Anfängen bis ins 20. Jahrhundert (Innsbruck, 1953). And also Fritz Glauser, “Handel und Verkehr zwischen Schwaben und Italien vom 10. bis 13. Jahrhundert,” in Schwaben und Italien im Hochmittelalter, ed. Helmut Maurer (Stuttgart, 2001), 229–94.↩︎
For more on this, see

Franz-Heinz Hye, “Grundzüge der alten Tiroler Verkehrsgeschichte, dargestellt anhand von Relikten in Sammlungen und im Gelände,” in Alpenübergänge vor 1850: Landkarten, Strassen, Verkehr, ed. Uta Lindgren (Wiesbaden, 1987), 147–55. See also, more recently, Gustav Pfeifer, “Spätmittelalterlicher Verkehrswegebau in den Zentralalpen. Der Kuntersweg im unteren Eisacktal,” in Weg und Steg: Aspekte des Verkehrswesens von der Spätantike bis zum Ende des Alten Reiches, ed. Nina Gallion and Kurt Andermann (Stuttgart, 2018).↩︎
Klaus Fischer, “Das Rodfuhrwesen zwischen Augsburg und Venedig vom 13. bis zur Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts,” in SchwabenTirol: Historische Beziehungen zwischen Schwaben und Tirol von der Römerzeit bis zur Gegegenwart: Beiträge, ed. Wolfram Baer and Pankraz Fried (Rosenheim, 1989), 240–50. Fisher’s essay includes a map.↩︎
Franz Bastian, Das Runtingerbuch 1383 und verwandtes Material zum Regensburger südostdeutschen Handel und Münzwesen (Regensburg, 1935), vol. 1, 548–58.↩︎
Stromer, Gründung der Baumwollindustrie, 140–41.↩︎
Manfred Vasold, “Die Ausbreitung des Schwarzen Todes in Deutschland nach 1348: Zugleich ein Beitrag zur deutschen Bevölkerungsgeschichte,” Historische Zeitschrift 277 (2003), 281–308; Manfred Vasold, Die Pest: Ende eines Mythos (Stuttgart, 2003), 110–23.↩︎
A detailed account with extensive evidence is given in Rolf Kießling, “Der Schwarze Tod und die weißen Flecken: Zur Großen Pest von 1348/49 im Raum Ostschwaben und Altbayern,” Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte 68 (2005), 519–39.↩︎
Raphael Matthias Krug, “Pest in Augsburg 1348? Eine Studie zur Frage eines Pestvorkommens zu Zeiten des Schwarzen Todes in Europa,” in Stadt und Land in der Geschichte Ostschwabens, ed. Rolf Kießling (Augsburg, 2005), 285–321.↩︎
Wendelin Haid, ed., “Liber taxationis (et Liber marcarum) ecclesiarum et beneficiorum in diocesi Constantiensi de anno 1353,” Freiburger Diözesanarchiv 5 (1870), 1–118. Recently on the same topic Wolfgang Scheffknecht, “Klima, Pest und Bevölkerungsentwicklung im Bodenseeraum vom 14. bis frühen 17. Jahrhundert,” in Herrschaft, Markt und Umwelt. Wirtschaft in Oberschwaben 1300, ed. Sigrid Hirbodian, Rolf Kießling, and Edwin E. Weber (Stuttgart, 2019), 53–76, esp. 53–62.↩︎
Michael Toch, Die ältesten Rechnungsbücher des Klosters Scheyern 1339, vol. 3 (Munich, 2000), 43*.↩︎
Bernhard Lübbers, Die ältesten Rechnungen des Klosters Aldersbach (1291/1409, vol. 3 (Munich, 2009), CXVII.↩︎
Amtsbücher – Archivium spirituale, KL Kaisheim, no. 7 (Bavarian State Archive, Augsburg); for more, see Rolf Kießling, “Zur Entstehung von Wirtschaftslandschaften im Spätmittelalter,” in Wirtschaftslandschaften in Bayern: Studien zur Entstehung und Entwicklung ökonomischer Raumstrukturen vom Mittelalter bis ins 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Rolf Kießling and Helmut Flachenecker (Munich, 2010), 15–54, esp. 33–37.↩︎
Walter Bauernfeind, Materielle Grundstrukturen im Spätmittelalter und der Frühen Neuzeit. Preisentwicklung und Agrarkonjunktur am Nürnberger Getreidemarkt von 1339 bis 1670 (Nuremberg, 1993).↩︎
Hermann Hoffmann, Die ältesten Urbare des Reichsstiftes Kaisheim 1319, vol. 1: Urbare ´(Augsburg, 1959).↩︎
Amtsbücher – Reichsstift Kaisheim, KL Kaisheim, no. 1081, 1082, 1085 (Bavarian State Archive, Augsburg).↩︎
Klaus Fehn, Siedlungsgeschichtliche Grundlagen der Herrschafts- und Gesellschaftsentwicklung in Mittelschwaben: Aufgezeigt am Beispiel der spätmittelalterlichen Rodungssiedlungen (Augsburg, 1966).↩︎
The figures are taken from Raphael Matthias Krug, “’Es ist doch zem Jungsten ein end daran’: Die Augsburger Steuerbücher im Spätmittelalter (1346) als Medium städtischer Verwaltung.” (Ph.D. diss., Universität Augsburg, 2006).↩︎
For more on this, see Kießling, Die Stadt und ihr Land, 723–25.↩︎
Reinhold Christopher Mueller, “Peste e demografia: Medioevo e Rinascimento,” in Venezia e la peste, 1348 (Venice, 1979), 93–96.↩︎
Klaus Bergdolt, Der Schwarze Tod in Europa: Die Große Pest und das Ende des Mittelalters (Munich, 1994), 39–57.↩︎
Mazzaoui, Italian Cotton Industry, 79–82.↩︎
Stromer, Gründung der Baumwollindustrie, 157–58.↩︎
Veronesi, Oberdeutsche Kaufleute in Genua, 29–38.↩︎
Stromer, Gründung der Baumwollindustrie, 139.↩︎
Kießling, Die Stadt und ihr Land, 722–23; Friedrich Wielandt, Das Konstanzer Leinengewerbe, vol. 1: Geschichte und Organisation (Konstanz, 1950), 15–26.↩︎
Stromer, Gründung der Baumwollindustrie, 31.↩︎
Christian Meyer, Das Stadtbuch von Augsburg insbesondere das Stadtrecht vom Jahre 1276 (Augsburg, 1872), 69, amendment to art. 26.↩︎
Pfandbuch I: 1329-1464, p. 9 (Municipal Archive Nördlingen); see Kießling, Die Stadt und ihr Land, 215–19.↩︎
See KießlingDie Stadt und ihr Land, 216–217, table 4a: Barchentverleger in Nördlingen, 1392–1420.↩︎
See Peter Geffcken, “Soziale Schichtung in Augsburg 1396 bis 1521. Beitrag zu einer Strukturanalyse Augsburgs im Spätmittelalter.” (Ph.D. diss., Ludwig-Maximilians-Unviersität, 1983), appendix, 6-12, table I: Steuerkonten zum Jahr 1396.↩︎
Peter Geffcken, “Egen,” in Augsburger Stadtlexikon, ed. Günther Grünsteudel, Günter Hägele, and Rudolf Frankenberger, Second ed. (Augsburg, 1998), 372.↩︎
See Peter Geffcken, “Die Welser und ihr Handel 1246,” in Die Welser: Neue Forschungen zur Geschichte und Kultur des oberdeutschen Handelshauses, ed. Mark Häberlein and Johannes Burkhardt (Berlin, 2002), 27–167, esp. 68–79.↩︎
Peter Geffcken, “Bach,” in Augsburger Stadtlexikon, ed. Günther Grünsteudel, Günter Hägele, and Rudolf Frankenberger, Second ed. (Augsburg, 1998), 265; Peter Geffcken, “Rehm,” in Augsburger Stadtlexikon, ed. Günther Grünsteudel, Günter Hägele, and Rudolf Frankenberger, Second ed. (Augsburg, 1998), 742.↩︎
See Rolf Kießling, “Bürgerlicher Besitz auf dem Land - ein Schlüssel zu den Stadt-Land-Beziehungen im Spätmittelalter, aufgezeigt am Beispiel Augsburgs und anderer ostschwäbischer Städte,” in Bayerisch-Schwäbische Landesgeschichte an der Universität Augsburg 1975, ed. Pankraz Fried (Sigmaringen, 1979), 121–40; Rolf Kießling, “Herrschaft, Markt, Landbesitz. Aspekte der Zentralität und der Stadt-Land-Beziehungen spätmittelalterlicher Städte an ostschwäbischen Beispielen,” in Zentralität als Problem der mittelalterlichen Stadtgeschichtsforschung, ed. Emil Meynen (Cologne, 1979), 180–218.↩︎
See Rolf Kießling, “Der Markt Zusmarshausen im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit,” in Zusmarshausen: Markt, Pflegamt, Landgericht und Bezirksamt, ed. Walter Pötzl (Zusmarshausen, 1992), 44–90, esp. 44–46; Citation? Rolf Kießling, “Der Markt Zusmarshausen im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit,” in Zusmarshausen: Markt, Pflegamt, Landgericht und Bezirksamt, ed. Walter Pötzl (Zusmarshausen, 1992), 44–90, esp. 44–46; Wolfgang Wüst, “Zusmarshausen: Die Entwicklung eines bischöflichen Amtsorts,” in Zusmarshausen: Markt, Pflegamt, Landgericht und Bezirksamt, ed. Walter Pötzl (Zusmarshausen, 1992), 91–155, esp. 92–93.↩︎
Henry Simonsfeld, Der Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venedig und die deutsch-venetianischen Handelsbeziehungen (Stuttgart, 1887), esp. vol. 1, 97–98 (No. 217–218) and vols. 2, 58.↩︎
Kießling, Die Stadt und ihr Land, 722–23.↩︎
Ibid., 482.↩︎
Ibid., 725.↩︎
Eugen Nübling, Ulms Baumwollweberei im Mittelalter (Leipzig, 1890), 149.↩︎
For a detailed account, see the relevant passages in Kießling, Die Stadt und ihr Land, esp. 721–42.↩︎
Kießling, “Entstehung von Wirtschaftslandschaften,” 15–54, esp. 21–25.↩︎
See Stromer, Gründung der Baumwollindustrie, 30–31, 40–41, 61–62.↩︎
See Kießling, “Wirtschaftslandschaften und (De)Industrialisierung,” 378–80.↩︎

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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Network in Bamberg

by Mark Häberlein, Michaela Schmölz-Häberlein

translated by Andrew Godfrey and Ellen Yutzy Glebe

2020-10-8

You can cite this article e.g. Mark Häberlein, Michaela Schmölz-Häberlein, “Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Network in Bamberg” in Bavarian Studies in History and Culture (2020) [originally published in German 2018], last modified 2020-10-8, https://www.bavarian-studies.org/2020/haeberlein-schmoelz.

This article is a translation and was originally published in German as:

Mark Häberlein and Michaela Schmölz-Häberlein. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegels Bamberger Netzwerk, in Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte 81 (2018), 627-655

DOI: https://doi.org/10.48357/bshc/2020.1

This text is open access and licensed under the terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Mark Häberlein, Michaela Schmölz-Häberlein

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Network in Bamberg

translated by Andrew Godfrey and Ellen Yutzy Glebe

2020-10-8

DOI: https://doi.org/10.48357/bshc/2020.1

This text is open access and licensed under terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Image: Public Domain

Portrait of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel by Jakob Schlesinger, 1831

1. From Jena to Bamberg

The twin battles of Jena and Auerstedt, in which Napoleon’s forces crushed the Prussian troops, and the destruction and pillaging in their wake, fundamentally changed life in the Thuringian city of Jena. Teaching at the university was temporarily suspended, student numbers fell sharply, and many professors left the city to seek employment elsewhere. These included the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), who had lived in Jena since early 1801 and been appointed professor there in 1805 (unsalaried at first, though he later drew a modest stipend). Hegel initially left the city only temporarily, between early November and mid-December 1806, so that he could oversee the printing of his Phenomenology of Spirit by the publisher Anton Göbhardt in Bamberg. Upon his return, he found himself facing great personal and professional difficulties. On February 8, 1807, his former housekeeper, Christiane Charlotte Burckhardt (née Fischer), gave birth to their son, Georg Ludwig Friedrich Fischer. Hegel had no plans to marry her, and mother and child stayed behind in Jena when he departed to Bamberg for the second time in early March 1807.¹

Although Hegel had considered moving to Bamberg already in late 1800,² the final decision to do so was primarily due to his difficult circumstances. His biographer Terry Pinkard writes: “When, out of the blue, [Friedrich Immanuel] Niethammer offered him a position as editor of a newspaper in Bamberg, Hegel jumped at the chance, although it is clear that he did it with some regret.”³ Although Hegel accepted the editor’s job at the Bamberger Zeitung for want of any other alternatives, he saw it as a strictly temporary solution, “something to which he was not completely averse but which was clearly second-best for him.”⁴ He still hoped to pursue an academic career,⁵ writing in June 1808 to the Jena publisher Carl Friedrich Ernst Frommann: “I cannot go there without a respectable salary, but with one, I would love to, and, if I consider the matter well, would rather go nowhere else. Apart from Jena I almost despair of obtaining honorable work again.”⁶

Although biographical studies have paid some attention to Hegel’s work as an editor in Bamberg,⁷ details of his social life there are generally scant and confine themselves to lists of his activities as well as his friends and acquaintances in the city.⁸ Hegel’s correspondence during his time in Bamberg—from March 1807 to November 1808—suggests that he associated mainly with doctors, clergymen, civil servants, and army officers. While some of these individuals were prominent figures in the city’s history or in the wider intellectual, literary, and educational history of the period, of others there is little trace beyond Hegel’s mentions of them in his correspondence. This article examines the biographies and networks of Hegel’s Bamberg acquaintances more closely and situates them within their historical context in order to give a clearer picture of the philosopher’s social circle during his Bamberg years than previous accounts and to shed further light on the intellectual and social changes that were occurring in the city at the turn of the nineteenth century.

2. Context

The context of Hegel’s life and work in Bamberg between spring 1807 and fall 1808 was shaped by four main factors. The first and probably most important was the secularization of the prince-bishopric [Hochstift] after the city was occupied by Bavarian forces in fall 1802, ending Bamberg’s centuries-old status as an independent ecclesiastical territory. Bamberg, with a population of 18,388 in 1804, went from being the capital of an autonomous territory and residence of a prince-bishop to a provincial Bavarian town.⁹ While some of the city’s residents lost out as a result (the cathedral chapter and university were closed, the prince-bishopric’s bureaucracy and most of the monasteries were dissolved), for others it meant new opportunities. Prior to 1802, Bamberg had been the seat of a Catholic bishopric, and Protestants were unable to practice their religion openly; following its incorporation into Bavaria, the city became multidenominational. The local Protestants were granted the old collegiate church of St. Stephan’s, where they held services from 1806 onwards.¹⁰ Bamberg also underwent major health and social reforms. Adalbert Friedrich Marcus (1753–1816),¹¹ the former personal physician to the prince-bishop, had become founding director of Bamberg’s pioneering general hospital in 1789, but his career subsequently stalled under the reign of the last prince-bishop, Christoph Franz von Buseck (r. 1795–1802). Marcus took the change of rulers as an opportunity to secure the post of medical director for Franconia and implement wide-ranging reforms. In late April 1803, Marcus wrote to Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling that he wanted “to bring medical institutions in Franconia to a point without precedent in Germany.”¹² During that year, he proceeded with breathtaking speed to that end, founding a health board, a hospice, a maternity home, training centers for midwives and medical orderlies, a medical and surgical academy, and a psychiatric institute. As a result, Bamberg’s healthcare system was soon highly advanced by the standards of the time. In May 1803, Schelling wrote to Hegel, “Marcus governs land and people, and his hospital, which is now a medical school, is set up superbly once again.”¹³

Bamberg’s resulting reputation among educated Central Europeans as a center for pioneering medicine was a second key factor that shaped Hegel’s time in the city. Aside from the hospital, this renown was due mainly to Marcus and his intermittent deputy Andreas Röschlaub (1768–1835) championing the new, much-discussed Brunonian theory of medicine, which they began provisionally implementing in Bamberg in the mid-1790s. The Bamberg physicians’ reforms and experiments attracted hordes of young doctors to the city in the years around 1800. A visit by the philosopher Schelling began a phase of collaboration with Marcus and Röschlaub that culminated in Marcus and Schelling copublishing the Yearbooks of Medicine as a Science (Jahrbücher der Medicin als Wissenschaft, 1805–1808).¹⁴

When Marcus became increasingly attracted to Schelling’s Naturphilosophie, however, it caused a rift between him and Röschlaub, who had developed the Brunonian model into his own theory of excitation.¹⁵ Exasperated by Marcus’s egotism and intellectual fickleness, Röschlaub accepted a post in Landshut in 1802, and Marcus replaced him with the young physician Conrad Joseph Kilian (1771–1811) from Jena, who was a firm proponent of Naturphilosophie.¹⁶ However, Kilian also fell out with Marcus in 1804 after Marcus published a critical article about Würzburg’s university and hospital under Kilian’s name. Kilian, who felt he had been slandered and bullied by Marcus, launched legal proceedings against him and published a lengthy polemic attacking Marcus in 1805.¹⁷

Hegel, who may have met Kilian during his time in Jena, was aware of these events. In December 1804, he wrote to his friend Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer (1766–1848)¹⁸—a philosopher, theologian, and fellow native of Württemberg—“I heard of Marcus’s triumph over Kilian and feel sorry for the latter, who despite his actual legal victory is the defeated party.”¹⁹ In a later letter to Niethammer, dated March 1805, Hegel wrote, “Without a doubt, some fine insights are still to be expected from Kilian and Marcus. Kilian at least does not appear to be as completely laid out on the floor against Marcus as it seems, and at least apparently is still able to knock Marcus down.”²⁰ In November 1805, Hegel received a highly critical report about Röschlaub from his correspondent Karl Wilhelm Gottlob Kastner (1783–1857). Röschlaub was alleged to have plagiarized the dissertation of Karl Eberhard Schelling, brother of the philosopher.²¹ Hence, even before 1807, Hegel was aware of Bamberg’s reputation as a leading center for medicine as well as of the quarrels between some of its preeminent physicians.

A third key factor that shaped the historical context of Hegel’s time in Bamberg was the Coalition Wars against Revolutionary/Napoleonic France, in which the city was repeatedly caught up between 1796 and 1815. Bamberg was first occupied by France in 1796, and was divided between French and Austrian occupying forces from December 1800 until April 1801. In summer 1806, French troops were once again stationed in Bamberg, and Napoleon signed the declaration of war on Prussia in the city in early October that same year.²² When the French forces departed from Bamberg, they were joined by the Alsatian priest Gérard Gley (1761–1830), who had left France in 1791 due to the passing of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. After working as a tutor for aristocratic families in Cologne and Mainz, Gley came to Bamberg in 1794, where he discovered the medieval Heliand manuscript in the cathedral library, worked as a language teacher, and in 1795 became editor of the Bamberger Zeitung, the prince-bishopric’s first independent newspaper.²³ According to Matthias Winkler, the success of the paper—which Gley edited until 1801, and then again from 1804 to 1806, from the rear annex of Marcus’s house²⁴—and of the political supplement Charon demonstrates “the innovativeness of the émigré Gley, who shortly after his arrival in Bamberg identified gaps in the publishing market and managed to tap into potential demand.”²⁵ Gley also studied Kant’s philosophy, and met with Schelling and August Wilhelm Schlegel—with whom Marcus presumably put him in touch—in Bamberg in 1800. In 1805, he traveled to Erlangen to attend Johann Gottfried Fichte’s inaugural lecture.²⁶ When Gley joined the troops commanded by Marshal Louis-Nicolas d’Avoût²⁷ as an interpreter in the fall of 1806 and accompanied them to Prussia and Poland, the editorship was left vacant, and Niethammer subsequently offered the post to Hegel, writing:

The last time the French came through the city, the owner of the local newspaper released its editor, a French émigré, to accompany Marshal Davoust and, hoping for his return, temporarily gave the editorship to Bamberg’s Professor Täuber, who is doing such a marvelous job that he has all but tolled the paper’s death knell. This circumstance, in conjunction with the fact that the previous editor is not coming back, has prompted the newspaper’s owner, Mr. Schneidewind or Schneidewang²⁸ or whatever his peculiar-sounding name may be, to seek assistance as quickly as possible.²⁹

Niethammer was initially offered the post himself but turned it down because he already had too many demands on his time, instead passing the offer along to his friend Hegel.³⁰ The editorship in Bamberg came to Hegel thanks to biographical twists and turns resulting from the Coalition Wars. As a resident of Bamberg, he witnessed further effects of the wars firsthand. By August 1808 at the latest, a large number of wounded French soldiers were accommodated in the city.³¹ The same month, Hegel informed Niethammer that Bavarian troops would be moving out and a “10,000-strong” French division would be stationed in the city.³²

A fourth important contextual factor in Hegel’s experience in Bamberg was the rise of bourgeois society there since the 1790s, which provided new cultural opportunities in a city which had traditionally been dominated by the prince-bishop’s court and other administrative structures. The founding of the Bamberger Zeitung in 1795 is just one of several striking examples of these new developments. Informal weekly meetings of a group of local dignitaries (lawyers, doctors, businesspeople, prosperous artisans) led to the founding of a formalized club in 1792. The physician Marcus was one of the leading figures³³ in the club, which was renamed the “Society of Local Dignitaries” in 1796 and then “the Harmony” in 1808. The club provided a sociable meeting place for Bamberg’s gentry and educated bourgeoisie. It accepted “all persons of rank, artists, businessmen, any respected citizens of a noble, moral character,” and had around two hundred members (including both men and women) during Hegel’s time in Bamberg.³⁴ On New Year’s Eve 1808, the philosopher attended a costume party that Marcus held in honor of the district general commissioner, Count Friedrich Karl von Thürheim (1762–1832).³⁵

Another milestone in the rise of bourgeois society was the founding of Bamberg’s theater. Three years after members of the Society of Local Dignitaries set up an amateur theater in 1797, the prince-bishop appointed Daniel Gottlob Quandt (1762–1815), from Leipzig, to establish a professional ensemble in Bamberg once the ongoing War of the Second Coalition was over. After Quandt’s troupe fell into financial difficulties, he was replaced in spring 1802 by the writer Julius Graf von Soden (1754–1831), who had worked with Gley and Marcus as coeditor of the Bamberger Zeitung and its supplement Charon. Soden purchased a property on Zinkenwörth (now Schillerplatz) and had it converted into a theater. In addition to performances of Soden’s own plays and dramas by the popular contemporary playwrights August Wilhelm Iffland and August von Kotzebue, the theater presented older popular works including Schiller’s The Robbers, Lessing’s Emilia Galotti, and Mozart’s operas.³⁶ However, the running costs exceeded Soden’s means, and he was forced to sell the theater in February 1808 (i.e. while Hegel was living in Bamberg) to the innkeeper Anna Maria (Nanette) Kauer. Kauer refurbished the theater and Gesellschaftshaus (a venue for social and cultural events), but its financial situation remained precarious, and there was a frequent turnover of directors.³⁷

3. Montgelas’s Man in Bamberg: Joseph du Terrail Bayard (1765–1815)

Niethammer, who was appointed Protestant school superintendent for Franconia in 1806, undoubtedly played the key part in arranging the editorship for Hegel, but the approval of Joseph du Terrail Bayard, one of the most influential Bavarian officials in the former prince-bishopric, was clearly significant as well. Niethammer, to whom Bayard initially offered the job, passed the offer to his friend Hegel “after reminding Privy Councilor von Bayard of the matter yesterday,” and Bayard himself took over the editorship until Hegel’s arrival.³⁸ In his reply to Niethammer, Hegel signaled that he was interested in principle, and added, “It will be a very advantageous circumstance in this regard for me to deal with Privy Councillor von Bayard.”³⁹ In Bamberg, the philosopher and the Bavarian civil servant were in regular contact. In July 1807, for instance, Hegel let Niethammer know that Bayard had asked after him.⁴⁰ However, when political tensions ran high in Bamberg a month later—“Patrols have abounded in the city for several nights and days,” as Hegel wrote to Niethammer—contact with Bayard appears to have become more difficult:

I have not dared cross Mr. von Bayard’s path at such a time […] I gather that he withdrew from all the managing. Anyone who claimed to the people of Bamberg—you know how they are—that the district government showed much intelligence in operations that contradicted and canceled one another every hour would have gained the reputation among them of having a mania for paradox.⁴¹

In a letter to Niethammer from January 1808, Hegel described Bayard as having a “good head,” but

he is such a completely practical administrator that he has often explained to me that he puts no stock in theory if it does not have a so-called practical use. He shares the usual Bavarian ideas in other ways as well: that Bavarians have an excellent [basic] nature, and that it would not be easy to find elsewhere peasants with such native wit, and so on. This is the sort of reply one hears when the scientific standing, culture, and knowledge expected of every educated man come up for discussion, and when the lack of it in Bavaria is remarked. I told him on one occasion that Bavaria has been a real blot on the luminous painting that is Germany. He thought this was nothing but a self-conceit of Saxons or Protestants who do not want to hear of [Andreas] Lamey,⁴² the founders of the Academy, and so on.⁴³

Hegel mentioned Bayard again in a letter to Niethammer in 1810, by which point Hegel had already moved to Nuremberg.⁴⁴

An attempt to trace Bayard’s biography, of which no in-depth study has yet been published, reveals primarily that he was close to Bavaria’s leading statesman of the day, Maximilian von Montgelas (1759–1838). Bayard came from the County of Artois and is said to have completed part of his education in Paris, in addition to having been enrolled at the University of Ingolstadt as a student of logic between 1783 and 1785.⁴⁵ According to the historian Joachim Heinrich Jäck, he subsequently entered the service of Duke Charles II August of Palatine-Zweibrücken (1746–1795), whose brother would later become Elector Maximilian IV Joseph of Bavaria.⁴⁶ From the early 1790s onwards, Bayard worked as a secretary at the Palatine-Bavarian embassy to the Franconian Imperial Circle in Nuremberg, and in 1792 he became editor of the Teutsche Ministerialzeitung (renamed Deutsche Staats- und Ministerialzeitung in 1793), a Nuremberg newspaper opposed to the French Revolution.⁴⁷ In 1794, Bayard received permission from the Palatine-Bavarian elector to wear the uniform of a lieutenant à la suite.⁴⁸ His duties in Nuremberg included “monitoring attempts by foreign powers to recruit deserters and subjects of the principality, and buying military gear and other items back from them,” in addition to carrying out covert recruitment for the Eleventh Palatine-Bavarian Fusilier Regiment.⁴⁹

Between 1794 and 1798, Bayard regularly supplied Montgelas—who at that time was living in Ansbach as secretary to the exiled Duke of Zweibrücken (the later Maximilian IV Joseph) and working on reforms of the Bavarian civil service⁵⁰—with information about the affairs of the Franconian Circle and messages that arrived in Nuremberg from Paris and Vienna. In March 1795, for instance, he reported on the election of Georg Karl Ignaz von Fechenbach zu Laudenbach (r. 1795–1808) as Prince-Bishop of Würzburg. He also sent Montgelas excerpts from French newspapers.⁵¹

Karl August von Hardenberg (1750–1822), Prussia’s leading statesman in Franconia, evidently took notice of Bayard’s talents, recruiting him into Prussian service and even sending him on a diplomatic mission to Paris.⁵² After Bayard had, according to his own words, “served under three royal ministers […] in Prussia,” he returned to Bavarian service in 1800,⁵³ when he was appointed to a post in the foreign ministry. Upon taking up the office in February, he received a special allowance of three hundred gulden.⁵⁴ In his new role, Bayard attended meetings of the Bavarian state council, established in 1799, where he took positions on a variety of issues and presented several rescripts.⁵⁵ Given Bayard’s earlier work for the Teutsche Ministerialzeitung in Nuremberg and Hegel’s later appointment in Bamberg, it is notable that, in a state council meeting on March 10, 1802, Bayard presented a draft rescript on a matter relating to press affairs that outlined the conditions under which the Duchy of Berg’s privy councilor Johann Anton Mannes should be permitted, subject to certain conditions, “to transform his Düsseldorf gazette into a general advertiser for the Duchy of Berg.”⁵⁶

Following his final state council meeting in October 1802,⁵⁷ Bayard was appointed director of the first deputation of the Würzburg district government in 1803, making him the highest-ranking Bavarian official in the former bishopric after Count Thürheim, general commissioner for the Franconian principalities.⁵⁸ In June 1803, Elector Maximilian IV Joseph promoted Bayard to the rank of full privy councilor “in recognition of our exceptional satisfaction with his services.”⁵⁹ In early October 1805, he met in Würzburg with the commissaires des guerres of the first and second corps of the Napoleonic army in his capacity as the Bavarian representative to negotiate arrangements for supplying French troops in Northern Franconia.⁶⁰ According to Jäck, Bayard met his wife the same year while performing administrative duties in Ansbach.⁶¹

While Bayard resided in Würzburg, artists such as the painter Johann Martin von Wagner (1771–1858) sought his patronage,⁶² and he socialized with Schelling (who was a professor in Würzburg between 1803 and 1806), his wife Caroline, and Meta Forkel-Liebeskind, all of whom were also acquainted with Hegel. In May 1806, for instance, Caroline wrote to Schelling that Bayard had told her “about a letter from Liebeskind to you” that, because it had been “addressed to him,” had “traveled halfway through Germany before finally reaching you.”⁶³

In 1808, Bayard was appointed chancellor of the Main district, with its seat in Bamberg. The post came with an annual salary of 2,600 gulden, making him Bavaria’s second-highest government representative in the district after general commissioner Stephan Freiherr von Stengel (1750–1822), who collected a salary of 6,000 gulden.⁶⁴ In fall 1810, Bayard moved to Ansbach to take up the post of district chancellor for the Rezat district,⁶⁵ but in 1814—one year before his death—he is once again referred to as district chancellor in Bamberg. He died in Ansbach at the age of fifty.⁶⁶

In sum, Bayard was a civil servant who clearly enjoyed the trust of Montgelas and, after several years of service in the state council, was one of the most influential officials in Bavaria’s new Franconian territories from 1803 onwards. He also had a particular interest in press matters and actually worked as a newspaper editor at several points. Although Hegel described him as a pragmatic “administrator,” he appears to have also cultivated friendships with artists and intellectuals in both Würzburg and Bamberg.

4. Aristocrats, Academics, and Army Officers

In a letter to Niethammer’s wife Rosine Eleonore in late May 1807, Hegel concisely summed up their mutual Bamberg acquaintances:

I meet Fuchs at times. I see the Bengels⁶⁷ at times while taking a walk. The tea circle is not as organized during the summer. I am frequently at Ritter’s […] and at Mrs. von Jolli’s. I also frequent Diruf’s house. […] I have been made acquainted with the Countess Rotenhahn⁶⁸ as well. She is a particularly respectable woman, and her daughters are likewise as natural and good-natured as they are educated and full of talents.⁶⁹

A look at the biographies of the individuals mentioned in this passage reveals that they were mainly scholars and army officers and their wives who, like Hegel himself, had only been in Bamberg for a short time. The Protestant theologian Karl Heinrich Fuchs (1773–1847) came from a Huguenot family in Heidelberg. After attending school and university there, he accepted a pastorate in Wachenheim an der Haardt in the Palatinate in 1796. Three years later, he became a Reformed military chaplain in Carl Philipp Joseph von Wrede’s (1767–1838) Electoral Palatine-Bavarian Brigade. He came to Würzburg in 1803 with the army of Lieutenant General Friedrich Wilhelm zu Isenburg during the bishopric’s secularization. There he worked as a Protestant pastor—first for military personnel, later for all the city’s Protestant residents—and consistorial councilor. In 1804, the local university awarded Fuchs a doctorate and gave him a temporary post as professor of theology. Like Bayard, Fuchs moved from Würzburg to Bamberg in 1806, after Würzburg became capital of the newly formed Grand Duchy of Franconia. In 1807, he married Friederike Vogel, the daughter of a treasury official from Bayreuth.⁷⁰ After serving in Bamberg as pastor of the newly opened Protestant church of St. Stephan’s and as a consistorial councilor, Fuchs moved to Regensburg in 1810 to take up a post as dean. He subsequently spent a period in Ansbach before ending his career in Munich as senior consistorial councilor and second preacher [zweiter Hauptprediger]. A eulogy printed after Fuchs’s death in 1847 said that he had devoted himself to the “uniquely difficult task” of establishing Protestant worship in Bamberg “with prudence, intelligence, noble dignity, and firm resolve.”⁷¹

Like Bayard’s, Fuchs’s career took numerous unexpected turns due to the upheavals of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era. Moreover, like Bayard, he played a part in integrating the secularized Franconian bishoprics into the Bavarian state. Hegel mentions Fuchs several times in his correspondence.⁷² In July 1807, the philosopher commented on the pastor’s wife: “Young [Miss] Fuchs’s father [Karl Heinrich Fuchs] has a splendid garden and hothouse in Bayreuth, but his daughter’s hothouse warm feeling in Bamberg perhaps does not meet with a similarly hot embrace by others.”⁷³ In January 1808 Hegel wrote to Niethammer, “The local Protestant Church will be opened in a week. [Karl] Fuchs is having an invitational text printed. I have just read the proofs.”⁷⁴ Hegel also refers to the grave illness of the Fuchses’ eldest child in one of his letters.⁷⁵

The “Mrs. von Jolli” whom Hegel mentions several times in his correspondence with obvious admiration⁷⁶ was born Marie Eleonore Alt. Although originally from Bamberg, she married an army officer from elsewhere and left the city with him a few years later. Her husband, Ludwig (Louis) Jolly (1780–1853), came, like Fuchs, from a Huguenot family in the Palatinate; his father was the pastor of a Walloon church in Mannheim. At the age of fifteen, Ludwig Jolly joined an Electoral Palatine-Bavarian fusilier regiment and embarked on a military career. In 1803, he was posted to the garrison in Bamberg, where he met the seventeen-year-old Marie Eleonore, a Catholic registrar’s daughter. He married her in October of the following year. Jolly returned to war in 1805, and in 1806 came back from the War of the Fourth Coalition with the rank of captain. In 1808, their first daughter was born, and they spent half a year in Nuremberg. The following year, he left the army and returned with Marie Eleonore (now pregnant again) to his native Mannheim, where he later became mayor and a successful businessman.⁷⁷

Karl Jakob Diruf (1774–1869), with whose family Hegel was on sociable terms, was likewise a native of the Electoral Palatine, and his name again suggests Huguenot ancestry. Diruf studied philosophy and medicine in his home city of Heidelberg before practicing in Heilbronn. Later, he served as a doctor in the Austrian army and became a prosector⁷⁸ at the veterinary school in Munich. He also taught at Munich’s medical school and trained orderlies at the Herzog-Josephs-Spital. Subsequently he accompanied the Bavarian crown prince (the later Ludwig I) on trips to Landshut, Göttingen, Italy, and France. In late 1805, Diruf was posted to Bamberg as medical councilor and junior physician with responsibility for medical and charitable institutions.⁷⁹ He took over from Kilian as deputy to the aforementioned Marcus.⁸⁰ It did not take long for relations to cool between Diruf and his superior. In 1807, a row broke out with Marcus and the committee responsible for supervising Bamberg’s hospital, because Diruf refused to compile monthly statistics on the patients.⁸¹ As a result, Marcus threw his weight behind his nephew Karl Moritz Marc (1784–1855) and tried to have him replace Diruf. In a petition to the Bavarian Interior Ministry in September 1807, Marcus claimed that “medical councilor Diruf’s behavior suggests he himself wishes to be posted elsewhere.”⁸² Despite this, Diruf retained the post for the time being, although he mainly worked in the psychiatric institute and hospice to avoid further conflict with Marcus. Diruf also taught at the Bamberg medical and surgical academy, and, when this was reorganized into a school for country doctors in fall 1809, he was given responsibility for teaching anthropology, zoology, physics, and public health [Staatsarzneywissenschaft].⁸³ In January 1810, he moved to the Grand Duchy of Würzburg, where he worked as a general practitioner, medical councilor, and spa physician in Bocklet.⁸⁴ Another point of interest in the present context is Diruf’s publication of a work on natural explanations of meteorites [Ideen zur Naturerklärung der Meteor- oder Luftsteine] in Göttingen in 1805, a topic that Hegel later addressed in his lectures on the philosophy of nature.⁸⁵

Hegel’s circle of acquaintances in Bamberg was thus made up of well-educated individuals who rarely settled in one place for long and whose path of migration brought them to Bamberg during the tumultuous period between 1802 and 1810. In late 1807, this group expanded to include a married couple whom he described as a “new acquisition” for the city: the lawyer and flute virtuoso Johann Heinrich Liebeskind (1768–1847) and his wife Sophia Margarethe Dorothea, known as Meta (1765–1853). The daughter of the Göttingen theologian Rudolph Wedekind had already had an eventful life by this point: having separated from her first husband, the music scholar Johann Nicolaus Forkel, after a brief marriage, Meta Liebeskind had a year-long affair with the poet Gottfried August Bürger, who afterwards scornfully referred to her in letters and poems as Furciferaria (a reference to the Latin furcifer, a fork fitted around the necks of slaves in ancient Roman times, combined here with sexual overtones). Beginning in the late 1780s, she translated numerous works from English and French, including Constantin-François Volney’s Les Ruines, ou méditations sur les révolutions des empires (1791), Thomas Paine’s political treatise Rights of Man (1792), and William Godwin’s novel Caleb Williams (1795). During the Republic of Mainz (1792/93), she moved in the circles of leading Jacobins, including Georg Foster and her brother Georg Wedekind. Because of these personal ties, she was imprisoned for a period after the republic’s fall. In 1794, she married Liebeskind, two years after she had given birth to his son in the village of Vorra in the parish of Frensdorf, not far from Bamberg. The child was christened Adalbert Joseph Anton, and his godparents are listed as the Bamberg physician Marcus and Joseph Sippel, a pharmacist, city councilor, and professor of natural science at the University of Bamberg.⁸⁶ The Liebeskinds lived in Riga, Königsberg (1794), and Ansbach (1797), before moving in spring 1807 to Bamberg, where Johann took up a post in the judiciary.⁸⁷

Hegel wrote about Meta in a letter to Niethammer (in which he presumed that the free-spirited author and translator would “not be unknown” to his friend):

Her friendship with Mrs. [Caroline] Schelling might perhaps—depending on one’s judgment of the latter—add some timidity to one’s curiosity to get to know her. She seemed good-natured to me, and he is indeed quite a charming man. The manners and culture of the rest of Bamberg are perhaps not completely suited to this family, and are perhaps even somewhat opposed to it. So I am all the more inclined to think I will find an interesting, free and easy circle of friends here.⁸⁸

Meta had known Caroline Böhmer-Schlegel-Schelling, the daughter of the Göttingen orientalist Johann David Michaelis, since her youth. They had lived together during the time of the Republic of Mainz, and Meta had visited her in Jena in 1797 en route from Königsberg to Ansbach, and later in Würzburg in 1804. The record of this second visit shows that she was acquainted with Bayard as well.⁸⁹

For a while, close personal relations developed between Liebeskind, his wife, and Hegel. “The Liebeskinds are a great acquisition for me,” Hegel wrote to Niethammer on July 8, 1807, “I visit almost no other house.”⁹⁰ A month later, the philosopher informed his friend that “a few days ago I played a game of l’hombre with the Countess [Julie] von Soden hosted at Mrs. Liebeskind’s.”⁹¹ However, Liebeskind was transferred to Munich in late 1807, so their personal contact with Hegel lasted only a few months.⁹²

The handful of Catholic families that Hegel associated with included Georg Franz Pflaum (1778–1807) and his wife. Pflaum and his father, Matthäus Pflaum (1748–1821), a privy councilor and judicial official who rose to prominence as a criminal law reformer in the Prince-Bishopric of Bamberg in the 1790s,⁹³ were also friends with Niethammer. Georg Pflaum’s career began under the last prince-bishop of Bamberg, Christoph Franz von Buseck. In the court almanac of 1796, Pflaum is listed as a canon [Domicellar] at the collegiate chapter of St. Stephan.⁹⁴ He was promoted the following year, and later became privy councilor [Hofrat] and junior treasury counsellor [zweiter Kammerkonsulent]. On September 2, 1802, he married Barbara Schlehlein, daughter of the senior civil servant Johann Georg Albert Schlehlein, in a ceremony at the cathedral presided over by the prince-bishop himself.⁹⁵ After secularization, the Bavarian government appointed the ambitious young lawyer to the position of judge.⁹⁶ However, Hegel’s acquaintance with Pflaum was only brief, for on May 2, 1807, just two months after his arrival in Bamberg, Pflaum passed away. The records of the parish of St. Martin’s list the cause of death as “gout and inflammatory fever.”⁹⁷

Hegel immediately passed news of the death to Niethammer:

Pflaum died but two hours ago. This news—which I did not want to delay sending you, dear friend, since I know how much this family interests you—will surprise you as well, since no one expected it. His father told me that the day before yesterday he wrote you convinced that Pflaum felt better—a conviction shared by doctors, acquaintances, and even the patient himself. The illness was a painful gout moving about in the members. He suffered from it greatly, and his wife no less.⁹⁸

In a letter to Niethammer’s wife composed four weeks later, Hegel again referred to the unexpected death and gave a detailed account of the young widow’s grief.⁹⁹ Pflaum had been treated by the physicians Marcus and Johann Philipp Ritter (†1813), both of whom were also personally acquainted with Hegel. According to Jäck, Ritter had introduced the young Marcus (who converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1781) into Bamberg society, and remained friends with him until his death.¹⁰⁰ In a letter to Niethammer in August 1807, Hegel wrote that he enjoyed the “occasional glass of wine after dinner with the honorable Privy Councillor [Johann Philipp] Ritter.”¹⁰¹

5. Complex Relationships: Hegel, the Pauluses, and Adalbert Friedrich Marcus

As we have seen, most of Hegel’s acquaintances in Bamberg were, like himself, outsiders who were only living in the city for a few months or years as a temporary stepping-stone in their careers. Another example of this pattern is the Protestant theologian Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob Paulus (1761–1851) and his wife Karoline. The Pauluses, who, like Hegel, were natives of Württemberg, merit more detailed attention than Hegel’s other acquaintances for two reasons: Firstly, they had first met each other in Jena¹⁰² and subsequently in Nuremberg and Ansbach.¹⁰³ Secondly, Karoline had had an affair with Marcus in Bad Bocklet in summer 1801, which led to her becoming pregnant. Although August Wilhelm, born in spring 1802, was raised in the Paulus household, both mother and father knew that he was Marcus’s son.¹⁰⁴ The family moved to Würzburg—at that time under Bavarian rule—in 1803, where Paulus assumed the post of professor of theology at the university (an appointment that Marcus had a key part in arranging).¹⁰⁵ Things became thorny, however, when Würzburg temporarily regained its status as an independent territory, and Paulus was transferred to Bamberg of all places. Paulus was originally supposed to be given a post at the University of Altdorf, but the district general commissioner Count Thürheim, unimpressed by Paulus’s accomplishments in Würzburg, prevented this. Instead of the professorship, Paulus received the office of consistorial councilor and educational superintendent in Bamberg.¹⁰⁶

The Pauluses moved into Marcus’s home on Lange Straße in central Bamberg in summer 1807.¹⁰⁷ This created a very delicate situation, since not only did Marcus’s wife live there, but also her cousin, with whom Marcus had also had an illegitimate son in 1802. Consequently, Marcus began looking for a second house.¹⁰⁸ Staying in Marcus’s home evidently opened up some promising career opportunities for Paulus, for in August 1807 Hegel wrote to Niethammer: “The Pauluses are connected through Marcus and the wife of the Commercial Councilor with one branch of the [District] President’s [Stengel’s] family.”¹⁰⁹ The “wife of the Commercial Councilor” was Juliana (Esther) Stieglitz (1765–1834), the widow of Marcus’s brother, the Russian commercial councilor Nathan Marc,¹¹⁰ who died in Bamberg in 1801. Her second marriage (in 1810) was to the widowed district general commissioner Stephan von Stengel, who this passage from the letters suggests she was already close friends with in 1807.¹¹¹ Alongside Bayard, Stengel was one of the most influential Bavarian officials in the Main district.¹¹² Marcus gave a New Year’s party in his honor at Bamberg’s Feast of St. Michael in 1808, which Hegel also attended.¹¹³

Hegel evidently hoped his acquaintance with Paulus would bring him financial benefits, too. In late August 1807, he wrote to Niethammer that he had heard that the king had “earmarked 300,000 florins for education, of which 45,000 florins are to fall to the province of Bamberg. I have suggested to Paulus that he should get hold of some of it for me as well, since I also belong in education.” However, the next line indicates that he regarded the theologian as more of an abstract theorist than a practical organizer: “The only question is whether he is sufficiently in command of the empirical side to do so.”¹¹⁴

After the departure of the Liebeskinds, the Pauluses appear to have been one of the central nodes of Hegel’s social network in Bamberg. Alluding to their shared roots in Württemberg and time together in Jena, he wrote to Niethammer in November 1807 that “no people anywhere can compare with those of Jena, and especially with the Swabians of Jena. Just do not whisk Paulus, too, away from here in the organizational shuffle.”¹¹⁵ In a letter to Johann Sulpiz (Melchior Dominikus) Boisserée (1783–1854)—an art collector and friend of Hegel—in August 1808, Dorothea Schlegel (1764–1839) also spoke of the friendship between these two Swabian scholars who had ended up in Bamberg together:

Hegel lives in Bamberg and writes the local newspaper; he spends every evening at Paulus’s house, and since, although I was silent in company, my objections must have been written all over my face, Paulus and Hegel had a conversation with me in a more select circle in which I disputed all manner of things and revealed my thoughts.¹¹⁶

In September 1808, however, it seemed that Paulus would be leaving Bamberg. “Paulus has recently been on the road for school and curriculum inspections,” Hegel wrote to Niethammer,

I am sure the trip showed what an impact a good example can have. He has had occasion to visit Nuremberg with his wife and is impatiently awaiting something in the offing there. […] There is a real earthquake going on here. No one stands fast in his present position. Anyone who has not just been appointed is about to leave, wants to leave, or fears having to.¹¹⁷

A month later, in a letter to Karl Ludwig von Knebel (1744–1834),¹¹⁸ a poet and translator living in Weimar, Hegel wrote regretfully that “the acquaintances I had here, especially Paulus, are being once more dispatched elsewhere in the [mis]organizational shuffle. Paulus will go to Nuremberg as School Councilor; others are off in other directions.”¹¹⁹ However, on October 26, 1808, Hegel was informed by Niethammer (whose reforms have left their mark on the Bavarian school system to this day) that he had been nominated as rector of the gymnasium in Nuremberg and was to begin work there the following week. In the new role, he would be “implementing reforms to the gymnasium under District School Councilor Paulus’s instruction.”¹²⁰ Consequently, Hegel was at least able to maintain this contact—one that was of particular interest due to his relationship with Karoline, which may have been intimate in nature (though it is impossible to say for certain based on the available evidence).¹²¹

6. Observations on the Nature of Hegel’s Bamberg Network

In a 1979 essay, Wolfgang Reinhard observed that urban elites are “not primarily constituted by their members’ possessing the same social attributes, but through the social entanglement [Verflechtung] of these members, which enables, facilitates, and channels interactions.”¹²² Reinhard identified “four categories of personal relations that play a key role as potential bearers of interaction, for it can be shown that ‘networks’ of such relations have enabled not just solitary transactions but the formation of groups.” These four relations are kinship, common regional origin, friendship, and patronage.¹²³

If we analyze Hegel’s network in Bamberg in terms of these categories, kinship clearly played no role (unlike in the next chapter of his life in Nuremberg, where he married Marie Helena Susanna von Tucher, a member of one of the city’s leading patrician families¹²⁴), but common origin, friendship, and patronage were indeed significant factors. Hegel shared a common regional origin (in Protestant Württemberg) with his main correspondent, Niethammer and with the Pauluses. It is also striking that most of Hegel’s central acquaintances in Bamberg were Protestant, and that several of them (Fuchs, Jolly, Diruf) came from the Electoral Palatinate, a southwest German region to which the Swabian Hegel may have felt a closer affinity than to Catholic Franconia. In any case, when Hegel received the offer from Bamberg in early 1807, he was still hoping for an appointment at the University of Heidelberg.¹²⁵

Friendship was definitely an important category in Hegel’s network in Bamberg. He maintained his friendships both by correspondence (especially with Niethammer) and by socializing in person; it is notable that he befriended both men and women.¹²⁶ In his study of correspondence between Würzburg professors around 1800, Clemens Tangerding found that friendships were not cultivated simply for their own sake, but always had an instrumental and strategic character as well:

In the scholars’ correspondence, friendship manifests itself […] as an appeal to inaugurate or to continue mutual aid. It is striking how often professors proclaim friendship to colleagues when they are asking their addressee for something or granting the other person’s request.¹²⁷

Hegel was not the only one cultivating contacts for the sake of his future career; Paulus, to give one example, can also be observed behaving in a very similar way.

The final category, patronage, was one of the most important social relations in the early modern society of estates,¹²⁸ and it continued to play a key role in the politically turbulent period around 1800. It was politically influential men like Bayard and the district general commissioners Thürheim and Stengel who decided on the promotions and postings that determined the course of people’s careers. With respect to finding patronage, Hegel again appears to have corresponded and kept company with the right people.

One thing that is striking is the transitory nature of Hegel’s network. Reading his Bamberg correspondence, one has a sense not of a permanently settled group, but of constant comings and goings. Civil servants were frequently relocated due to Bavaria’s wide-ranging bureaucratic reforms in the wake of secularization and mediatization, while clergymen like Fuchs and doctors like Diruf pulled up stakes after a few years to take up more lucrative posts elsewhere. Hegel likewise saw Bamberg as a mere temporary stopping point: by his own admission, the editorship there was a way of

reaching Bavarian ground and soil at least temporarily, and of having my shoes in it even if not yet my feet. Since this engagement does not bind me to a definite time, in Bamberg I can doubtless for the moment pursue private study and discharge my obligations at the same time.¹²⁹

In this context of high geographic mobility, letters were a crucial method of maintaining relationships between different locations.¹³⁰ This mobility was also a key reason why the scholars and civil servants that this article has focused on did not develop long-lasting ties to Bamberg and its inhabitants;¹³¹ for them, the old seat of the Franconian bishopric, reduced in 1803 to the status of a provincial Bavarian town, was merely a temporary stop along the way to a more lucrative or appealing career opportunity.

Notes

See Kuno Fischer, Hegels Leben, Werke und Lehre, vol. 1 (Heidelberg, 1901), 69–74; Hans Friedrich Fulda, G. W. F. Hegel (Munich, 2003), 272–73; Walter Jaeschke, Hegel-Handbuch: Leben - Werk - Schule (Stuttgart, 2016), 22–24; Terry P. Pinkard, Hegel: A Biography (Cambridge, 2000), 221–33; Karl Rosenkranz, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Leben (Berlin, 1844), 227–31. On Göbhardt, see Karl Klaus Walther, Buch und Leser in Bamberg, 1750-1850: Zur Geschichte der Verlage, Buchhandlungen, Druckereien, Lesegesellschaften und Leihbibliotheken (Wiesbaden, 1999), 122–57 (On the printing of the Phenomenology of Spirit, see p. 154).↩︎
See Pinkard, Hegel, 85; Rosenkranz, Hegel’s Leben, 142–43.↩︎
Pinkard, Hegel, 233.↩︎
Ibid., 236. See also Jaeschke, Hegel-Handbuch, 24.↩︎
Pinkard, Hegel, 233–36.↩︎
Hegel to Frommann, Bamberg, July 9, 1808, in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel, the Letters translated by Clark Butler and Christiane Seiler (Bloomington, 1984), 425. Insertions in square brackets from the letters are taken from these published translations; some of these insertions have been silently elided in the passages quoted here.↩︎
See Wilhelm Raimund Beyer, Zwischen Phänomenologie und Logik: Hegel als Redakteur der Bamberger Zeitung (Frankfurt am Main, 1955); Pinkard, Hegel, 243–47; Manfred Rühl, Journalistik und Journalismen im Wandel: Eine kommunikationswissenschaftliche Perspektive (Wiesbaden, 2011), 101–7; Walther, Buch und Leser in Bamberg, 103–6.↩︎
See Jaeschke, Hegel-Handbuch, 25; Pinkard, Hegel, 247–8.↩︎
See Andreas Schenker, “Die Bevölkerungsentwicklung in Bamberg 1758–1804: Quellen, Verfahren und Daten,” Bericht des Historischen Vereins Bamberg 151 (2015) 185–210, 201.↩︎
Günter Dippold, “Der Umbruch von 1802/04 im Fürstentum Bamberg,” in Bamberg wird bayerisch: Die Säkularisation des Hochstifts Bamberg 1802/03, ed. Renate Baumgärtel-Fleischmann (Bamberg, 2003), 21–69, 21–69; Winfried Theurer and Robert Zink, “Bambergs Wandel von der fürstbischöflichen Residenzstadt zur bayerischen Provinzialstadt,” in Bamberg wird bayerisch: Die Säkularisation des Hochstifts Bamberg 1802/03, ed. Renate Baumgärtel-Fleischmann (Bamberg, 2003), 325–66, 325–66.↩︎
For recent accounts, see Gerhard Aumüller, Adalbert Friedrich Marcus: Der waldeckische Reformer des fränkischen Medizinalwesens und seine Familie (Bad Arolsen, 2016); Mark Häberlein and Michaela Schmölz-Häberlein, Adalbert Friedrich Marcus (1753-1816): Ein Bamberger Arzt zwischen aufgeklärten Reformen und romantischer Medizin (Würzburg, 2016).↩︎
Gustav Leopold Plitt, Aus Schellings Leben: In Briefen (Leipzig, 1869), 1, 457; Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, Briefe und Dokumente: 1775-1803 edited by Horst Fuhrmans (Bonn, 1962), 2, 499.↩︎
Schelling, Briefe und Dokumente: 1775-1803, 284–5. Also cited in Katharina Brauner, “Bamberg als Zentrum der romantischen Medizin: Eine Studie zur Bamberger Heilkunde im 18. und beginnenden 19. Jahrhundert.” (medical diss., University of Würzburg, 2006), 57; Werner Gerabek, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling und die Medizin der Romantik: Studien zu Schellings Würzburger Periode (Frankfurt am Main, 1995), 56; Wolfgang Grünbeck, “Der Bamberger Arzt Dr. Adalbert Friedrich Marcus.” (medical diss., University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, 1971), 48–49.↩︎
See Häberlein and Schmölz-Häberlein, Adalbert Friedrich Marcus, p. esp. 71–160, 201–7, 213–7 and 241–67.↩︎
See on this topic in particular Nelly Tsouyopoulos, Andreas Röschlaub und die romantische Medizin: Die philosophischen Grundlagen der modernen Medizin (Stuttgart, 1982).↩︎
Kilian initially studied theology in his native Würzburg. After being ordained, he moved to Jena, where he converted to Protestantism and began studying medicine. He edited the journal Georgia oder der Mensch im Leben und im Staate (1806/07). On his biography, see Paul Böhmer, “Die medizinischen Schulen Bambergs in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts.” (medical diss., University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, 1970), 103–05.↩︎
Conrad J. Kilian, Meine Zurückberufung nach Franken und Wiederaufnahme daselbst durch Direktor Marcus in Bamberg (Munich, 1805). See also Häberlein and Schmölz-Häberlein, Adalbert Friedrich Marcus, 230–38 and 267–281.↩︎
On Niethammer, see Wilhelm G. Jacobs, “Niethammer, Friedrich Immanuel,” in Neue Deutsche Biographie vol. 19 (Berlin, 1999), 247; Walther, Buch und Leser in Bamberg, 31, 53, 104–5, 154 and 192; Gunther Wenz, ed., Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer (1766-1848): Beiträge zu Biographie und Werkgeschichte (Munich, 2009). Cf. also the short biography in Reinhard Wendt, Die bayerische Konkursprüfung der Montgelas-Zeit: Einführung, historische Wurzeln und Funktion eines wettbewerbsorientierten, leistungsvergleichenden Staatsexamens (Munich, 1984), 178.↩︎
Hegel to Niethammer, Jena, December 10, 1804, in Hegel, Letters, 102.↩︎
Hegel to Niethammer, Jena, March 4, 1805, in ibid., 103 On the “Kilian affair,” see Häberlein and Schmölz-Häberlein, Adalbert Friedrich Marcus, 267–80.↩︎
Kastner to Hegel, Heidelberg, November 15, 1805, in Johannes Hoffmeister, ed., Briefe von und an Hegel: 1785-1812, vol. 1 (Hamburg, 1952), 102–3. “Schelling’s brother is now a general practitioner in Vienna; Röschlaub plagiarized him by translating his Dissertatio Inauguralis Medica word for word and inserting it as the first chapter of his Jaterie without mentioning the dissertation. The most amusing thing about it is that Röschlaub himself sent the Jaterie to Schelling in Würzburg and asked him to check it.”↩︎
Matthias Winkler, “’Noth, Thränen und Excesse aller Art’: Bamberg in der Epoche der Koalitionskriege, 1792–1815,” in Bamberg im Zeitalter der Aufklärung und der Koalitionskriege, ed. Mark Häberlein (Bamberg, 2014), 217–70.↩︎
On Gley, see Mark Häberlein, “’eine schöne, klingende und heute zu Tag unentbehrliche Sprache’: Fremdsprachen und Kulturtransfer in Bamberg im Zeitalter der Aufklärung,” in Bamberg im Zeitalter der Aufklärung und der Koalitionskriege, ed. Mark Häberlein (Bamberg, 2014), 217–70, 71–130, esp. 104–7 and 120–6; Georg Seiderer, Formen der Aufklärung in fränkischen Städten: Ansbach, Bamberg und Nürnberg im Vergleich (Munich, 1997), 64 and 479–483; Bernhard Spörlein, Die ältere Universität Bamberg (1648-1803) (Berlin, 2004), 879, 882–3 and 1318–1320; Walther, Buch und Leser in Bamberg, 28–30, 66, 103 and 191; Matthias Winkler, “Das Exil als Aktions- und Erfahrungsraum: Regionalhistorische Perspektiven auf die französischen Revolutionsemigranten im östlichen Mitteleuropa nach 1789,” Jahrbuch für Regionalgeschichte 33 (2015) 47–72; Matthias Winkler, Die Emigranten der Französischen Revolution in Hochstift und Diözese Bamberg (Bamberg, 2010), 121–29.↩︎
For a detailed account, see Häberlein and Schmölz-Häberlein, Adalbert Friedrich Marcus, 174–80.↩︎
Winkler, “Das Exil als Aktions- und Erfahrungsraum,” 55.↩︎
Ibid., 57.↩︎
Louis-Nicolas d’Avoût (also spelled Davoût or Davoust) (1770–1823) was one of Napoleon’s most skilled generals and played a central part in the battles of Jena and Auerstedt in October 1806. For more on him, see Pierre Charrier, Le maréchal Davoût (Paris, 2005); John G. Gallaher, The Iron Marshal: A Biography of Louis N. Davout (London, 2000).↩︎
He is referring to the Hofkastner Konrad Schneiderbanger. See Walther, Buch und Leser in Bamberg, 103–6 Niethammer was probably confusing the name with that of the lawyer and treasury official [Hofkammerrat] Franz Joseph Adolph Schneidawind (1766–1808), who in 1797 published a two-volume statistical study of the prince-bishopric of Bamberg (Versuch einer statistischen Beschreibung des kaiserlichen Hochstifts Bamberg). For more on Schneidawind, see Seiderer, Formen der Aufklärung in Fränkischen Städten, 292–301 and passim (see references in index).↩︎
Niethammer to Hegel, Bamberg, February 16, 1807, in Hoffmeister, Briefe von und an Hegel, 143–44 (quotation on p. 143). See also Pinkard, Hegel, 240–1; Walther, Buch und Leser in Bamberg, 192.↩︎
See Fischer, Hegels Leben, Werke und Lehre, 73; Pinkard, Hegel, 241; Rosenkranz, Hegel’s Leben, 231.↩︎
Winkler, “Bamberg in der Epoche der Koalitionskriege,” 331–2.↩︎
Hegel to Niethammer, Bamberg, August 20, 1808, in Hegel, Letters, 634.↩︎
Karin Dengler-Schreiber, So ein Theater: Geschichten aus 200 und einem Jahr Bamberger Stadttheater (Bamberg, 2003); Joachim Heinrich Jäck, Adalbert Friedrich Marcus: Nach dem Leben und Charakter geschildert (Erlangen, 1813); Bernhard Schemmel, “Bamberg und die ’Harmonie’ zwischen Aufklärung und Biedermeier,” Jahrbuch für fränkische Landesforschung 53 (1992) 321–33; Karl Friedrich Speyer, Karl Moritz Marc, and Georg Michael Klein, Dr. A. F. Marcus nach seinem Leben und Wirken: Nebst Krankheits-Geschichte, Leichenöffnung, neun Beilagen und dem vollkommen ähnlichen Bildnisse des Verstorbenen (Bamberg, 1817).↩︎
See Dengler-Schreiber, So ein Theater, 53–55; Schemmel, “Bamberg und die ’Harmonie’,” 329–30 ↩︎
See Grünbeck, “Der Bamberger Arzt Dr. Adalbert Friedrich Marcus,” 44–45; Häberlein and Schmölz-Häberlein, Adalbert Friedrich Marcus, 340; Pinkard, Hegel, 248; Schemmel, “Bamberg und die ’Harmonie’,” 332.↩︎
Dengler-Schreiber, So ein Theater, 35–41, 146; Peter Hanke, Ein Bürger von Adel: Leben und Werk des Julius von Soden, 1754-1831 (Würzburg, 1988), 145–7; Friedrich Leist, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Theaters in Bamberg (Bamberg, 1862), 7–8.↩︎
Dengler-Schreiber, So ein Theater, 46–48, 55.↩︎
Niethammer to Hegel, Bamberg, February 16, 1807, in Hoffmeister, Briefe von und an Hegel, 143.↩︎
Hegel to Niethammer, Jena, February 20, 1807, in Hegel, Letters, 126.↩︎
Hegel to Niethammer, Bamberg, July 8, 1807, in ibid., 134.↩︎
Hegel to Niethammer, Bamberg, August 8, 1807, in ibid., 138.↩︎
He is referring here to the historian and librarian Andreas Lamey (1726–1802), who in 1763 was given an appointment at the newly founded Electoral Palatinate Academy of Sciences in Mannheim by Elector Charles Theodore. In 1767, he became editor of the Mannheimer Zeitung. See Peter Fuchs, “Lamey, Andreas,” in Neue Deutsche Biographie vol. 13 (Berlin, 1982), 444–5.↩︎
Hegel to Niethammer, Bamberg, January 22, 1808, in Hegel, Letters, 157.↩︎
Hegel to Niethammer, Nuremberg, May 11, 1810, in ibid., 209.↩︎
Franz Xaver Freninger, Das Matrikelbuch der Universitæt Ingolstadt-Landshut-München Rectoren Professoren Doctoren 1472-1872 Candidaten 1772-1872 (Munich, 1872), 95; Rainer A. Müller, ed., Die Matrikel der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Ingolstadt, Landshut, München, part 1: Ingolstadt, vol. 3: 1750–1800 (Munich, 1979), 201.↩︎
Joachim Heinrich Jäck, “Joseph du Terrail Bayard,” in Wichtigste Lebensmomente aller königl. baierischen Civil- und Militär-Bedienstigten dieses Jahrhunderts vol. 2, ed. Joachim Heinrich Jäck (Augsburg, 1819), 34–35; Esteban Mauerer, ed., Die Protokolle des Bayerischen Staatsrats, 1799 bis 1817, vol. 3: 1808 bis 1810 (Munich, 2010), 160n279. Attempts at biographical reconstruction are complicated by the fact that Jäck’s account contains several inconsistencies.↩︎
Oskar Gross, Zeitschriftenwesen Nürnbergs und der Markgrafschaft Ansbach und Bayreuth im 18. Jahrhundert (Augsburg, 1928), 76–77; Johann Christian Siebenkees, Materialien zur Nürnbergischen Geschichte, vol. 2 (Nuremberg, 1792), 657.↩︎
Personalakte Du Terrail Bayard, Munich, July 7, 1794, in Offizierspersonalakten, no. 77104, (Bavarian Main State Archive, Munich). In the 1794 court and state almanac, Bayard is listed under the “de facto but not de jure secretaries.” Seiner Churfürstlichen Durchleucht zu Pfalzbaiern […] Hof- und Staatskalender für das Jahr […] 1794, Munich 1794, 335. Other mentions can be found in Michael Puchta, Mediatisierung ’mit Haut und Haar, Leib und Leben’: Die Unterwerfung der Reichsritter durch Ansbach-Bayreuth (1792-1798) (Göttingen, 2012), 300n62, 346n9, 536n42, 536n44, 603n318.↩︎
Personalakte Du Terrail Bayard, October 10, 1794, in Offizierspersonalakten, no. 77104 (Bavarian Main State Archive, Munich).↩︎
See on this topic Margot Hamm, Evamaria Brockhoff, and Michael Henker, Bayern entsteht: Montgelas und sein Ansbacher Mémoire von 1796 (Regensburg, 1996), 22–36; Eberhard Weis, “Montgelas’ innenpolitisches Reformprogramm: Das Ansbacher Mémoire für den Herzog vom 30.9.1796,” Zeitschrift für Bayerische Landesgeschichte 33 (1970) 219–56 .↩︎
Nachlass Montgelas, fasc. 63, (Bavarian Main State Archive, Munich).↩︎
His task was to relay information to the envoy of the Prussian king, David Alphonse de Sandoz-Rollin (1740–1809). Karl Süssheim, Preussens Politik in Ansbach-Bayreuth: 1791-1806 (Berlin, 1902), 193.↩︎
Mauerer, Die Protokolle des Bayerischen Staatsrats, 1799 bis 1817, 160n279.↩︎
Ibid. See also document number 55 in Reinhard Stauber and Esteban Mauerer, eds., Die Protokolle des Bayerischen Staatsrats, 1799 bis 1817, vol. 1: 1799 bis 1801 (Munich, 2006), 236–38.↩︎
On May 13, 1801, Bayard reported that “Prussian subjects in judicial districts on this side” of the border were refusing to pay the war levy. Ibid., 310. A month later, he instructed the committee responsible that the levy should not be collected on the property of the electoral house of Brandenburg-Prussia. Ibid., 377. On June 10, 1801, he spoke about the upcoming appointment of a new councilor to the Upper Palatinate district government, recommending Jakob Duras, secretary at the Bavarian embassy in Vienna. Ibid., 348. In July of that year, Bayard and Steiner, the secretary of the finance ministry, proposed that the chancelleries and registries of the four ministerial departments be relocated to the former Theatine monastery. Ibid. 385. Four months later, Bayard presented detailed plans on this proposal. Ibid., 468–71. In August 1801, he proposed modifying a council enactment in order to exert more control over emigration from Bavaria by those seeking to evade military service. Ibid., 411. The following November, he returned to the issue of emigration, speaking on recruitment activities, especially in the Palatinate, aimed to encourage citizens to move to territories that had fallen to Prussia in the partitions of Poland; it was agreed that the issue would also be raised in the Franconian district assembly, and a general ban on emigration was passed. Ibid., 465. In January 1802, Bayard reported at a state council meeting on a dispute between the magistrate’s and commandant’s offices in Landshut “over where the keys to the city gates are kept.” Esteban Mauerer, ed., Die Protokolle des Bayerischen Staatsrats, 1799 bis 1817, vol. 2: 1802 bis 1807 (Munich, 2008), 80. In early March of that year, his name appears on a list of “billeting and transport commissioners that would be required in the event of French occupation of the Bavarian capital.” Ibid., 137–8. In April 1802, the state council approved a rescript drafted by Bayard on the organization of a riflemen company in Heidelberg (Ibid., 195). In June 1802, Bayard reported on the question of whether assets invested abroad by a person living in the state were subject to additional taxation (Ibid., 253), and in early July he spoke on the topic of military service (Ibid., 260–1).↩︎
Ibid., 153. Between 1789 and 1792, Mannes published the Churfürstlich privilegirte Bergische Provinzialzeitung and the Elberfelder Address-Comtoir-Nachrichten. Holger Böning, “Pressewesen und Aufklärung - Intelligenzblätter und Volksaufklärer,” in Pressewesen der Aufklärung: Periodische Schriften im Alten Reich, ed. Sabine Doering-Manteuffel, Josef Mancal, and Wolfgang Wüst (Berlin, 2011), 69–119. See esp. p. 115.↩︎
Mauerer, Die Protokolle des Bayerischen Staatsrats, 1799 bis 1817, 20 and 345↩︎
Ute Feuerbach, Konflikt und Prozess: Bäuerliche Interessenpolitik für Freiheit und Eigentum in Mainfranken 1802-1848 (Neustadt an der Aisch, 2003), 284; Mauerer, Die Protokolle des Bayerischen Staatsrats, 1799 bis 1817, 494; Regierungsblatt für die Churbayerischen Fürstenthümer in Franken, vol. 1, no. 20 (May 1803), 94; Wolfgang Weiß, Kirche im Umbruch der Säkularisation: Die Diözese Würzburg in der ersten bayerischen Zeit (1802/1803-1806) (Würzburg, 1993), 111.↩︎
Regierungsblatt für die Churbayerischen Fürstenthümer in Franken, vol. 1, no. 24 (June 1803).↩︎
Churpfalzbaierisches Regierungsblatt, vol. 43 (October 1805).↩︎
Jäck, “Joseph du Terrail Bayard,” 35. Jäck claims that Bayard’s wife was the daughter of a functionary of the corporation of imperial knights [Ritterkanton] Odenwald in Kochendorf named Lämmert. Her brother was Heinrich Lämmert, a hospital administrator from Scheßlitz, a town in the Bishopric of Bamberg. After the death of her first husband, a court composer to the House of Oettingen-Wallerstein, Bayard’s future wife lived in Regensburg with several children from this first marriage.↩︎
Clemens Maria Tangerding, Der Drang zum Staat: Lebenswelten in Würzburg zwischen 1795 und 1815 (Cologne, 2011), 190.↩︎
Caroline von Schelling, Caroline: Briefe aus der Frühromantik, nach Georg Waitz vermehrt herausgegeben edited by Erich Schmidt (Leipzig, 1913), 2, 450. See also Monika Siegel, “’Ich hatte einen Hang zur Schwärmerey ...’: Das Leben der Schriftstellerin und Übersetzerin Meta Forkel-Liebeskind im Spiegel ihrer Zeit.” (Ph.D. diss., University of Darmstadt, 2001), 149–50.↩︎
Mauerer, Die Protokolle des Bayerischen Staatsrats, 1799 bis 1817, 160. In 1810, Bayard appears as “privy councilor [geheimer Referendär] and member of the Franconian general commissariat.” Ansichten der vorgzüglichsten Gegenden des Fürstenthums Bamberg: Nebst einer historisch und topographischen Übersicht dieses Landes vor und nach der Secularisation besonders in Hinsicht der neuen Eintheilung und bis jetzt erfolgten Veränderungen (Schwabach, 1810), 176. In Addreß-Handbuch für den königlich-baierischen Mainkreis: auf das Jahr 1810 (Bamberg, 1810), 5, he is described as district chancellor [Kreiskanzleidirektor].↩︎
Baierische National-Zeitung, vol. 247 (October 1810), 1007; Staats- und Address-Handbuch der Staaten des Rheinischen Bundes für das Jahr 1811 (Weimar, 1811), 293.↩︎
Jahrbuch der General-Administration der Stiftungen im Königreiche Baiern, vol. 1 (Sulzbach/Munich, 1814), 143 Bayard’s birth year can be reconstructed from his obituaries. Intelligenzblatt des Rezatkreises (Ansbach, July 1815), p. cols. 1111-1112, 1146.↩︎
No more precise identification is possible; there is no evidence that the Tübingen theologian Ernst Gottlieb Bengel (1769–1826) spent time in Bamberg.↩︎
He is referring here to Dorette Henriette von Rotenhan, née von Lichtenstein. In 1801, Marcus vaccinated two of her children against smallpox. Häberlein and Schmölz-Häberlein, Adalbert Friedrich Marcus, 239. Her late husband Friedrich Christoph Philipp von Rotenhan (1749–1798) had business dealings with members of Marcus’s family. See Mark Häberlein and Michaela Schmölz-Häberlein, “Revolutionäre Aussichten – Die transatlantischen Aktivitäten der Gebrüder Mark im Zeitalter der Amerikanischen Revolution,” Jahrbuch für europäische Überseegeschichte 15 (2015) 29–89, 71–72, 74 and 82–83.↩︎
Hegel to Mrs. Niethammer, Bamberg, May 30, 1807, in Hegel, Letters, 132. See also Horst Althaus, Hegel und die heroischen Jahre der Philosophie: Eine Biographie (Munich, 1992), 225.↩︎
He was probably the „Rechnungsrat" Georg Friedrich Vogel. Addreßhandbuch für die fränkischen Fürstenthümer Ansbach und Bayreuth (Ansbach, 1801), 233.↩︎
Christian Friedrich von Boeckh, Grabrede bei der Beerdigung des am 2. April 1847 in München gestorbenen Herrn Dr. Karl Heinrich Fuchs [. . .] (Munich, 1847), 6. Cf. Neuer Nekrolog der Deutschen, vol. 25: 1847, no. 1 (Weimar, 1849); Johannes Hund, Das Augustana-Jubiläum von 1830 im Kontext von Kirchenpolitik, Theologie und kirchlichem Leben (Göttingen, 2016), 247n293.↩︎
Hegel to Niethammer, Bamberg, May 2, 1807, in Hegel, Letters, 128; Paulus to Hegel, [Nuremberg], November 28, 1808, in Hoffmeister, Briefe von und an Hegel, 264–5.↩︎
Hegel to Niethammer, Bamberg, August 8, 1807, in Hegel, Letters, 137.↩︎
Hegel to Niethammer, Bamberg, January 22, 1808, in ibid., 157.↩︎
Hegel to Niethammer, Bamberg, August 20, 1808, in ibid., 166.↩︎
See Hegel to Niethammer, Bamberg, May 2, 1807, in Hoffmeister, Briefe von und an Hegel, 163 Hegel to Niethammer, Bamberg, July 8 1807, in Hegel, Letters, 135 In the latter, he writes: “Mrs. von Jolli was very pleased to receive a letter from you, but—in order not to flatter you—she was almost more pleased to receive one from Mme. Niethammer. The city is saying—and the way people are here they are even saying it to my face—that I am courting Mrs. von Jolli!”.↩︎
Hermann Baumgarten and Ludwig Jolly, Staatsminister Jolly: Ein Lebensbild (Tübingen, 1897), 1–3. See also the entry on Julius Jolly in Friedrich Otto Aristides von Weech, Badische Biographien, vol. 5 (Karlsruhe, 1906), 327–8.↩︎
Prosectors were individuals employed at anatomical institutions to remove organs or body parts from corpses.↩︎
Böhmer, “Die medizinischen Schulen,” 92–93; Adolph Carl Peter Callisen, Medicinisches Schriftsteller-Lexicon der jetzt lebenden Aerzte, Wundärzte, Geburtshelfer, Apotheker und Naturforscher aller gebildeten Völker [. . .], vol. 5 (Copenhagen, 1831), 225; Jäck, “Joseph du Terrail Bayard,” 28–29.↩︎
Böhmer, “Die medizinischen Schulen,” 92; Michael Renner, “Bamberg als medizinisches Zentrum Oberfrankens und Bayerns im frühen 19. Jahrhundert: Medizinisch-chirurgische Schule – Irrenhaus – Kranken- und Versorgungshäuser,” Bayerisches Ärzteblatt 24, no. 3 (1969) 250–67, 250–67, esp. 259.↩︎
See Häberlein and Schmölz-Häberlein, Adalbert Friedrich Marcus, 310–11.↩︎
Cited in Ibid., 307 See also Jäck, “Joseph du Terrail Bayard,” 29.↩︎
Böhmer, “Die medizinischen Schulen,” 38; Häberlein and Schmölz-Häberlein, Adalbert Friedrich Marcus, 328.↩︎
Jäck, “Joseph du Terrail Bayard,” 28–29.↩︎
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Philosophy of nature, vol. 2 edited by Michael John Petry (1970; London, 2002), 278.↩︎
Pfarrmatrikel Frensdorf, vol. 7/8: Geburten 1788–1793, fiche 87, (Archives of the Archbishopric of Bamberg, Bamberg), October 2, 1792, 143. Parts of the entry have been crossed out and are no longer legible. Both godparents were founding members of Bamberg’s first sociable association (“the Club”). See Häberlein and Schmölz-Häberlein, Adalbert Friedrich Marcus, 144 and 243.↩︎
On the biography of Meta Forkel-Liebeskind, see Siegel, “’Ich hatte einen Hang zur Schwärmerey ...’,” p. esp. 157–158 on her time in Bamberg. A contemporary portrait of her husband can be found in Joachim Heinrich Jäck, Pantheon der Literaten und Künstler Bambergs, vol. 3/4 (Erlangen, 1813), p. cols. 647–9.↩︎
Hegel to Mrs. Niethammer, Bamberg, May 30, 1807, in Hegel, Letters, 132.↩︎
Siegel, “’Ich hatte einen Hang zur Schwärmerey ...’,” 22–23, 83, 86, 108–9, 116–18, 123, 130, 141–42 and 148–150. See also Schelling, Caroline, 450.↩︎
Hegel to Niethammer, Bamberg, July 8, 1807, in Hegel, Letters, 135.↩︎
Hegel to Niethammer, Bamberg, August 8, 1807, in ibid., 137.↩︎
Siegel, “’Ich hatte einen Hang zur Schwärmerey ...’,” 158.↩︎
Matthäus Pflaum, Entwurf zur neuen Bambergischen peinlichen Gesetzgebung (Bamberg, 1792). See on this point Heinrich Lang, “Das Fürstbistum Bamberg zwischen Katholischer Aufklärung und aufgeklärten Reformen,” in Bamberg im Zeitalter der Aufklärung und der Koalitionskriege, ed. Mark Häberlein (Bamberg, 2014), 11–70, p. esp. 36–39; Alfred Sagstetter, “Der Pflaumsche Entwurf zur neuen Bambergischen peinlichen Gesetzgebung von 1792,” Bericht des Historischen Vereins Bamberg 90 (1950) 1–91.↩︎
Bamberger Hofkalender: für das Jahr [. . .] 1796 (Bamberg, 1796), 18; Bamberger Hofkalender: für das Jahr [. . .] 1798 (Bamberg, 1798), 18.↩︎
Dom Bamberg, vol. 4/3: Eheschließungen 1800–1805, fiche 64, (Archives of the Archbishopric of Bamberg, Bamberg), September 2, 1802.↩︎
Joachim Heinrich Jäck, Pantheon der Literaten und Künstler Bambergs: Von Mahr bis Stiebar, vol. 5/6 (Erlangen, 1814), p. cols. 861–2; Franz Schuler, “Die Bamberger Kirche im Ringen um eine freie Kirche im freien Staat: Das Werden und Wirken des Bamberger Kirchenrechtlers und Kirchenpolitikers Franz Andreas Frey (1763-1820) in den Auseinandersetzungen mit dem josephinistischen Staatskirchentum.” (theological diss., Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, 1979), 248n31; Friedrich Wachter, General-Personal-Schematismus der Erzdiözese Bamberg 1007-1907: Eine Beigabe zum Jubeljahre der Bistumsgründung (Bamberg, 1908), 7467.↩︎
Pfarrei St. Martin Bamberg, vol. 23/26: Sterbefälle 1807, fiche 895 (no. 551), (Archives of the Archbishopric of Bamberg, Bamberg), May 2, 1807. His first name is given there as Franciscus.↩︎
Hegel to Niethammer, Bamberg, May 2, 1807, in Hegel, Letters, 128.↩︎
“I can assure you I never saw anything more moving than this woman. I saw her for the first time about ten days after her husband’s death. She had been violently ill and was still so when I was with her. Her physical illness had come purely from within, from the violence and suddenness of this stroke of grief, and was due entirely to her nerves. She lacked the strength for a grief that screams, storms, sobs, or even just weeps; she was quite broken up—you know her tenderness—into a soft, trembling, spineless gelatin. She was still incapable of fixing her mind [Vorstellung], even if only for a moment, on anything but the last hours and scenes of her husband’s life. She felt relieved by repeating the account of it in conversation, and by the reflection that she had neglected nothing, that everything at all possible had been done. When she then came to mention the last catastrophic blow and the impossibility of it being otherwise, she mustered a deep sigh from the innermost recess of her heart and directed her beautiful blue eyes heavenward. She was the most moving image of the perfectly humble and actually quite hopeless mother in grief [mater dolorosa]. Just when she was able to leave her bed again she was struck by stomach cramps which lasted five days. During the first days of the attack I saw her again and thought her to be very dangerously ill. The doctors were greatly perplexed. Afterward she could not find words strong enough to describe to me the pains she endured. But with that the worst seemed over. She has since felt better, and last week she took to the carriage and went out quite frequently. I have not seen her but have heard that she is now feeling quite well. She is now my neighbor.” Hegel to Mrs. Niethammer, Bamberg, May 30, 1807, in ibid., 131–2.↩︎
Häberlein and Schmölz-Häberlein, Adalbert Friedrich Marcus, 62–63 and 362–363; Jäck, Adalbert Friedrich Marcus, p. cols. 707–8.↩︎
Hegel to Niethammer, Bamberg, August 8, 1807, in Hegel, Letters, 137.↩︎
Hegel to Hufnagel, Jena, December 30, 1801, in ibid., 89; Schelling to Hegel, Cannstadt, July 11, 1803, in Hoffmeister, Briefe von und an Hegel; Pinkard, Hegel, 113 and 222.↩︎
See Rebekka Habermas, Frauen und Männer des Bürgertums: Eine Familiengeschichte 1750-1850 (Göttingen, 2000), 186–87 and 191.↩︎
On this topic, see Häberlein and Schmölz-Häberlein, Adalbert Friedrich Marcus, 220–27 ↩︎
See ibid., 270–72.↩︎
Tangerding, Der Drang zum Staat, 101; Wendt, Die bayerische Konkursprüfung der Montgelas-Zeit, 178.↩︎
Karl Alexander Reichlin-Meldegg, Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob Paulus und seine Zeit: Nach dessen literarischem Nachlasse, bisher ungedrucktem Breifwechsel und mündlichen Mittheilungen dargestellt (Stuttgart, 1853), 2, 408; Siegel, “’Ich hatte einen Hang zur Schwärmerey ...’,” 149.↩︎
Häberlein and Schmölz-Häberlein, Adalbert Friedrich Marcus, 312–13.↩︎
Hegel to Niethammer, Bamberg, August 8, 1807, in Hegel, Letters, 137. The identification of the District President as Count Thürheim in this edition has been corrected here.↩︎
Supplik des Nathan Marc, Bamberg, April 28, 1788in Hochstift Bamberg, Geheime Kanzlei, no. 1190, prod. 96, (Bavarian State Archive, Bamberg); Häberlein and Schmölz-Häberlein, Adalbert Friedrich Marcus, 47.↩︎
There were probably already ties between the families, since Marcus’s nephew Friedrich Speyer dedicated an 1805 work to Stengel: Karl Friedrich Speyer, Ideen über die Natur & Anwendungsart natürlicher und Künstlicher Bäder. Nebst einer Vorrede von Adalbert Friedrich Marcus (Jena, 1805).↩︎
On his work in Bamberg, see Lothar Braun, “Stephan Freiherr von Stengel (1750–1822): Erster Generalkommissar des Mainkreises in Bamberg,” in Bamberg wird bayerisch: Die Säkularisation des Hochstifts Bamberg 1802/03, ed. Renate Baumgärtel-Fleischmann (Bamberg, 2003), 419–26; Jäck, Pantheon der Literaten und Künstler Bambergs: Von Mahr bis Stiebar, 1094.↩︎
On January 22, 1808, Hegel wrote to Niethammer about this New Year’s party: “The majority of the seventy guests came in costume. No one knew the disguises of the others. We were treated to processions of goddesses, Dr. Luther and Catherine, Saint Stephan, a doctor and pharmacist, bears and bear trainers, and so on. And most guests recited a verse to the guest of honor, who was taken quite by surprise. Afterward there was a most exquisite supper, a ball, and so on. Against such idealization [Idealität] I opposed a note of realism [Wirklichkeit] by donning a valet’s uniform coat belonging to the Court doorman, along with his wig. During the whole three-hour supper I conversed in this attire with Cypris by my side. Everyone—including myself—realized that this was who she was, but I leave it to you to guess her identity, though [for us] she wore no mask and thus incarnated Cypris all the better.” Hegel to Niethammer, Bamberg, January 22, 1808, in Hegel, Letters, 156. See also Häberlein and Schmölz-Häberlein, Adalbert Friedrich Marcus, 313.↩︎
Hegel to Niethammer, Bamberg, August 29, 1807, in Hegel, Letters, 141.↩︎
Hegel to Niethammer, [Bamberg, November 1807], in ibid., 152.↩︎
Dorothea Schlegel to Sulpiz Boisserée, Lobenstein, August 20, 1808, in Günther Nicolin, ed., Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in Berichten seiner Zeitgenossen (Hamburg, 1970), 89. On Boisserée, see Paul Arthur Loos, “Boisserée, Sulpice,” in Neue Deutsche Biographie vol. 2 (Berlin, 1955), 426–27.↩︎
Hegel to Niethammer, Bamberg, September 15, 1808, in Hegel, Letters, 168–69.↩︎
Adalbert Elschenbroich, “Knebel, Karl Ludwig von,” in Neue Deutsche Biographie vol. 12 (Berlin, 1979), 169–71.↩︎
Hegel to Knebel, Bamberg, October 14, 1808, in Hegel, Letters, 145.↩︎
Niethammer to Hegel, Munich, October 26, 1808, in Hoffmeister, Briefe von und an Hegel, 250. On the school reforms, see Wendt, Die bayerische Konkursprüfung der Montgelas-Zeit.↩︎
In late October 1808, Karoline wrote to Hegel that her landlord in Nuremberg had “forced her to play the role of an upstanding woman, which in time might not be so arduous.” She wished “that you missed me only half as much as I do you, for then you would certainly come here, and that would be the most sensible thing you could do. […] People live a true student lifestyle here. Nobody cares about anyone else, and everyone does as they please. The two of us, for instance, could be perfectly true to one another without anyone thinking ill of it.” Karoline Paulus to Hegel [Nuremberg, late October 1808], 7 p.m., in Hoffmeister, Briefe von und an Hegel, 250–51.↩︎
Wolfgang Reinhard, Freunde und Kreaturen: ’Verflechtung’ als Konzept zur Erforschung historischer Führungsgruppen: Römische Oligarchie um 1600 (Munich, 1979). Cited here from Wolfgang Reinhard, Ausgewählte Abhandlungen (Berlin, 1997), 289–310, quotation on p. 290. The concept of “network” is now widely used in studies of intellectual culture in the early modern and "Sattelzeit" periods. See for instance Anne Baillot, Netzwerke des Wissens: Das intellektuelle Berlin um 1800 (Berlin, 2011); Anna Busch, Nana Hengelhaupt, Alix Winter, and Anne Baillot, eds., Französisch-deutsche Kulturräume um 1800: Bildungsnetzwerke, Vermittlerpersönlichkeiten, Wissenstransfer (Berlin, 2012); Regina Dauser, Stefan Hächler, Michael Kempe, Franz Mauelshagen, and Martin Stuber, eds., Wissen im Netz: Botanik und Pflanzentransfer in europäischen Korrespondenznetzen des 18. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 2008); Franz Mauelshagen, “Netzwerke des Vertrauens. Gelehrtenkorrespondenzen und wissenschaftlicher Austausch in der Frühen Neuzeit,” in Vertrauen: Historische Annäherungen, ed. Ute Frevert (Göttingen, 2003), 119–51; Maria Stuiber, Zwischen Rom und dem Erdkreis: Die gelehrte Korrespondenz des Kardinals Stefano Borgia (1731-1804) (Berlin, 2012).↩︎
Reinhard, Freunde und Kreaturen, 305–9 (quotation on 305).↩︎
Pinkard, Hegel, 296–97.↩︎
Hegel to Niethammer, Jena, February 20, 1807, in Hegel, Letters, 127. See also Walther, Buch und Leser in Bamberg, 31. Walther makes the following observation about the migration of scholars from Jena to Franconia around 1800: “One notable thing about the wave of migration is that its main figures shared a south-west German background and in some cases the same course of education.”↩︎
On this aspect, see Habermas, Frauen und Männer des Bürgertums.↩︎
Tangerding, Der Drang zum Staat, 74–76 (quotation on 74).↩︎
See Heiko Droste, “Patronage in der frühen Neuzeit – Institution und Kulturform,” Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 30, no. 4 (2003) 555–90; Birgit Emich, “Staatsbildung und Klientel: Politische Integration und Patronage in der Frühen Neuzeit,” in Integration, Legitimation, Korruption: Politische Patronage in der Frühen Neuzeit und Moderne, ed. Ronald G. Asch, Birgit Emich, and Jens I. Engels (Frankfurt, 2011), 33–48; Birgit Emich, Nicole Reinhardt, Hillard von Thiessen, and Christian Wieland, “Stand und Perspektiven der Patronageforschung: Zugleich eine Antwort auf Heiko Droste,” Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 32, no. 2 (2005) 233–65.↩︎
Hegel to Schelling, Jena, February 23, 1807, in Hegel, Letters, 75.↩︎
On this point, see Martin Stuber, “Brief und Mobilität bei Albrecht von Haller. Zur Geographie einer europäischen Gelehrtenkorrespondenz,” in Kommunikation und Medien in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. Johannes Burkhardt and Christine Werkstetter (Munich, 2005), 313–34.↩︎
See also Walther, Buch und Leser in Bamberg, who remarks (exaggerating somewhat): “Hegel too had an ambivalent relationship with Bamberg. In his letters, he makes no mention of any of the city’s leading figures of the time except Marcus; in fact, apart from Countess Rotenhan, he only mentions compatriots who had ended up in Bamberg and that he kept company with.” Ibid., 33.↩︎

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This article is a translation and was originally published in German as:

Mark Häberlein and Michaela Schmölz-Häberlein. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegels Bamberger Netzwerk, in Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte 81 (2018), 627-655

How Things Produce Authenticity

Cultural Heritage as a Network

by Helmut Groschwitz

translated by Sarah Swift and Ellen Yutzy Glebe

2019-12-17

Helmut Groschwitz, “How Things Produce Authenticity: Cultural Heritage as a Network” in Bavarian Studies in History and Culture (2019) [originally published in German 2017], last modified 2019-12-17, https://www.bavarian-studies.org/2019/groschwitz
You can cite this publication by paragraph numbers (“para.”)

Originally published as

Helmut Groschwitz, “Wie Dinge Authentizität produzieren. Kulturerbe als Netzwerk” in Bayerisches Jahrbuch für Volkskunde (2017), 17-27.

This text is open access and licensed under the terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Helmut Groschwitz

How Things Produce Authenticity

Cultural Heritage as a Network

translated by Sarah Swift and Ellen Yutzy Glebe

2019-12-17

This text is open access and licensed under terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Image: Helmut Groschwitz

St. Peter’s Cathedral in Regensburg, detail from the south face. Photograph taken by the author in 2008.

Authenticity¹ and cultural heritage are two multilayered, challenging concepts central in a field of discourse that the involved actors engage with in very different ways. Whether in relation to the work of cultural historical and ethnological museums, the valorization and recognition of monuments, performances in the form of customs and rituals, or the chimera (both problematic and successful in equal measure) of “tradition” or “the traditional society,” the question of how cultural heritage is constructed and functions is a recurrent theme in the history and practice of the related disciplines of folklore studies, cultural anthropology, and European ethnology and has also been highly productive in public discourse. Following the adoption of the UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (1972) and the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003), scholars and even the general public have devoted more attention to questions related to cultural heritage. The field of Critical Heritage Studies² emerged as a result of the increasingly intensive appraisal of origins and implementation of the associated programs as well as their direct and indirect effects on the sites and practices accorded heritage status. This interdisciplinary field addresses the communities and discourses linked to these sites and practices by posing questions about the actors and power structures involved and about value creation and conflicts; it examines the construction of identities and processes of inclusion and exclusion as well as modes of location, appropriation, and instrumentalization.

Amid a range of heterogeneous stances on “cultural heritage,” there are two discernible fundamental approaches associated with different actor groups. One view is essentialist, rooted in the assumption that cultural heritage is intrinsic and needs only to be accorded recognition. The other is constructivist, perceiving cultural heritage as the product of discourses, attributions, and processes of inclusion and exclusion. In this latter view, the awarding of heritage status and the preceding phase of reflection and discussion is constitutive for heritage—cultural heritage, in this perspective, is what has been intentionally designated as such. Recognition itself creates heritage, which unfolds its own dynamism from the moment of recognition onwards.

These two perspectives in turn underlie two very different approaches to understanding and interacting with cultural heritage that frequently collide, resulting in mutual incomprehension and a need for “translation.” On one side of the divide, actors champion “their” tangible or intangible cultural heritage as valuable, important, and unique, stressing that its very existence makes it worthy of protection. Critical voices on the other side of the debate, which most commonly come from academic circles, instead tend to highlight the evolution and manufactured nature of cultural heritage, pointing out how contingent it is and how it has been shaped by underlying power structures and value creation processes and subjected to political influences and instrumentalization.³

The question of authenticity is highly significant for both camps. The former assumes that it is in possession of authentic matter and authentic performances; in other words, this position perceives objects and actions, everyday (“common sense”) certainties, and familiar social realities as inherent, taking them largely for granted. The opposing camp questions authenticity and deconstructs what is perceived as authentic, viewing this as primarily a product of discourses and processes of communication and authentication.

This essay appraises the potential of actor-network theory—i.e. the comprehensive analysis of networks involving people, things, discourses, and translations—for paving a route to the middle ground between these camps and opening up a fresh perspective on cultural heritage. It considers various forms of cultural heritage including the role of museums and intangible aspects of heritage and focuses in particular on the role played by things themselves.

Cultural heritage as reflective practice

There is no unambiguous definition of Kulturerbe [cultural heritage]; even the simple comparison of this term with its counterparts in other languages (French patrimoine, English heritage)⁴ suggests just how complex and open this field of discourse is. A lack of conceptual clarity is particularly evident in the broad area of needing to find ways of distinguishing general forms of passing on, continuing, acquiring, and updating cultural techniques and objects (in ways for which the categories of socialization and appropriation seem suitable) from those forms of cultural expression and objects that are perceived in a specific way and have been especially designated as cultural heritage. A process of reflection is decisive for the latter, and while this often (although not necessarily) coincides with feelings of uncertainty and fears or experiences of loss, it may also mark a transition from daily performance to reflective reinterpretation, a transformation into representational forms,⁵ and processes of museum-ization or heritage-ization. These processes of reflection and the associated production of knowledge have been described many times.⁶

They are supplemented by cultural heritage transmission practices that frame cultural heritage as needing to be explained and register altered perceptions regarding phenomena as cultural heritage as evidence of a developing new consciousness. In fact, the importance of fostering a new awareness of heritage is often expressly spelled out in metatexts, especially in those dealing with programmatic objectives. It is visible, for example, in hopes voiced that popular narratives that have been “saved” from oblivion in the nick of time might again become meaningful to people in their daily lives,⁷ in the countless objects in museums that have survived an intermediate stage of falling into disuse and being discarded, in the securing of ruins that are to be made accessible because they are seen to represent developments in cultural history, in the “revival” or “purification” of cultural performances, and even in completely new inventions based on components cobbled together from other practices.⁸ These reflective productions of what is then designated as cultural heritage are connected with the contingent selection of what is included and excluded. A defined and definable image of a specific cultural heritage is created through this process—an ideal starting point for the application dossier that (politically motivated) cultural heritage programs generally require.

This process of reflection, however, fosters different perceptions of cultural heritage in different actors—as remarked on above—that are also deserving of attention: reflection strengthens some actors’ sense that their own cultural heritage and practices are special, but the flip side of this coin is that knowledge production (i.e., scholarly reflection) tends to emphasize the contingent and manufactured nature of cultural heritage.

Authenticity and authentication

The concept of authenticity—the tacit assumption or stated presumption of “genuineness,” “originality,” and “provability”—is a core formula conveying legitimacy on museums and on tangible and intangible cultural heritage. The problematic and dazzlingly multifaceted character of the discourse on authenticity, which spans a range of concepts from proof of material continuity to the authoritative determination of “correct” interpretations, has been discussed many times,⁹ as have the difficulties associated with the perception of authenticity. Judging whether something is authentic requires a definition of authenticity, but such a definition is ultimately the result of communication processes—what is authentic depends on what being authentic has been negotiated to be. At the same time, the concept of authenticity always requires an opposite pole, inauthenticity, and thereby also encompasses the neighboring discourses on forgery, copying, and reinvention.¹⁰

Three examples will serve here to outline the problematic nature of authenticity. The first of them is the cathedral in Regensburg, which is included in the town’s UNESCO World Heritage site. Work on the Gothic incarnation of the cathedral began in the thirteenth century and, in principle, has never been completed. The spires—a central element of the cathedral’s present appearance—were only added in the nineteenth century. During this same period, some baroque elements were removed to restore the cathedral’s “pure Gothic style.” To this day, the Dombauhütte [cathedral workshop] is continually replacing the building’s substance. The restoration work now uses a significantly more durable limestone in place of the greenish sandstone used at the beginning (Illustration 1). While the site of the building can be described as authentic, the building substance itself is only partially authentic, to the extent that authenticity refers to the original medieval material. The form of the building follows earlier models, and the craftsmen in the cathedral workshop use historical techniques to some extent. The cathedral is, finally, also authentic as a building that changes its shape again and again, one that spans multiple epochs and is always being reworked in some way. It is clear that “authenticity” can refer to very different aspects.

Illustration 1: St. Peter’s Cathedral in Regensburg, detail from the south face. The various building materials used in the facade are clearly evident: the darker, somewhat green stones are the original sandstone, while the lighter stones are more recent limestone replacements. Photograph taken by the author in 2008.

Knowledge pertaining to authenticity is typically expert knowledge that changes and is reinterpreted during its transmission. This expert knowledge and the performances and objects evaluated, however, need to maintain compatibility with other forms of knowledge. Imagine if the performers at one of the now highly popular “medieval fairs” spoke Old High German or Middle High German—whichever corresponded to the period being depicted. They might come very close to an authentic performance, but most visitors would be utterly incapable of decoding it. What happens instead is that visitors regard the specially invented artificial language used on such occasions as authentic, a language which makes liberal use of “-ey” (Gaukeley [amusements], Sauferey [drinking] etc.) and is peppered with quaint words and phrases largely motivated by Early New High German.¹¹ The expectations of the general public are not infrequently centered around depictions in pop culture including films and books. Silke Meyer has shown this for the film “Braveheart”¹²: the hero—a “genuine Scot”—wears a kilt, even though the film is set in a period (the thirteenth century) when kilts did not yet exist in this form. The kilt in the film serves as a symbol to authenticate the protagonist as a Scottish freedom fighter. Authenticity here can be understood as an interpretive framework of the kind defined by Erving Goffman, one that that facilitates the categorization and interpretation of observations. But these examples also show how disparate scholarly and public discourses often are and how “popular authenticity” can take on a life of its own, developing its own frameworks for evaluation depending on social contexts.

My third example, the Japanese Nō theater masks in the Museum Rietberg in Zurich, are displayed in an isolated context with lighting that has an auratizing effect. While these masks are technically originals, decisive elements are lacking here because of their extreme decontextualization and the elaborate stagecraft deployed in their aesthetic presentation: the costumes that go with them, for one thing, but even more significantly the dimension of performance, of the masks’ appearance on stage. Because so much cultural complexity is omitted here, the presentation of the masks is inauthentic in spite of their status as original objects.

In all of its dazzling facets, authenticity appears to be a phenomenon which can only ever be attested for partial aspects, and its perception also appears to depend upon the observer. Despite the problematic nature of the concept, however, authenticity (or the pursuit of authenticity) represents a point of orientation for metacultural action, for example finding the “correct” way to display an object in a museum or to conserve one, but also—for groups that are “bearers” or “carriers” of cultural heritage—striving to find the “correct” way of executing a cultural performance. While authenticity may defy any analysis that seeks to move beyond partial aspects, what we can describe quite well are the processes and practices of authentication, the strategies, in other words, deployed in attempts to mark objects or performances as authentic.¹³

Museums as destroyers and producers of authenticity

Museums seem to be on quite solid ground with the narrative of authenticity; the aura of authentic objects is, after all, the bread and butter of their very existence. However, objects become entangled in a dynamic process of decontextualization and recontextualization during their museumization. Objects entering the inventory of a museum are removed from the contexts in which they formerly functioned—as utilitarian objects or as status symbols, as ceremonial or religious items, or as objects that had already reached an interim stage of becoming outmoded and being discarded.¹⁴ At the same time, these objects undergo an intensive process of knowledge production: they are cleaned, inventoried, conserved, researched, and finally—should they belong to the exclusive two to five percent of the inventory destined to be exhibited—placed on display in permanent and special exhibitions, in which curators order the arrangement of these objects to illustrate the narrative they have chosen (or created). As all this goes on, spatial and argumentative connections form that did not exist before the objects entered the museum and curators designed the exhibition (Illustration 2). The ordering of objects in a museum does not reproduce a “natural” or “original” situation: objects are contextualized in new ways that reflect the narratives of the museum, the relevant exhibition, and the curators. Karl-Heinz Kohl coined the provocative slogan “context is a lie” (“Kontext ist Lüge”) to describe this phenomenon.¹⁵

The other side of this picture, however, is that arguments proceeding from objects are often epistemically effective, considerably more so than text-based modes of knowledge transmission. Just as historians do not reproduce historical events but rather interpret sources and develop historical narratives, exhibitions do not simply display objects and illustrate events, but select and arrange objects to create relationships between them and integrate them into broader narratives and arguments. Just as the recognition of cultural heritage involves an aspect of invention, museums are constantly creating new knowledge in this process. It is only a slight exaggeration to claim that museumization destroys authenticity by nullifying functional relationships and fragmenting the cultural integration of objects. This is, of course, not to suggest that the history of these artifacts is brought to an end. In fact, the reverse is the case: a new chapter opens in the “biographies” of the things that are now artifacts held in museums and stored or exhibited in various ways. Taking up the bon mot of objects as slow events, one might say that new episodes are beginning. Museumization also includes a process described by Gottfried Korff, with reference to Walter Benjamin, as “auratization.”¹⁶ Being incorporated into a museum designates an object as special, but also makes it a proxy for others, giving it a representative character and thus an additional role complementing its individual immediacy and uniqueness.

Illustration 2: Reflection of a reliquary bust in the shape of a bishop (ca. 1520, presumably from Brussels) in front of a Congolese Nkisi (“power figure,” 19th century). The juxtaposition of these two objects—featured in the EuropaTest exhibition (Berlin, 2014)—illustrates how Catholic theology is intertwined with local cultures and interpreted differently depending on these cultural contexts. Photograph taken by the author in 2014.

The mechanisms of deauthentication are flanked by processes of authentication, the most notable of which are forms of verification, knowledge production, and knowledge formation. In contrast to the oft-voiced invocation that exhibits should be permitted to “speak for themselves,” in general the individual objects on display do not actually say very much on their own. The role of proving their authenticity, or more often of attesting it, typically falls to the accompanying texts and narratives (Illustration 3). Considering the intensity of the struggles over knowledge formation at times, it can perhaps be concluded that what is described as genuine and made the focus of research counts as authentic. Authenticity is produced by the scholars and curators who concern themselves with it and mark it as such in exhibitions. But perceptions of authenticity are also induced by other factors: the museum building, for example (objects that have entered the museum are more likely to be seen as “genuine”), the exhibit labels, and the display cabinets that not only provide protection but also signify the presence of protected objects that merit a closer look.

Agency and the disciplining of things

While authenticity appears to be a multilayered process of negotiation and attribution as well as an interpretive framework, the objects viewed within this framework are not arbitrary; objects distinguished by particular material qualities, the places where they were found, or modes of acquisition are evaluated differently from others, and in this a kind of agency of things can be seen to be at work.¹⁷ Whether one should go so far as to inquire into whether objects have “power” or are capable of “doing” is debatable, since “doing”—as opposed to just behaving in a certain way—is always linked to intentionality. Stories attributing agency to objects are, however, rife in popular narratives and myths, in everyday perceptions, and in religious contexts. The (European) concepts of fetishes, of relics—sacramental or magical objects—that were used in manifold ways in the past are still quite popular, for example, with esoteric shoppers today. That the world views of many indigenous societies take the agency of material things for granted can only be mentioned in passing here.

It could, of course, be argued, from a constructivist point of view, that it is discourse which produces attributions of supernatural potency or spiritual essences to things. From the perspective, however, of the actors themselves—of pilgrims bringing healing holy water home from Lourdes, for example, or of computer users cursing or pleading with machines as though these were autonomous entities with their own intentions—material things do appear capable of acting independently, and often enough subversively; at least in cases like these, the boundaries between things simply having behavioral characteristics and having the power to act seem rather fluid.

The power relations that can be observed between people and things are, indeed, not always unilateral or unambiguous. A passenger in a car that rolls over in traffic accident is not part of a discourse or an attribution, but embedded in the behavior, the materiality of the technical machine. Museums, too, are stages upon which conflicts between people and things play out. These conflicts are normally not visible for visitors—but conservators are all the more keenly aware of them. Colors change in shade, varnish darkens, fibers disintegrate and dissolve, thatched roofs rot—museums are usually intent on suppressing the actions of things and represent spaces characterized by efforts to discipline things—both materially and discursively.

Illustration 3: Explanatory text; Grassi Museum of Ethnology, Leipzig. Photograph taken by the author in 2016.

How things produce authenticity

When authenticity is considered to be the result of negotiations carried out and attributions made by people, things appear as largely passive, as no more, at most, than nuclei around which discourses can crystallize. But approaching authenticity from a vantage point that does not rule out the idea of things having agency throws up a new question: how do things themselves produce authenticity and contribute to discourses and processes of attribution?

Things “act” by existing and being perceived, interpreted, and integrated into functional contexts, by having an appearance and characteristics that prompt people to act differently or to commence an action in the first place (affordance). People produce and modify objects, and objects in turn influence and shape people: they support identity, acting as extensions of the human body and as media which facilitate social exchanges.¹⁸ Actor-network theory¹⁹ (ANT) is analytically useful, as it facilitates the examination of human and non-human actors and their reciprocally entangled relationships. Because the scope of this article does not allow for a more in-depth exploration of ANT’s theoretical ramifications, two examples of such networks serve to illustrate this approach here:

The first example is the phenomenon of the “movie star” that emerged in the wake of the nineteenth-century invention of cinematographic film. Precursors are identifiable in stage acting; the initial introduction of film as a medium merely changed acting techniques and ended the simultaneity of acting and watching, but it also provided new forms of representation—changes of perspective, close-ups, special effects, and the like. The emergence and evolution of the “movie stars” subsequent to film’s introduction can be understood as a social process, but also as one determined by technical aspects—cameras, lighting, cutting, projection—in other words, by things. Technical innovations—like the advent of sound film—have always been accompanied by changes in acting techniques and audience reception.

Museums as institutions form another example of such a network. The history of museums illustrates how objects have been marked, valorized, and revalued and how exhibits have been arranged, presented, and received by visitors in ways that are linked with various discourses and social processes. These discourses cannot be investigated in isolation, however, as they are always bound up with things—with the artifacts collected, the exhibits placed on display, the cabinets protecting them, and the buildings housing them. In a way, these things “create” professions and actors of their own: curators, conservators, guards, and visitors to the museum. Museum history is usually written as the history of collectors and institutions, of an interest in the exotic and its presentation—as, all in all, the outcome of discourses. ANT, however, foregrounds the complex entanglements of human and non-human actants. In the case of museums, this means the relationships between exhibits, display cabinets, labels, buildings, curators, visitors, politicians, conservators, security guards, and so on. What is ultimately of interest are the negotiations and translations that are constantly taking place between things and people forming performative networks that are constantly changing in ways that can include the active removal of objects from the network.²⁰ How could networks like this now be interrogated to discover more about how things produce authenticity? A first example revolves around an object that cannot be decoded without ambivalence due to a lack of available sources. The second example takes up the question as to how material things unleash discourses.

Weltmuseum Wien (Vienna World Museum, formerly Wiener Völkerkundemuseum, the Vienna Museum of Ethnology) holds an object that is widely known as the “Penacho”²¹. It consists mostly of feathers and gold ornaments connected to a supporting frame. The object acquired the appellation “Moctezuma’s headdress” in the context of the discourse which crystallized around it, but this attribution to the Aztec ruler Montezuma II (c. 1465–1520) is unproven. It has left traces in inventories from the sixteenth century onwards, and the interpretations in exhibition catalogs have varied—so its history is attested by further objects. Both its exact provenance and its precise function before it was brought to Europe are unclear, but the feathers and the techniques used in its construction confirm its Mexican origins. The Penacho is a good example of an object which is non-decodable in the absence of sources and consequently amenable to being interpreted in new ways and embedded in changing discourses. The description of this object—back in the colonial era—as “Montezuma’s featherwork crown” clearly served, for example, to boost the museum’s renown. While the museum’s curators increasingly questioned this attribution in the twentieth century, postcolonial activists adopted it in their repatriation demands, elevating the Penacho to a national symbol bearing witness to the injustice of Spanish pillaging.²² How can such an object that lacks a clear provenance and function—one that in its ambiguity defies authentication in the sense of having an attested history²³—successfully generate authenticity in a way that transcends the ebb and flow of discourses? In this case, the pure existence and materiality of the object, the contingency of its appearance, its components, and the techniques used in its making draw visitors into dialogue with it and constitute its singularity. The productions of knowledge proceeding from such properties are—along with the capacity of exhibits to engage the senses and emotions of visitors—core components of the presentation of objects in museums.

Things can bear witness to historical cultural practices—independently of any claims to them advanced by contemporary societies or nations seeking to bolster the narrative of their origins by integrating these practices into their own historiographies. Given the fact that historical borders of settlements and territories often diverge from modern state borders, relicts in the landscape can acquire great political brisance by allowing for claims that a particular group occupied a given stretch of land “first” and can stake legal claims to it. This can be observed, to give two examples, for the native peoples of North America and for Armenian claims to territories within modern Turkey, where churches, ruins, and stone crosses (khachkars) have been systematically destroyed to undermine such claims. The simple existence of objects can become problematic, things themselves can become unsettling and disturbing actants, and their destruction can be pursued in order to effect shifts in person-thing-networks.

Similarly, the remnants of villages near the Czech-Bavarian border have an impact which can be attributed to their sheer existence. Deserted following the deportation of the German-speaking population after the Second World War and the creation of exclusion zones behind the Iron Curtain, they conserved cultural memory. After the lifting of the Iron Curtain, these sites and their material evidence bore witness to earlier settlements in the area in a fashion that has led to an intensive renegotiation of history²⁴ that must now be inscribed into the history of Czech Republic, the region, and Europe’s collective memory.

The ability of things to accumulate various modifications, appropriations and attributions of meaning within themselves—and in this sense to form a kind of palimpsest—also creates their polyvalent and ambiguous nature. The Selimiye Mosque in North Nicosia in Northern Cyprus is a prime example (Illustration 4). Both its history as a Gothic cathedral and its history as a mosque are inscribed into its materiality in a way that makes it impossible to unambiguously classify the structure in regard to national, ethnic, or religious cultural heritage. Instead, it embodies an entangled cultural history that could be allowed to take on a bridging function as shared cultural heritage, or rather as cultural heritage forming part of a shared history, although such an outcome currently appears remote considering the present political situation in Cyprus and recent nationalist attempts at appropriation.

In all these examples, the roles played by things are far from passive. Embedded into person-thing networks, they have the power to unleash, amplify, or curb discourse, and things can also authenticate further things, sites, and historical events. Pursuing questions of authenticity would be pointless without these material and cultural effects, and authenticity can neither be attested nor transmitted in their absence. At the same time, however, attempts to appropriate things and attribute significance to them in a manner that seeks to eliminate ambiguity rather than to shine a light on the multi-layered and open-ended meanings of objects is problematic because it precludes a comprehensive approach which could highlight shared cultural heritage.

Illustration 4: Interior of the Selimiye Mosque in Nicosia (Northern Cyprus). The building’s interior shows clear traces of its conversion since 1571 from the Gothic Cathedral of Saint Sophia into a mosque. The apse to the east is still recognizable on the left side of this image, although the furnishings are now arranged around the Mihrab (prayer niche), which is placed in the direction of Mecca. Photograph taken by the author in 2015

Cultural heritage as a network

The difficult question as to whether agency is attributable to things is a point upon which ANT is vulnerable to criticism.²⁵ The concept of the agency and, indeed, the waywardness of things is, nevertheless, a fertile one, both because of the insights it affords into how the meanings of things can extend beyond their current status in a discourse²⁶ and because of the way in which it allows us to investigate how things and people influence each other reciprocally. In the context of the relationship between cultural heritage and authenticity, paying more attention to networks and to negotiations between people and things offers a promising way forward. When the authenticity of things and practices is subjected to analysis within the framework of Critical Heritage Studies, the diagnoses reached are often somewhat skeptical and unsettling. The processes surrounding the transmutation of objects into cultural heritage are forms of metacultural action and inevitably produce something which is new. Their character is more creative and productive than it is declarative; recognition of heritage often sparks profound changes, and the question tends to rear its head quickly as to how exactly the heritage celebrated is “authentic.”

Essentialist approaches to cultural heritage that take its existence to be a given and perceive its character as fundamentally non-discursive remain problematic; neither of these assumptions can be confirmed, but both feature regularly in public and political discourse. At the same time, these very attributions—these yearnings for what is “original,” “genuine,” and “unique”—are themselves part of the phenomenon of cultural heritage and merit attention in that context. The essentialist view of cultural heritage cannot only be seen as that portion of heritage which should be deconstructed, or whose adherents should be persuaded of the error of their ways, but as an aspect of cultural heritage which is constitutive for and inherent to the phenomenon.

From a perspective which examines networks between people, things, discourses, and translations, authenticity can be understood as the result of negotiations between people and things and as a consensus reached between various actors and institutions. This does not free us from needing to critically examine processes, power relations, and value creation, but it allows for a broader definition of cultural heritage as a complex and fluid network of people, things, discourses, translations, and institutions that constitutes itself depending on the situation through the interactions of the various actors involved. This can usefully supplement the deconstructivist perspective on cultural heritage which researchers (with their strong focus on processes of “heritage-ization” and valorization) typically apply with a perspective that allows for more thorough consideration of material aspects.

Thinking of cultural heritage as a network also has interesting consequences for the categories used to describe it. The distinction made between tangible and intangible cultural heritage has long been in the sights of critics who see it as problematic and have pointed out that both forms of heritage are far more intertwined than has been reflected in the implementation of cultural heritage programs to date. While the older UNESCO world cultural heritage program was primarily related to the material substance of heritage, the criteria repeatedly referenced aspects addressing intangible heritage.²⁷ The more recently defined criteria for intangible cultural heritage expressly encompass the objects intangible heritage draws on—the tools used in crafts, for example, or the accoutrements used in customary practices—although the main emphasis is on knowledge, social practices, and performances, these are unimaginable without their material “coalition partners.” Numerous museums, especially open-air museums, have also been moving beyond their traditional mission—the preservation of material evidence of the past—in recent years and are now concerning themselves to a greater degree than before with the museumization of intangible cultural heritage like historical craftsmanship or cultivation methods.

The background to how this distinction between tangible and intangible cultural heritage was discursively produced in the first place during the long conceptual history of cultural heritage—from the first cabinets of curiosities and movements to protect historical monuments all the way up to the UNESCO conventions and EU programs—would merit an investigation all of its own, not least because this background also supplies the context in which the discipline of ethnology developed. The rigid corset of conventions, procedures, and institutions which now exists in the heritage sphere—a Foucauldian dispositif if ever there was one—will hardly permit more holistic approaches to tangible and intangible aspects of cultural heritage in the near future. But from an analytical perspective, the investigation of networks between people, things, discourses, and translations can be profitably integrated into the continuing development of the idea of cultural heritage, into “doing heritage” and into heritage management—all the more so if it is also oriented towards current approaches to fostering participation and knowledge transmission.

Notes

The present article is based on a lecture with the title “Wie Dinge Authentizität produzieren. Kulturerbe aus Sicht der Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie” [“How Things Produce Authenticity: Cultural Heritage from the Perspective of Actor-Network Theory”] given as part of the lecture series “Heritage, Gedächtnis, Identität—Herausforderungen für die Autorisierten Diskurse” [“Heritage, Memory, Identity—Challenging the Authorized Discourses”] hosted by the University of Cologne Forum “Cultural Heritage in Africa and Asia” on 8 May 2014 at the University of Cologne. http://forum-heritage.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/19513.html [27 December 2015].↩︎
The foundation of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies and the promulgation of its 2012 “Manifesto” deserve mention as the pinnacle of efforts to date to bring critical approaches to cultural heritage together in a network: http://www.criticalheritagestudies.org/history [June 2017].↩︎
Representative texts for the now extensive literature on cultural heritage include: Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Intangible Heritage as Metacultural Production,” in: Museum International 56 (2004), 52–65; Michael Simon/Thomas Schneider/Timo Heimerdinger/Anne-Christin Lux/Christina Niem (eds.), Kulturelles Erbe und Authentizität (Volkskunde in Rheinland-Pfalz 20), Mainz 2006; Dorothee Hemme/Markus Tauschek/Regina Bendix (eds.), Prädikat “Heritage.” Wertschöpfungen aus kulturellen Ressourcen (Studien zur Kulturanthropologie/Europäischen Ethnologie 1), Berlin 2007; Karl C. Berger/Margot Schindler/Ingo Schneider (eds.), Erb.gut? Kulturelles Erbe in Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft. Referate der 25. Österreichischen Volkskundetagung vom 14.–17. 11. 2007 in Innsbruck (Buchreihe der Österreichischen Zeitschrift für Volkskunde N. S. 23), Vienna 2009; Harm-Peer Zimmermann, “Second Hand World? Zur Kritik der Heritage-Kritik in Hinblick auf das Kasseler Weltdokumenteerbe,” in: ------. (ed.), Zwischen Identität und Image. Die Popularität der Brüder Grimm und ihrer Märchen in Hessen (Hessische Blätter für Volks- und Kulturforschung NF 44/45), Marburg 2009, 572–591; Markus Tauschek, Kulturerbe. Eine Einführung, Berlin 2013; Göttinger Studien zu Cultural Property, vols. 1–11, Göttingen 2010–2017.↩︎
Astrid Svenson, “‘Heritage,’ ‘Patrimoine’ und ‘Kulturerbe’. Eine vergleichende historische Semantik,” in: Hemme/Tauschek/Bendix, Prädikat (as in fn. 3), 53–74.↩︎
What is meant by this is the transformation of a cultural technique that has fallen out of everyday use (with the abandonment of a mine, for example, or the discontinuation of timber rafting) into a practice continued in a symbolic form by culture associations or during festivals.↩︎
See, for example, Thomas Schmitt, “Jemaa el Fna Square in Marrakech—Changes to a Social Space and to a UNESCO Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity as a Result of Global Influences,” in: The Arab World Geographer 8 (2005), 173–195; Markus Tauschek, Wertschöpfung aus Tradition. Der Karneval von Binche und die Konstituierung kulturellen Erbes (Studien zur Kulturanthropologie/Europäischen Ethnologie 3), Berlin 2010.↩︎
Helmut Groschwitz, “Kulturerbe als Metaerzählung,” in: Ingo Schneider/Valeska Flor (eds.), Erzählungen als kulturelles Erbe. Das kulturelle Erbe als Erzählung (Innsbrucker Schriften zur Europäischen Ethnologie und Kulturanalyse 2), Münster 2014, 75–85.↩︎
On this, see the “folklorism” dispute [Folklorismusstreit] in ethnology sparked by Hans Moser, “Vom Folklorismus in unserer Zeit,” in: ZV 58 (1962), 177–209; Eric Hobsbawm/Terence Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge 1983; Anthony Giddens, “Leben in einer posttraditionalen Gesellschaft,” in: Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens u. Scott Lash, Reflexive Modernisierung. Eine Kontroverse, Frankfurt am Main 1996, 113–194.↩︎
For example, Wolfgang Seidenspinner, “Authentizität. Kulturanthropologisch-erinnerungskundliche Annäherungen an ein zentrales Wissenschaftskonstrukt im Blick auf das Weltkulturerbe,” in: Volkskunde in Rheinland-Pfalz 20 (2006), 5–39; Achim Saupe, “Authentizität,” in: Stefanie Samida/Manfred K. H. Eggert/Hans-Peter Hahn (eds.), Handbuch materielle Kultur. Bedeutungen, Konzepte, Disziplinen, Stuttgart 2014, 180–184.↩︎
On this, see also Martin Fitzenreiter (ed.): Authentizität. Artefakt und Versprechen in der Achäologie (IBAES. Internet-Beiträge zur Ägyptologie und Sudanarchäologie XV), London 2014. Accessible online at: http://www.ibaes.de and http://www2.rz.hu-berlin.de/nilus/net-publications/ibaes15/beitraege.html [8 June 2017].↩︎
Helmut Groschwitz, “Authentizität, Unterhaltung, Sicherheit. Zum Umgang mit Geschichte in Living History und Reenactment,” in: BJV (2010), 141–155.↩︎
Silke Meyer, “Heldenmythen. Inszenierung von Geschichte im Spielfilm,” in: Andreas Hartmann/Silke Meyer/Ruth‑E. Mohrmann (eds.), Historizität. Vom Umgang mit Geschichte (Münsteraner Schriften zur Volkskunde/Europäischen Ethnologie 13), Münster 2007, 69–83.↩︎
Groschwitz, “Authentizität”; Stefanie Samida, “Zur Genese von Heritage. Kulturerbe zwischen ‘Sakralisierung’ und ‘Eventisierung,’” in: ZV 109 (2013), 77–98.↩︎
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “From Ethnology to Heritage. The Role of the Museum. SIEF keynote address given on 28 April 2004.” Online: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/238714489_From_Ethnology_to_Heritage_The_Role_of_the_Museum [8 May 2017].↩︎
Karl-Heinz Kohl, “Kontext ist Lüge,” in: Paideuma 54 (2008), 217–221.↩︎
Gottfried Korff, “Aporien der Musealisierung. Notizen zu einem Trend, der die Institution, nach der er benannt ist, hinter sich gelassen hat,” in: Wolfgang Zacharias (ed.), Zeitphänomen Musealisierung. Das Verschwinden der Gegenwart und die Konstruktion der Erinnerung, Essen 1990, 57–71.↩︎
Anke Rees, “(Un)heimliche Akteure. Kultur als Netzwerk,” in: BJV (2013), 45–57; Guido Fackler/Brigitte Heck, “Von Vogelscheuchen und der Handlungsmacht der Dinge. Zur Re kontextualisierung von Museumsdingen mit der Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie (ANT),” in: Karl Braun/Claus-Marco Dietrich/Angela Treiber (eds.), Materialisierung von Kultur. Diskurse – Dinge – Praktiken, Würzburg 2015, 125–136.↩︎
In connection with the “material turn,” material culture and the social embeddedness of things attracted renewed attention. Examples include Elisabeth Tietmeyer/Claudia Hirschberger/Karoline Noack/Jane Redlin (eds.), Die Sprache der Dinge. Kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven auf die materielle Kultur(Schriftenreihe des Museums Europäischer Kulturen 9), Münster et.al. 2010; Daniel Miller, Der Trost der Dinge, Berlin 2010; Andreas Hartmann/Peter Höher/Christiane Cantauw/Uwe Meiner/Silke Meyer (eds.), Die Macht der Dinge. Symbolische Kommunikation und kulturelles Handeln. Festschrift für Ruth‑E. Mohrmann (Beiträge zur Volkskultur in Nordwestdeutschland 116), Münster et al. 2011; Samida/Eggert/Hahn, Handbuch (as in fn. 9).↩︎
For an introduction, see Ingo Schulz-Schaeffer, “Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie. Zur Koevolution von Gesellschaft, Natur und Technik,” in: Johannes Weyer (ed.), Soziale Netzwerke. Konzepte und Methoden der sozial wissenschaftlichen Netzwerk forschung, Munich 2000, 187–211; Andréa Belliger/David Krieger, “Netzwerke von Dingen,” in: Samida/Eggert/Hahn, Handbuch (as in fn. 9), 89–96.↩︎
Anamaria Depner, Dinge in Bewegung. Zum Rollenwandel materieller Objekte. Eine ethnographische Studie über den Umzug ins Altenheim, Bielefeld 2015. For a summary, see: https://www.socialnet.de/rezensionen/18981.php [8 May 2017].↩︎
Sabine Haag/Alfonso de Maria y Campos/Lilia Rivero Weber/Christian Feest (eds.): Der altamerikanische Federschmuck. Altenstadt 2012.↩︎
Gottfried Fliedl, “… das Opfer von ein paar Federn.” Die sogenannte Federkrone Montezumas als Objekt nationaler und musealer Begehrlichkeiten, Vienna 2001.↩︎
See Helmut Groschwitz, “Das Museum als Strategie der kulturellen Ambiguitätsbewältigung,” in: Hans-Peter Hahn (ed.), Ethnologie und Weltkulturenmuseum. Positionen für eine offene Weltsicht, Berlin 2017, 139–172.↩︎
See, for example, Nils Kopp, “Vergesst nicht unsere Geschichte.” http://www.br.de/br-fernsehen/sendungen/nachbarn/tschechien-geschichte-junge-100.html [8 May 2017].↩︎
Belliger/Krieger, Netzwerke (as in fn. 19), 95.↩︎
Hans-Peter Hahn, “Vom Eigensinn der Dinge,” in: BJV (2013), 13–22.↩︎
Eva-Maria Seng, “Die UNESCO-Konvention zur Erhaltung des Immateriellen Kulturerbes,” in: Heimatpflege in Westfalen 30 (2017), Issue 1, 1–4.↩︎

Originally published as

Helmut Groschwitz, “Wie Dinge Authentizität produzieren. Kulturerbe als Netzwerk” in Bayerisches Jahrbuch für Volkskunde (2017), 17-27.

Amber inscribed in Linear B from Bernstorf in Bavaria

New Light on the Mycenaean Kingdom of Pylos

by Richard Janko

2019-12-17

Richard Janko, “Amber inscribed in Linear B from Bernstorf in Bavaria: New Light on the Mycenaean Kingdom of Pylos” in Bavarian Studies in History and Culture (2019)[originally published 2015], last modified 2019-12-17, https://www.bavarian-studies.org/2019/janko
You can cite this publication by paragraph numbers (“para.”)

Originally published as

Richard Janko: “Aber inscribed in Linear B form Bernstorf in Bavaria. New light on the Mycenaean Kingdom of Pylos”, in Bayerische Vorgeschichtsblätter 80 (2015), 39-64.

This text is open access and licensed under the terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Richard Janko

Amber inscribed in Linear B from Bernstorf in Bavaria

New Light on the Mycenaean Kingdom of Pylos

2019-12-17

This text is open access and licensed under terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Amber object B (BR Zg 2)

Summary

In 2000 the extensive fortified citadel of Bernstorf near Munich in Germany, which burned down in or after c. 1320 BC and had already yielded some gold regalia of rather Aegean appearance, produced two amber objects seemingly inscribed in Linear B. The authenticity of these objects has been questioned, on grounds that are as yet insufficient. A new reading suggests links with a place called *Ti-nwa-to, the existence of which is attested by the Mycenaean archives at Pylos and possibly at Knossos. Women from this place worked at both palatial centers as weavers, but it also had a wealthy ‘governor’. An analysis of the Pylos tablets suggests that this place was in western Arcadia. This material sheds light on long-distance connections in Mycenaean times.

1. The finds from Bernstorf

Some archaeological and epigraphic finds are so startling that they seem to make no sense. With no knowledge of the Vikings, we would not expect to discern Norse runes on a stone lion in the Piraeus or discover Arab dirhams in Dublin. The Aegean script Linear B should not be found in Bavaria, even in a Bronze Age context. Any attempt to explain such a puzzle will of necessity draw on various disciplines and materials – in this case, the epigraphy of Linear B, early metallurgy, records of governors and female slaves at Pylos and Knossos, amber in Messenia, the geography of the kingdom of Pylos, and historical evidence from c. 1350–1200 BC for roving warriors in the Levant and Aegean. Only by adopting a very broad outlook can we hope to explain something so bizarre – unless the objects from Bernstorf are outright forgeries. But what if they are not?

The hamlet of Bernstorf lies in Upper Bavaria near Freising in the vicinity of Kranzberg, on the river Amper not far from the Danube and some 40 km north of Munich. It happens to be the site of the largest Middle Bronze Age fortification so far known north of the Alps. The site was located in 1904 by Josef Wenzl, a local schoolmaster, who drew a sketch-plan of the fortifications, half of them buried in the forest. Since 1955 two thirds of the enceinte has been destroyed for the extraction of gravel and marl; its original length was 1.6 km and it encompassed an area of 12.8 ha. In 1992 two amateur archaeologists associated with the Archaeological Museum in Munich, Manfred Moosauer, an ophthalmologist, and Traudl Bachmaier, a bank-employee, discovered that the site was enclosed by a timber stockade that burned so fiercely that vitrification occurred; the temperature reached was 1350 °C¹. With the authorities’ permission, they excavated a small area of its NE sector in 1994–8. Burned timbers yielded a preliminary ¹⁴C date for its construction of 1370–1360 BC, during the local late Middle Bronze Age².

Goldensemble Bernstorf Gde.Kranzberg Lkr.Freising (Rights: Archäologische Staatssammlung, Munich. Photo M. Eberlein.)

In August 1998, after the archaeological excavations had ended, the contractor’s bulldozers and graders tore up the trees over an area of about 1 ha within the rampart inside the gate. Reportedly, the drivers found a hinged bronze cuirass with nipples rendered in pointillé, a bronze helmet and bronze weapons, all too small to fit modern men³. Moosauer and Bachmaier, in dismay at the devastation, investigated the spoil-heap on 8 August and began to discover among the uprooted tree-stumps an extraordinary hoard of amber and golden objects that had been carefully folded and wrapped in clay; after the first object was unearthed, most of the finds were made under official supervision between then and 29 April 1999, and all were taken promptly to the Museum⁴. Most of the material was encased in its original clay packing, which has been analysed and proves to come from Bernstorf⁵. This remarkable cache included six irregular centrally perforated lumps of amber⁶, a wooden sceptre which partly survived in a carbonized state (at the laboratory in Oxford the charcoal received a calibrated ¹⁴C date of 1400–1100 BC with 95.4% probability)⁷ and had a spiralform gold wrapping⁸, a gold belt with pierced triangular ends, a gold bracelet, a crown made of two layers of sheet gold with five attached vertical elements rising from its horizontal headband, a dress-pin of twisted gold with a flat triangular head, a gold diadem or cloak-fastener with pierced, pointed ends, and seven square gold pendants pierced at one corner for attachment (Fig. 1); in total these weigh 103.4 g⁹. The jewellry is made of sheet gold uniformly c. 25 mm in thickness¹⁰. Most of it was produced by a single workshop in repoussé by hammering the gold with punches made of bone or wood rather than of metal¹¹; the decoration is rows of concentric circles and of diagonally hatched triangles, with a square tooth-pattern along the edges¹². However, pointillé decoration is used on the sceptre and pin-head, which bears the wheel-pattern ? impressed in dots (there is no suggestion that this is writing)¹³. The projections on the crown were held in place with slots, as in Aegean crowns as early as that from Mochlos Grave VI¹⁴. The hoard was at first dated to the 16th or 15th centuries BC, because the style of the goldwork was compared with that of the rich finds from the Shaft Grave Circle A at Mycenae¹⁵. However, parallels with the gold of the Shaft Graves are weak¹⁶, and an initial ¹⁴C calibrated date of the wood from the sceptre, obtained in the laboratory at Oxford, gave a result of 1390–1091 BC¹⁷; three further ¹⁴C tests have given a tighter chronological range, with two yielding 1389–1216 ± 1 BC¹⁸. Although this is the only gold crown possibly of Aegean type that has been found outside the Aegean¹⁹, the treasure has been thought to derive from a local workshop under both Carpathian and Mycenaean influence²⁰, or to come from a local workshop using material imported from afar²¹. The metal is too soft for the objects to have been used in ordinary life, and they were certainly ceremonial equipment; it has plausibly been proposed that they adorned a cult-statue or xoanon²², but they could also have been used for mortuary purposes. Analysis showed that the crown bore traces of styrax-resin, used for incense and native to southern Arabia²³. The gold bears some traces of combustion. In its final use it was carefully folded and deposited as a hoard. Further excavations, now led by the Bayerisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege, took place on the S. side of the rampart in 1999–2001, and revealed that it had been constructed from an estimated 40,000 oaken logs and was completed with a ditch.

Fig. 2. Bernstorf, Lkr. Freising. Amber object A (BE Zg1). Obverse: bearded male head, facing; Reverse: inscription in Linear B. Scale 2:1 (Rights: Archäologische Staatssammlung, Munich. Photo S. Friedrich.)

During the archaeological excavations of 2000, the directors decided to use a mechanical digger to clear an area of previously unproductive soil within the rampart, some 50 m E. of the find-spot of the hoard, in preparation for another rescue-excavation; however, after heavy rain, the resultant spoil-heap was seen to contain some prehistoric sherds, whereupon they asked the amateurs to search it. On two successive Saturdays, 11 and 18 November, Moosauer and Bachmaier, together with Alfons Berger, the deputy mayor of Kranzberg, found two inscribed amber objects, Objects A and B, along with sherds of a local Middle Bronze Age pot decorated with incised lines²⁴. These were promptly handed to the Museum, where Object B was found still to be surrounded by a matrix of local sand and clay; they are described below.

Amber Object A (Figs. 2–3) is a roughly triangular piece of dark brown amber, 3.21 cm wide by 3.05 cm high and 1.08 cm in thickness. It has on the ‘obverse’ (Fig. 2) a male face with eyebrows, nose, mouth, and ears shown by simple incised lines; incised circles represent the eyes, and a beard is indicated by a number of short oblique incisions (no moustache is shown). It has been compared the famous gold funeral mask of ‘Agamemnon’ found by Heinrich Schliemann in Shaft Grave V at Mycenae,²⁵ but is actually very crude. The ‘reverse’ (Fig. 3) bears three incised linear signs that in general appearance resemble the Linear B script. However, two of them are in fact very hard to identify in that script (see §7). Like the amber beads in the hoard, its edges and reverse display signs of melting and burning. However, where it is unburnt one can see that the surface of the reverse was smoothed or polished before the incisions were cut.

Amber Object B (Fig. 4) might be held roughly to resemble a scarab in shape. It is made of bright yellow amber. It is 2.1 cm high, with a flat oval obverse measuring 2.4 by 3.1 cm and and a convex reverse. It has a conical hole 0.35–0.31 cm in diameter drilled from one end only along the longer dimension of the reverse. Its upper and lower surfaces were carefully smoothed and polished before the incisions were made. Two thin strips of sheet gold, of much the same thickness and composition as the gold of the treasure, were found by X-ray analysis deep within the hole. The object seems not to have been burnt. On the obverse it bears three incised linear signs. The ‘exergue’ below the signs on its obverse bears a horizontal line with five vertical elements rising from it; this has been interpreted as a reasonably accurate depiction of the gold crown seen in Figure 1²⁶. Above this it has three signs, which were correctly read in Linear B as ??? pa-nwa-ti in the editio princeps, where the inscription received the number BE Zg 2²⁷. This reading of the signs is opaque in meaning, but the presence of the sign ? nwa confirmed, in the eyes of both the experts who were consulted at the time, L. Godart and J.-P. Olivier, that we are dealing with Linear B rather than Linear A, in which script that sign does not occur²⁸. We shall return to their reactions below (§2).

Fig. 3. Bernstorf, Lkr. Freising. Amber object B (BR Zg 2). Oberse: inscription in Linear B. Scale 2:1 (Rights: Archäologische Staatssammlung, Munich. Photo S. Friedrich.)

Further excavations of the south-west sector of the ramparts followed in 2007 and 2010–11, together with a geomagnetic survey by the University of Frankfurt. These have showed that occupation at the site began in c.1600 BC, and that after its abandonment it was reoccupied to a lesser extent in Hallstatt and Medieval times²⁹. Although ¹⁴C dating has given two possible chronological ranges for the construction of the rampart, 1376–1326 or 1317–1267 BC³⁰, dendrochronological study shows that its logs were felled between 1339 and 1326 BC, more probably close to 1339³¹. Local archaeologists believe that it was burned within one generation of its construction, since in their view such structures were never long-lived³².

The curators of the Archäologische Staatssammlung at Munich are certain of the authenticity of both the inscribed amber and the golden objects, which, they write, is guaranteed by the find-spot and the circumstances of the discovery, by the investigations that were immediately carried out in their laboratories, and by subsequent research³³. Careful scientific studies have produced no valid proof that any of them have been tampered with since their discovery³⁴. However, the purity of the gold is a stumbling-block. The first X-ray fluorescence analyses revealed the gold to be highly refined, with under 0.5% of base metal and under 0.2% of silver, presumably by the use of the salt cementation method that is first described by Agatharchides of Cnidus in the 2nd century BC³⁵; the dearth of silver shows the gold could not be a local product from alluvial sources³⁶. Salt cementation is first documented archaeologically in Sardis in the mid-sixth century BC, but could have existed in the Bronze Age³⁷. Later studies have shown that the gold is about 99.7% pure by weight; none of the pieces contains any copper or silver at all, but traces of antimony, sulphur, mercury and bismuth in proportions that are roughly similar in all the objects³⁸. The two small pieces of gold wire from deep within the perforation of amber Object B³⁹ have a purity and composition almost identical to that of all the other golden objects from Bernstorf⁴⁰. This shows that the authenticity of both sets of finds is a single question, which is also linked to the early radio-carbon date of the wood from the sceptre. The presence of these trace-elements has been held both to exclude modern electrolytic gold⁴¹, and to prove that this is what the Bernstorf objects are made of⁴². There are still rather few comparanda for the composition of early gold; only a handful of Bronze Age artefacts from Northern Europe are made of such pure gold, notably the Moordorf disk, which also has similar decoration⁴³. However, such gold is known from the handle of a Mycenaean sword from Chamber Tomb 12 (the ‘Cuirass Tomb’) at Dendra in the Argolid; the tomb was closed in LH IIIA 1, but the sword may be LH IIB. This was pure except for 0.01% silver, 0.13% bronze, 0.002% tin, and 0.017% platinum⁴⁴. The gold matrix of the mask of Tutankhamun is 97–98% pure by weight⁴⁵. A finger-ring from Amarna is 98.2% pure⁴⁶, while the gold in the so-called ‘coffin of Akhenaten’ found in the Valley of the Kings (KV 55) is 99% pure⁴⁷, but differs in other respects⁴⁸. For paucity of comparative data, we simply do not yet know how pure Bronze Age gold could be⁴⁹. Lack of comparative data also hinders the determination of the origins of central European and Mycenaean gold⁵⁰; the latter has been linked with Transylvania, Nubia, or possibly the Black Sea.⁵¹

The amber is succinite from the Baltic⁵². When at the Museum Object B was first removed from the matrix of local sand and clay in which it was found, it looked like new. Freshly cut amber fluoresces strongly under ultra-violet light, and this phenomenon lasts for ten to twenty years of exposure to light and air. When both pieces were examined shortly after they were found they fluoresced very faintly⁵³. However, examination of other pieces of amber found in an excavation at Ilmendorf near Ingolstadt showed that they too all fluoresced faintly, whereas no fluorescence was seen in any of over a hundred pieces of Roman and Bronze Age amber in the Archäologische Staatssammlung which had been out of the ground for between thirty years and a century. Rather than prove these items to be forgeries, the comparison shows that the amber was relatively fresh when it was buried, and that its fluorescence was preserved by its burial⁵⁴. Like the gold and amber from the cache, the two inscribed objects show traces of burning and melting. The lack of reoccupation at Bernstorf until the Hallstatt period suggests that the destruction of its fortifications provides a terminus ad quem for the artifacts found there. The hoard of gold and the carved amber objects were perhaps buried for safety by their owner or owners, never to be recovered, before the fortifications were fired, or were rescued from the fire and interred shortly thereafter.

2. Reactions to the discoveries

Kristiansen and Larsson, in a wide-ranging study of travel and trade in the European Bronze Age, accept the authenticity of the finds at Bernstorf and regard them as an important support for the thesis that there were extensive contacts in LH II–IIIA (1500–1300 BC) between Scandinavia and the Tumulus Culture of southern Germany on the one hand, via the Adriatic, with the eastern Mediterranean on the other⁵⁵. As they note, the Uluburun shipwreck of c. 1305 contained both Baltic amber and an Italian sword⁵⁶, as if amber routes via Central Europe and Italy were still operative⁵⁷. However, the finds at Bernstorf were too outlandish and remote for them to have attracted much notice from scholars of the Aegean Bronze Age, a field which has seen some notorious forgeries and hoaxes⁵⁸. Our inability thus far to identify parallels for Linear B on seals, to interpret the inscriptions convincingly, and to account for the nature of these objects has contributed to their continuing obscurity. When they have been noticed, they have attracted profound scepticism⁵⁹.

Since the discovery of Linear B inscriptions in a Bronze Age context so far from Greece is completely unparalleled, forgery has been alleged, on several grounds: the amber objects were found by amateur archaeologists in an unstratified context, incisions can easily be made in amber, and assessing the condition of amber is a complicated question; convincing ‘antiquities’ made of it are not hard to create, and unworked amber was frequently found at the site⁶⁰. Moreover, the discovery came at a convenient time to lend publicity to a book about the recent find of the cache of gold from the same site⁶¹. But it does not suffice to argue ‘was nicht sein darf, kann es nicht geben’, nor to try to impugn the integrity of their discoverers when there are no grounds for doing so⁶². Nor is it a valid objection to authenticity that the Bavarian amateurs have sometimes confused Minoan and Mycenaean in their publications⁶³, and have made some far-reaching and probably exaggerated claims about their significance⁶⁴. It should hardly need saying that wild comparisons and errors in popular publications do not in themselves constitute arguments that the objects under discussion are fakes (compare the Phaestus disc).

The reactions of Godart and Olivier to the inscriptions were mixed.⁶⁵ Godart regarded the second and third signs on Object A as possibly Linear A, but rejected its overall authenticity. He would not have hesitated to accept the authenticity of Object B had it been found in a Bronze Age Aegean context, and read the signs as pa-nwa-ti. But he concluded that both were forgeries, because Object B was found with Object A, which he considered a forgery, because no amber seals are incised with Aegean scripts and only one seal is inscribed in Linear B (see below), and because they were found in Germany⁶⁶. Upon learning, from further correspondence, of the previous discovery of the hoard of gold, he wrote that there can be no question of forgery in this case⁶⁷. Olivier read the signs in Linear B as a symbol probably followed by ka-a on Object A, and as pa-nwa-ti on Object B. He too was astounded by the findspot, but moderated his scepticism after further correspondence.⁶⁸

Apart from the possibility of forgery, three other reasons have been offered for rejecting the inscriptions from Bernstorf. First, if Object B is a seal its shape is unparalleled in the Minoan and Mycenaean corpora⁶⁹. Secondly, if the parallels between the golden crown, the frontal portrait of a face on amber Object A, and the treasures from Grave Circle A at Mycenae, including the ‘Mask of Agamemnon’ from Shaft Grave V, are valid, these objects are much too early to be associated with Linear B⁷⁰, which is first attested in the LM II or early LM IIIA 1 archive from the Room of the Chariot Tablets at Knossos⁷¹. Finally, although Linear B signs were freely written over sealings impressed on clay, ‘seals were not vehicles for Linear A and B. Nor was amber used for making them’⁷². However, these objections can be met.

First, although the shape of Object B (Fig. 4) is certainly unparalleled among Aegean seals, it may have been left largely in its natural shape. Object A largely retains its unworked shape.

Secondly, the gold is definitely to be dated after the Shaft Grave era on grounds of style, and perhaps too because of the purity of its composition. The similar composition of the gold wire found inside Object B seems to prove that the gold treasure and the inscribed amber were used together before their final depositions. Gold and amber were both worked in Room B of the palatial workshop at 14 Oedipus Street at Thebes in Boeotia⁷³. If the goldwork were to be from the Aegean, its style does not match that of Late Middle Helladic and Early Mycenaean gold from the Argolid and Messenia, since both in Greece and in central Europe spiral and curvilinear decoration predominates at that time⁷⁴. In this case, it was made later, perhaps in a peripheral area.

Thirdly, Linear B was certainly written on materials other than palatial clay tablets and Cretan stirrup-jars for trade in olive-oil. There must have been records on perishable materials, notably longer-term ledgers that correspond to the yearly records kept on the tablets⁷⁵. The retention for two centuries or more of the curvilinear shapes of the signs, although they are written on clay, is a decisive proof⁷⁶. Moreover, inscriptions on a sherd and on a stone weight have come to light at Dimini⁷⁷. There are also a few connections between amber, seals, and Linear B. A single seal made of amber was found at Mycenae, an amygdaloid with grooved back showing a bull⁷⁸; another probable specimen was found in a tholos-tomb⁷⁹ at Pellana in Laconia dating to LH IIIA⁸⁰, and a third in tholos-tomb 1 at Routsi (Myrsinochori) in Messenia (LH IIIA), which may have borne a rare frontal image of a human head⁸¹. Their existence shows that amber was sometimes worked after its arrival in Greece⁸². In addition, there is a Linear B inscription on a seal from a secure Mycenaean context. A lentoid seal now in the Museum at Delphi⁸³, MED Zg 1 (Fig. 5), fully legible as Linear B, was found in the LH IIIC tomb 239 at Medeon in Phocis. Such items in LH IIIC tombs are often ‘heirlooms’, and naturally one suspects that it in fact dates from LH IIIA–B, when Linear B was still used⁸⁴. It is published as ivory but is probably made of bone⁸⁵. It has no figural decoration, but only the signs (reading from left to right) ??? e-ko-ja, an unparalleled sign-group⁸⁶. However, every sign in this inscription happens to be symmetrical about its vertical axis; a retrograde reading of the seal from right to left would give a dextroverse reading in the impression⁸⁷. If the order of the signs is indeed reversed, they read ??? ja-ko-e⁸⁸. Both ja and e have medial as well as initial uses in sign-groups, but ??? e-ko-ja is perhaps preferable, since ? e is more common as an initial sign. Unfortunately neither reading supplies the basis for any obvious interpretation, and neither evokes any obvious parallel in our present corpus of Linear B. We are probably dealing with an unknown personal name or conceivably toponym⁸⁹. The interpretation of short sign-groups in this script is always far harder than that of longer ones, particularly in cases like these where there is no context to help determine the meaning⁹⁰.

Fig. 4. Medeon, Phocis (Greece). Bone seal from tomb 239 with inscription in Linear B (CMS V 2 no. 415), Archaeological Museum Delphi.

3. A Fresh Approach

As was observed soon after the discovery⁹¹, all the signs in the inscription on Object B, ??? pa-nwa-ti (Fig. 4), are symmetrical about their vertical axes, like those on the seal from Medeon (Fig. 5). They are therefore open to being read in either direction, either as a seal or as an impression. Although microscopic examination shows that the lines were engraved from left to right⁹², and left to right is the invariable direction in Linear B, we should be open to a sinistroverse reading, since the impression of the signs would inevitably be read in the normal direction from left to right. If we do reverse the sequence of signs, we obtain ??? ti-nwa-pa (Fig. 6). This reading is still obscure, but it reminded Olivier of the ethnic adjective ti-nwa-si-jo that is well known in the Pylos tablets⁹³.

I suggest that in fact there has been a mechanical confusion between two signs of similar shape. Experts on Linear B are even more wary than classical scholars of corrections to their texts⁹⁴, because of the high level of uncertainty that the interpretation of Linear B involves, but this should not absolve them from considering intelligent emendations when ratio et res ipsa demand them; texts written in Linear B are no more exempt from error than those in any other script. As Ilievski showed, errors that depend on the confusion of sign-shapes do occur, and several other kinds of mistake, like the omission of a final syllable, are as verifiably frequent in the corpus⁹⁵. In this case the intended inscription would have been ??? ti-nwa-to rather than ??? ti-nwa-pa, entailing the easy confusion between ? pa and ? to. Such errors are common in Linear B, and include ? na versus ? to⁹⁶, ? pa versus ? ro⁹⁷, and ? pi versus ? ti⁹⁸, although not so far as I know ? pa versus ? to.

In this case ? to seems to have been changed into ? pa rather than the reverse. Magnification of the high-resolution image (Fig. 6) proves that the upper part of the vertical in ? pa was created as a separate incision,⁹⁹ which was made in a different movement from the rest of the upright. This mode of writing it was normal among the scribes of Linear B¹⁰⁰. Since the uppermost vertical is not crossed by the upper horizontal, which was incised from left to right, we cannot tell on that basis which line was cut first. However, since the uppermost vertical of ? pa projects above the apex of the sign ? ti that occupies the opposite, equivalent position on the oval flan, it breaches the symmetry of the engraving, in which the middle sign ? nwa ought to have projected above the signs on either side. Thus the mistake was probably caused by the engraver, who revised his opinion as to which sign he was meant to write, and altered his original ? to into ? pa¹⁰¹. Perhaps he was not himself literate, unlike the person who had written his exemplar; in Mycenaean Greece, a scribe was by definition literate but we have no evidence that craftsmen were. To the objection that, if the amber was originally a Mycenaean symbol of authority, such an error ought not to have escaped the notice of the ruler who commissioned it, I would reply that not all rulers of early societies were literate; the Mughal king Akbar was not, nor William I of England, to whom his rebellious son Henry I defended his bookish ways by saying ‘rex illiteratus, asinus coronatus’¹⁰². This mistaken correction, once made, could not have been reversed without ruining the precious amber. I conclude that the original reading was ti-nwa-to.

Fig. 5. Bernstorf, Lkr. Freising. Detail of amber object B. obverse , to show added upper line in the sign (Sign) pa and vertical asymmetry of this sign

The sign-group ti-nwa-to is not directly attested in the Linear B tablets, but the adjectives ti-nwa-si-jo (masculine)¹⁰³, ti-nwa-si-ja (feminine nominative plural)¹⁰⁴ and ti-nwa-ti-ja-o (feminine genitive plural)¹⁰⁵ appear in the archive from Pylos. The alternation between -si-ja and -ti-ja must be owed to analogical levelling: toponymic adjectives ending in -tios or -thios first became –sios in Mycenaean, as in Attic Μιλήσιος from Μίλητος and Προβαλίσιος from Προβάλινθος, but then the dental was often restored by analogy with the noun, as in Attic Κορίνθιος from Κόρινθος and Knossian ra-su-ti-jo /Lasunthios/ from *Λάσυνθος ‘Lasithi’¹⁰⁶. Hence the forms ti-nwa-si-jo and ti-nwa-ti-ja-o must be derived from a place-name that is not itself attested, but was at once reconstructed as *ti-nwa-to and tentatively recognized as a prehellenic toponym in -ανθος within the wider class of such toponyms in -ανθος, -ινθος and -υνθος¹⁰⁷. Thus the place-name *Ti-nwa-to¹⁰⁸ should be interpreted as /Tinwanthos/ or /Thinwanthos/¹⁰⁹, and the corresponding adjective as /T(h)inwansios/ or /T(h)inwanthios/. Except for pe-ru-si-nwa ‘last year’s’, no Mycenaean word containing nwa has an Indo-European etymology¹¹⁰.

Let us briefly examine the pre-hellenic words in -ανθος¹¹¹. The termination shows that the mountain-range Ἐρύμανθος or Ἐρυμάνθιον, now the Olonós on the north-west border of Arcadia, has a pre-hellenic name, as many mountains do. A settlement Ἐρύμανθος is said to have been the earliest name for Psophis, and the river Ἐρύμανθος flowed south-west from the mountains to join the Alpheus¹¹². On Pylos tablet Cn 3.6 a contingent of U-ru-pi-ja-jo, a detachment of troops who were defending the coast and were stationed at O-ru-ma-to in the Hither Province, send an ox to Diwyeus, one of the officials called ‘Followers’ that liaised with the coastguard¹¹³. These same U-ru-pi-ja-jo, noted to be thirty in number, are described by the ethnic O-ru-ma-si-jo-jo on ‘coastguard’ tablet An 519¹¹⁴; this ethnic gives the place where they were based, whereas they are guarding the coast at a place called A2-te-po south of Ro-o-wa, which was also in the Hither Province¹¹⁵. The fact that the ethnic of O-ru-ma-to is O-ru-ma-si-jo, just as that of *Ti-nwa-to is Ti-nwa-si-jo, confirms that O-ru-ma-to ended in -ανθος.

O-ru-ma-to must be the same word as Ἐρύμανθος, with a different initial vowel, because the same fluctuation is seen in other words that appear to contain the same stem: the name of the Homeric warrior Ἐρύμας is read as Ὀρύμας by the T scholia¹¹⁶, and the toponym Ἔρυμνα in Pamphylia was also known as Ὄρυμνα¹¹⁷. But the coincidence does not prove that Pylian O-ru-ma-to was located near Mt Erymanthus¹¹⁸; on the contrary, the corresponding reference to O-ru-ma-to in the coastguard tablets appears between entries pertaining to contingents in the south of the Hither Province, between Ro-o-wa and Pi-ru-te¹¹⁹. Another name in -ανθος in the archive is Pu-ro Ra-wa-ra-ti-jo (Ra-u-ra-ti-jo), i.e. /Pulos Lauranthios/, on Pylos tablets Ad 664 and Cn 45¹²⁰, which is apparently formed from *Lauranthos¹²¹. This town lay in the south-east quadrant of the Further Province¹²². The only place outside the Western Peloponnese that ends in -ανθος is the village of Πύρανθος near Gortyn in Crete, modern Pyrathi¹²³. However, like the name Gortys or Gortyn, the name Pyranthos could of course have been taken from the Peloponnese to Crete, since Arcadian elements appear in the dialect of central Crete at Axos and Eleutherna.¹²⁴ With Pyranthos compare Hittite Puranda, a village in Pisidia¹²⁵.

The concentration of place-names in -ανθος in the Western Peloponnese suggests that *Ti-nwa-to was located there. The likeliest explanation for the limited distribution of such names is that the local dialect of the pre-hellenic language (and this dialect alone) either modified the vowel that precedes the ending or preserved its original vocalization. In the latter case this ending is more closely comparable to the ending -anda that is so widely attested in the ancient place-names of Western Anatolia¹²⁶.

4. The people of *Ti-nwa-to at Pylos and Knossos

The socio-economic status of *Ti-nwa-to and its inhabitants within the kingdom of Pylos has not been investigated, but turns out to have been peculiar.

*Ti-nwa-to was not among the sixteen major towns of the kingdom; only its ethnic attests its existence. At least two men identified by the ethnic Ti-nwa-si-jo were members of the Pylian élite. First, on tablet Fn 324.12 a certain A-ta-o Ti-nwa-si-jo, probably /Antāos/, receives an allocation of barley, perhaps in order to attend a religious festival¹²⁷. On Jn 431.23 a man named A-ta-o is identified as a bronze-smith with no allotment of bronze, on An 340 a certain A-ta-o contributes or controls fourteen men, and on Vn 1191 the name appears in the genitive as A-ta-o-jo. Some or all of these further references may be to the same person, but this is uncertain¹²⁸. As there was a man named A-ta-o at Knossos also (L 698), the name may have been common.

Secondly, a holding of land belonging to Ti-nwa-si-jo, which means ‘man’ or ‘men’ of *Ti-nwa-to, is recorded in tablet Ea 810¹²⁹. The word may well be a name, since a singular proper name is expected here¹³⁰. If, however, the name was used as an ethnic to describe an important individual from the town, it may describe the A-ta-o of Fn 324, the ‘governor’ Te-po-se-u (see below)¹³¹, or a third unidentified person¹³².

Thirdly, *Ti-nwa-to had a local leader or ‘governor’ (ko-re-te), whose name was Te-po-se-u. That a place which was not among the sixteen tax districts should have a ‘governor’ is not unparalleled; tablet Nn 831 mentions a ko-re-te who was probably in charge of the town of Korinthos¹³³. Te-po-se-u appears twice. On tablet Jo 438, he is required to contribute towards the 5–6 kg of gold that the palace wished to collect for some purpose¹³⁴. With ten others he is assessed for the standard amount of 250 g, the second-largest quantity listed, twice as much as the amounts for seven major towns. His gold never reached the palace, since there is no check-mark against his entry. His name recurs without a title or ethnic in tablet On 300, which records distributions or contributions¹³⁵ of commodity *154, probably leather hides, among the governors of all the towns in both Provinces. Because the title ‘governor’ is given in eleven of the thirteen surviving entries, we can be sure that the same man is meant. His amount is the standard 3 units (the largest quantity is 6).

Chadwick well interpreted Te-po-se-u as /Thelphōseus/, comparing the toponym Τέλφουσα or Θέλπουσα;¹³⁶ more precisely, Te-po-se-u would have been /Thelphonseus/ in Mycenaean Greek.¹³⁷ This name certainly comes from the toponym Thelpousa or Telphousa; both forms are derived from *Θέλφονσα < *Θέλφοντyα ‘Place of diggings’¹³⁸, with different dissimilations of the aspirates according to Grassmann’s Law¹³⁹. The first is the spring Telphousa near Haliartus in Boeotia¹⁴⁰. Ιn addition, a town of this name was located on the river Ladon in N.W. Arcadia¹⁴¹, but its location may have moved since Mycenaean times, since many Pylian place-names appear in Arcadia¹⁴²; I suspect that they were taken thither by refugees from the collapse of the Pylian kingdom, since the Mycenaean dialect of the tablets survived in Arcadia into the historical period. In classical times two other place-names from Mycenaean Pylos are found in N.W. Arcadia—Erymanthus and Lousoi (see §5 below). In addition, Pausanias records that a river Ἁλοῦς flowed below Thelpousa¹⁴³, whereas the coastguard tablets mention a place A2-ru-wo-te /Halwons/, i.e. Ἁλοῦς, in the north of Hither Province near Ku-pa-ri-so and O-wi-to-no¹⁴⁴. Since the river’s name, from *ἁλόϝεντ-ς, means ‘salty’¹⁴⁵, the Pylian location on the coast was probably the original one.

In addition, the lists of personnel who worked for the palace suggest that nine of its women were dependent on it and are recorded among sets of tablets that otherwise tally slaves. The Ad series records the children of about 750 women at Pylos who were working in various humble professions¹⁴⁶. Tablet Ad 684 lists the seven children, two adult and two under age, of weavers from *Ti-nwa-to¹⁴⁷. The same women, stated to be nine in number, reappear in tablets Aa 699¹⁴⁸ and Ab 190¹⁴⁹, where they have seven and three children respectively. The other groups of women at Pylos in these three sets of tablets, Aa, Ab and Ad, are identified either by their professions alone, or by toponyms, and their husbands are never referred to¹⁵⁰. Where the toponyms can plausibly be identified, as most of them have been, they are almost all located far away on the coasts and islands of the Aegean¹⁵¹, as if they were captured in the kind of piracy or raiding that forms the background to Homer’s Iliad. The women in these series include women of Cythera (ku-te-ra3)¹⁵², Carystus (ka-ru-ti-je-ja)¹⁵³, the Euripus (e-wi-ri-pi-ja)¹⁵⁴, Chios (?) (ki-si-wi-ja)¹⁵⁵, Asia/Aššuwa (A-*64-ja = A-swi-ja)¹⁵⁶, Lemnos (ra-mi-ni-ja)¹⁵⁷, Miletus (mi-ra-ti-ja)¹⁵⁸, Cnidus (ki-ni-di-ja)¹⁵⁹, and Halicarnassus (?) (Ze-pu2-ra3)¹⁶⁰, alongside the unplaced ko-ro-ki-ja¹⁶¹ and Ti-nwa-si-ja¹⁶². This pattern immediately suggested that they had come to the palace as slaves, especially since they seem to have no husbands¹⁶³. Chadwick proposed that they were named after the slave-markets in which they were purchased¹⁶⁴, like the one on Lemnos in which Priam’s son Lycaon was sold¹⁶⁵. However, historical parallels for such a nomenclature are lacking; they ought to have been known by their ethnic origins, like the Carian or Phrygian slaves of classical antiquity. Some are probably called ‘captives’: on tablets Aa 807 and Ad 686 twenty-six or twenty-eight of these women are described as ra-wi-ja-ja /lāwiaiai/, which is more likely to mean ‘captives’, from λεία (Ionic ληΐη, Doric λαΐα) ‘booty’¹⁶⁶, than ‘harvesters’ from λήϊον ‘harvest’¹⁶⁷. The fact that these women are explicitly called ‘captives’ might imply that the others were not, but more probably means that their ethnic origins were mixed or unknown. In any case, the others were treated like them¹⁶⁸.

That women from *Ti-nwa-to are among these alien women is a remarkable oddity that ought to have been noticed long ago. Tritsch did so notice it, and deduced from it that the women in these documents cannot have been slaves or captives: ‘the Ti-nwa-si-ja cannot possibly be captives, for they come from a Pylian township . . . whose ko-re-te brings a gold tribute about twice as large as those of the ko-re-te of Rouso, Pakijana, Akerewa, Karadoro, Timitija, Iterewa, Eree, etc.’¹⁶⁹. Tritsch held that the women of *Ti-nwa-to cannot represent a population cleared out of their town by the Pylian king himself¹⁷⁰: ‘the Pylian fleet, however large, did not aimlessly raid Pylian townships to bring Pylians as captives to Pylos’¹⁷¹. To our way of thinking, if these women came from within the kingdom they certainly should not have been slaves. However, at Od. 4. 174–7 Menelaus tells his guests that he had thought of ‘sacking a city’ (πόλιν ἐξαλαπάξας) of people ‘in Argos’ (ἐν Ἄργεϊ) who ‘dwell round about, and are ruled by me’ (περιναιετάουσιν, ἀνάσσονται δ’ ἐμοὶ αὐτῷ), in order to hand it over to his foreign ally Odysseus and all his retinue; evidently he did not actually do so. Yet, although we do not know whether actual Mycenaean kings ever behaved so ruthlessly towards their own subjects, we cannot exclude it.

Instead Tritsch suggested that all these women were refugees or persons displaced by recent disturbances, who had fled from more exposed places in or beyond the kingdom and were gradually being found employment under emergency conditions within the palatial system shortly before the palace at Pylos was itself burned¹⁷². Such a situation existed at contemporary Ugarit, where women of Alašia (now proved to be Cyprus or in Cyprus, and at the time allied to the king of Ugarit) were taken in as refugees before that city too was destroyed¹⁷³, apparently by an attack of the ‘Šikalayu who dwell on ships’¹⁷⁴. This hypothesis has been rejected on the basis that there was no disorder in the Aegean at this time¹⁷⁵ (this begs the question), that the terminology for the textile-workers is the same as at Knossos, where no state of emergency is documented, that these records cover more than twelve months, and that the women ought to have been dispersed for their safety¹⁷⁶. Can this possibility be excluded?

The women of *Ti-nwa-to are exceptional in that they not only come from within the kingdom, but also have husbands. The scribe of Ad 684 adds on the edge that their children were ‘sons of the rowers at A-pu-ne-we’, a port in the Hither Province¹⁷⁷. Chadwick called this addition ‘very remarkable, as being the only instance where the fathers of the children are mentioned’¹⁷⁸. That the women and children were not living with their husbands confirms their humble status¹⁷⁹, but their husbands’ existence was acknowledged by the palace in this afterthought, and suggests that the women did not have exactly the same status as other female workers employed by it. The sons of some of the other women were also rowers: thus forty men from the port Da-mi-ni-ja in the Further Province are listed as Da-mi-ni-jo among the rowers on An 610.13, and Ad 697 records ‘at Da-mi-ni-ja the sons of the linen-workers, being (?) rowers’¹⁸⁰. If any of these women were displaced persons rather than slaves, it is the women of *Ti-nwa-to, since they, alone among such women, are recorded to have had husbands as well as sons. These men were serving as rowers at A-pu-ne-we; seven men were sent from A-po-ne-we, which is the same port, to Pleuron in tablet An 12, and An 19 lists thirty-seven rowers there. Can it be coincidence that the latter tablet includes men called po-si-ke-te-re ‘suppliants’, ’refugees’ or ’immigrants’, beside za-ku-si-jo ’Zacynthians’, ki-ti-ta’settlers’, and me-ta-ki-ti-ta ’new settlers’, who held land in exchange for service in the fleet¹⁸¹? There is no indication, however, that the rowers who were married to the women of *Ti-nwa-to owned any land¹⁸².

In the kingdom of Knossos women from a place called Ti-wa-to are listed among over a thousand female workers in the textile industry who were dependent on the palace. Tablet Ap 618 tallies five or more Ti-wa-ti-ja¹⁸³. I suggest that Ti-wa-ti-ja may be a graphic variant of Ti-nwa-ti-ja /Tinwanthiai/, which is of course a variant of Ti-nwa-si-ja /Tinwansiai/ (above, §3); the n at the end of the first syllable would be omitted in accord with the usual orthographic conventions of Linear B, in which the sign nwa is exceptional¹⁸⁴. Such is the length of the sign-group that a coincidence seems unlikely¹⁸⁵. These women belong to, or are attributed to, two powerful members of the palatial élite, /Anorquhontās/ and /Komāwens/ (both often appear in the main archive from Knossos)¹⁸⁶, together with a certain We-ra-to¹⁸⁷. They are stationed at an otherwise unrecorded place called A-*79¹⁸⁸. The tablet adds that two further women, who bear the names I-ta-mo and Ki-nu-qa¹⁸⁹, are missing (/apeassai/) from two places that are familiar from the archive, Do-ti-ja and *56-ko-we¹⁹⁰. Like the Pylian weavers from *Ti-nwa-to, they manufactured textiles¹⁹¹. Their status as corvée labourers, refugees, or slaves is clear.

To explain why women of *Ti-(n)wa-to are recorded in the main Knossian archive one might suggest that there was another place called Ti-(n)wa-to, not the one referred to in the Pylian archive. Normally one would not want to multiply entities unnecessarily. However, many prehellenic place-names recur in different regions of Greece, such as Leuktron and Orchomenos in Arcadia and Boeotia, Thebai in Boeotia and Phthiotis, or Korinthos in the Further Province and on the Isthmus¹⁹²; so there could have been two places with this same name. However, if these women came from the Pylian *Ti-nwa-to, this would have startling implications, since the coincidence might support the latest possible dating of the main archive at Knossos, i.e. within LM IIIB. Although this dating is currently out of favour, it is yet to be decisively disproved¹⁹³.

5. The location of *Ti-nwa-to

No later toponym in the Peloponnese, or indeed anywhere in Greece, corresponds to or resembles *Ti-nwa-to, whether in ancient, Medieval or modern times. Even were one attested, this would not in itself establish where *Ti-nwa-to was. Place-names often changed their location over time, above all the case of Pylos itself, which formerly lay under Mount Aigaleon (Mycenaean /Aigolaion/) at Ano Englianos, as the tablets prove, then in classical times at Coryphasium on the north side of the bay of Navarino, and now on its SE side, not to mention the traditions about other places further north in Triphylia that were also called Pylos¹⁹⁴. Again, in classical times there was a place called Leuctrum in the Outer Mani south of Kalamata, i.e. beyond the E. boundary of the Further Province, the river Nedon, yet in the Pylian archives Re-u-ko-to-ro was a major town within the kingdom¹⁹⁵. Again, the Ro-u-so /Lousoi/ south of Pylos in the Hither Province has the same name as classical Λουσοί in northern Arcadia east of Mount Erymanthus¹⁹⁶. As we saw in §4, many place-names may have been taken to Arcadia by refugees from the Pylian kingdom, and there is a notable concentration of such names around Mount Erymanthus.

The geography and frontiers of the Pylian kingdom have proved surprisingly hard to reconstruct with confidence¹⁹⁷. This is owed to two factors. First, there was a radical discontinuity in settlement at the end of the Bronze Age, when the number of settlements in Messenia declined massively¹⁹⁸. The region changed its dialect from Mycenaean, the closest ancestor of Arcado-Cypriot, to West Greek, or Doric, a change which has seemed to many hard to explain without an influx of new people¹⁹⁹. The discontinuity is compounded by poor sources for Messenian history in the classical period and the high proportion of Slavic toponyms²⁰⁰. Thus the list of nine towns in the Homeric Catalogue of Ships notoriously fails to correspond to the towns in the Pylian tablets²⁰¹. and Strabo claims that Nestor’s Pylos was in Triphylia²⁰². Secondly, the Linear B tablets were created as economic records: the network of settlements underlying them has to be deduced from their sequence in the documents, their recorded products, and the links between them, and some of these links may be hierarchical or arbitrary rather than simply geographical²⁰³. To relate them to archaeological remains on the ground, in the absence of inscriptions that tell us the names of their findspots, is even harder²⁰⁴.

All scholars agree that the kingdom was divided into two provinces, the Hither Province and the Further Province, by the mountains called /Aigolaion/ by the Mycenaeans and Αἰγαλέον by Strabo, and that the Hither Province lay to the west, the Further Province to the east, with its eastern border on the river Nedon²⁰⁵. The relative locations of places in the Hither Province close to Pylos and further south are also fairly secure, since it is agreed that they are listed from north to south²⁰⁶. However, the location of the northern border of the Hither Province seems less certain: did it lay in the Soulima (Kyparissia) valley, or on the river Neda, or yet much further north on the river Alpheus²⁰⁷?

Two main arguments have been advanced for restricting the Pylian kingdom to Messenia. First, for security and ease of communications its capital ought to have been centrally located; however, one may contrast, for instance, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, or the United States)²⁰⁸. Secondly, few Late Mycenaean settlements are known between the Soulima valley and the Alpheus, with a particularly noticeable gap at the Neda; however, this is an argumentum e silentio, since Triphylia is not well explored²⁰⁹. The best evidence for the river Neda is that the commander of the northernmost command on the ‘coastguard’ tablets (the An series) is named Ne-da-wa-ta /Nedwātās/, a name formed from ‘Neda’²¹⁰. But even the first securely located place in the north-south series of towns in the Hither Province, ku-pa-ri-so (PY Na 514), which is thought to correspond to modern Kyparissia, refers to a tree that must have been very common in the landscape; therefore its location does not seem secure²¹¹. The northernmost town in the Hither Province, ?? Pi-*82, may have been inland; it does not appear on the ‘coastguard’ tablets, what that fact is worth. If Pi-*82 is to be read Pi-swa²¹², as is likely, its name is ‘Pisa’ like the later Pisa near Olympia on the Alpheus; its products, sheep and flax, might suit the latter location²¹³, but these products were widespread in Mycenaean Messenia too. The second town in the Hither Province, Me-ta-pa, was on the coast²¹⁴ and rich in barley and textile production²¹⁵; on tablet Cn 595 it is next to a place Ne-de-we-e, which is properly linked with the name of the River Neda and likely to be near it²¹⁶. Both centres controlled sizable territories²¹⁷. Me-ta-pa reappears as the name of an otherwise unknown town called Metapa that is attested by a treaty of the early 5th century BC, found at Olympia, between τὸς Ἀναίτ[ς] καὶ τὸ[ς] Μεταπίς²¹⁸. Since this pact is in Elean dialect and officials at Olympia were to oversee it, like the treaty between the Eleans and their neighbours the Ἐϝαοῖοι²¹⁹, this Metapa was not the town of the same name in Acarnania²²⁰ but must have been in the western Peloponnese. Classical Metapa was, perhaps, south of classical Pisa²²¹. The coincidence that Pisa and Metapa were located near to each other in the classical period reduces the odds that their collocation in the tablets is random, and makes it possible that these place-names were in much the same area in Mycenaean times, or that they were both taken to Elis by refugees from the same region in the Pylian kingdom. Dyczek puts Bronze Age Metapa at Kato Samikon, and Lukermann and Eder locate it at or near Kakovatos²²². However, most scholars continue to locate Mycenaean Pisa and Metapa south of the River Neda²²³. We shall shortly see that Metapa also had ties to the North West sector of the Further Province.

Tritsch held that *Ti-nwa-to lay in the Further Province, probably on the Messenian Gulf rather than inland on the Laconian border²²⁴. Chadwick supposed that it was not fully part of the Pylian state, but ‘a distant possession (colony or island?) which was administratively attached to the Further Province’²²⁵. He later rejected the idea that it was an island: ‘it must have been of some size, since its assessment for gold on Jo 438 is one of the higher ones on the list. There are only two islands within easy reach of Pylos which are large enough, Zakynthos and Kythera, both of which appear to be mentioned on the tablets under these names’²²⁶. Deriving *Ti-nwa-to from *στενϝός, he suggested instead that it was in ‘the hill country immediately to the north of the Messenian valley’, i.e. above the Stenyclarus plain²²⁷; whatever the merits of this location, the proposed etymology is unconvincing²²⁸. Finally, evidently still perplexed, he proposed that it was in a part of the Mani, i.e. the east coast of the Messenian Gulf, that was not accessible by land from the kingdom’s eastern frontier²²⁹. Thus Agamemnon offered Achilles as a dowry seven towns in a peripheral area outside the kingdom of Nestor in the Outer Mani, i.e. the east coast of the Messenian Gulf²³⁰. This region was hard to reach overland from Kalamata until a generation ago; historically the Mani has always resisted subordination to centralizing powers. But better arguments can be made by reexamining the tablets.

The sequence of entries in the tablets provides several clues to the location of *Ti-nwa-to. Unfortunately tablet Jo 438, recording the gold-tax on governors and vice-governors, does not itemise the towns in the usual order, and mixes up towns from the two Provinces²³¹. It lists the governor of *Ti-nwa-to between entries for the first town from the Further Province, namely e-re-e (/Helos/ ‘marsh’), and the last town of the Hither Province, Ti-mi-ti-ja²³². The location of these places depends on the organization of the four tax-districts of the Further Province in the Ma series of flax-tablets (Table 1), in which the Pamisos is the north-south division, and the Skala hills the east-west²³³.

Table 1. The tax districts of the Further Province on the Ma tablets (after Chadwick 1973a).

Thus Jo 438 mentions the governor of *Ti-nwa-to between tax districts b1 and a2 of Table 1. This is puzzling, since in the standard reconstruction these districts are not adjacent. Ti-mi-ti-ja or Te-mi-ti-ja (/Terminthia/?) is the same as Ti-mi-to-a-ke-e, i.e. /Tirminthōn ankos/ ‘glen of terebinth trees’²³⁴, a coastal town on the western border of the Further Province; it has often been identified with the major settlement at Nichoria (Rizomylo)²³⁵, Chadwick showed that, since on tablet Cn 595 sheep from the station at E-ra-te-re-wa in district b2 are recorded as at Metapa in the north of the Hither Province, districts b2 and a2 are likely to be in northern rather than southern Messenia. Hence Za-ma-e-wi-ja and the other towns in its district are in the N.E. quadrant of the Province. Helos is listed after Za-ma-e-wi-ja on tablet Jn 829; it does not appear in the Ma series, but has its place taken by E-sa-re-wi-ja, and is also likely to be in the N.E. quadrant²³⁶. There are links on tablet Aa 779 between A-te-re-wi-ja and Metapa, on An 830 between A-te-re-wi-ja and Pi-*82 (/Piswa/?), the northernmost town of the Hither Provice, and on Ma 225 between Pi-*82 (/Piswa/?) and Re-u-ko-to-ro /Leuktron/, an important place in the further province²³⁷. Hence Helos is split into two in the Ma texts, and may have had ties to both northern tax districts²³⁸; it was probably the marshes at the source of the River Pamisos between both districts²³⁹.

Tablet On 300, transactions involving the governors of all the towns in both Provinces in commodity *154, probably hides, is also helpful in locating *Ti-nwa-to. The name of its governor, Te-po-se-u, is the final entry, after the governors of two towns that belong to the Further Province, namely a-si-ja-ti-ja ko-re-te ‘the governor of Asiatia’ and [e-re-o du]-ma ‘the official of Helos’²⁴⁰. Again, exactly as on Jo 438, the entry for *Ti-nwa-to appears with that for Helos.

This seems the best clue to the location of *Ti-nwa-to. It lay inland, on or over the northern borders of the Further Province, close to Helos. Whether the kingdom’s northern frontier lay on the Alpheus, or (more probably) on the Neda itself, *Ti-nwa-to must have been located in the northernmost districts of Messenia or in what one can call southern Triphylia or south-western Arcadia.²⁴¹ Although Chadwick rejected most of the suggestions for locating Pylian place-names in Arcadia, he conceded that the Pylians may have occupied ‘the extreme south-western fringe of Arcadia, so as to control the few passes leading into Messenia’²⁴².

The interior of southern Triphylia, i.e. south-western Arcadia, was so poor that it was famous for its mercenaries in historical times²⁴³. It is so lacking in fertile land that it can hardly have been any richer in the Bronze Age. Cooper has shown that Apollo Epikourios was worshipped in Ictinus’ temple at Bassae, with all its military dedications, as god of mercenaries (ἐπίκουροι)²⁴⁴. Such poverty may explain why women of *Ti-nwa-to went or were taken to Pylos and perhaps to Knossos to work as weavers alongside slaves from afar.

6. From the Peloponnese to Bavaria: some hypotheses

If the amber from Bernstorf was incised with Linear B in the western Peloponnese, how did it reach Upper Bavaria, and why? Even in the Middle Bronze Age, valuable artifacts could travel vast distances²⁴⁵. One can only offer hypotheses, since it is not clear on what basis we could decide between them, but at least only a limited number of them are available; considering them will shed light on several aspects of Mycenaean long-distance relations. If these objects are genuinely from Mycenaean Greece, they must either have been traded by Mycenaeans, taken from them by force, or paid by them for services of some kind, the most obvious of which is service in a force of mercenaries. They could then of course have been traded great distances, as far as Bernstorf, by other intermediaries. Let us start with trade.

Vianello proposed that the amber objects from Bernstorf were tokens sent from Greece along the trade-route for amber to ask for ‘more of the same’, and that the signs (which he does not interpret) signify ‘some commercial agreement’²⁴⁶. Indeed, names on the inscriptions could perhaps have functioned as guides to illiterate merchants or travellers; once they went back to Greece, they could have shown the inscriptions to literate officials in order to find the place or the person that they were seeking. We simply do not know how Mycenaean trade with such remote regions operated.

The piece of gold wire found deep within the suspension-hole of Object B²⁴⁷, which links it with the gold treasure (see §1 above), suggests that this item was at some point worn by a member of the Mycenaean élite, presumably around the wrist like the seal seen in the fresco from the shrine of the Citadel House at Mycenae (Fig. 7)²⁴⁸. A young man buried in a wooden coffin in a chamber-tomb in the agora at Athens in LH IIIA1 wore an amygdaloid amber bead and a seal around his wrist²⁴⁹. Could the gold and amber have been insignia of office, carried by rulers or lesser officials like the ko-re-te-re to enhance their authority? We are not certain what Mycenaean symbols of royal authority looked like, but it is easy to suppose that the crown and sceptre in the Shaft Graves were such regalia²⁵⁰. One may compare the famous LM I seal-impression from Khania which shows a large and muscular male figure holding a staff and standing on top of a two-gated city.²⁵¹ For a sceptre, such as would be borne by a σκηπτοῦχος βασιλεύς, one may compare the celebrated sceptre made of enamelled gold from Kourion in Cyprus,²⁵² or those of gold and of ivory wrapped in gold from Shaft Grave Circle A at Mycenae.²⁵³ Amber was rare and highly prized²⁵⁴, no doubt for its electrical properties, which would have been considered magical, as well as for its golden colour and beauty. Could the bearded face on the ‘obverse’ of Object A even depict the ruler of *Ti-nwa-to?

Fig. 6. Mycenae (Greece). Detail of fresco from the Citadel Jouse Mycenae. Archaeological Museum Mycenae.

A variation on trade is that these objects became obsolete for some reason and sent to remote Bernstorf as diplomatic gifts. If political reorganization or conflict led to a diminished status for *Ti-nwa-to, perhaps its precious insignia of power, if this is what the amber and golden objects were, came to need a safe and lucrative disposal. Although scholars assume that the great increase during LH IIIA–IIIB1 in the size and number of settlements in the central regions of Mycenaean Greece indicates a time of general peace, archaeological and textual evidence points to the expansion of the kingdom of Pylos in LH IIIA2 and trouble in peripheral areas²⁵⁵. A strong argument has been advanced, on the basis of both archaeological indications and internal evidence from the Pylian archives, that the Further Province was brought into the kingdom during LH IIIA2; Bennet dates its incorporation to between 1350 and 1300 BC²⁵⁶. The fresco from the megaron of Mycenaean warriors by a river fighting rustics clad in hides and armed only with daggers may depict such a conflict²⁵⁷. The authorities at Pylos could have converted the royal insignia of the subjected town of *Ti-nwa-to into material for a diplomatic gift-exchange and sent them, directly or indirectly, to remote trading-partners in contemporary Germany.

For such a scenario one may compare the collection of gems and cylinder-seals made of Afghan lapis lazuli which were found in a LH IIIB context at Thebes in the so-called Treasure Room on the Kadmeia Hill, where they had ended up as raw material in a Mycenaean palatial workshop²⁵⁸. The latest of the numerous Kassite seals from Babylon, some with dedications to Marduk, date stylistically from c. 1250 BC. Porada proposed that this cache was a diplomatic gift to the Thebans from King Tukulti-Ninurta I of Assyria, who would have taken it from Babylon after he pillaged the temple of Marduk there in 1225 BC²⁵⁹. This hoard, which included numerous heirlooms, would have had high value to the Assyrians. However, the seals were no longer usable for their initial purpose; the Assyrian king had nullified their utility as sources of power, and it became convenient, or even wise and necessary, to dispose of them safely as scrap. The solution adopted was to send them far away, presumably as part of a mercantile exchange so that no loss was incurred. If it were doubted whether the Assyrians would have wanted to establish a close relationship with Mycenaean Thebes by sending such an expensive gift²⁶⁰, one must remember the Hittites’ determination, expressed in the treaty between Tudḫaliya IV of Hatti and Šaušgamuwa of Amurru in Syria, to interdict trade between Tukulti-Ninurta I and the land of Aḫḫiyawa.²⁶¹

Let us turn to the second possibility, that these materials were seized by force. The gold treasure represents about 46% by weight of the 250 g which, according to tablet Jo 438, the governor of *Ti-nwa-to was expected to send to the palace, but which did not arrive there in time to be recorded before the palace was destroyed (see §4). Were the treasures from Bernstorf that very same consignment, with the amber meant to make up the rest of the payment, seized during the catastrophe of c.1190 BC and then taken, either directly or indirectly, to Bavaria? This scenario would be part of a pattern of contacts between western Greece, Italy and the Adriatic that manifested itself from LH IIIB2 onwards in such phenomena as Naue II swords and fibulae²⁶². That would entail that the enceinte at Bernstorf was burned far later than in c.1300, as archaeologists believe it was (see §1). But these materials could have been seized at some earlier date, perhaps in LH IIIA 2 when the Pylian kingdom was expanding²⁶³.

A final option is that these materials were brought to Bernstorf, whether directly or indirectly, after they had been paid to (or taken by) mercenaries in the service of the palace. Such warriors could carry treasures great distances, like the gold and ivory sword-hilt brought to Lesbos by the poet Alcaeus’ brother Antimenidas after he had served in Judaea under the Babylonians²⁶⁴. Chadwick already proposed that the Pylian levies of gold recorded on tablet Jo 438 were needed for buying off hostile forces or paying mercenaries²⁶⁵. Mycenaean warriors were depicted far away, both in Anatolia at Boğazköy and in Egypt at El Amarna²⁶⁶. Like their Near Eastern counterparts, the rulers of Pylos and Knossos both employed such forces²⁶⁷. Gschnitzer has shown that Mycenaean armies consisted of three elements: chariotry, the general levy of the /lāwos/ ‘host’, and specialized forces that were, at least originally, of foreign origin²⁶⁸. Driessen pointed out that contingents of such troops called Ke-ki-de, Ku-re-we (/Skurēwes/ ‘Scyrians’?)²⁶⁹, O-ka-ra* (o-ka-ra3) ’Oechalians’, and U-ru-pi-ja-jo* were serving at both Pylos and Knossos²⁷⁰. Moreover, Gschnitzer identifies the Pe-ra3-qo at Pylos as /Pe(r)raig^woi/ ‘Perraebians’ and the I-ja-wo-ne* at Knossos as /Iāwones/ ’Ionians’; neither group would have originated within their respective kingdoms²⁷¹. We do not know where the other groups came from, but the various contingents of the coastguard at Pylos, collectively called e-pi-ko-wo²⁷², are not named after the toponyms of Bronze Age Messenia. Chadwick deemed them ‘communities resident within the kingdom of Pylos but not part of the normal Greek population’, i.e. pre-hellenic subject groups²⁷³, but this does not account for the groups recorded at both Pylos and Knossos. According to the Na series of tablets, the Pylian contingents held flax-producing land and were associated with textile production²⁷⁴. The e-pi-ko-wo* on tablet As 4493 at Knossos, who like their Pylian counterparts appear with an e-qe-ta /hequetās/ ’follower’, were also associated with textile production²⁷⁵. In both kingdoms they apparently held land in exchange for military service²⁷⁶, like some of the rowers at Knossos and Pylos (rowers, of course, could also fight)²⁷⁷.

The coastguard tablets from Pylos bear the heading o-u-ru-to o-pi-a2-ra e-pi-ko-wo, i.e. /hō wruntoi opihala e-pi-ko-wo/ ‘thus the e-pi-ko-wo* are protecting the coast’²⁷⁸. Ever since the decipherment of Linear B, e-pi-ko-wo* has been read as ἐπίκο(ϝ)οι ‘watchers’²⁷⁹. The later word ἐπίκουρος, taken to mean ‘allies’ in Homer, has been derived from a cognate of Latin currō ‘run (to assist)’, from the Proto-Indo-European root *kors-²⁸⁰. This root, however, is otherwise unattested in Greek, and one can readily interpret e-pi-ko-wo as /epikorwoi/ ἐπίκουροι, from /korwos/ ‘boy’²⁸¹. Melena proposed that e-pi-ko-wo* means ’those in charge of young apprentices’, taking the prefix epi-* as ‘over’²⁸². However, if one understands epi- as ‘additional’ the compound would mean ‘extra lads’, i.e. ‘extra warriors’, which is perfectly acceptable in semantic terms²⁸³. Cooper proposed that the term evolved from ‘allies’ to ‘mercenaries’, which is its sense in late 5th century authors²⁸⁴. In fact it already means ‘mercenary’ in Archilochus²⁸⁵ and in the Iliad, even though the Trojans’ ἐπίκουροι are always translated ‘allies’²⁸⁶. However, Homeric ἐπίκουροι are clearly ‘mercenaries’ who are allies or ‘allies’ who are mercenary. Thus Hector points out to them that the Trojans’ payments of ‘gifts’ and provisions to them are excessive if they will not fight:

κέκλυτε μυρία φῦλα περικτιόνων ἐπικούρων· οὐ γὰρ ἐγὼ πληθὺν διζήμενος οὐδὲ χατίζων ἐνθάδ’ ἀφ’ ὑμετέρων πολίων ἤγειρα ἕκαστον, ἀλλ’ ἵνα μοι Τρώων ἀλόχους καὶ νήπια τέκνα προφρονέως ῥύοισθε φιλοπτολέμων ὑπ’ Ἀχαιῶν. τὰ φρονέων δώροισι κατατρύχω καὶ ἐδωδῇ λαούς, ὑμέτερον δὲ ἑκάστου θυμὸν ἀέξω.

‘Listen, you myriad tribes of allies who dwell round about: I did not gather each of you here from your cities because I needed or wanted a crowd, but for you to protect with zeal from the warlike Achaeans the Trojans’ wives and innocent children. To that end, I wear out my people with gifts and food, but nourish the pride of each one of you’²⁸⁷

These ἐπίκουροι ‘protect’ (ῥύοισθε) the city with exactly the same verb, wruntoi = ῥύ(ο)νται²⁸⁸, as on the heading of the coastguard tablets, /hō wruntoi opihala epikorwoi/. Again, Hector tells Poulydamas that they must capture the Achaeans’ ships because the city’s payments of gold and bronze have bankrupted the city:

πρὶν μὲν γὰρ Πριάμοιο πόλιν μέροπες ἄνθρωποι πάντες μυθέσκοντο πολύχρυσον πολύχαλκον· νῦν δὲ δὴ ἐξαπόλωλε δόμων κειμήλια καλά, πολλὰ δὲ δὴ Φρυγίην καὶ Μῃονίην ἐρατεινὴν κτήματα περνάμεν’ ἵκει, ἐπεὶ μέγας ὠδύσατο Ζεύς.

‘For once all articulate people used to call the city of Priam rich in gold and bronze. But now the fine heirlooms are perished from our halls; many are the possessions traded to Phrygia and lovely Maeonia, since great Zeus got angry’²⁸⁹

Thus ἐπίκουροι already connotes ‘mercenaries’ in the Iliad. Expeditionary troops were paid either by plundering cities, or, if they were on the defending side, by gifts of what would otherwise have been looted. Kings like Peleus and Menelaus could also give land within their kingdoms to foreign warriors like Phoenix and Odysseus, in the latter case with his retainers, in exchange for military service.²⁹⁰ We have seen that the situation was similar in the Bronze Age.

Thus ἐπίκουροι is the easiest interpretation of e-pi-ko-wo. Chadwick refused to interpret e-pi-ko-wo as ἐπίκουροι on the historical ground that the Mycenaeans would have been imprudent to employ alien ‘allies’ for anything but non-combatant duties²⁹¹. However, the reliance of Late Bronze Age kingdoms on such troops is well documented. It was certainly imprudent if they contributed to the collapse of around 1200 BC, but imprudent actions are all too common in human history. In this case one should remember the Romano-Britons’ reliance on Germanic mercenaries for the defence of the ‘Saxon shore’ in eastern England, where these mercenaries eventually invited in their friends and relatives and took the country over²⁹². The heading of Pylos tablet Cn 3 gives the troops of the coastguard the collective name me-za-na²⁹³, which is rightly read as /Metsānai/ ’Messenians’²⁹⁴. Does this not suggest that these warriors took control of the region after the fall of the palace and gave their name to it? This was certainly done by the Franks, who gave their name but not their language to France, and the Huns and Bulgars who did likewise to Hungary and Bulgaria. We should be alert to such possibilities.

As we saw in §5 above, *Ti-nwa-to was in southern Triphylia or south-western Arcadia, a region famous for mercenaries in historical times²⁹⁵. Such a location for *Ti-nwa-to is also attractive because it was rich in gold and amber—but not, of course, because these substances occurred there naturally. Large amounts of Baltic amber, as well as gold, appear in the tholos tombs at Pylos, Routsi (Myrsinochori), Koukounara, Peristeria, and above all Kakovatos, down to LH IIB²⁹⁶. The heyday of the traffic in amber was in LH I–IIA (as well as later, from c. 1200 BC onwards)²⁹⁷. It percolated through Mycenaean society more widely, but in smaller quantities, during LH IIIA–B; there is none from the Palace of Nestor²⁹⁸. Although some amber was still being traded by sea in c. 1305, since at least forty beads of Mycenaean type made of Baltic amber were recovered from the shipwreck at Uluburun²⁹⁹, it has been suggested that this was simply by a redistribution of the plenteous supplies which had arrived in Early Mycenaean times³⁰⁰. The tholos tombs at Kakovatos were extremely rich in both gold and amber, and surely some of them had already been robbed of their wealth by Late Mycenaean times.

The whole story may never be known, but the discovery of Linear B in Upper Bavaria opens a surprising new window onto the Mycenaeans and their far-flung connections.

7. Appendix: the Inscription on Object A

The text on Object A was assigned the number BE Zg 1. It is very obscure, since two of its three signs are unclear (Fig. 4), and there are high odds against achieving an assured interpretation of even two signs without a context.

The first sign | or ↾ looks like an upright arrow or spear with something of a point at the top, like the ideogram ? has ‘spear’ but with a different orientation. This upright can hardly be a word-divider, since it is too tall and redundant in the absence of a second sign-group. Might it be represent a sceptre, conceivably as a symbol of sovereignty or rank? We can compare the gold-wrapped wooden sceptre from Bernstorf: just as Object B seems to bear a representation of the crown with its five projections, so too Object A may represent the sceptre that was found with the crown. Thus this seems the best interpretation of this sign.

The second sign is the familiar wheel ? ka. One may also compare the ideogram ? rota.

The third sign consists of a square, occupying the upper half of the sign, that is bisected by a single central vertical line which runs from the very top right down to the base-line, like the ideogram ? gra ’wheat’ but with straight sides. It is not ? wa, where the lateral verticals always continue to the bottom and the box is not bisected. The sign ? ko is once written φ by the scribe from wa-to in Crete who painted some stirrup-jars found at Thebes³⁰¹, but this cannot be relevant, since our scribe could draw curves. The sign ? a2 always has distinct curves or, as in Hand 1 at Pylos, angles, and is never simplified to a box bisected by a vertical line. The Bernstorf sign does not correspond to ? a, even though many variants of this have a second horizontal above the first one, since in ? a the space between these horizontals is never bisected by the upright. It does correspond to the rare variant of the sign ? di which has a medial cross-bar in Hand 91 at Pylos³⁰². In addition, the sign ? ne is very similar in Hand 11 at Pylos, but still has distinct curves to the side-bars that the Bernstorf sign lacks.

Its discoverer, Manfred Moosauer,³⁰³ read the inscription from left to right as ??? do-ka-me, but this does not seem likely. Olivier suggested ?? ka-a³⁰⁴, but the ? a would have had to be very badly written. The reading could be ?? ka-di, but the sign-group is unparalleled in Linear B³⁰⁵. If this inscription too is dextroverse, it might read ?? di-ka; the closest parallel in Linear B is Mount Dicte in Crete (di-ka-ta)³⁰⁶, but the match is poor. If the reading were ?? a-ka, there is an obscure place called a-ka in the Knossos sheep tablets³⁰⁷, or the name /Arkas/ Ἀρκάς, the mythical founder of Arcadia, might be read. None of this is very convincing, and I suspect that the scribe was simply not very literate, which would not be so surprising if *Ti-nwa-to lay on the periphery of the Pylian kingdom, perhaps indeed in what was later called Arcadia.

Notes

* I warmly thank Rupert Gebhard of the Archäologische Staatssammlung in Munich, who kindly shared with me Figs. 2–5 and much other valuable information, Olga Krzyszkowska for Fig. 1 and for other help, and Helen Hughes-Brock, and two anonymous experts on Linear B for critical readings of this manuscript. I am also grateful to Margaret Beeler, Manfred Moosauer, Sarah P. Morris, and Malcolm Wiener. None of them necessarily agrees with my findings, which challenge the standard orthodoxies at multiple points.

D. D. Klemm, in: Moosauer/Bachmaier 2000, 74. See also Gebhard et al. 2004.↩︎
Gebhard/Rieder 2002, 115–117. Moosauer/Bachmaier (2000, 71–72) gave calibrated ¹⁴C dates for the beams of 1675–1510, 1515–1410 and 1515–1330 BC; these must represent the interiors of the beams and date the construction too high. Hence Marazzi (2009, 142) gives the objects an excessively early terminus ante quem of c. 1350.↩︎
Moosauer/Bachmaier 2000, 67, who report that a nearby urnfield with bronze arrowheads and spearheads had already been found and destroyed during the building of a CD-factory in the 1980s; presumably these finds date from the Hallstatt reoccupation.↩︎
Moosauer/Bachmaier 2000, 61 with figs. 87–89; Gebhard et al. (2014, 763–765) confirm the circumstances of the finds.↩︎
Gebhard et al. 2014, 765–766.↩︎
David 2001, 70 Abb. 9.↩︎
Test-no. OxA–8361, uncalibrated date 2995 ± 40 bp, using the Oxcal calibration curve of 1986 (Gebhard 1999, 5).↩︎
For a parallel from Shaft Grave IV at Mycenae cf. Karo 1930, 81 Abb. 19 (no. 296).↩︎
Gebhard et al. 2014, 767.↩︎
C. Lühr, in: Bähr/Krause/Gebhard 2012, 30 with Abb. 25.↩︎
Gebhard 1999, 9; David 2007a, 435.↩︎
The best parallel for the triangles is the gold disc from Moordorf near Aurich in northern Germany (Gebhard 1999, Taf. 8), which is also made of 99.9 % pure gold with 0.1 % silver and 0.03% lead (Hartmann 1970, 108–109, item Au 1122). There are rows of hatched triangles on the gold lunulae from St Juliot in Cornwall and Mangerton in county Kerry (Schulz 2012, 114–115 with Abb. 11). In the Aegean there are hatched triangles on the gold sceptre from Shaft Grave IV at Mycenae (no. 308–309 in Karo 1930, 84, Abb. 20, Pl. XVIII), but the hatching is horizontal rather than diagonal; similarly the gold dress-ornament from Shaft Grave IV, no. 302 (Karo 1930, 81 Abb. 19, Pl. XLV). The triangles are hatched in opposite directions about a central divider on the button no. 325 from Shaft Grave IV (Karo 1930, Pl. LIX). There are alternating hatched triangles on a gold sword-attachment from Shaft Grave Λ (Mylonas 1972–1973, πίν. 125β).↩︎
Gebhard et al. 2014, 770–771, citing parallels from Germany and the Aegean.↩︎
Gebhard 1999, 12 with Abb. 10.↩︎
Hence Marazzi (2009, 142) gave the upper limit for their dating as c. 1600 BC.↩︎
David 2007a, 435–6.↩︎
Gebhard 1999, 5.↩︎
Gebhard et al. 2014, 767 with Abb. 3 (samples MAMS 16186, 16187).↩︎
Kristiansen/Larsson 2005, 204 fig. 94. For the distribution of diadems of sheet gold in the Aegean, and an argument that their use was not exclusively funerary, since a woman appears to be wearing one on a fresco from Xeste 3 at Thera, see Zavadil 2009, 101–103 with Abb. 6–7. A lozenge-shaped gold diadem with stamped circles and zigzags is known from Binningen near Basel (item Au 445 in Hartmann 1970, 106–107, with Taf. 41).↩︎
Gebhard 1999, 16; likewise David 2007a, 435–436.↩︎
David 2003, 38; 2007a, 435.↩︎
Gebhard 1999, 17; Bähr/Krause/Gebhard 2012, 38 with Abb. 33.↩︎
Analysis by M. Koller using gas chromatography (Gebhard 1999, 7 n. 11). Since the results were not published, the test is being repeated on other objects which also have this resin (Gebhard et al. 2014, 772).↩︎
Gebhard/Rieder 2002, 118–120 with Abb. 3. For their own account of the discovery see Moosauer/Bachmaier 2005, 99–131, 140–143.↩︎
Hughes-Brock (2011, 104) uses the comparison as an argument against the authenticity of the amber seal, suggesting that the forger copied the well-known ‘Agamemnon’.↩︎
Gebhard/Rieder 2002, 131. Hughes-Brock (2011, 104) interprets the resemblance as an argument against authenticity, as if the seals were created to authenticate the crown. However, there is a striking parallel for an interaction between the treasures in a hoard and the images found in them in the Tiryns Treasure, where a gold ring depicting a goddess holding a chalice was found, with the other objects, inside a highly unusual bronze chalice (Maran 2012, 123–124; 2013, 160).↩︎
Gebhard/Rieder 2002, 130–131, in consultation with J.-P. Olivier. BE stands for BE(rnstorf) and Zg indicates an inscription on amber rather than clay.↩︎
Gebhard/Rieder 2002, 129–130.↩︎
Bähr/Krause/Gebhard 2012, 37–38.↩︎
R. Gebhard, pers. comm., 1 March 2013. Herzig/Seim (2011, 121) report a range 1515–1330 BC for the timbers.↩︎
Herzig/Seim 2011, 121; Bähr et al. 2012, 19.↩︎
Bähr/Krause/Gebhard 2012, 38–39.↩︎
Bähr/Krause/Gebhard 2012, 37–38 with n. 89.↩︎
Gebhard/Rieder 2002, 126–128; Bähr/Krause/Gebhard 2012, 37; Gebhard et al. 2014, 772.↩︎
Cited by Diodorus Siculus 3. 11–12.↩︎
Gebhard 1999, 9–10.↩︎
This method has been proved to have used in sector Pactolus North, but it is often thought not to have been invented before that time: see Craddock 2000, 31–32, who argues that there was no motive for refining gold before the invention of coinage, so the method would not have been invented before (likewise Pernicka 2014, 251). But this is an argumentum e silentio, and earlier experimentation can hardly be excluded. Thus Craddock showed that treatments to enhance the surface of gold go back to the 4th millennium BC (2000, 27–30).↩︎
C. Lühr, in: Bähr/Krause/Gehard 2012, 27–30. The presence of sulphur and antimony, known in gold from Early Dynastic Egypt, may indicate that the gold derived from deposits of auriferous pyrites, which are often rich in these elements (Craddock 2000, 71 n. 68).↩︎
Gebhard/Rieder 2002, 125 Abb. 9.↩︎
C. Lühr, in: Bähr/Krause/Gebhard 2012, 28–30 with Abb. 23–25.↩︎
C. Lühr, in; Bähr/Krause/Gebhard 2012, 27–30.↩︎
Pernicka 2014.↩︎
Gebhard et al. 2014, 773; for its purity, and similarity to the Bernstorf gold, Pernicka 2014, 251–253 with Abb. 3; he notes however that it contains silver and platinum, as one would expect if it is a product of salt cementation. To the possibility that the Moordorf disk proves that salt cementation was used in the Bronze Age, Pernicka objects that it is dated even earlier than the gold from Bernstorf (2014, 253); this cannot be a decisive objection, and he himself seems not to exclude that the Moordorf disk is genuine (2014, 255).↩︎
Item Au 3249/3250 in Hartmann 1982, 31–36, 150, with Tab. 36; cf. Åström 1977, 18 with Taf. VII,2. However, Hartmann’s study by emission spectrography relied on scrapings taken from the objects’ surfaces, which could have been enhanced by surface treatment (Craddock 2000, 51 n. 32).↩︎
Uda et al. 2007, 75, who showed that the face itself has a veneer of alloy.↩︎
Troalen et al. 2009.↩︎
D.D. Klemm, in: Grimm/Schoske 2001, 81–85. See now Klemm/Klemm 2012, 44–46, with figs. 4.3–4.4.↩︎
Pernicka 2014, 251.↩︎
J. D. Muhly, pers. comm., Dec. 2013. Pernicka suggested that the gold is 99.99% pure, without the bismuth, and hence is from electrolysis and of modern origin (oral comm., conference Metalle der Macht: Frühes Gold und Silber, 17–19 Oct. 2013 at Halle). However, subsequent testing by K. T. Fehr has confirmed the original analyses, and detected an inhomogeneous distribution of bismuth up to 3000 ppm, a phenomenon familiar to him from placer gold (R. Gebhard, pers. comm., Dec. 2013). Further tests are being done. One question that needs further exploration is whether all the varieties of the salt-cementation process always remove bismuth and antimony, as has been suggested on the basis of experimental archaeology (Wunderlich/Lockhoff/Pernicka 2014).↩︎
There seem to be many possible sources, but the presence of mercury as a trace-element is unusual: see Lehrberger 1995. The earliest mined gold seems to have been from the eastern desert of Egypt (Weisgerber/Pernicka 1995, 177–178), where it occurs with mercury (El-Bouseily et al. 1983).↩︎
For references see Zavadil 2009, 111–112.↩︎
C. Lühr, in: Bähr/Krause/Gebhard 2012, 30–35.↩︎
Gebhard/Rieder 2002, 123, 125, 126.↩︎
Gebhard/Rieder 2002, 127–128.↩︎
Kristiansen/Larsson 2005, 125–128, 235–236.↩︎
Kristiansen/Larsson 2005, 101–102. For the finds see Yalçın/Pulak/Slotta 2005, 589.↩︎
See now Czebreszuk 2011, who does not, however, mention the items from Bernstorf; likewise Maran 2013.↩︎
I refer above all to the ‘late Middle Helladic’ inscribed pebble, OL Zh 1, found at Kafkania near Olympia in Elis (Arapojanni et al. 1999), which was discovered during the excavations of 1998 on April Fools’ Day – a highly suspicious datum (Palaima 2002–2003).↩︎
Harding 2006, 463–465, and 2007, 52; Del Freo 2008, 221–222; Hughes-Brock 2011, 105–106; Harding 2013, 10, who, however, remarks that ‘the gold finds from Bernstorf have an unimpeachable provenance’. Cf. Facchetti/Negri 2003, 185–186.↩︎
Hughes-Brock 2011, 106.↩︎
Hughes-Brock 2011, 106–107, referring to Moosauer/Bachmaier 2000.↩︎
Bähr/Krause/Gehard 2012, 37–38 with n. 89.↩︎
Hughes-Brock 2011, 104–105.↩︎
Hughes-Brock 2011, 106, citing Moosauer/Bachmaier 2005, 112–116.↩︎
They are reported (in German translation) by Gebhard/Rieder 2002, 128–131.↩︎
‘Ich muß Ihnen sagen, daß ich — wäre dieses Objekt in der Ägäis, an einer bronzezeitlichen Fundstelle entdeckt worden — nicht gezögert hätte, die vorliegende Gravur für authentisch zu halten’ (letter to Gebhard, 12 Dec. 2000, in: Gebhard/Rieder 2002, 129).↩︎
‘Es sich unmöglich um Fälschungen handeln kann’ (letter to Gebhard, 11 Mar. 2001, in Gebhard/Rieder 2002, 130).↩︎
Gebhard/Rieder 2002, 130–131.↩︎
Hughes-Brock 2011, 106.↩︎
Hughes-Brock 2011, 104.↩︎
On the date see Driessen 2008, 71–72.↩︎
Hughes-Brock 2011, 106 (cf. Godart and Olivier in: Gebhard/Rieder 2002, 129–130). She notes that seals were used for Cretan Hieroglyphic script, but does not address the fact that the sign-group read in Linear A as (j)a-sa-sa-ra also appears on Cretan Hieroglyphic seals (e.g. CMS VI 13); this fact surely proves that Linear A is simply the cursive version of Cretan Hieroglyphic, just as Hieratic is the cursive version of Egyptian Hieroglyphics.↩︎
Zavadil 2009, 105–106; Simeonoglou 1985, 231–233 (site 4).↩︎
David 2007a, 435 with fig. 8, showing that the Shaft Grave style is quite different from the Bernstorf goldwork; cf. David 2007b, 416.↩︎
So, e.g., de Fidio 2008, 82 n. 3; Duhoux 2008, 313.↩︎
So, e.g., Palaima 2011, 116, 124.↩︎
See Adrimi Sismani/Godart 2005; both objects are in the Archaeological Museum at Volos (for other inscribed sherds from Mycenae, Tiryns, Knossos and Chania see Killen 2011, 105). In the same region, at least three Linear B tablets have been found in the quarter Kastro-Palaia in Volos (Skafida et al. 2010). However, the symbolic wheels on the lintel of the tholos tomb at Kazanaki north of Volos seem purely decorative.↩︎
CMS I no. 154 (the database is on the internet at http://arachne.uni-koeln.de); cf. Krzyszkowska 2005, 239, no. 448. This is from Chamber Tomb 518, and is LH I–II in date.↩︎
Karachalios 1926, 44 describes a rock-cut tholos with a relieving triangle, but gives no plan or section.↩︎
Karachalios 1926, 43 fig. 3, with Harding/Hughes-Brock 1974, 164. Hughes-Brock (1985, 259 n. 26) thinks the description (ἑνὸς σφραγιδολίθου ἐξ ἠλέκτρου μετὰ δυσκρίτου παραστάσεως) is unclear, since ἤλεκτρον means ‘amber’ or ‘electrum’ in Greek, but electrum seems unlikely. The seal is not in CMS, and seems to have been misplaced in the Archaeological Museum of Sparta.↩︎
This was pierced and was perhaps a damaged spacer-plate (Harding/Hughes-Brock 1974, 155–156, 164, 166); it has been suggested that it bears an incised sign in Linear A or B (Deshayes/Dessenne 1959, 74), but this must remain doubtful. For a poor photograph see Marinatos 1957, Εἰκ. 1, who describes the design as ‘a skull with the lines of the palate’ (κρανίον μὲ τὰς γραμμώσεις τοῦ οὐρανίσκου), but also says that the whole design might be illusory; perhaps these lines were either side of the central design, like the hair depicted on either side of the rare frontal portrait which appears on a carnelian seal from the tholos tomb at Nichoria (McDonald/Wilkie 1982, Pl. 5–59, = CMS V no. 431). There is little resemblance to the other ‘portrait-heads’ that we find on a few well-known seals, since all of these are Minoan, show a high level of artistic talent and are much earlier: see Krzyszkowska 2005, 114–115 with no. 195, 121 with nos. 236–237.↩︎
Hughes-Brock 1985, 259.↩︎
No. Me/D 52, = CMS V 2 no. 415; cf. Müller 1997, 84–85 (with colour plate).↩︎
On such heirlooms cf. Krzyszkowska 2005, 271–273, 306. A recent example is the first Mainland Popular Group seal known from Laconia; this object, from a LH IIIC Early tomb at Ayios Stephanos, is dated to LH IIIA–B and became very worn before it was interred (item no. 7126 in French 2008, 458). For the distribution and significance of these seals see Eder 2007.↩︎
I thank Olga Krzyszkowska for this information.↩︎
Olivier Pelon with an excess of scepticism describes these as ‘Lineare Zeichen, Schriftzeichen imitierend’ (CMS loc. cit.), but the sole problem with reading them as Linear B is the oblique trident-shaped mark at the upper left side in the impression, which is unexplained.↩︎
Data on the direction of reading of signs in Aegean seals is scarce, since the only corpus is that of Cretan Hieroglyphic; seals can be read in either direction, with the direction of reading indicated by a special sign × (so already Evans 1909 (I) 251–253). In the earliest Cretan writing the direction of reading was probably boustrophedon rather than from left to right, as also in the earliest Cypro-Minoan text and in those from Ugarit (Janko 1987).↩︎
Olivier 1999, 434.↩︎
It has also been suggested that CMS VI no. 395, a haematite lentoid seal in the Ashmolean Museum stylistically dated to LH IIIA 1 or LH III A 2, bears a Linear B sign (see CMS ad loc.), namely the wavy line separating the two griffins that face each other over the bull, which might be interpreted as the ideogram ? ole ’oil’; but this interpretation seems unlikely.↩︎
Duhoux 2011, 10–14.↩︎
Gebhard/Rieder 2002, 131.↩︎
Gebhard/ Rieder 2002, 124, Abb. 8.↩︎
Letter of Olivier to Gebhard, 17 Dec. 2000, in: Gebhard/Rieder 2002, 130.↩︎
cf. e.g. Duhoux 2011, 8.↩︎
Ilievski 1965, 49–51.↩︎
e.g. *o-na-te-re ‘leaseholders’ written as o-to-te-re* in PY En 659.9 and possibly pi-ri-na-jo (KN C 911.1) for pi-ri-to-jo ’of Philistos’.↩︎
e.g. a-re-ro (PY Un 718.8) for a-re-pa ‘unguent’ and ro-we-a in KN X 5949 instead of pa-we-a ’cloths’.↩︎
e.g. e-ra-ti-ja-o (PY Un 1317) for e-ra-pi-ja-o ’of deerskin’ (Aura Jorro 1985, 237).↩︎
Gebhard/Rieder 2002, 124, with Abb. 8.↩︎
For the shapes see the tables in Olivier 1967 and Palaima 1988.↩︎
a-ro-to was at first misread as a-pa-to on KN Gg 5185.1. Ilievski (1965, 48) gives an extensive list of such errors.↩︎
William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum ii. 467.↩︎
This form appears in tablets PY Ea 810, nominative singular (perhaps a man’s name), Fn 324.12, dative singular (describing the man called a-ta-o), and Jo 438.21, nominative singular or genitive plural; see Tritsch 1957, 160–2.↩︎
See tablets PY Aa 699 and Ab 190, both in hand 1.↩︎
So tablet PY Ad 684 in hand 23 and perhaps Xa 633 in hand 13 (?) (ti-nwa-ti-[).↩︎
KN L(9) 761 (hand 213). The asterisk denotes a reconstructed linguistic form. Some have seen in the non-assibilated adjectival forms evidence for West Greek (i.e. Doric) in the Mycenaean archives (Nagy 1968, cf. Woodard 1986), but this interpretation of them is neither necessary nor desirable (so Hajnal 1997, 214–224), and independently Thompson 1998, 2002–2003.↩︎
Ventris/Chadwick 1956, 161. For discussion of such names see Georgiev 1961, 38–41.↩︎
I have deliberately departed from the convention that capitals are never used in transcribing Linear B. This convention arose out of caution, because it is often uncertain whether sign-groups are proper nouns; it makes perfect sense in our editions of reference. However, there is no reason to adhere to it in an interpretative article, and Ventris and Chadwick did not.↩︎
In theory it could be /(S)Tirnwanthos/ or /(S)Thirnwanthos/; it cannot have been /Dinwanthos/, since the script has a separate d-series of signs. Heubeck (1963, 16–17) instead interpreted the name of the town as Greek /T^hinwantios/, from *t^hīnu̯ṇtii̯os ‘sandy’, a derivative of θίς ‘sand’; he is followed by García Ramón (2011, 240). But this does not explain the fluctuation between -asios and -atios, since he has to reconstruct the name of the town itself as *Thīnwon(t)s. Chadwick (1988, 83–84) tried to relate the name to *στενϝός and so perhaps to Στενύκλαρος in Messenia, but this is unconvincing on phonological grounds.↩︎
So Davies 2010, 517, with a complete list; she notes that most of them are attested at Knossos.↩︎
Ἄκανθος and Φάλανθον are irrelevant, since they are compounds of ἄνθος, which is of Indo-European origin. The cities called Ἄκανθος are derived from the common noun ἄκανθα; the Mycenaean man’s name a-ka-to on KN Dv 5256 and Sc 256, may perhaps be related, but may also be read as Ἀγαθός, Ἀγαθών, or Ἄκαστος (Aura Jorro 1985, 34). Similarly, from φάλανθος ‘bald’ comes the place in Thessaly called Φαλανθία, also transmitted as Φαλαγαθία, near Cypaera west of Lamia in central Greece (Ptol. Geog. 3. 12. 42), and the mountain called Φάλανθον and a town of the same name in Arcadia (Paus. 8. 35. 9). The man’s name pa-ra-ti-jo on KN C 914.A may be formed from this, but could instead be read *Παλα(ι)στιος (cf. Παλαίστη in Illyria). The name Μέλανθος is also in Mycenaean as me-ra-to on PY Jn 832.11 (Aura Jorro 1985, 437).↩︎
Charax FHG fr.7; Steph. Byz. s.v. Ψωφίς; cf. Paus. 8. 24. 3–4.↩︎
Tablet Cn 3.6 lists o-ru-ma-to u-ru-pi-ja-jo bos 1, under the heading jo-i-je-si me-za-na / e-re-u-te-re di-wi-je-we qo-o ‘thus the Messenians are sending oxen to inspector (?) Diwyeus’. Cf. Wa 917 (o-da-sa-to a-ko-so-ta / e-qe-ta e-re-u-te-re); for the meaning of e-re-u-te-re see Killen 2007, 264 and Nakassis 2010, 280. Diwyeus was a Follower (An 656.8–9).↩︎
An 519.10–12: a2-te-po de-wi-jo ko-ma-we / o-*34-ta-qe U-ru-pi-ja-jo / O-ru-ma-si-jo vir 30. At first scholars tried to relate these U-ru-pi-ja-jo to Ὀλυμπία: so still Eder 2011, 112. But the initial vowel makes this difficult, and P. B. S. Andrews’ interpretation /Wrupiaioi/ is better (Chadwick 1973b, 43); cf. perhaps classical Rhypes, Rhypai or Rhypaea in Achaea near Aigion.↩︎
Stavrianopoulou 1989, Beilage XVI. O-ru-ma-to remains in the Hither Province if we accept Lang’s proposal (Lang 1990, 123–125) that An 519 belongs immediately before An 661, which more effectively groups the places represented on tablet Cn 3. She is followed by Bennet 1999, 141 with table 3.↩︎
Σ Τ ad Il. 16. 345, τινὲς δὲ “Ὀρύμαντα” (perhaps from Didymus).↩︎
W. Ruge in RE VI.1, 1907, 570. Cf. perhaps the alternation in the Arcadian toponym Orchomenos/Erchomenos (Nielsen 2005, 578).↩︎
Eder 2011, 112 favours this location, and regards the fact that in An 519.10–12 (supra, n. [103]) U-ru-pi-ja-jo are stationed at O-ru-ma-to as a supporting argument. See further Parker 1993, 53 n. 62.↩︎
Cn 3.5–7 run: e-na-po-ro i-wa-si-jo-ta bos 1 / o-ru-ma-to u-ru-pi-ja-jo bos 1 / a2-ka-a-ki-ri-ja-jo u-ru-pi-ja-jo{-jo} bos 1. With this compare An 661.3, 12: e-na-po-ro i-wa-so vir 70 ... a2-ka-a-ki-ri-jo u-ru-pi-ja-jo ne-do-wo-ta-de vir 30, which suggests that O-ru-ma-to was in the same vicinity (cf. Sainer 1976, 48).↩︎
It is also known as Ra-u-ra-ti-ja /Lauranthia/ on On 300.9, in the Further Province, and is also written ra-wa-ra-ta2 (An 298.1, Jn 829.14 (damaged), Ma 216.1) and ra-wa-ra-ṭị-ja (An 830.11); cf. Aura Jorro 1993, 232.↩︎
Chadwick 1988, 87 infers from the absence of a form in -si-ja that the dental was preceded by a sibilant, which would hinder assimilation, and that the form was therefore /Laurastios/, but this must remain doubtful.↩︎
Chadwick 1973a, 278; see Table 1 below.↩︎
Hrd. Prosod. 146,21 Lentz and Steph. Byz. Ethn. s.v., with K. Ziegler, RE XXIV, 1963, 11.↩︎
The most salient example is the sound-change of Mycenaean /en/ to ιν (Dubois 1988, 17–22).↩︎
Georgiev 1961, 40.↩︎
Haley in: Blegen/Haley 1928, 141–145.↩︎
See further Killen 2001.↩︎
So Lindgren 1973, i. 33.↩︎
PY Ea 810, ti-nwa-si-jo gra 3 t 5.↩︎
Chadwick in: Ventris/Chadwick 1973, 586.↩︎
Lindgren (1973, i. 188) notes both possibilities.↩︎
This land did not belong to a male relative or relatives of the Ti-nwa-si-ja who were working as weavers at Pylos (Ad 684), since we will see that these women were of low status.↩︎
I thank an anonymous reviewer for this point.↩︎
On this purpose see §6 below.↩︎
The commodity is given ‘to’ the officials of the Hither Province, whose titles appear in the dative, whereas the titles of those from the Further Province appear in the nominative, as was noted by Palmer 1963, 374. Chadwick (in: Ventris/Chadwick 1973, 467) puts the variation down to ‘scribal inconsequence’, i.e. error, but does not make it clear whether he thinks the dative with the locatival ending in -i (given at least 4× in the first paragraph) or the nominative (given 7× in the second paragraph) is correct.↩︎
Chadwick 1998–1999, 35; see below §5.↩︎
Chadwick 1998–1999, 35 posited /Thelphōseus/, but the loss of the nasal with compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel would not yet have occurred (Lejeune 1972, 129–130, 222). For the formation cf. the Knossian name te-ra-po-si-jo /Theraponsios/ from θεράπων (KN Lc 466 etc.).↩︎
The root is Proto-Indo-European *d^helb^h- ‘dig’, cf. English ‘delve’ (G. Neumann in: Beekes 2010, ii. 1464). Δελφοί, i.e. ‘wombs’, ‘caves’, is unrelated.↩︎
Dubois 1988, i. 51–53.↩︎
Hom. Hy. Pyth. Ap. 243–276, 375–387.↩︎
Paus. 8.25 (Θέλπουσα); Steph. Byz. s.v. Τέλφουσα. Nielsen 2005, 597–599. The forms of the ethnic Θελπούσιος, Τελφούσιος and Θελφοίσιος (SEG 11.1254a) point to original *Θελφόνσιος (Dubois 1988, ii. 227–228).↩︎
Cf. Bennet 2011, 144, 152, with §5 below.↩︎
Pausanias 8. 25. 2.↩︎
Tablet PY An 657.8, with Sainer 1975, 35.↩︎
Heubeck 1976, 131.↩︎
For the total, which allows for missing documents, see Chadwick 1988, 76.↩︎
PY Ad 684: pu-ro ti-nwa-ti-ja-o i-te-ja-o ko-wo vir 5 ko-wo 2. On edge: a-pu-ne-we e-re-ta-o ko-wo.↩︎
PY Aa 699: ti-nwa-si-ja mul 9 ko-wa 4 ko-wo 3 DA 1 TA [1.↩︎
PY Ab 190: gra 3 ⟦τ 9⟧ DA TA

pu-ro / ti-nwa-si-ja mul 9 ko[-wa ]2 ko-wo 1

NI 3 ⟦τ 9⟧.

The quantities of gra (grain) and NI (figs) were both corrected from 2 t 9 to 3 (Chadwick 1988, 55).↩︎
Tritsch (1958, 431–437) argues that they are taken for granted and are with the women, but see below, this §.↩︎
Stavrianopoulou (1989, 84), in seeking to deny this, proposes instead that they were all within the kingdom, but the absence of all these places from the other records is in that case problematic.↩︎
Aa 506, Ab 562, Ad 390, Ad 679.↩︎
Carystus was in Euboea. On Ad 671, this is a derivative of the man’s name Καρύστιος, just as A-da-ra-te-ja on Aa 785 and Ab 388 may be derived from the man’s name Ἄδραστος rather than just be the single woman’s name (Chadwick 1988, 78–79). The toponym Ka-ru-to /Karustos/ is now known at Thebes (TH Wu 55.β).↩︎
Aa 60; but this need not refer to the Euripus near Chalcis in Euboea, since the place E-wi-ri-po on An 610 has been identified as the strait between Methone and the islands off the SW tip of Messenia, and this may instead be the ethnic formed from that place-name (Chadwick 1988, 86). Evidently the toponym was found in different straits which had strong currents.↩︎
i.e. /Kswiai/ (Chadwick 1988, 80).↩︎
Aa 701, Ab 515, Ad 315, Ad 326. This roughly corresponds to later Lydia.↩︎
Ab 186.↩︎
Aa 798, Aa 1180, Ab 382, Ab 573, Ad 380, Ad 689.↩︎
Aa 792, Ab 189, Ad 683, also [An 292.4].↩︎
Aa 61, Ad 664.↩︎
Aa 354, Ab 372, Ad 680, and also An 292.3. This place is unidentified.↩︎
So Ventris/Chadwick 1956, 156; Chadwick 1976, 80–81.↩︎
So Ventris/Chadwick 1956, 156. This hypothesis, advanced by T. B. L. Webster, is widely accepted: cf. Shelmerdine 2008, 340–341. For an attempt at rebuttal see Tritsch 1958, 423–427.↩︎
Chadwick 1988, 92.↩︎
Homer, Iliad 21. 81.↩︎
Chadwick 1988, 92, who proves that these women are at a place Ke-re-za that is close to Pylos rather than are Κρῆσσαι ‘Cretans’, because the word does not become †ke-re-za-o on Ad 686 and Ad 318 [+] 420.↩︎
Tritsch 1958, 428.↩︎
Chadwick 1988, 92.↩︎
Tritsch 1958, 429. Four further cases that he alleges of ethnics for women from townships within the Pylian kingdom are all incorrect. A woman a-da-ra-te-ja is recorded on Aa 785 and Ab 388, but rather than be an ethnic this may be the individual name /Adrāsteia/, since only one woman is recorded (Chadwick 1988, 78). Pa-wo-ke is apparently a descriptive /panworges/ ‘maids of all work’ (Chadwick 1967). The A-*64-ja* are the /Aswiai/ or ’women of Asia’ whom we encountered above. Lastly, three women are recorded at Metapa in the Hither Province on Aa 779, where A-te-re-wi-ja* is added on the lower edge. This is not an ethnic, but refers to the Pylian town of A-te-re-wa or A-te-re-wi-ja in the Further Province, whence or whither the women at Metapa had been transferred (Chadwick 1988, 85).↩︎
Tritsch 1958, 429 n. 44.↩︎
Tritsch 1958, 431.↩︎
Tritsch 1958, 437–443, building on a suggestion of L. R. Palmer.↩︎
Tritsch 1958, 443, citing RS 11.857.↩︎
RS 34.129.↩︎
So Stavrianopoulou 1989, 92.↩︎
So Chadwick 1988, 90–91; however, Tritsch (1958, 437 n. 63) showed that in antiquity the safest places were usually nucleated centres such as Athens during the Archidamian War.↩︎
So Ventris/Chadwick 1956, 161. Stravrianopoulou (1989, 88) takes ko-wo as ‘männliche Arbeitskraft’ rather than ‘men and boys’, and thinks the men and boys have already been sent to A-pu-ne-we, but Chadwick 1988 points out that the addition of the number of ‘boys’ on the Aa and Ad sets produces a total very similar to that of the girls (179 + 82 = 261 boys versus 251 girls), whereas the sex-ratio is otherwise unequal (cf. Shelmerdine 2008, 340–341). This leaves no room for husbands within the numbers who are receiving rations.↩︎
Chadwick 1988, 87.↩︎
Ventris/Chadwick 1956, 156.↩︎
PY Ad 697, Da-mi-ni-ja ri-ne-ja-o ko-wo ‘e-re-[ta] qe-ro-me-no’ vir, with Chadwick 1988, 58, 87–88, who notes that the lack of a numeral shows that all the men were absent serving with the navy.↩︎
Cf. Gschnitzer 1999, 262–263; Shelmerdine 2008, 147; Nakassis 2010.↩︎
Shelmerdine 2008, 147.↩︎
KN Ap 618, ṭị-wa-ti-ja / a-*79 ‘a-no-qo-ta’ mul 3[ ] ko-ma-we-to mul 2 we-ra-te-ja mul 2 [, with an upper line adding a-pe-a-sa / i-ta-mo ‘do-ti-ja’ mul 1 ki-nu-qa ‘*56-ko-we’ mul 1. There is really no doubt over the ṭị. The names of the ‘collectors’ A-no-qo-ta and Ko-ma-we-to, who also owns a slave on KN B 988+, appear variously in the nominative and genitive. The tablet is in hand 103, from findspot F14 in the West Magazines (Olivier 1967, 106).↩︎
Aura Jorro 1993, 356, commented ‘probablemente se trata de un adj. étnico, quizá una grafía irregular por *ti-nwa-ti-ja (d. ti-nwa-ti-ja-o, s.u. ti-nwa-si-jo)’. For the omission of n in medial -nw- compare pa-wo-ke, interpreted as /panworgēs/ (Chadwick 1967). To a reviewer’s objection that /ksenwios/ is always written ke-se-ni-wi-jo and never †ke-se-wi-jo, and /perusinwos/ pe-ru-si-nu-wo and never †pe-ru-si-wo, I would reply that both are Indo-european words, in which the syllabification may have differed.↩︎
Chadwick (in Ventris/Chadwick 1973, 586) compared the two ethnics, but the implications are not considered.↩︎
A-no-qo-ta is in KN Ak 615, Da 1289, Dq 45, E 847, Vc 173 and elsewhere, Ko-ma-we at C 913, Cn 925, Dk 920, 1049 (?), Dv 1272 etc.↩︎
We-ra-te-ja is probably the feminine possessive adjective based on the name We-ra-to, which is attested in KN De 1136 (Rougemont 2009, 375, 498–499).↩︎
A-*79 is a woman’s name at Mycenae (Oe 123) and is held to be so at Knossos also (Chadwick in Ventris and Chadwick 1973, 536, with Aura Jorro 1985 s.v.). However, for the scribe at Knossos to have given the name of just one woman would violate the format of the main entry on the tablet, which does not declare the names of the three sets of women, who are each time a plurality. Since their owners’ names are stated, and toponyms are included in the line added above (along with the women’s names, since only one woman is missing in each case), the sole possibility left is that A-*79 is a place-name.↩︎
I-ta-mo is to be read as /Itamō/ from ἰταμός, but Ki-nu-qa is opaque.↩︎
*56-ko-we was probably in West-Central Crete, as we know from the stirrup-jars with Linear B labels painted before firing (Bennet 2011, 150).↩︎
Olivier 1967, 131.↩︎
Chadwick 1988, 86.↩︎
For a summary of the controversy over the dating of the main archive at Knossos see Driessen 2008, 70–72; the lowest chronologies that have been offered lately are in the first half of LM IIIB/LH IIIB.↩︎
Chadwick 1973b, 40.↩︎
In the Hither Province according to Stavrianopoulou (1989, 85–6), who argues that it was not the capital of the Further Province, as Chadwick proposed (in: Ventris/Chadwick 1973, 418); cf. Bennet 1998–1999; Hope Simpson 2014, 65.↩︎
For the location of Ro-u-so, which is uncontroversial, see e.g. Bennet 1999, 140.↩︎
For the reconstruction of Pylian geography see Chadwick 1976, 41–48, and Bennet 2011, 151–155. On the difficulties of determining the land frontiers to the N. and E. see Hope Simpson 1981, 144–146, and especially Rougemont 2009, 59–60. Cosmopoulos (2006, 206 n. 2) accepts the standard view, but see now Eder 2011, 111–114.↩︎
McDonald and Hope Simpson 1972, 141–143 with maps 8–14 and 8–15.↩︎
Duhoux 1983, 44–57; Bartoněk 2003, 471–487, esp. 483–484.↩︎
Georgacas/McDonald 1967.↩︎
Chadwick 1976, 185–186.↩︎
8. 3. 14. Hiller (1972, 214–216) suggested that the Iliad presupposes that Nestor’s capital was in Triphylia, while the Odyssey locates it in Messenia, and that the capital was actually moved south when the palace at Ano Englianos was built. There is also Ma-to-ro-pu-ro/Ma-to-pu-ro ‘mother Pylos’ (Cn 595, Mn 1412), a small place in the Further Province (Hiller 1972, 168).↩︎
Chadwick 1976, 42. For a good account of the standard view Cosmopoulos 2006, 205–213.↩︎
For recent and very promising attempts see Cosmopoulos 2006 and Hope Simpson 2014.↩︎
This last detail is known from the last entry in the o-ka coastguard tablets, PY An 661.12–13: a2-ka-a2-ki-ri-jo u-ru-pi-ja-jo / ne-do-wo-ta-de vir 30, ‘at A2-ka-hakrion, 30 U-ru-pi-ja-jo men to the Nedwon’.↩︎
Palmer 1963, 65–70; Carothers 1992, 238–245 with figs. 7–9; Cosmopoulos 2006, 211.↩︎
In favour of the latter hypothesis see Lukermann 1972, 168–170, with his map, fig. 9–6; Parker 1993, 42–54; Dyczek 1994, 60–63 with his fig. 18; Gschnitzer 1999, 261; Eder 2011, 111–114 with Abb. 5.↩︎
Chadwick 1976, 39, opposed by Rougemont 2009, 59.↩︎
Chadwick 1976, 39. Hope Simpson (1981, 88, 92) notes that many more Mycenaean sites are to be expected both in western Arcadia, especially near the Alpheus and Ladon rivers, and in coastal Triphylia; cf. Lukermann 1972, 162; Hope Simpson 2014, 8.↩︎
An 657.6, ne-da-wa-ta-o o-ka. It does not follow, of course, that the ‘man from the Neda’ actually lived there (Parker 1993, 44–45). An 657.13–14, which read o-ka-ra ‘o-wi-to-no’ vir 30 ke-ki-de-qe a-pu2-ka-ne / vir 20 me-ta-qe pe-i ai-ko-ta e-qe-ta, form an appendix to o-ka I, in order to give a detailed breakdown of the 50 men there listed in line 4 and to supply the name of the accompanying e-qe-ta.↩︎
Palmer 1963, 73; Parker 1993, 44.↩︎
So Chadwick 1968, with strong arguments; he prefers, of course, to regard it as a homonymous town well south of the Alpheus, and to posit that the name moved after the Mycenaean period, as in many other cases. Cf. the name Pi-sa-wa-ta /Piswātās/ at Knossos (B 1055.2).↩︎
So Dyczek 1994, 62; Eder 2011, 112–113. Pausanias (5. 14. 3) remarked that Elis is the only region where flax grows well in Greece.↩︎
It is listed in the coastguard tablets (An 654.3).↩︎
Dyczek 1994, 62–63.↩︎
Parker 1993, 66 with n. 110.↩︎
Parker 1993, 48–54 has shown that the very productive territory of the next centre to the south, Pe-to-no, extended from the palace up to the Neda, and that both Pisa and Metapa were north of that river; cf. Eder 2011, 113–114.↩︎
Schwyzer 1923, 414 = SEG 11.1183, 38.364.↩︎
Meiggs/Lewis 1969, no. 17 (c. 500), with the misreading Ἐρϝαοῖοι, and Nielsen 2005, 188, 558; they are not the Heraeans in Arcadia.↩︎
Herodian, Prosod. 258,28, Μέταπα πόλις Ἀκαρνανίας. Πολύβιος πέμπτῳ; Steph. Byz. s.v. has the same wording, but adds τὸ ἐθνικὸν Μεταπαῖος ἢ Μεταπεύς διὰ τὰ ἐπιχώρια. The fragment of Polybius has passed unnoticed, as has this city in the records of the Copenhagen Polis Centre. The name is prehellenic (Haley, in: Blegen/Haley 1928, 145 with Pl. 1).↩︎
So Palmer 1963, 65, 74; Virgilio 1972, 71–72; Eder 2011, 113. Chadwick (Gnomon 36 [1964] 325) objected that another inscription found at Olympia records a treaty between Sybaris and another Italian city, and by this logic we might think Sybaris was near Olympia. However, the dialect is local to Elis, as Kroll and Barkowski noted (RE XV.2, 1932, 1326; RE Suppl. III, 1918, 95). There are no grounds for emending the text to Μεσσαπίς.↩︎
Dyczek 1994, 63; Lukermann 1972, fig. 9–6; Eder 2011, Abb. 5.↩︎
Hope Simpson 2014, 58–60, puts Pi-*82 at Siderokastro: Sphakoulia and Metapa at Mouriatadha: Elliniko.↩︎
Tritsch 1957, followed by Heubeck 1963, 17.↩︎
Chadwick 1972, 105.↩︎
Chadwick 1988, 83.↩︎
Chadwick 1988, 84; the derivation is untenable, but the conclusion may be right.↩︎
See above §3.↩︎
Chadwick 1998–1999, 34–35. The well-built Mycenaean tholos-tomb at Kambos should not be forgotten in this context, since tholoi are associated with local rulers (Bennet 1998, 125–127).↩︎
Homer, Iliad 9. 149–53 = 290–5; cf. Bennet 2011, 155.↩︎
Chadwick 1973b, 54.↩︎
PY Jo 438.19–24: e-re-e po-ro-ko-re-te aur p 3 X / a-ke-ro qa-si-re-u aur P 3 X / te-po-se-u ti-nwa-si-jo ko-re-te aur n 1 / po-ki-ro-qo aur n 1 / au-ke-wa aur n 1 / ti-mi-ti-ja ko-re-te aur p 6 / (Ventris and Chadwick 1973, 358–9, 514). The places associated with A-ke-ro and Augewas, who was the da-mo-ko-ro, are unknown, but according to An 654.11–12 Poikiloq^us may be from To-wa.↩︎
Shelmerdine 1973, whose conclusions are applied to a map by Chadwick 1973a; cf. Chadwick 1976, 47–48. Parker (1993, 60–75) confirms these conclusions with new evidence, save that he locates Sa-ma-ra to the north of Ra-wa-ra-ta2.↩︎
From τέρμινθος (Palaima 2000, 14–18).↩︎
Shelmerdine 1998, 142–144; cf. also Parker 1993, 60–4.↩︎
Chadwick 1973a, where ‘Cn 594’ is a misprint. The start of Cn 595 reads: e-ra-te-re-wa-pi ta-to-mo o-pe-ro / me-ta-pa a-we-ke-se-u vir 1 ovis+TA 5. Likewise Dyczek (1994, 69–70) puts Helos in the Stenyclarus plain to the N.E.↩︎
Bennet 1999, 148, with his very useful fig. 3; Eder 2011, 113 n. 42. ‘Like me-ta-pa, pi-*82 reaches in one step towns from both provinces’ (Carothers 1992, 258–259); similarly Eder 2011, 113.↩︎
So Parker 1993, 68–69, who compares East Anglia with its two subdivisions Norfolk and Suffolk.↩︎
Hope Simpson 2014, 67. Bennet tentatively locates A-te-re-wi-ja in the Soulima valley at Peristeriá in N.W. Messenia, and Helos at Mouriatada (1998–1999, 24–25, 30, and 1999, 148–149 with fig. 3). Cherry (1977, 80 with his Fig. 7) suggested a location for Helos in the S.E. corner near the marshy mouth of the Pamisos.↩︎
PY On 300.12. Relying on the other lists of towns, Chadwick plausibly restores the first half of the line as [e-re-o du-]ma ‘the mayor of Helos’, since du-ma is a title comparable to ko-re-te (in: Ventris/Chadwick 1973, 466–468). Palaima (1995, 631–632) proposed that Te-po-se-u was listed in this place because he was also da-mo-ko-ro of the Further Province.↩︎
For the classical settlement of Triphylia see Nielsen 2005, 603–612; Eder 2011, 105.↩︎
Chadwick 1977, 226.↩︎
See Nielsen 2005, 79–83.↩︎
Cooper 1996, 77–79, who shows that, pace Pausanias 8. 41. 9, ἐπικούριος did not mean ‘healer’ or ‘helper’ against the plague. At least 4,000 of Xenophon’s Ten Thousand were Arcadians (Roy 1967, 308–309).↩︎
Compare the votive seal-case of King Naram-Sin (middle of the 18th century BC) of Ešnunna (Tell Asmar, north-east of Baghdad), which was found at Kastri on Kythera (Janko 2008, 584–586).↩︎
Vianello 2008, 20.↩︎
Gebhard/Rieder 2002, 125 Abb. 9.↩︎
Cf. Taylour 1983, 56 Fig. 33 (the dark blob worn by a cord around the right wrist of the smallest female figure). The Vapheio prince was buried with clusters of seal-stones around each wrist (Vermeule 1972, 128).↩︎
Vermeule and Travlos 1966, 66, 78, pls. 24–25; Harding and Hughes-Brock 1974, 159.↩︎
De Fidio 2008, 88.↩︎
CMS V Suppl. 1A no. 142; cf. Krzyszkowska 2005, 140, no. 247. Mycenaeans often appropriated Minoan ideological symbols.↩︎
Castleden 2005, 75–76 with his Fig. 3.6.↩︎
Karo 1930, 81 Abb. 19 (no. 296), 84 Abb. 20 with Taf. XVIII (nos. 308–309), 84 with Taf. XLIII (no. 310).↩︎
Harding and Hughes-Brock 1974, 152; Kristiansen/Larsson 2005, 139, 236.↩︎
Cf. Bennet 1998, 126–129, on changes at Nichoria and in the Soulima valley on the northern edge of the kingdom. Ayios Stephanos in southern Laconia, a peripheral zone where there had been much interaction with Knossos and earlier with Minoan Crete, was burned and largely abandoned in LH IIIA2 Early, as if it was subjected by a rising power in the vale of Sparta (Janko 2008, 595–597), perhaps centred at the newly discovered palace at Ayios Vasilios near Xirokambi.↩︎
Bennet 1998 and 2011, 155; he holds that the northern border of the kingdom may even have continued to be unstable until the collapse of the palatial system. Cf. Bennet/Shelmerdine 2001.↩︎
Lang 1969, 71–73 (nos. 22 H 64, 25 H 65), with plates M–N.↩︎
Krzyszkowska 2005, 304 with Fig. 10.4.↩︎
Porada 1981, 68–70.↩︎
Krzyszkowska 2005, 304.↩︎
KUB XXIII.1, col. IV; cf. Beckman 1996, 101; Bryce 2005, 309; de Fidio 2008, 102.↩︎
Cf. e.g. Bouzek 2007, 358, Papadopoulou 2007, Teržan 2007.↩︎
Hope Simpson 2014, 53–54.↩︎
Alcaeus fr. 350, with Strabo 13. 2. 3.↩︎
Chadwick 1976, 145; 1998–1999, 36–37.↩︎
Niemeier 2003, 105, fig. 4; Schofield/Parkinson 1994.↩︎
Catling 1961, 121; Driessen 1984; Drews 1993, 147–157; Gschnitzer 1999; M. H. Wiener, in: Karageorghis/Morris 2001, 247–248.↩︎
Gschnitzer 1999.↩︎
Ventris/Chadwick 1956, 191.↩︎
Driessen 1984, referring to KN B 164 (from the early archive of the Room of the Chariot Tablets), F 7362 v., Fh <392>, X 7631, X 7668, Xd 70.↩︎
Gschnitzer 1999, 259–260 with n. 16, citing PY Ma 195.3 for the Perrhaebians from northern Thessaly and the Pindus, KN B 164 for the Ku-re-we and Ionians, who were perhaps in central Greece at this early period (cf. Driessen 1984, 50–51). Gschnitzer also suggests that the Ạ3-wo-re-u-si of KN Wm 1707.a may be ‘Aeolians’. Other contingents are the I-wa-so /Iwasoi/ or I-wa-si-jo-ta /Iwasiōtai/ and Ko-ro-ku-ra-i-jo, i.e. /Krokulaioi/ or /Krokuraioi/ (‘Corcyreans’?) at Pylos (An 656, 661, Cn 3.5), and the unidentified ạ-ḍạ-wo-ne[ at Knossos (B 164.3).↩︎
PY An 657.1.↩︎
Chadwick 1976, 115.↩︎
Killen 2007, 265.↩︎
Melena 1975, 37–42; Killen 2007, 265, who rightly observes that the evidence of KN As 4493 undermines the view that the Pylian coastguard was an emergency measure.↩︎
Cf. Gschnitzer 1999, 262–263; Killen 2008, 170 with n. 31; Nakassis 2010.↩︎
Killen (2007, 265) has proved that the rowers on KN As(1) 5941 were also textile workers, because the tablet is written by the scribe 103, who was concerned only with the production of textiles. For Pylos see Gschnitzer 1999, 262–263.↩︎
PY An 657.1.↩︎
Ventris/Chadwick 1956, 189, 392; Killen 2007, 263. Deroy (1968, 19) took it as ἐπίκουροι but regarded these ‘helpers’ as tax-collectors.↩︎
So e.g. Beekes 2010, i. 442.↩︎
So Negri 1977–1978.↩︎
Melena (1975, 37–42), regarding KN As 4493, which will be discussed later in this §.↩︎
Janko 1992, 140; cf. e.g. e-pi-de-da-sa-to /epidedastoi/ ’has been distributed in addition’.↩︎
Cooper 1996, 76–77, with LSJ⁹ s.v. I.2.↩︎
καὶ δὴ ‘πίκουρος ὥστε Κὰρ κεκλήσομαι, ’I will be called a mercenary like a Carian’ (Archilochus fr. 216 West, cf. fr. 15.1). This is not noted by LSJ⁹. Caria was famous for its mercenaries (Adiego 2007, 1–2).↩︎
LSJ⁹ s.v. I.1, who rightly note that this meaning is unique to the Iliad, and Snell et al. 1969–2010, ii. 640. As the scholia observe (schol. D on Iliad 3. 188), only those helping the Trojans are called ἐπίκουροι, whereas those helping the Achaeans are σύμμαχοι.↩︎
Homer, Iliad 17. 220–226.↩︎
An 657.1. Mycenaean preserves the athematic conjugation, which Homer has modernized (Ventris/Chadwick 1956, 189).↩︎
Homer, Iliad 18. 288–92.↩︎
Homer, Iliad 9. 478–84, Od. 4. 174–7 (quoted above, §4).↩︎
Chadwick 1976, 67, 175.↩︎
Johnson 1982, 125, 134–158.↩︎
jo-i-je-si me-za-na / e-re-u-te-re di-wi-je-we qo-o /hō hihensi Metsānai ereutērei Diwiei gwōns/ ’thus the Messenians are sending oxen to the inspector Diwyeus’ (cf. n. 104 supra).↩︎
Chadwick, in: Ventris/Chadwick 1973, 435–436.↩︎
Nielsen 2005, 79–83.↩︎
Harding/Hughes-Brock 1974, 162, 164, 166 with Fig. 1; Dickinson 1994, 249–250; Eder 2007, 40–45, and 2011, 108. A large quantity of unworked amber even reached the palace at Qatna near Homs in Syria at some date (perhaps centuries) prior to c. 1340 BC (Hughes-Brock 2011, 107–109).↩︎
Harding/Hughes-Brock 1974, 152–153. For recent scepticism that the trade followed any one particular route see Hughes-Brock 2011, 108, with references.↩︎
Harding and Hughes-Brock 1974, 150–151, Figs. 2–3.↩︎
Pulak 1998, 218; Kristiansen/Larsson 2005, 101–102. Since some amber floats, more pieces may have been lost.↩︎
Harding/Hughes-Brock 1974, 149–153.↩︎
TH Z 849, 851, 852, 882, with Sacconi 2010, 129–131.↩︎
Palaima 1988, 259. In Hand 14 at Pylos, the same sign ? di has the side bars angled diagonally.↩︎
www.praehistorica.eu/pdf/DasBernsteingesichtvonBernstorf.↩︎
In: Gebhard/Rieder 2002, 130–131.↩︎
ka-di-ti-ja describes women at Knossos (KN V 1003), and is doubtfully taken as /Kadistiai/ (Ventris/Chadwick 1973, 549).↩︎
KN F 866, Fp 7 etc.↩︎
KN Da 1078, Dn 5318.↩︎

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Vianello 2008: A. Vianello, Late Bronze Age Aegean Trade Routes in the Western Mediterranean. In: H. Whittaker (ed.), The Aegean Bronze Age in relation to the wider European Context, BAR International Series 1745, 7–34.
Weisgerber/Pernicka 1995: G. Weisgerber/E. Pernicka, Ore mining in prehistoric Europe: an overview. In: Morteani/Northover 1995, 159–182.
Wunderlich/Lockhoff/Pernicka 2014: C.-H. Wunderlich/N. Lockhoff/E. Pernicka, De cementatione oder: Von der Kunst, das Gold nach Art der Alten zu reinigen. In: Meller/Risch/ Pernicka 2014, 353–375.
Woodard 1986: R. D. Woodard, Dialectal Differences at Knossos. Kadmos 25, 1986, 49–74.
Yalçın/Pulak/Slotta 2005: Ü. Yalçın/C. Pulak/R. Slotta (eds.), Das Schiff von Uluburun: Welthandel vor 3000 Jahren. Katalog der Ausstellung des Deutschen Bergbau-Museums Bochum vom 15. Juli 2005 bis 16. Juli 2006 (Bochum 2005).
Zavadil 2009: M. Zavadil, Diademe und Siegel, Tassen und Perlen: Gold in der mykenischen Welt. In: S. Deger-Jalkotzy/N. Schindel (eds.), Gold: Tagung anlässlich der Gründung des Zentrums Archäologie un Altertumswissenschaften an der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, (Wien 2009) 99–112.

Originally published as

Richard Janko: “Aber inscribed in Linear B form Bernstorf in Bavaria. New light on the Mycenaean Kingdom of Pylos”, in Bayerische Vorgeschichtsblätter 80 (2015), 39-64.

The Beginnings of Bavaria

Introduction and Summary

by Hubert Fehr, Irmtraut Heitmeier

translated by Julia Ess

2019-12-17

Hubert Fehr, Irmtraut Heitmeier, “The Beginnings of Bavaria: Introduction and Summary” in Bavarian Studies in History and Culture (2019) [originally published 2012], last modified 2019-12-17, https://www.bavarian-studies.org/2019/fehr-heitmeier
You can cite this publication by paragraph numbers (“para.”)

Originally published as

Hubert Fehr, Irmtraut Heitmeier, “Ein Vierteljahrhundert später…” in Die Anfänge Bayerns: Von Raetien und Noricum zur frühmittelalterlichen Baiovaria, ed. Hubert Fehr, Irmtraut Heitmeier (St. Ottilien: EOS Verlag, 2012), 13-20.

This text is open access and licensed under the terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Hubert Fehr, Irmtraut Heitmeier

The Beginnings of Bavaria

Introduction and Summary

translated by Julia Ess

2019-12-17

This text is open access and licensed under terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Disk fibulas of Unterhaching

This summary refers to

Hubert Fehr, Irmtraut Heitmeier, eds.

Die Anfänge Bayerns: Von Raetien und Noricum zur frühmittelalterlichen Baiovaria

Bayerische Landesgeschichte und europäische Regionalgeschichte 1

St. Ottilien 2012: EOS Verlag

German

Hardcover, 694 Pages

The Bavarian-Salzburgian state exhibition “Die Bajuwaren. Von Severin bis Tassilo 488–788” (“The Bajuwaren. From Severinus to Tassilo 488–788”) in 1988 marked a temporary end to an intense debate on the Early History of the Baiern in years before. It conveyed an image of the beginnings of Baiern that has been widely received by the public and remained prevalent up to the present day. Based on an interpretation of the Baiern-name as ‘men from Bohemia’, it was believed that a ‘kernel of tradition’ (‘Traditionskern’) immigrated from there, initiating the ethnogenesis of the Baiern from different ‘Germanic’ tribes and local population. Moreover, since this assumption seemed to correspond to the archaeological Friedenhain-Přešt’ovice group of finds, the impression was created that “… after centuries of efforts the mystery of the origin of the Bavarians had been solved”.¹

In the almost 25 years that passed since then, all disciplines involved in protohistory (Frühgeschichte) have been dealing intensely with theoretical and methodological principles for the interpretation of their relevant sources. In this context, the concepts of ‘tribal formation’ (‘Stammesbildung’) and ‘ethnogenesis’ (‘Ethnogenese’) have been developed further so that today the formation of the identity of protohistorical groups is under discussion. While archaeological sciences increasingly question whether ethnic identities manifest themselves in the archaeological record (burial habits or style of clothing), historical research deals with the problem of how (historical) tradition and its reception throughout the centuries created these ethnic identities in the first place. Eventually intense onomastic and etymological research in language border and interference areas proved the one-sided ethnic view of language also to be a product of national ideas of the 19th century.

This scholarly debate puts a different complexion on the beginnings of Baiern and poses new questions. A critical assessment of the sources in conjunction with newly gained insights toppled many an older ‘certainty’, so that the ‘mystery’ cannot be regarded as solved by any means – on the contrary: The early history of Baiern is more open than ever!

Against this background, the aim of the conference in Benediktbeuern in March of 2010 together with the present volume was to re-initiate the debate on this topic. It was not intended to replace the older model with a new one – at the current state of research this also would not be possible. In fact, the main focus was to take stock of the current debate and reveal different points of view. This is being reflected by the contributions in the present volume, which introduces numerous new approaches as well as different competing and to some extent, contradicting views.

On one hand, the development in recent years was characterized by a vast increase of archaeological finds and findings in conjunction with improved capabilities for analysis, for example regarding detailed chronology or the use of methods of natural sciences. Even the field of linguistics accesses a significantly broader and methodically more thoroughly edited material-base today. On the other hand, methodological principles for the interpretation of primary sources were discussed intensely in individual disciplines, with the result that the validity of one’s own sources is being evaluated differently today than before. Hence, a problem arising in the related disciplines is that it is impossible to keep track of either the abundance of individual results or their methodological realization. This has significant consequences for interdisciplinary cooperation. In some cases, the lack of transparency in the research-progress causes the adoption of results from related disciplines without the necessary awareness of the problem. In other cases, related subject areas are treated with great skepticism, in extreme cases to the point of complete disregard.

In view of this development, it seems absolutely essential not only to converse between disciplines about the results, but also about their realization and methodological principles. Ultimately, specific primary source material of the individual disciplines only allow a certain view on protohistory. Therefore, no discipline is able to present a comprehensive historical picture based solely on their specific perspective. Only in an active interdisciplinary debate, which also includes methodological aspects, is it possible to recognize not only the potential but also the pitfalls of the interdisciplinary approach.

As indicated before, in the past the category of ethnos appeared to be suitable to integrate contributions of various disciplines. In a way, the question of how the Baiern emerged as a tribe or people constituted a common point of focus for all subjects. However, his approach has become questionable due to findings of recent decades regarding the structure of ethnic communities in the Early Middle Ages. In addition, by focusing on ethnos, another category, which, from a present-day perspective, is considerably better suited to serve as a common reference for interdisciplinary research, has faded from the spotlight: Space. Primary sources of all disciplines involved in the research of the early history of the Baiern possess notable spatial reference: Archaeological material usually is located in space precisely; the same is true for skeleton finds that are addressed by anthropology. Toponyms are inherently space-related and written sources refer to specific places and regions in many cases. Therefore, it is not a coincidence that in contrast to the state exhibition of 1988 the colloquium in Benediktbeuern was entitled “From Raetia and Noricum to early medieval Baiovaria”. With this in mind, the present volume also focuses on the historical territory of Baiern, with its beginnings in the Alpine Foreland of Bavaria-Upper Austria between Iller and Lech in the west and the Enns River in the east, as well as its subsequent expansion into the Alpine Region in the south.

In recent times, the so-called ‘spatial turn’ in historical research raised awareness for the potential of an examination under spatial aspects. Space in its various forms is more than just a common reference point for all disciplines involved: it offers general geographical preconditions for settlement, commerce, and transportation, for strategic and political importance – consequently providing substantial information for the comprehension of historical developments. As early as in Late Antiquity, a region like early Baiern constitutes a human-made ‘cultural area’ (‘Kulturraum’) with structures of administration and political power that are, for instance, reflected in names of the Roman provinces. It is subject to debate to what extent these structures provide the basis of early medieval Baiovaria. Ultimately, almost all primary sources pertaining to protohistory are not to be interpreted without regard to location or geographical reference. Last but not least, this is true for the ‘onomastic landscape’ (‘Namenlandschaft’), which obtains further validity due to its spatial manifestation. Thereby, space itself becomes a primary source and it must be examined which ‘notions of history’ (‘Geschichtsbilder’) can be constructed plausibly on this basis.

As a visual aid to this methodological approach, the present volume provides various topical maps intending to facilitate the notion of spatial constellations as well as the comprehension of subsequent developments. The fact that historical content sometimes is pinned down more precisely than the state of discussion actually allows for needs to be considered individually.

The contributions of this volume can be divided into two groups: The first group of articles deals with questions directly related to early Baiern in terms of time and space. The second group is made up of contributions that illuminate problems of the early period of Baiern in comparison with examples from other contexts.

Michaela Konrad’s contribution sketches the different developments of the two provinces Raetia and Noricum since the Early Principate. While Noricum came under Roman influence early and experienced radical urbanization, Raetia remained a province dominated by the military with considerably less ‘Romanized’ conditions of living – preconditions whose consequences on the further development have not been discussed yet.

Roland Steinacher summarises the current state of discussion about identity formation in early medieval communities, elaborating that protohistorical identities are a highly complex and, in many cases, situationally constructed phenomenon. Thereby, they barely have anything to do with the concept of a culturally and linguistically homogeneous group, that developed as late as the Modern Period.

Jochen Haberstroh discusses the concept of the archaeologically defined Friedenhain-Přešt’ovice group of finds. Therewith, the so far predominant model of the immigration of a Baiovarian ‘kernel of tradition’ (‘Traditionskern’) is – from an archaeological perspective – deprived of its basis. At the same time, he demonstrates ways for a systematic study of plastically decorated fine-ceramic from the Migration Period, which still remains to be done despite numerous approaches on the topic of Friedenhain-Přešt’ovice.

Ludwig Rübekeil succeeds in offering new explanations for the very name Baiern. He analyses the ethnonym with a comparative approach, taking into consideration other names with the ending -varii. This typological study illustrates that these names are not based on ethnic, but rather on military structures. Furthermore, their spatial reference does not allude to a place of origin but to an area of military action. The lack of ethnic continuity becomes manifested in the Baiern name, whereby ,on-site’ identity formation is proved also from a linguistical point of view.

Alheydis Plassmann examines the ‘legend of origin’ of Baiern (‘Stammessage’), which is problematic due to its late tradition in medieval manuscripts. On one hand, she points out that the non-tradition of an early origin legend of the Baiern must not constitute an argument of research in either in a positive or a negative way. On the other hand, Plassmann emphasizes that the high medieval narrative possibly drew on older material, but a 12th century contextualization is also justified, which is why the legend can by no means be applied for the early period of Baiern.

Taking up Carl I. Hammer’s recent argument², who trenchantly points out that the earliest dukes’ affiliation to the Agilolfings is not verifiable, while vice versa the eldest known Agilolfings were not dukes of Baiern, Britta Kägler discusses the axiom that the dukes of Baiern always were Agilolfings since the mid-6th century.

The following two contributions address the early onomastic landscape. Christa Jochum-Godglück discusses toponyms including ‘Walchen’ – a group of toponyms that has been seen as evidence for ‘residual roman culture’ (‘Restromanentum’) in older research. Composed with the Germanic ethnonym *walh-oz- (equated with Romanus in glosses), they are a phenomenon of bilingual language border areas. In addition, they frequently contain a location that reminds one of a development in the context of fiscal organisation of space. This conclusion of a contextual appearance limits the importance of the Walchen names for settlement patterns.

Dealing with the area of Iller, Danube, and Lech, Andreas Schorr turns to the western fringe of Baiovaria. He poses the question of whether specific elements of early Bairisch or Alemannic can be found in toponyms as well as personal names (‘Namengut’) of this Bairisch-Alemannic intersection area. Schorr also discusses the state and tendencies of the etymological debate – in particular for even earlier periods – based on various categories of toponyms. He fathoms the consequences for an interdisciplinary conversation by discussing their respective statements concerning communication range and questions of continuity.

Brigitte Haas-Gebhard’s contribution regarding the grave field of Unterhaching presents one of the most significant new archaeological discoveries of recent years in Bavarian early medieval archaeology. Furthermore, she demonstrates the wide spectrum of modern archaeological investigation methods. The archaeological record shows that around the year 500 C.E., a high-ranking group of people resided on the Munich gravel plain – an important location in terms of traffic and administration. According to the evidence, this group also was of Christian faith.

On a larger scale, Arno Rettner addresses the testimony of archaeological sources in Raetia. He points to the gravestone of Pierius as a little-known evidence of one of the main protagonists of the late 5th century, discussing the problem of archaeologically perceived breaks as a result of methodological deficits. Regarding the potential of the grave field, Rettner presents new arguments for the Germanic or Romanic interpretation of certain burial attributes from the Early Middle Ages. In conclusion, he emphasizes the significance of Augsburg due to early Christian evidences.

Opposingly, Hubert Fehr postulates that the concept of the immigration of the Baiovarii and the extensive resettlement of the Alpine Foreland by Germanic immigrants during the Migration Period is a master narrative, that can not be proven from an archaeological point of view. Neither would the typical linear cemeteries hint to such an immigration, nor could grave goods like weapons or bow-fibulas be labeled as Germanic.

Barbara Hausmair looks into the problem of the hiatus, which is suggested by the archaeological record in Upper Austria for the period from the Roman retreat from the province of Noricum Ripense in 488 C.E. to the second half of the 6th century. She raises the question of whether there was an actual discontinuity of settlement – which was frequently presumed based on the Vita Severini – or rather a research gap. Structural and partially stratigraphic coherences of the findings indicate that particularly the numerous graves without goods in late Roman and again in early medieval cemeteries could be the missing link.

Archaeological sources of the Migration Period in Bohemia as well as its ties to neighbouring areas are being addressed in Jaroslav Jiřík’s article. He is able to demonstrate that intense archaeological connections to present-day Southwest Germany and the Middle Danube Region become apparent; however archaeological proof for immediate contacts between Bavaria and Bohemia is rather sparse and therefore stands in contrast to the traditional assumption of an immigration from this area.

Based on the example of the early medieval grave field of Enkering, Eva Kropf’s contribution explores the potential and limits of the anthropological study of protohistoric skeleton finds. On one hand, traditional morphometric methods still have great potential. On the other hand, in recent times there is the risk of repeating old mistakes in the interpretation of data due to a noncritical usage of new scientific methods.

From the viewpoint of economic history, Josef Löffl points out Baiern’s central location and accessibility via the Danube as a fast waterway and the access to various Alpine passes. He emphasizes that organisational continuities are to be expected, especially in the context of shipping and freight traffic. Due to a period of unfavorable weather conditions in the 5th and 6th century as well as unstable political development, the focus in agriculture changed to animal husbandry, which is less prone to external threats.

Stefan Esders discusses the late Roman ducate (ducatus) as a military organisation of frontier areas like Raetia, which can be considered as a predecessor of early medieval duchies. Using the examples of the Libyan dux Pentapoleos around the year 500 C.E. and the dux Histriae around 800, Esders illustrates their institutional preconditions and financial resources. The ducate of Istria also serves as an example of a seamless transition from the Byzantine Empire to the Francs, while changing opponents, which also needs to be taken into consideration for Raetia. To comprehend the preconditions of the ducate in Baiern, as for other Merovingian duchies, it is necessary to study long-term substructures diachronically and analyse them in local operational contexts.

Based on the question, what the background of the equation of Baiern with Noricum in early to high medieval sources could be, Irmtraut Heitmeier develops the model of a dual formation of the duchy of Baiern. Since in late Roman administration Raetia was part of the Italian dioceses and Noricum part of the Illyrian, the Inn River received a superior function in the organisation of space, which separated different spheres of sovereignty already in the Ostrogothic and later in the Merovingian period. The integration of parts from both territories can help to explain the structural dichotomy of the subsequent duchy as well as the peculiarities of the dukeship of Baiern.

In the discussion on the nature of the dukeship as a hereditary sovereignty, the parallel of Aquitaine has been referenced particularly. For this reason, Philippe Depreux looks at the princeps in Aquitaine in the 7th and 8th centuries. Thereby, he points out contradictions and chronological problems in the “principautés périphériques” – as evolved by Karl Ferdinand Werner. By analysing the Miracula sancti Martialis accurately, Depreux shows that the principatus in Aquitaine is a construction of the 8th century and therefore much later than the postulated peak of the “principautés périphériques”. Ultimately, it was a title granted by the Carolingians in retrospect to those in power in Aquitaine, when it had already become a minor kingship.

With the question ‘Christians or Pagans?’, the following two contributions stress the problem of early Baiern’s identity once more. Christian Later explores the question of how religious denominations and Christianity in particular can become apparent in archaeological evidence. He not only deals with the different types of sources but also – based on the cross pins of the Aschheim thermae – offers the theory that those cross pins could constitute a reference to local forms of Christian denomination. The archaeological evidence is hardly conclusive but easily compatible with the conception that Christianity has long been widespread as the official religion in the Roman provinces of Raetia and Noricum Ripense and therefore did not need to be expressed explicitly in burial rituals.

This is Roman Deutinger’s thesis, based on a critical analysis of written sources. He exposes the reports of a Christianization of Baiern not until the 7th and 8th centuries as a master narrative. Its premises are, on one hand, the idea of individual conversions, and on the other hand, the assumption that an ethnic and religious (Pagan) identity of the Baiern already existed before the integration into Christian empires. The latter had already been refuted, but it still needs to be done with the former. In a long Christianized settlement area headed by a Christian duke, in the 6th century the Baiern could not have been pagans anymore. The primary question concerns the quality of their Christianity.

The volume is concluded by four short articles on Regensburg and its hinterland by Silvia Codreanu-Windauer, Arno Rettner, Wolfgang Janka, and Alois Schmid. These contributions originated from a roundtable debate during the conference in Benediktbeuern and discuss the previously approached questions in the specific case of the metropolis Baioariae. Their main emphases lie on the continuity or transformation of the population, the question of the early ‘capital’ of Baiern, and the issue of the transformation of the Roman territorium legionis as a basis of power for the Agilolfing dukes. These short contributions are intended to serve as material for further discussions.

At last, the spelling of the Baiern-name needs to be addressed briefly: The territory of the early Baiern covered in this volume reached far beyond the borders of the modern-day Free State of Bavaria, especially in the east and south, whereas it was bounded on the north by the Danube. To signify this in writing too, the spelling Baiern with <ai> is being used. In linguistics, it correlates with the customary spelling of ‘bairische Sprache’ (Bavarian language), whose geographical distribution in central and southern dialect areas of Bavaria corresponds to the early Baiern more or less. In early medieval sources, Baioaria/Baiovaria was commonly used as the toponym, and the residents were referred to as Baiovarii. Today’s popular spelling Bajuwaren originates in a 19th century misconception of the word Baiuuarii, where <uu> stands for <w> and not for <uw> (Rübekeil). When Ernst von Schwind entitled his edition of the Code of Baiern ‘Lex Baiwariorum’, he did not make this mistake, for which reason his title is given preference to the prevalent ‘Lex Baiuvariorum’ in this volume. Altogether, it seemed desirable to revise a problematic conception of the 19th century and to restore the names of people and territory in accordance to the sources: Baiovarii and Baiovaria.

Notes

SZ Nr. 299 vom 24./25/26.12.2004 S. 51.↩︎
Carl I. Hammer, From Ducatus to Regnum, 2007, 49.↩︎

Originally published as

Building a Future out of the Ashes

The German Federal States after the Second World War

by Michael Kißener

translated by Andrew Godfrey and Ellen Yutzy Glebe

2019-12-17

Michael Kißener, “Building a Future out of the Ashes: The German Federal States after the Second World War” in Bavarian Studies in History and Culture (2019) [originally published in German 2016], last modified 2019-12-17, https://www.bavarian-studies.org/2019/kissener
You can cite this publication by paragraph numbers (“para.”)

Originally published as

Michael Kißener: “Zukunft in der Katastrophe. Die deutschen Länder nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg” in Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte (2016), 625-647.

This text is open access and licensed under the terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Michael Kißener

Building a Future out of the Ashes

The German Federal States after the Second World War

translated by Andrew Godfrey and Ellen Yutzy Glebe

2019-12-17

This text is open access and licensed under terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Image: SZ Photo

Bavarian Constitutional Assembly at the Main Auditorium (Große Aula) at the University of Munich, 1946

For many of the West German states founded in the wake of World War II, 2016 and 2017 marked the seventieth anniversary of their founding. The degree to which they chose to commemorate these events varied widely: North Rhine-Westphalia organized a grand ceremony attended by Chancellor Angela Merkel and Britain’s Prince William, and Hesse held numerous events commemorating the history of its founding and regional successes, but other states, perhaps regarding seventy years as a rather unorthodox milestone, were more restrained in their celebrations or saw little need to mark the anniversary at all. Schleswig-Holstein, for instance, organized only a small celebration, which was unceremoniously pushed back from the actual anniversary of the state’s founding, August 23, to October so as to coincide with the end of the State Horticultural Show in Eutin.¹ The state’s former minister-president, Björn Engholm, thought this was perfectly adequate: “After all, seventy years is no reason to have all the world’s choirs take to the stage,”² he was reported as saying in the press. However, this attitude also came in for criticism. Wolfgang Kubicki, leader of the FDP faction in the state parliament, complained that in Schleswig-Holstein “celebrations of our own achievements are always given the lowest priority.”³

One striking thing about the commemorations was the marked emphasis on issues that had remarkably little to do with the states’ founding or the crucial groundwork for the future that had been laid seventy years earlier. Most representatives of the states understood the seventy years since their state’s founding primarily as a story of economic success. This was something to which Hesse, for instance, was keen to draw attention, emphasizing that, based on certain economic parameters, it was doing even better than Bavaria or Baden-Württemberg.⁴ Another commonly mentioned topic was the integration of refugees and displaced persons after 1945, with parallels being drawn to the present-day refugee crisis. For example, Hannelore Kraft, then minister-president of North Rhine-Westphalia, credited the various waves of immigration as a factor behind the “economic strength, … social cohesion, and … cultural diversity”⁵ that her state now enjoyed, seventy years after its founding.

Clearly, the German states found it difficult to celebrate the history of their own founding and those who had been central in these historical events. They also struggled to establish their own democratic tradition worthy of celebration.

It would appear that the same problem that has long affected the historiography of the Federal Republic of Germany as a whole was being repeated at the level of the states. According to Axel Schildt, there exist five (competing and in some cases contradictory) ways to narrate the history of the Federal Republic: 1) as a history of success, 2) as a history of failure, 3) as a history of modernization, 4) as a “burdened” history [Belastungsgeschichte], and 5) as a history of Westernization.⁶ Given these divergent interpretations, it is no wonder that “celebrating” has proven difficult. This article will therefore focus specifically on the establishment of statehood in the German states after 1945 and investigate how this history should be classified in light of recent research, so that it can be seen more clearly what exactly there is to “celebrate” seventy years on.

Because the examination and comparison of specific examples results in more detailed understanding of the historical developments, the German states of Bavaria and Rhineland-Palatinate will serve as case studies. The circumstances and general conditions surrounding the foundation of these two states varied in ways that allow for a productive juxtaposition. For reasons of space, however, this comparison of the two states’ early years focuses on three key aspects: a) the establishment of statehood and democracy, b) economic reconstruction, and c) efforts to address the burden of the National Socialist past.

I.

To properly assess the establishment of statehood and democracy in Germany after 1945, it is necessary to consider the background against which it took place, for—in the words of political scientist Hans-Peter Schwarz—our recent history is “only fully comprehensible … if one attempts … to understand it from the perspective of catastrophe, as a response to the physical, political, economic, and moral chaos out of which West German society emerged.”⁷ This background cannot be described as anything less than a total catastrophe of previously unimaginable scope. Allied-occupied Germany was in a state of complete collapse, without any state structures: many of the Third Reich’s political leaders had eluded responsibility for their crimes by fleeing the country or taking their own lives. Until literally the last minute, they had continued to issue senseless orders to keep on fighting and dying, thereby adding to the tally of their crimes and driving the German state as a whole into utter ruin. National Socialism had long eroded regional political identities, as the case of Bavaria illustrates especially clearly. Although there had still been a state by the name of “Bavaria” and a Bavarian minister-president, Ludwig Siebert, during the Third Reich, Siebert governed Bavaria as little more than a puppet of the National Socialist regime, overseen by a Reichsstatthalter (Reich governor). After he was succeeded by Gauleiter Paul Giesler in 1942, the last remnants of Bavarian sovereignty disappeared completely, since Giesler for all intents and purposes ceased to exercise the office.⁸ His counterpart in the Palatinate region, Josef Bürckel, proceeded in a similar manner, attempting to loosen the ties between the Palatinate and Bavaria so he could build up a realm along the French border in which he could exercise unlimited power.⁹

The dissolution of state structures was accompanied by the wholesale destruction of infrastructure and industry by the Allied air campaign and the combat operations in the final weeks of the war. While rural areas were spared the worst destruction, urban areas in Bavaria were devastated: around 33 percent of Munich and 51 percent of Nuremberg were destroyed, and the latter’s population after the war was less than half of what it had been before. On March 16, 1945, three weeks before the city was occupied by American forces, 75 percent of Würzburg was destroyed by an aerial bombardment that left 90 percent of homes in ashes and killed almost five thousand people.¹⁰

Matters were similar—or even worse—in the areas that were incorporated into the state of Rhineland-Palatinate in 1947. This was where, even as the war was in its final stages, the utterly senseless Ardennes Counteroffensive had been launched, resulting in high casualties and destruction on a massive scale. Ninety thousand soldiers perished on the German side alone in this insanity. The BASF chemical plant complex in Ludwigshafen, the region’s only major industrial site, was subjected to sixty-five aerial attacks with a combined total of some forty thousand bombs: these attacks completely destroyed one-third of the complex and damaged the remaining two-thirds so badly that no further production was possible. Moreover, after the war the company was sequestered by the French military administration, meaning its future was completely uncertain. All the bridges over the Rhine and twenty of the twenty-one bridges over the Mosel had been destroyed.¹¹

On top of the destruction of the economic infrastructure, a global food crisis that was particularly acute between 1946 and 1948 meant the Allies were not always able to provide the Germans with sufficient food. The crisis hit the French occupation zone, in which the region that became Rhineland-Palatinate was located, harder than the American zone, in which Bavaria was located, because the weakest member of the anti-Hitler coalition did not even have enough food for its own population. Thus, there were protests over food shortages both in Ludwigshafen in the Palatinate and over the border in Lyon.¹²

Alongside the collapse of the state, the wholesale economic ruin, and the devastated livelihoods of many, Germans were also faced with the moral guilt their nation had brought upon itself. Before long, there could be no doubt in any honest person’s mind about the terrible toll of the war, with previously unimaginable war crimes and the murder of six million Jews and many other groups of victims now coming to light. People at the time had no idea how the victors would deal with a nation that had committed such crimes, or how, in the face of this guilt, a new German statehood, however constituted, could even be contemplated.¹³

It would be hard to overstate the bleakness of the situation. Even if we bear in mind only these few, by no means exhaustively described aspects, it is astonishing that there was anybody at all willing to take over from the Allied authorities and accept responsibility for the unenviable task of making a new start. It could hardly have been the prospect of success, fame, material reward, or even simply gratitude that motivated them—from the perspective of 1945/46, there was scant hope of any of these things.

II.

It is striking that the re-establishment of statehood in Germany in the years that followed, culminating in the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, came from the bottom up out of the individual occupation zones, under the oversight of the Allied military commanders. This is especially clear in the case of Rhineland-Palatinate, where Ordinance No. 57 decreed the founding of a “Rhenish-Palatinate [Rheinpfälzisches Land]” on August 30, 1946. Following elections for the Gemeinderat (municipal council, September 15, 1946) and Kreisversammlung (district assembly, October 13, 1946), an advisory state constituent assembly was formed out of these two bodies (elected on November 17, 1946). The constituent assembly drafted a constitution, which was put to a referendum on May 18, 1947.¹⁴ In Bavaria, the state constituent assembly was directly elected on June 30, 1946, following local and municipal elections in the first half of the year. The assembly approved the draft version of the constitution on October 26, 1946, and it was subsequently accepted by 71 percent of Bavarian voters in the parliamentary elections on December 1, 1946. Although both constitutions were produced under Allied oversight, they were based on preliminary work carried out long before, which could now finally be put to use. Wilhelm Hoegner in Bavaria and Adolf Süsterhenn in Rhineland-Palatinate are thus rightly considered these states’ respective “constitutional fathers.”¹⁵

The new Rhineland-Palatinate constitution did not enjoy the same relatively widespread acceptance as its Bavarian counterpart, winning the referendum by a narrow margin of 53 percent. This slim majority was only secured thanks to strong support in the predominantly Catholic districts of Koblenz and Trier. In Rheinhessen and the Palatinate, a majority of voters actually rejected the constitution: not because they were fundamentally opposed to democracy, but rather due, firstly, to doubts about whether the artificial construct of Rhineland-Palatinate could possibly have a future and, secondly, to a dispute over a reform to the school system that was also on the ballot; whereas the newly founded CDU wanted to reintroduce denominational schools, even in areas where they had been abolished prior to 1933, the SPD, FDP, and Communist Party favored interdenominational schools, and ultimately rejected the whole constitution.¹⁶

All the same, the constitutions of both states have survived down to the present day without any fundamental changes. One need look no further than the preambles to register a fundamental rejection of the recently fallen National Socialist dictatorship and a passionate commitment to erecting in its place a new, democratic state governed by rule of law—a commitment that did not need to be compelled by the victorious powers.¹⁷

“In the face of the scene of devastation into which the survivors of the 2nd World War were led by a godless state and social order which lacked any conscience and respect for human dignity”—so begins the preamble to the new Bavarian constitution—“the Bavarian people herewith bestows upon itself the following Democratic Constitution.”¹⁸ Thus, the very first words of the document make a conscious break with the past and express respect for human dignity. In line with these aims, the second part of the constitution is devoted to civil liberties. Very generally, the Bavarian constitution of 1946 is marked by its desire to help forge a Bavarian identity—a desire that it was at least partially successful in realizing. This is why, in a rhetorical move unusual in a constitution, the document refers to Bavaria’s long history and its population’s common roots in an attempt to unite Bavarians behind the nascent democracy. The constitution thus drew on historical tradition and Bavarian identity in the service of establishing a democratic order. How could the fundamental new start down a democratic path have been formulated any more clearly?¹⁹

The new, patched-together state of Rhineland-Palatinate had no such traditions and territorial continuities to which its constitution could refer, which may be one reason why the preamble refers to God at great length than any other German state constitution. The document’s opening phrase—“Conscious of their responsibility before God, the source of right and creator of all human community”—elevates its status above that of a merely human contract. Its stated aims are “to secure the freedom and dignity of man, to regulate community life according to the principle of social justice, to promote economic progress for all people, and to form a new democratic Germany as an active member of the community of nations.”²⁰ Part one of the constitution then sets out the fundamental rights and freedoms of the people of Rhineland-Palatinate, which are justified on the basis of natural law.²¹

All the work that went into establishing these new principles of statehood within Germany clearly proved fruitful, as evidenced by how long the constitutions have endured. In Axel Schildt’s terms, we thus appear to have here a remarkable history of success—even if such a history may nowadays strike us as “boring” and arouse the suspicion that a kind of simplistic, apologetic foundational myth is being handed down.²² This suspicion can be countered by incorporating aspects of what Schildt terms the “history of failure.”²³ In the worldviews of both Bavaria’s and Rhineland-Palatinate’s constitutional fathers, there were elements that appear strange and contradictory when viewed through the lens of our modern, developed conception of democracy, and which seem to suggest the existence of a “restorative” mood in the founding years.

One commonly cited example in this context is the draft of a law to “defend the Bavarian state” that was penned by the social democrat Wilhelm Hoegner, Bavarian minister-president and constitutional father. The proposed law, modeled on the Law for the Defense of the Republic from 1922, would have allowed preemptive indefinite detention of people without occupations, restrictions on freedom of expression, and many other measures in the event of a threat to the Bavarian state. Attempting to intimidate the Bavarian minister-president or any other minister or to prevent them from exercising their authority would have become punishable by death or life imprisonment. The American military government was swift to block any such proposals, which was a definite help in attaining the goal of democracy.²⁴ The father of Rhineland-Palatinate’s constitution, Adolf Süsterhenn, also held some misguided views incompatible with a democratically constituted society: In 1952, he attempted to have the film Die Sünderin banned in Rhineland-Palatinate because he considered it immoral. Later, in the mid-1960s, he called for changes to article 5, paragraph 3 of German Basic Law, which declares that “art and scholarship, research, and teaching shall be free.”²⁵ Süsterhenn wanted to confine this freedom to the bounds of the “general moral order” so as to ensure “decency in German cultural life.”²⁶ This proposal did not win majority support in parliament.

It would be wrong, however, to allow these misguided views to discredit these men in general or suggest a weakness in the political systems they helped to create. Hoegner’s aim, against the backdrop of the experience of National Socialism, was to protect the new democratic order by all available means. He did not want to see German democracy threatened a second time and did all he could to protect it—including attempting to have three defendants who had been acquitted at the Nuremberg trials, Franz von Papen, Hjalmar Schacht, and Hans Fritzsche, rearrested by the Bavarian police.²⁷ Süsterhenn’s ideas, meanwhile, were rooted in the ideological concept of a “Christian Occident” [christliches Abendland]; proponents of this notion—quite popular in the wake of the Second World War and National Socialism—sought to initiate a spiritual and moral revival based on Christian tradition. It was committed to reconciliation between peoples and rejected all nationalism and chauvinism.²⁸

This fact alone suggests that, from a regional perspective, the history of the founding of the German states may perhaps not be adequately classified as what Schildt calls a “history of Westernization” in his list of five possible historical narratives for postwar Germany.²⁹ Despite the occasional misguided step, the founding fathers of these German states made a genuine and constructive contribution to democratic development in their own right; this development cannot be attributed solely to the influence of the occupying powers.

It would be entirely mistaken to take such opinions to mean that the founding fathers’ ultimate goal was authoritarianism or even “renazification.” Hoegner was one of the National Socialists’ fiercest opponents during the Weimar period and later fled to Switzerland to escape the Gestapo. During his exile, he was influenced by Swiss direct democracy.³⁰ Süsterhenn also became an opponent of the Nazis, serving as a lawyer to persecuted individuals in the courts of the Third Reich.³¹ Many of those who now assumed positions of responsibility had similar biographies. In Bavaria, the old elites were comprehensively ousted at the level of local governments. Around a third of representatives in the first Bavarian Landtag had been imprisoned or interred in concentration camps during the Nazi period,³² and recent studies of the political backgrounds of Landtag representatives overwhelmingly refute the thesis of renazification within the two states under consideration here. Of the 559 members of the Rhineland-Palatinate advisory state assembly of 1946 and the Landtag from 1947 to 1987, only 15 percent were former members of the NSDAP, of whom the vast majority had demonstrably not been actively involved in the party’s work.³³ On the other hand, among the sixty-eight members of that initial advisory state assembly, fifteen members had lost their jobs during the Nazi period for political reasons, twenty-five had been detained as political prisoners, and six had been forced into exile.³⁴ However, these figures are not representative of all the German states; in Schleswig-Holstein, over 50 percent of those serving in the Landtag between 1954 and 1967 were former NSDAP members, and the proportion of parliamentarians who had faced persecution by the Nazi regime dropped off dramatically after 1947.³⁵ The figure for Hesse lies somewhere in between, with a total of ninety-two former NSDAP members out of 403 Landtag representatives in the postwar period or 22.8 percent.³⁶ The situation in Lower Saxony was similar, with 27 percent of state parliamentarians between 1946 and 1994 having been NSDAP members prior to the end of the war.³⁷

Schildt’s “history of failure,” which is based largely on the charge that the founding years of the Federal Republic had a “restorative” character, thus becomes relativized when differences between the individual German states are taken into account. Elements of this history are also captured in Christoph Kleßmann’s notion of “modernization under conservative auspices.”³⁸ For despite all the “retarding” or retrogressive aspects, the social dynamism unleashed by the new statehood was so great that it ultimately resulted in a pluralist democracy—a remarkable turn of events, and one worthy of commemoration.

III.

In depicting the early years of the Federal Republic and the individual German states as a “history of modernization,” there is no doubt a risk of “nostalgic retrospectives on the heroic phase of reconstruction” that can easily be mistaken for the “apologetic” variant of the history of success.³⁹ But this should not lead us to overlook the enormous accomplishments by the architects of the country’s reconstruction, despite the occasional misstep or failure.

Their first, overriding priority was to ensure that the population was fed and housed (many people did not even have a roof over their heads) and to rebuild essential economic infrastructure. The now-published minutes of the early meetings of Bavaria’s and Rhineland-Palatinate’s councils of ministers vividly illustrate the highly practical nature of the issues that politicians had to grapple with in this period, such as the supply of coal or the potato harvest—topics that could sometimes provoke intense debate. If we fully acknowledge what the business of reconstruction involved in practice—working day and night, dealing with everything from the small necessities of life to major economic problems, rebuilding out of virtually nothing—it cannot help but command astonishment and respect even today.⁴⁰ As Anton Pfeiffer, state secretary at the Bavarian State Chancellery, summed up the prevailing situation in summer 1945: “The situation is more or less like that after the Thirty Years’ War. If we lose these chances now, people in Bavaria will have to bear it for centuries. There are tremendous opportunities to shape the future.”⁴¹

The very different starting conditions and options open to the states in 1945 is once again evident in a comparison. Rhineland-Palatinate, founded in 1947, was pieced together from former border regions that had historically been economically weak, and was administered by France, which, due to its own economic problems, was not only unable to provide economic assistance, but intended to use the occupation zone to bolster its own reconstruction, and hence was planning to dismantle the state’s already minimal industrial capability. Moreover, Rhineland-Palatinate had suffered heavy damage to infrastructure even in rural regions, necessitating extensive rebuilding.⁴²

In Bavaria, the overall situation was more favorable. Although it had some of the same problems as Rhineland-Palatinate—a large number of traditionally agricultural regions that represented economic problem zones, mass devastation from the war, the threat of destruction of industrial capability—research by Stefan Grüner found that more industrial assets remained intact and that the American military administration was better able to provide assistance.⁴³ However, Bavaria had to deal with the mass influx of over 1.9 million refugees, since for a long time the French simply refused to allow them into their zone. Refugees and displaced persons were only admitted into Rhineland-Palatinate in the early 1950s following protracted negotiations over how to share the burden more equally between the zones. Despite the far lower numbers involved, in Rhineland-Palatinate, too, feeding and housing the new arrivals posed an enormous challenge.⁴⁴ Immigration had a substantial impact on Bavaria’s demographic structure, especially the arrival of Sudeten Germans, who were soon dubbed the fourth Bavarian tribe and made up well over 20 percent of Bavaria’s population by 1949. Like the evacuees who were sent to live in the Bavarian countryside (the “air raid shelter of the Reich,” as it came to be known) during the war, the refugees were also mostly placed in smaller towns and villages, drastically altering the existing social structures. This fostered hostility toward these fellow German citizens, who had lost everything, and led to the founding of parties and groups opposed to accepting refugees. This was, to be sure, a dark chapter in the history of postwar reconstruction,⁴⁵ particularly given that the refugees ultimately (albeit a few years down the line) proved to be a boon to Bavaria’s economic growth and helped bring about positive changes in their host society. The Bavarian Refugee Act of 1947 and the churches’ pastoral care for displaced persons played a key role, as did initiatives by the refugees themselves and a broad spectrum of cultural policy measures. The result was that, by the 1950s, the first signs of successful integration were already in evidence.⁴⁶

The question of how a successful new start was possible in the face of this dire economic situation has been better researched in relation to Bavaria than Rhineland-Palatinate. What politicians were able to do in the structurally weak Rhineland-Palatinate, which had practically no large-scale industry other than the chemical plants in Ludwigshafen, was to pass laws designed to stimulate the economy, to actively seek economic assistance from external sources such as the federal government and the Marshall Plan, and—above all—to rebuild the transportation infrastructure, which was essential for recovery. A lot of money went into rebuilding the dominant agricultural sector. This included investment in wine production: the new state contained around 70 percent of Germany’s vineyards, but vast sums of state aid were needed to make the wine crops phylloxera-resistant before the opportunities this offered could be harnessed. Rhineland-Palatinate probably pumped too much money into agriculture at first without taking advantage of the (albeit limited) opportunities to catch up in terms of industrialization. This was due in part to the state’s financial weakness: in the early 1950s, it struggled to provide a mere 58 million Deutschmarks [DM] in economic assistance. Moreover, NATO’s defense strategy saw eight new airbases being created in the region on the left bank of the Rhine, transforming it (in the words of Minister-President Bernhard Vogel) into “NATO’s aircraft carrier.” Although this helped in the economically weak areas, it prevented modern industries from becoming established in the region and meant that, when the NATO forces withdrew after 1990, the old problems returned. Solving these problems requires a process of structural transformation that is still ongoing to this day.⁴⁷

Things developed very differently in Bavaria, which also started out with a dominant agricultural sector and economically weaker border regions to the east. Despite all the political debates about whether or not the state should intervene in the economy, the first structural funding measures began in 1946/47, and in the early 1950s, Bavaria became the first state after North Rhine-Westphalia to introduce a state development plan. Bavaria’s selling points were its business-friendly labor laws, cheap commercial building land, and prestigious, long-established educational institutions. There was also a huge housebuilding program, with 350,000 new homes constructed between 1950 and 1954. The amount of state assistance on offer was in an entirely different league than Rhineland-Palatinate: by 1954, Bavaria had issued DM 700 million of indemnity bonds, for example to support the founding of new companies that were low on capital. Further assistance was available from the Bavarian State Institute for Development Financing (LfA), which was given DM 40 million of initial capital by the state.⁴⁸ There was also investment in research, despite Bavaria being branded at the time as a not very research-friendly state: the Fraunhofer Society, founded in 1949, soon shook off its reputation as a product of Bavarian exceptionalism and established a respected place for itself in the German research landscape—something that also benefited the Bavarian economy. Later, the “Rucker Plan,” a program launched by Wilhelm Hoegner to promote research in Bavaria in 1956, helped to revolutionize the state’s research sector.⁴⁹

With its strategy to modernize industry, Bavaria avoided the mistakes made in other German regions. In particular, the state made attractive offers to industries fleeing the Soviet occupation zone and former German territories, and became home to modern, large-scale industries with promising future prospects: for example, Auto Union/Audi relocated to Ingolstadt in 1949.⁵⁰ Schott, the glassmaking company from Jena in East Germany, was one of the rare cases where Rhineland-Palatinate managed to hold its own in the face of competition from Bavaria, with the company choosing Mainz as the site for its new West German headquarters, which opened in 1952.⁵¹

In summary: although by the mid-1950s Bavaria was still below average national GDP per capita,⁵² its economy was gradually recovering. Rhineland-Palatinate’s recovery was slower, not taking off until the early 1960s, when it was able to take advantage of opportunities opened up by the EEC. Relative to the point they started out from, both cases—each with its own peculiarities and limitations—represent remarkable histories of success and modernization, the crucial foundations for which were laid down during the period under consideration here.⁵³ Why this should not have been commemorated in the anniversary celebrations is unclear.

IV.

It is sometimes argued that this unparalleled growth in prosperity was accompanied by collective amnesia and suppression of the Germans’ guilt for the crimes of the Nazi era, resulting in what Ralph Giordano provocatively termed a “second guilt”;⁵⁴ this (disputed) claim lies at the heart of accounts that present the founding of the Federal Republic and/or the individual states as a “burdened history.”⁵⁵ It is not hard to find evidence of such suppression at the state level, either: at a meeting of Rhineland-Palatinate’s advisory state assembly in Koblenz on December 6, 1946, Peter Altmeier (later minister-president) offered up an idiosyncratic interpretation of history that went on to enjoy great popularity in the state: “The political emphasis and the leading cultural center of future German state life must lie here on the Rhine, where the nationalistic and centralistic authoritarian state thinking never could take root, where militarism never had a home, [where] on the contrary—during the Nazi era as well—democratic, federalistic and peace-loving thinking always remained alive.”⁵⁶ Although these words were clearly pandering to the political views of the French military administration, and were intended to somehow bring unity to the disparate state of Rhineland-Palatinate, it is difficult to read them without a sense of incredulity.

Turning now to an example from Bavaria: at a Dachau Symposium in 2013, Sybille Steinbacher⁵⁷ described the difficulties survivors of the Dachau concentration camp encountered when trying to build new lives after liberation. Some sections of the population united against them, taking the side of those who had perpetrated the crimes in Dachau and Landsberg.⁵⁸ Steinbacher’s findings form part of a vast body of research showing that the Germans failed for decades to adequately confront their guilt, that German politicians and judges were too reluctant to punish the crimes of the Nazi era, and that German society was prevented from coming to terms with its past by a host of myths and legends that only gradually dissipated.

A finer-grained examination of the histories and local situations of individual German states, however, brings the mechanisms and determinants of this development into sharper relief and helps to prevent overhasty generalizations of the historical findings.

For example, a study by Edith Raim, based on an extensive analysis of thousands of German judicial proceedings against Nazi criminals, begins by noting the many different things that had to be done all at once and under the most difficult of conditions in the first ten years or so after 1945: the international war crimes tribunal took place in Nuremberg; other military tribunals and German courts also heard cases concerning Nazi war crimes; the entire population was subjected to an unprecedented political screening program known as “denazification”; reparations had to be made for damage inflicted in other countries; and compensation and restitution had to be arranged for victims. One American observer described it as the “largest judicial enterprise recorded in the history of mankind.”⁵⁹

If we focus our attention on the punishment of Nazi crimes, the surviving case files give an idea of the scale of the task that had to be accomplished: in Bavaria, for example, a total of 4,932 proceedings were instituted over the course of the years, while 2,374 such cases were brought in Rhineland-Palatinate. North Rhine-Westphalia bore the heaviest brunt, with 8,674 proceedings.⁶⁰ Ultimately, judges handed down sentences against some 30,000 Nazi perpetrators. To take a specific example, the Würzburg district attorney’s office instituted 218 proceedings in the period that we are interested in here, 1945–1949. By no means did all of these proceedings result in the defendants’ prosecution, but some did end with severe punishments. In 1953, for instance, a Rapportführer [report leader] from the Groß-Rosen concentration camp was sentenced to life imprisonment.⁶¹ According to Raim’s research, never again were so many proceedings initiated against Nazi perpetrators than during this period from 1945 to 1950. She believes these public trials also had great educational value, since they gave people a concrete, up-close insight into the full reprehensibility of the National Socialist regime. She concludes: “One cannot help but respect the Justice Administration for its efforts to combat forgetfulness and seek justice despite the prevailing hardship of the early postwar years.”⁶²

The major war crimes trials conducted by the Allies—in Bavaria most notably, of course, the Nuremberg trials, though there were also other trials held before American military tribunals—are now widely regarded, after years of research, as a key milestone in the history of bringing those complicit in the crimes of dictatorial regimes to justice; these trials have served as a reference point for all subsequent attempts to undertake similar proceedings in other countries.⁶³ To give one example, Eugen Kogon described the Nuremberg trials as “a crucial step in world history toward using justice to tame violence.”⁶⁴

Comparable, though far less well-known, trials also took place in Rhineland-Palatinate, namely, the Rastatt war crimes trials, which were conducted by the French military administration and resulted in several death penalties.⁶⁵ Following these trials and the manhunts for German war criminals carried out by the French authorities in Germany and France, several hundred prisoners had to serve time at the war criminal prison in Wittlich, Rhineland-Palatinate—perpetrators who have long disappeared from public consciousness, but should nonetheless be included in a full account of efforts to address the crimes of the Nazi era.⁶⁶

Recent regional and local studies have likewise resulted in a more nuanced assessment of the process of denazification. Instead of simply being sweepingly disparaged as a Mitläuferfabrik (a factory turning perpetrators into “fellow travelers”), more attention is now given to the individual phases of denazification and the problems that led to an unsatisfactory overall result. In Rhineland-Palatinate, for example, the first stage of denazification—the “Auto-Épuration” of 1945/46, overseen by the French with German involvement—was anything but lenient; while it did achieve remarkable results, it quickly became politically controversial. It was only when the French proceedings were replaced by the American Spruchkammer tribunals that political guilt began to be squeezed into overly rigid categories, resulting in the well-known homogenizing effect.⁶⁷ As regards Bavaria, meanwhile, a recent study on denazification in Nuremberg, the city of the Nazi rallies, refutes any suggestion that the old Nazi elites were let off lightly there; instead, surviving Nazi leaders were rigorously brought to account for their crimes.⁶⁸ This contrasts with research on Augsburg, where this was found at least in some instances not to be the case.⁶⁹

The intensely debated topic of reparations (Wiedergutmachung, lit. “making good” [e.g., an injustice]) for the crimes of the National Socialists has also been analyzed with specific reference to Bavaria. On the one hand, the analysis confirms the much-discussed weaknesses of the process, which required victims to provide an unreasonable level of proof of the injustices done to them; this study found greater reluctance in Bavaria to pay reparations than in other states, such as Hesse. On the other hand, it also showed that Bavaria did undertake substantial efforts to make reparation right from an early stage: for example, by October 1945, a state commission for the care of Jewish people had already been set up under the auspices of the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior. Intended to alleviate the pressing everyday hardship of the victims of persecution, this commission provided some three million Reichsmarks of immediate aid in the first three months of 1946. As ambivalent and unsatisfactory for many victims as the overall result was, the reparation process did make those whom persecution had deprived of rights into “legitimate claimants,” and “changed the present” for all parties by addressing the injustices of the recent past.⁷⁰

Another key aspect of addressing this legacy was public, societal confrontation with the National Socialist era. The Institute of Contemporary History (IFZ) played a key role here. The institute, which was given its present name in 1952, was founded in Munich in 1949 with the task of studying the National Socialist period. By actively supporting and funding the institute, “Bavaria proved to be a driving force in critical engagement with the National Socialist dictatorship,”⁷¹ according to Edgar Wolfrum. Informed by their own painful experiences in the Dachau concentration camp, Bavarian CSU politicians such as Alois Hundhammer championed a rigorously anti-totalitarian attitude in the political sphere too, and in the 1950s were early proponents of plans for a Dachau memorial.⁷²

Although there was no institution comparable to the IFZ in Rhineland-Palatinate, the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz—a “reform” university founded by the French military administration in 1946—was able to at least partially fill the gap with its broad-ranging studium generale (“general studies”; the s.g. typically takes the form of a series of interdisciplinary talks around a particular theme open to all students and the general public). Very early on, the university hosted well-attended discussion evenings run by Karl Holzamer (later director general of the television station ZDF), featuring guests such as the émigré Carl Zuckmayer, which compensated to some extent for lack of institutions of political education.⁷³

None of this amounted to a process of confronting the legacy of the past of the scale and quality we are familiar with today—but it did provide an important impetus with lasting effects. It shows that the early years were not yet marked by the general mentality of suppression that Hermann Lübbe called “collective silence”⁷⁴—a term others have challenged—and that there were at least some efforts to face up to the legacy of the National Socialist era.

Politically, probably the most critical issue for this process of coming to terms with the past was whether it would be possible to win over German society as a whole, and the many individual citizens with varying degrees of complicity in the Nazi crimes, to the new democratic and political system. Scholars of contemporary regional history have largely neglected the question of how this was achieved among the old, mainly Protestant, national conservative elites, whose political views were especially problematic. As the example of the pharmaceutical entrepreneur Dr. Ernst Boehringer from Rhineland-Palatinate shows, this process could take over a decade. A staunch national conservative and militarist, after 1945 Boehringer continued to cleave to the ideas of a group of like-minded national conservatives whose attitude toward German guilt was at the very least problematic or ambivalent. Its members included men such as the authors Ernst Jünger and Gerhard Nebel, the philosopher Martin Heidegger, and the later NATO general Hans Speidel. However, between 1945 and 1955, Boehringer became an increasingly ardent supporter of the new German state, of the CDU (the governing party both in Rhineland-Palatinate and at federal level), and the policy of reconciliation with France, as practiced at the regional level by Minister-President Peter Altmeier and at the national level in the economic policies of Ludwig Erhard. In the last ten years before his death in 1965, Boehringer even became a committed advocate for the cause of greater international understanding. This would not have been possible without the foundations laid down in the preceding years by the founding fathers and mothers of the German states and the confrontation with the past their efforts enabled.⁷⁵

VI.

Taken together, these findings from recent research about the end of the war and the years that followed make clear that the establishment of a new concept of statehood and democracy that emerged out of the founding of the German states is no cause for unqualified jubilation. Neither the post-1945 history of the individual states nor that of Germany as a whole is a simple, linear success story. Forward steps and new democratic beginnings were often counteracted and reversed by retrogressive developments, before the pendulum swung back once again toward progress.

The history of the founding of the German states can therefore probably be best described as a “history of development”: a history with numerous regional and sectoral differences, a history that it is as crucial to scrutinize as it is to commemorate, so as to avoid descending into apologetics. That the states are where they are today is, in any case, not a product of mere chance, but rather of the foundations that were laid down in the postwar years. Hence, alongside the various defects, we can also highlight the considerable achievements of this experiment (whose success was anything but assured back in 1946/47) and commemorate them at anniversary celebrations—for doing so will help us to build what Thomas Hertfelder called a “republican legitimacy sui generis”⁷⁶ that is capable of counteracting an overwhelmingly negative, antidemocratic populism.

Notes

See Maximilian Matthies, “SH schaut NRW beim Geburtstag feiern zu,” shz.de, last modified August 23, 2016, accessed September 24, 2018, http://www.shz.de/regionales/schleswig-holstein/sh-schaut-nrw-beim-geburtstag-feiern-zu-id14643191.html; see also Anne Steinmetz, “Landesgartenschau Eutin: Schleswig-Holstein feiert seinen 70. Geburtstag,” Kieler Nachrichten online, last modified October 2, 2016, accessed September 24, 2018, http://www.kn-online.de/News/70-Jahre-SH/Landesgartenschau-Eutin-Schleswig-Holstein-feiert-seinen-70.-Geburtstag.↩︎
“Schleswig Holstein bleibt lieber unter sich: Kritik an 70-Jahr-Feier,” Lübecker Nachrichten online, last modified January 23, 2017, accessed September 24, 2018, http://www.ln-online.de/Nachrichten/Norddeutschland/Schleswig-Holstein-bleibt-lieber-unter-sich-Kritik-an-70-Jahr-Feier.↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
See the speech given by Volker Bouffier, minister-president of Hesse, at the anniversary celebration: “70 Jahre Proklamation Hessen: Festakt am 19. September 2015,” Hesse State Government website, accessed September 24, 2018, https://www.hessen.de/sites/default/files/media/staatskanzlei/09-19-15_70_jahre_proklamation_hessen.pdf, 1.↩︎
Hannelore Kraft, “Wir alle sind NRW!” North Rhine-Westphalia State Government website, accessed September 24, 2018, www.land.nrw/de/wir-alle-sind-nrw. Volker Bouffier, minister-president of Hesse, represents something of an exception. In a speech celebrating the 70th anniversary of Hesse’s founding, he maintained that the founding mothers and fathers had laid down a solid foundation for the state’s current prosperity, which was something Hessians could most certainly be “proud” of; see “2.000 Gäste feiern den 70. Geburtstag Hessens in Berlin,” Hesse State Government website, last modified July 5, 2016, accessed September 24, 2018, https://www.hessen.de/presse/pressemitteilung/2000-gaeste-feiern-den-70-geburtstag-hessens-berlin ↩︎
The main conclusions of Schildt, Ankunft im Westen, were recently republished in summarized form in Schildt, “Fünf Möglichkeiten die Geschichte der Bundesrepublik zu erzählen” 15–26.↩︎
Schwarz, “Die ausgebliebene Katastrophe”H, 151–174.↩︎
See Schmid and Spindler, eds., Handbuch der bayerischen Geschichte, 531–538; Rumschöttel, “Ministerrat, Ministerpräsident und Staatskanzlei”, esp. 50–58.↩︎
See Wetterstein, Bürck, 219–222; see also Paul, “Josef Bürckel—Der rote Gauleiter”, 51–65.↩︎
See Hartmann, Bayerns Weg in die Gegenwart, 529–30; Süss, “16 März 1945: Die Bombardierung Würzburgs”, 385–399.↩︎
See Kißener and Kahlenberg, “Grundzüge der historischen Entwicklung”, esp. 121–2.↩︎
See Nordblom, “Wirtschaftsgeschichte”, esp. 305–6; see also Hudemann, Sozialpolitik im deutschen Südwesten zwischen Tradition und Neuordnung 1945–1953; Rothenberger, “Die Hungerjahre nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg unter französischer Besatzung”, 159–173.↩︎
See Reichel, Schmid, and Steinbach, “Die ‘zweite Geschichte’ der Hitler-Diktatur”, 7–21.↩︎
See Kißener, Kleine Geschichte des Landes Rheinland-Pfalz 1945–2005, 58–73.↩︎
For a general account in relation to Bavaria, see Kramer, “Die Entstehung der Bayerischen Verfassung und die Rolle des Landtags in der Verfassung”, esp. 6, 9.↩︎
See Kißener and Kahlenberg, “Grundzüge der historischen Entwicklung”, 128–9, 134; Klaas, ed., Die Entstehung der Verfassung für Rheinland-Pfalz.↩︎
See Fait, Demokratische Erneuerung unter dem Sternenbanner.↩︎
Cited in Meder, Die Verfassung des Freistaates Bayern, 19. English translation from “Constitution of the Free State of Bavaria,” Bavarian State Parliament website, accessed September 24, 2018, https://www.bayern.landtag.de/fileadmin/Internet_Dokumente/Sonstiges_P/BV_Verfassung_Englisch_formatiert_14-12-16_neu.pdf.↩︎
See ibid, 59–66; see also Lindner, Verfassung des Freistaates Bayern, 1–12, and Kramer, “’Eingedenk seiner mehr als tausendjährigen Geschichte’”, 21–38.↩︎
Klaas, ed., Die Entstehung der Verfassung für Rheinland-Pfalz, 514–806, cited here: 514.↩︎
See Baumgart, “Voraussetzungen und Wesen der rheinland-pfälzischen Verfassung”, esp. 23–27.↩︎
See Schildt, “Fünf Möglichkeiten die Geschichte der Bundesrepublik zu erzählen”, 16.↩︎
See ibid, 17.↩︎
See Benz, Auftrag Demokratie, 485; see also Kritzer, Wilhelm Hoegner, 163ff., 323.↩︎
“Basic Law,” German Federal Government website, accessed September 24, 2018, https://www.bundesregierung.de/Content/EN/StatischeSeiten/breg/basic-law-content-list.html.↩︎
See Kuchler, Kirche und Kino, 298–9; von Hehl, Adolf Süsterhenn (1905–1974), 568–9.↩︎
See Taylor, Die Nürnberger Prozesse, 694; Kritzer, Wilhelm Hoegner, 201–204.↩︎
See von von Hehl, Adolf Süsterhenn (1905–1974), 334–347; see also Becker, “Nachdenken über Europa”, esp. 17–20.↩︎
Schildt, “Fünf Möglichkeiten die Geschichte der Bundesrepublik zu erzählen”, 24.↩︎
See Ritter, Arbeiter, Arbeiterbewegung und soziale Ideen in Deutschland, 294ff.↩︎
See von Hehl, Adolf Süsterhenn (1905–1974), 80–101.↩︎
See Goschler, “Reformversuche gegen siegreiche Traditionen”, esp. 65; see also Gömmel, “Gewerbe, Handel und Verkehr”, esp. 268–9.↩︎
See Maier, “unpublished”, 2–3; see also President of the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate, ed., Die Stellvertreter des freien Volkes.↩︎
Maier, “Personal”.↩︎
See Danker, “Parlamentarische Kontinuitätsstudien zur NS-Zeit”, esp. 83.↩︎
See Kirschner, “Dabei gewesen?”, esp. 50.↩︎
See Vogtherr, “Die Vergangenheit niedersächsischer Landtagsabgeordneter während des Nationalsozialismus”, esp. 42.↩︎
Schildt, “Fünf Möglichkeiten die Geschichte der Bundesrepublik zu erzählen”, 19.↩︎
See ibid, 19–20.↩︎
See Historical Commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, ed., Die Protokolle des Bayerischen Ministerrats 1945–1954; Rummel, ed., Die Protokolle des Ministerrats von Rheinland-Pfalz.↩︎
Cited in Grüner, Geplantes “Wirtschaftswunder”, 3f., 23.↩︎
See Kißener, Kleine Geschichte des Landes Rheinland-Pfalz 1945–2005, 45–52.↩︎
See Grüner, Geplantes “Wirtschaftswunder”, 33.↩︎
On the acceptance of refugees in Rhineland-Palatinate, see Sommer, “Die Nachkriegsjahre”, and, for a comparison with Hesse, “Erinnerungskultur und gelungene Eingliederung—ein unlösbares Spannungsverhältnis?”.↩︎
See Pohl, Zwischen Integration und Isolation, 41–45; on the hostility to refugees, see Ziegler, “Die Integration der Flüchtlinge in Bayern”, esp. 280–282.↩︎
See Bendel, Vertriebene—Katholische Kirche—Gesellschaft in Bayern 1945 bis 1975, 460ff. Prinz, Die Integration der Flüchtlinge und Vertriebenen in Bayern, 17–19 paints an overall positive picture of integration. A nuanced account is offered by Krauss, “Geglückte Integration?”, 47–56. Another positive account is given by Franzen, Der vierte Stamm Bayerns. On cultural measures, see Pohl, Zwischen Integration und Isolation.↩︎
See Nordblom, “Wirtschaftsgeschichte”, 306–321; Ucharim, Rheinland-Pfalz, der Föderalismus und der unitarische Bundesstaat; on Rhineland-Palatinate’s wine industry, see Diehl, “Reblausbekämpfung und Flurbereinigung”. On the process of structural transformation, see Hiller, “Konversionspolitik als landespolitische Herausforderung”.↩︎
See Grüner, Geplantes “Wirtschaftswunder”, 23–156; see also Grüner, Schlemmer, and Balcar, “‘Entwicklungshilfe im eigenen Lande’”.↩︎
See Trischler, “Nationales Innovationssystem und regionale Innovationspolitik”, esp. 128, 131.↩︎
See Schmid and Spindler, eds., Handbuch der bayerischen Geschichte, 264.↩︎
See Kißener, Kleine Geschichte des Landes Rheinland-Pfalz 1945–2005, 175–6; see also Kappler and Steiner, Schott 1884–2009, 106–121.↩︎
See Kramer, “Wirtschaftswunder in Bayern”, esp. 125.↩︎
See ibid, 131.↩︎
See Giordano, Die zweite Schuld oder von der Last Deutscher zu sein.↩︎
Schildt, “Fünf Möglichkeiten die Geschichte der Bundesrepublik zu erzählen”, 21–2.↩︎
Cited in Grass, ed., Peter Altmeier: Reden 1946–1951, 18. English translation from Mitchell, The Origins of Christian Democracy, 98.↩︎
See Steinbacher, ed., Transit US-Zone.↩︎
See Eiber and Sigel, Dachauer Prozesse.↩︎
Cited in Raim, Justiz zwischen Diktatur und Demokratie, 1175. Translated into English as Raim, Nazi Crimes against Jews and German Post-War Justice.↩︎
These figures were kindly provided by the Institute of Contemporary History (IFZ), Munich, in an email dated August 30, 2016.↩︎
See Eichmüller, “Die Verfolgung von NS-Verbrechen durch westdeutsche Justizbehörden seit 1945”, esp. 518.↩︎
Raim, Justiz zwischen Diktatur und Demokratie, 1176–7, 1180., Generaldirektion der Staatlichen Archive Bayerns, Schuld, also paints a nuanced, problem-focused picture of the judicial confrontation with Nazi crimes. By way of comparison, see Gehler, “Verfehlte Sühne?”, esp. 379. By reference to cases from Innsbruck, Austria, Gehler argues that the judges working in the immediate aftermath of 1945 could not be accused of “laxity” in the way they dealt with these crimes.↩︎
See Heller, The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law; Stiller and Priemel, eds., NMT: Die Nürnberger Militärtribunale zwischen Geschichte, Gerechtigkeit und Rechtsschöpfung.↩︎
Kogon, “Vorwort”, 9.↩︎
See Pendaries, Les procès de Rastatt; Berger and Joly, “Fall 13: Das Rastatter Röchling-Verfahren”.↩︎
On this point, see Christopher Spies’ forthcoming doctoral thesis; see also Spies, “Gnade für NS-Kriegsverbrecher?”, 453–556.↩︎
See Möhler, Entnazifizierung in Rheinland-Pfalz und im Saarland unter französischer Besatzung, 143–206; see also Borgstedt, Entnazifizierung in Karlsruhe 1946 bis 1951, which argues that statistical material on denazification cannot capture the reality of the process.↩︎
See Schuh, “Entnazifizierung in Nürnberg”, esp. 322–3.↩︎
See Gückel, “Kellerwohnung und Persilschein”. However, it was also in Augsburg that Gauleiter Karl Wahl was sentenced to three and a half years in a labor camp in 1948.↩︎
See Winstel, Verhandelte Gerechtigkeit, 50, 65–6, 88–9, 387, 393, 395–6.↩︎
Wolfrum, “Geschichtspolitik in Bayern”, cited here: 360.↩︎
See ibid, 400; Braun, Konservative Existenz in der Moderne, 249–264.↩︎
See Kißener, Ut omnes unum sint; Mathy, Die erste Landesuniversität von Rheinland-Pfalz, 183–186, 197–200, 231–234.↩︎
See Lübbe, “Der Nationalsozialismus im deutschen Nachkriegsbewußtsein”.↩︎
See Kißener, Boehringer Ingelheim im Nationalsozialismus, 171–221. On the conservative networks, see Krüger, Hans Speidel und Ernst Jünger.↩︎
Hertfelder, “’Modell Deutschland’”, cited here: 25.↩︎

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Originally published as

Michael Kißener: “Zukunft in der Katastrophe. Die deutschen Länder nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg” in Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte (2016), 625-647.

The Reorganization of Europe North and South of the Alps

Bavaria, Austria, and the Italian States, 1814–1816

by Reinhard Stauber

translated by Andrew Godfrey and Ellen Yutzy Glebe

2019-12-17

Reinhard Stauber, “The Reorganization of Europe North and South of the Alps: Bavaria, Austria, and the Italian States, 1814–1816” in Bavarian Studies in History and Culture (2019) [originally published in German 2015], last modified 2019-12-17, https://www.bavarian-studies.org/2019/stauber
You can cite this publication by paragraph numbers (“para.”)

Originally published as

Reinhard Stauber, “Die Neuordnung Europas nördlich und südlich der Alpen. Bayern, Österreich und die italienischen Staaten 1814–1816” in Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte (2015), 481-512.

This text is open access and licensed under the terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Reinhard Stauber

The Reorganization of Europe North and South of the Alps

Bavaria, Austria, and the Italian States, 1814–1816

translated by Andrew Godfrey and Ellen Yutzy Glebe

2019-12-17

This text is open access and licensed under terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Image: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Detail from Map of Alois von Coulon, Carl Schleich, Johann Baptist Seitz, Post-Karte von Baiern, (Munich, 1810)

By the end of 1813, Napoleon’s Grand Empire had collapsed in central Europe and, apart from a few isolated garrisons, French forces had withdrawn from all the territories east of the Rhine. With their coordinated military operations, the alliance between Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Britain had achieved its goal. Most recently, a series of uprisings had forced the French to withdraw from the territory of the Netherlands and present-day Belgium, which Napoleon had annexed in 1810. In Italy, Viceroy Eugène Beauharnais was struggling to hold his position on the Adige River; meanwhile, the Austrians had already regained control of the region to the east, Veneto, and the British field marshal, Lord Wellington, had retaken the Iberian Peninsula and advanced deep into southern France.

Significant differences emerged among the allies over whether to continue the offensive. Klemens von Metternich, Austria’s leading statesman, was willing to recognize the Rhine and the Alps as France’s “natural borders.” Tsar Alexander I of Russia, by contrast, pushed for an invasion of France, arguing that a lasting peace could only be agreed upon in Paris, and only with someone other than Napoleon. The British cabinet in London, primarily concerned with the fate of the Netherlands, was wary of offering overly generous concessions to the defeated French emperor and took the unusual step of dispatching the foreign secretary, Lord Castlereagh, to the continent.¹

As 1813 drew to a close, the allied powers resolved to continue the military campaign, and Karl Philipp of Schwarzenberg’s and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher’s armies marched into France, experiencing a series of victories and defeats in the early months of 1814. Meanwhile, Napoleon rebuffed all diplomatic overtures. When Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Britain signed the Treaty of Chaumont on March 9, 1814, Castlereagh was one step closer to achieving his great ambition of turning the wartime coalition into a “quadruple alliance” for peace. The terms of the treaty were utterly unprecedented in the diplomacy of the day: a twenty-year military alliance, a coordinated continuation of the war until Napoleon’s defeat, and jointly conducted peace negotiations. The intention, in Castlereagh’s words, was “not only to procure, but to preserve peace.”² The allied forces renewed their westward push and captured Paris on March 31, 1814; having lost the support of his marshals, Napoleon subsequently abdicated on April 6. Two weeks later, on April 23, the four allied powers—now joined by Portugal—signed an armistice with France, represented by the new French foreign minister, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, acting on behalf of Louis XVIII, who had been restored to the throne.

Austria’s War in Italy, 1813/14

The implosion of Napoleon’s Grand Empire in the second half of 1813 and his retreat to France left central Europe to the north and south of the Alps in a “limbo of unresolved questions.”³ The territories from which Napoleon’s troops had withdrawn found themselves facing very different fates. The governor of the Russian tsar asserted claims to Poland by right of military conquest, and the representative of the Austrian emperor laid claim to northern Italy for similar reasons. Meanwhile, the German territories recovered from the French were, except where the allies acknowledged their ruler, placed under the control of a provisional central administration for the transition period, which had been set up in 1813 under the leadership of Baron vom Stein on behalf of the alliance.⁴ Matters were different yet again in those south German members of the Confederation of the Rhine that had voluntarily switched to the side of the anti-French coalition; Bavaria led the way with the Treaty of Ried (October 8, 1813).

On both sides of the Alps, the decisive factor in the potential new state order was the political interests of the Austrian Empire. At the same time that the far better-known battles of the “Wars of Liberation” were taking place in in Saxony and along the Main River, Austrian forces were independently (with only occasional support from the British) waging war against the Italian viceroy Eugène, Napoleon’s stepson and general.

Vienna had never taken its eyes off the Duchy of Milan, an economically important territory that Austria had acquired in 1713 but been forced to cede to Napoleon’s Cisalpine Republic in 1797; the empire had likewise ruled the regions of Veneto, Istria, and Dalmatia from 1797 to 1805 before losing them to the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy. The Austrians’ military victories against Eugène, a celebrated general, in 1813 and 1814 allowed them to secure control of northern Italy, paving the way for the proclamation of the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia in April 1815.

Italy was high on the political agenda of Emperor Francis I of Austria and his leading minister, Metternich. Metternich’s first “vision of a rebuilt Europe in a state of peace,” which he devised in May 1813 as Austria was tentatively drawing closer to the anti-Napoleon coalition, called for the restitution of the Papal States and for Austria to be given the region of Veneto to the east of the Adige.⁵ At the talks with Napoleon in February 1814, Metternich called for the restoration of Italy’s independent states (états indépendans).⁶

After prolonged hesitation, a phase of neutrality, and several attempts at mediation, the Habsburg Empire finally sided with Russia and Prussia in mid-August 1813 and declared war on France. The largest of the alliance’s three armies, the Army of Bohemia, with just under 240,000 troops under Schwarzenberg’s command, set off towards Dresden to the north, where an inconclusive engagement ensued in late August.⁷

At the same time, the far smaller Army of Inner Austria, an all-Austrian force of 50,000 men under the command of General Johann von Hiller, began operations against Viceroy Eugène along the border between Carinthia, Carniola, and Friuli. By mid-October 1813, when the Battle of the Nations was fought at Leipzig, the viceroy had been forced to abandon Illyria, Friuli, and eastern Veneto (apart from a few fortresses and the city of Venice) and withdraw his French–Italian troops beyond the Tagliamento.⁸

The Austrians now attempted to come at their enemies from behind through the Adige and Eisack valleys, a plan that required control of the road through the Puster valley, over which the Austrian lieutenant field marshal Franz Philipp Fenner von Fenneberg and Italian general Alessandro Gifflenga fought in October. This military situation explains Metternich’s interest in quickly concluding the Treaty of Ried with Bavaria; the seventh secret article of that document allowed the Austrians to conduct military operations in Tyrol.⁹ Austria could thus move troops and supplies through Bavarian territory in the Inn valley without disruption, and from there south via the Brenner Pass, even before a decision had been made about returning Tyrol to Austria. Moreover, the troops stationed in Upper Austria to defend against Bavaria—around 25,000 men under the command of the general Prince Heinrich XV of Reuss-Plauen—could now be redeployed to reinforce the Army of Inner Austria. Emperor Francis appointed Reuss military governor of all conquered territories in Italy.¹⁰

By the end of October, Hiller’s Austrian troops had passed through the Puster valley and occupied the cities of Bolzano and Trento. To circumvent Gifflenga’s blockade of the Chiusa di Verona, he advanced toward Vicenza via the Sugana valley, forcing Eugène to beat a rapid retreat to the west bank of the Adige, where he set up headquarters in Verona. The viceroy now found his position threatened from the south as well, for the Austrians, supported by the British Navy, had landed on the Adriatic coast and taken control of Ferrara.

In early 1814, as the allied forces were marching into France, the new commander-in-chief of the Austrian army in Italy, Field Marshal Heinrich von Bellegarde, initiated negotiations with King Joachim Murat of Naples. Bellegarde, who now had 55,000 men at his disposal, did not want to attack Eugène’s position on the Adige without the support of Murat, whose army controlled the areas south of the Po. In a treaty of alliance signed on January 11, 1814, the king pledged to send 30,000 men into battle against Eugène. He launched his first offensive near Ancona in mid-February.

Thereupon, Eugène withdrew from Verona, the southern Alpine passes, and the line of the Adige to a position on the far side of the Mincio, between Lake Garda and Mantua. Neither side advanced significantly at the Battle of the Mincio River on February 8. Clashes with Murat along the Po continued, and Eugène’s position came under a new threat when British troops under Lord William Bentinck landed in Tuscany in early March 1814 and occupied the Ligurian coast up to Genoa.

Eugène’s position in Italy finally became unsustainable with Napoleon’s abdication on April 13, 1814; the viceroy and Bellegarde formally ended armed conflict in Italy with the conventions of Schiarino-Rizzino and Mantua (on April 16 and 23, respectively). The whole of Lombardy (up to the old border along the Ticino) came under Austrian control, and the remaining French and Italian garrisons were ordered to surrender. Hostilities ceased and the French troops withdrew to the west. In the face of mass unrest in Milan, Eugène declared his abdication on April 26 and left Verona with his wife Augusta and two-week-old daughter Théodelinde. Accompanied by an Austrian escort, they set out for the court of Eugène’s Bavarian stepfather, King Maximilian I Joseph in Munich.¹¹

Just as the Russian tsar now controlled most of Poland, the Austrian emperor, thanks to the conquests by his troops, had taken control of the region north of the Po, from the Adriatic to the Ticino (between Lake Maggiore and Pavia), which marked the border with Sardinia-Piedmont. This was the region granted to the Habsburg Empire in the second secret article of the First Peace of Paris of May 30, 1814: “Les possessions de Sa Majesté Impériale et Royale Apostolique en Italie seront limitées par le Pô et le Tesin et le lac majeur.”¹² The public part of the treaty executed Metternich’s plan of dividing the rest of Italy into sovereign states (etats souverains).¹³

In the fluid situation during the campagne de France and the engagements along the Mincio in spring 1814, various plans were drawn up for reorganizing central Europe, based on the principles to which the four powers had agreed. For example, in April 1814, Karl August von Hardenberg, prime minister of Prussia, set out a “plan for the future arrangement of Europe” (Plan für die künftige Gestaltung Europas).¹⁴ Napoleon’s defeat, the document begins, has “undone his monstrous plans of world domination”; the victors must now, “through a just equilibrium and balanced distribution of power,” establish a European order that would ensure a stable, manageable peace. France was to be limited to its 1789 borders, while Russia had “every right to a considerable enlargement. Austria, Prussia, Sardinia, and Holland shall be restored, and receive the power and territorial expansion necessary to maintain both equilibrium and their […] independence.” Regarding Tuscany, Modena, the Papal States, and Naples, the document makes a less binding commitment: they were to be “restored as circumstances permit.” Switzerland would be “free and independent of any external influence,” while Germany was to be “a confederation of sovereign states united by a federal treaty.” Bavaria also gets a mention: as compensation for territories ceded to Austria, it was to receive Würzburg, Aschaffenburg, Hammelburg, districts in Baden and Hesse between the Main, Tauber, and Neckar, and territories on the left bank of the Rhine between Speyer, Landau, and Kaiserslautern.

Imaginary maps were a key component of the political plans. New borders were imposed on rulerless regions, with the promise of bringing stability and greater security to Europe and preventing a revival of French hegemony. The major German-speaking powers, Prussia and Austria, sought to compensate themselves for the extensive territories they had lost in the treaties of Pressburg (1805) and Tilsit (1807). Hardenberg’s plan aimed to restore both powers to the size they had been in 1805—measured not in terms of geographical area, but of population. The process of tallying up subjects and shuffling them around had its roots in cameralist resettlement theories and the mechanistic calculi born of the eighteenth-century faith in numbers. The Congress of Vienna was denounced even at the time for attempting it. Other powers articulated their interests more emphatically. For example, Britain insisted that the French withdraw from the Dutch-Belgian region and that the port of Antwerp be demilitarized; furthermore, the British delegation did not want colonial matters to so much as appear on the agendas at the peace talks or the congress.

The fundamental decisions about the new European order had already been made before the Congress of Vienna convened in late 1814 and early 1815. According to the First Peace of Paris,¹⁵ signed on May 30, 1814, the Netherlands were to be enlarged and ruled by the House of Orange, the independent states of Germany were to be united by a “federative bond,” Switzerland was to be constituted as independent of all external influences, and Italy was, in the document’s succinct formula, to be composed of sovereign states. These fundamental arrangements had first been formulated when the four allies met in February 1814; they arose out of an interest in creating a line of militarily strong buffer states along France’s eastern border to prevent any future incursions into central Europe and the Italian peninsula. Secret articles appended to the Paris treaty settled France’s Alpine border in favor of Sardinia-Piedmont and Austria, though Savoy was to remain in French hands for the time being. The former territories of the Holy Roman Empire on the left bank of the Rhine, which France had occupied since 1792 and now had to return, were to be used for the expansion of Holland and to compensate Prussia and other German states.

Italy’s Political Landscape in 1814/1815

Austria’s dominance in northern Italy was the result of the military developments between August 1813 and April 1814: Austria had fought the war against the Kingdom of Italy, which was collapsing along with Napoleon’s empire, singlehandedly, which meant that time-consuming diplomatic agreements or complex transitional administrations were not necessary. All the Great Powers were prepared to recognize the Austrian Empire’s exclusive control over northern Italy, provided that the House of Savoy’s legitimate claims in Piedmont-Sardinia were respected. Britain played a special role due to the superiority of its navy. It controlled the island of Sicily and gave protection to the Bourbons, the ruling family of Naples, who were living there in exile. Britain also supported the Austrians in the North Adriatic and intervened in the Tuscany-Liguria region.

As already noted, the peace treaty of May 1814 formalized the Habsburgs’ dominance, fixing Sardinia’s border along the line of the Ticino and awarding all the territories to its east, from the Alps to the Po, to the Austrian emperor. At the Congress of Vienna, Metternich was able, by doggedly exploiting disagreement among the Swiss cantons, to successfully assert a further claim to a small but strategically important Alpine region: in March 1815, the three districts of Valtellina (Bormio, Sondrio, and Chiavenna), located to the north of Lake Como, became part of Austria.¹⁶ Between 1822 and 1825, a new road was built there that directly linked Tyrol to Lombardy via the Stelvio Pass; at an elevation of 2,758 meters, it remains the second-highest paved Alpine pass to this day.

It was only the Peace of Paris that confirmed that not just Veneto but also Lombardy would return to Habsburg control.¹⁷ Already in March 1814, however, Emperor Francis had begun issuing decrees over what he termed his “conquered provinces” in Italy.¹⁸ Following the peace agreement, Field Marshal Bellegarde, commander-in-chief of the Austrian troops, was appointed commissioner of the occupied Italian territories. Returning from London to Vienna in July 1814, Metternich pushed for Austria’s sovereignty over the occupied territories in northern Italy to be formally recognized as soon as possible.¹⁹ Provisional civil administrations were set up in Milan and Venice. They assisted the Central Organizing Court Commission (Central-Organisirungs-Hof-Commission), established in Vienna in late July 1814 to reorganize the territories Austria had won back or newly acquired.

In February 1815, Emperor Francis decided on the proposals of the organizing commission, and in April 1815 awarded “my Italian states” the status of a kingdom, though the name Regno Lombardo-Veneto was only introduced at the last minute.²⁰ As the name suggests, this kingdom, established by the highly condensed atto costitutivo of April 7, 1815, was a composite state, with two separate governors (Franz Joseph Graf Saurau in Milan and Peter Graf Goëss in Venice) and two advisory assemblies known as “congregations.”²¹ The final institutional arrangement, based on the structures of the Austrian states, was agreed upon during the emperor’s lengthy tour of the kingdom between October 1815 and May 1816; Metternich’s proposals on this matter consistently sought to strengthen the state’s rights to self-government.²² Francis’s younger brother Archduke Anton was appointed viceroy, but he never took up the office and was replaced by his brother Rainer in 1818.²³

Austria’s “sphere of hegemony” on the Italian peninsula²⁴ extended far beyond the new regno, encompassing Tuscany, Modena, Parma, and Piacenza as well. In summer 1814, Austria had contingents stationed throughout this region to defend the Habsburg Empire’s claims if necessary. Victor Emmanuel I of Sardinia–Piedmont, who was restored to his throne in May 1814 with the support and close involvement of Austria, immediately laid claim to western Lombardy and Parma. King Murat of Naples, despite having nominally been an ally of Austria since the start of 1814, was also considered a loose cannon, especially given that he had troops stationed far outside his territory.

Hence, Metternich’s political plans to stabilize Europe involved not just central Europe but also Italy in its entirety. In mid-1814, before the start of the Congress of Vienna, he considered founding a Lega Italica, which was intended to serve a twofold security function: firstly as a defensive military alliance to protect against France and secondly as a kind of “central police force” to ward off Jacobinism, which Metternich viewed as a perpetual threat. He saw the principles of the French Revolution and the possible foundation of a unified Italian state codified in a constitution as an ever-present danger that had to be “killed off.”²⁵ Metternich’s policy on Italy was—from an earlier stage and to a more pronounced extent than his policy on the German Confederation—dominated by considerations of security. As a result of these concerns, he sought to maintain direct or indirect control over the peninsula so that Austria could maintain a military defense able to quash any effort to expand on France’s part while also keeping a watchful eye on the Italian territories, ready to intervene swiftly in the event of revolutionary unrest.²⁶ The restitution of the individual states of the ancien régime (with minimal changes to borders) and a rejection of constitutions were further cornerstones of Metternich’s plans for Italy. Vienna avoided any policy or terminology that so much as hinted at “the idea of unifying Italy into a single power.”²⁷ It was primarily for this reason that the Napoleonic Regno d’Italia was replaced by the Habsburgian Regno Lombardo-Veneto.

Metternich’s tactic for the negotiations at the Congress of Vienna, which began in September 1814, was to delay any discussion of Italian matters for as long as possible.²⁸ He thereby intended to win time while developments unfolded in Naples, where King Murat was opposing French and Spanish demands for the restitution of the Bourbon monarchy. When, at the first official meeting of the decision-making Committee of Eight on November 13, 1814, the Spanish representative Pedro Gómez Labrador proposed the formation of a separate committee to specifically address Italy’s restructuring, along the same lines as had been done a month earlier for Germany, Metternich, who was chairing the meeting, rebuffed him with uncharacteristic verve: Italy, he said, had never been a “true political body” but “only a collection of independent states […] grouped under a single geographic designation,” and, moreover, unlike with Germany, no agreement had been made to form a “federative bond” for Italy. The territorial configuration of the individual Italian states should therefore be discussed “separately and successively,” going from north to south.²⁹ Metternich’s characterization of Italy for tactical reasons as a mere “geographic designation” led to his being depicted as the archenemy of Italian unification during the Risorgimento.

Metternich succeeded in that the eight powers’ negotiations in Vienna began with a matter that had essentially already long been settled: the proposal that the king of Sardinia-Piedmont be given control of Genoa as compensation for having ceded territories in Savoy to France. After brief hearings on the precise arrangements, the congress agreed to this proposal on December 12, 1814, and King Victor Emanuel had annexed Liguria before the year was out. The disappearance of the ancient maritime republic from the map of Europe, without Genoa being given a special status within the kingdom of Piedmont or at least that of a free port, sparked outrage among the opposition in the British House of Commons. Victor Emanuel’s plans to annex parts of Lombardy, by contrast, quickly proved to be wishful thinking.

After arrangements for the two major northern territories, Lombardy-Venetia and Sardinia-Piedmont, and the Papal States in central Italy had been settled, Metternich introduced a master plan for the remaining territories on the peninsula in January 1815.³⁰ The Austrians now gradually distanced themselves from King Murat of Naples and instead sided with the Bourbon claims. The fact that Napoleon’s brother-in-law had continued to station troops in central Italy, beyond the borders of his kingdom, was steadily eroding trust in his reliability as an ally.

To bypass dealing with Talleyrand in Vienna, Metternich did not negotiate his plans for the Italian peninsula at the congress but dealt directly with the French government in Paris. Metternich’s “principle of legitimacy,” according to which monarchs who had lost power under Napoleon’s reign should be restored, played a key role, but even more important was his fear that Murat could trigger a revolutionary war in Italy “under the banner of […] national freedom.”³¹ The British foreign secretary, Castlereagh, discussed Metternich’s plans with the French king Louis XVIII in person on his return journey to London and secured his support.

Napoleon’s escape from Elba in late February 1815 and the “Hundred Days” reign rendered all diplomatic plans for Italy obsolete. Murat sided with the returned emperor and issued the Rimini Proclamation, calling on all Italy, from the Alps to Sicily, to rise up against the Austrians and create an independent nation. In response, Austria declared war on Murat, and then defeated him in a brief but psychologically important campaign at the foot of the Apennines in April/May 1815; this lesser-known military action took place at the same time that allied forces were marching against Napoleon in Belgium. Based on this victory, in late May, the Bourbon monarch Ferdinand IV returned to Naples as king under the protection of the Austrian army and British navy. Formal treaties tied his political future closely to the interests of the Habsburg Empire.

In early June 1815, in the final days of the congress, the Committee of Five quickly agreed upon territorial arrangements for Italy based on Metternich’s program from the start of the year. No mention was made of Tuscany; the emperor and his family had already decided in early 1814 that Grand Duke Ferdinand III, the emperor’s brother, should return from Würzburg to Florence (though without actually consulting Ferdinand on the matter).³² Meanwhile, Archduke Francis IV of Austria-Este was finally able to assume the rule of the Duchy of Modena, more than a decade after his family had inherited the ducal title back in 1803.

In reality, the situation in Tuscany was extremely complex. In 1801, it had been elevated to the status of the Kingdom of Etruria, and, until Napoleon integrated the region directly into France in 1808, it was ruled by a branch of the Spanish Bourbons who had formerly ruled Parma. The Spanish infanta Maria Luisa, sister of the Spanish king, Ferdinand VII, laid claim to these lands, and one of the key tasks of Labrador, the chief Spanish delegate, and Talleyrand was to support her claims. Metternich had not originally included the Parma Bourbons in his plans for Italy, but was forced to revise these plans and concede the heritable Duchy of Lucca. Spain was not content with this meager territory, however, and was the only major European power to refuse to sign the congress’s Final Act. Ferdinand VII did not ratify the treaty until 1817, when a new treaty offered the Parma Bourbons succession rights to the duchies of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla. The Congress of Vienna had granted these duchies to Napoleon’s second wife, Marie Louise, daughter of the Habsburg emperor, but only ad personam and for her lifetime; the new treaty meant that after her death (which came in 1847), they would revert from the Habsburgs to the Bourbons.

A quick glance from Italy to the opposite coast to the east reveals that Austria conceived of itself not just as an Italian but as an Adriatic power. The reconstituted kingdoms of Illyria (including Laybach and Trieste) and Dalmatia, and the portion of Croatia returned to the Kingdom of Hungary, which included the port of Fiume, extended the full length of the Adriatic coast from Istria to Dubrovnik. Vienna also showed an interest in the protectorate of the Ionian islands off the west coast of Greece, which had been controlled by Britain since 1809, but Russia repeatedly vetoed this proposal during the negotiations.³³

Bavaria’s Compensation and the Dispute over Salzburg

Metternich had to contend with a far greater range of interests during the negotiations over the areas of central Europe north of the Alps than he did during those over Italy: the “wing powers” of Russia and Britain; Austria’s traditional rival, Prussia, which had an interest in Saxony and its own ideas about what form the German Confederation should take; and “middle states” such as Bavaria, Württemberg, and Baden, which owed their elevation in status and sovereignty to Napoleon’s protectorate but had abandoned the French coalition before the end of 1813. Their prize for joining the alliance against the French was a guarantee that they would retain their territory and sovereign status. Thus, even before the Congress of Vienna, it was clear that the results of the territorial revolution that had transformed central Europe during the Napoleonic era between 1803 and 1810 would remain in place; there was no question of a “restoration” of the prerevolutionary status quo.

The discussion in this section will concentrate on the region of the eastern Alps, which was the subject of bilateral negotiations between the Habsburg Empire and the Kingdom of Bavaria. The key decisions in the territorial disputes between the two neighboring powers (whose relations had been marked by frequent conflict throughout the eighteenth century) were not hammered out at the Congress of Vienna, but before and afterwards. Hence, the final territorial configuration of the Wittelsbachs’ kingdom was only settled in April 1816—and it looked rather different than Bavaria had envisioned.

From April 1813 onward, the option of switching sides against Napoleon gained increasing ground in Munich.³⁴ The question took on a new urgency when Austria declared war on France; in late summer 1813, Bavarian and Austrian troops were mustered against each other in the Innviertel and Upper Austria. The Russian tsar called on the Bavarian king Maximilian I Joseph to join the alliance against Napoleon, leading to direct negotiations between the two commanders-in-chief, General Karl Philipp von Wrede on the Bavarian side and Prince Heinrich XV of Reuss-Plauen on the Austrian side. From mid-September, any hopes that Bavaria could remain neutral in the ongoing conflict had disappeared, but it was only with considerable reservations, and at the last minute, that Max Joseph—having written that “betraying” Napoleon “would be a cowardice incongruous with the loyalty of my character”—assented to the signing of the Treaty of Ried, which took place on October 8, 1813.³⁵

Max Joseph allied himself with Napoleon’s opponents just as the French emperor was planning his offensive against Bernadotte’s and Blücher’s armies to the north of Leipzig, making it a very risky move for the Bavarian king. In exchange for this volte-face, however, his kingdom’s powerful neighbor, Austria, guaranteed Bavaria absolute sovereignty and constitutional independence, as well as the retention of its territory. There was no time to reach agreement on specific questions of territory; Max Joseph had wanted Franconia and Swabia to be named as preferred territories in any compensation to Bavaria, but this did not make it into the final version of the text.³⁶ All that was agreed upon was the principle that any adjustments of borders would be made without compulsion and through the exchange of territories that were of equal value and contiguous with existing possessions.

The allied forces received an additional 36,000 Bavarian soldiers as reinforcement. Moreover, Austria benefited from the immediate opening of Tyrol for military operations to support Hiller’s Italian campaign in the Puster and Eisack valleys; it was for this reason that Austria had repeatedly stressed its interest in controlling the Inn–Brenner route during the treaty negotiations.³⁷

For Metternich, the main factors in the decision of October 1813 were calculability and stability: “any reversal of Napoleon’s new territorial order would have triggered a chaos of old and new claims.”³⁸ He also needed Bavaria as an ally, as part of a “fixed system,” as he called it, that was intended to bring Bavaria to the side of Austria, Prussia, and Britain and thereby keep France and Russia in check.³⁹ The priorities were to prize Bavaria away from the French coalition as quickly as possible, to gain access to the new ally’s military resources, and, hopefully, to trigger a domino effect that would bring further members of the Confederation of the Rhine over to the allies’ side. The principles of the Treaty of Ried, which ruled out both the dissolution of the large Rhine Confederation states and a return to the order of the Holy Roman Empire, prefigured the federal solution for central Germany that Metternich outlined shortly afterwards: “Allemagne composée de princes souverains uni par un lien fédératif qui assure et garantisse l’indépendance de l’Allemagne.”⁴⁰ Metternich had explicitly recognized the sovereign status of the princes of the Confederation of the Rhine ever since the Treaty of Teplitz, which founded the Coalition.⁴¹ Bavaria’s carefully worded proclamation of war on October 14 therefore justified the change of sides in terms of “securing the independence of the Germanic nation and the states comprising it.”⁴²

Because it was too late for the Bavarian troops under Wrede’s command to be mobilized for the Battle of Nations at Leipzig, they occupied Würzburg instead. In late October 1813, they were defeated in the Battle of Hanau as they attempted to cut off Napoleon’s retreat to France, but they played a successful part in the invasion of France in February/March 1814. Max Joseph, his foreign minister Maximilian von Montgelas, and his commander-in-chief Wrede, who was sympathetic to the offensive course favored by the Russian tsar, thus earned a place in the allied powers’ inner circle.⁴³

After the allied forces reached Paris and forced Napoleon’s abdication, peace talks began in the French capital in April 1814. Wrede—who had been promoted to field marshal and granted the status of prince—had been named Bavaria’s chief negotiator, despite his own vehement objections, because he was the “most credible” representative of “Bavaria’s new political position”⁴⁴ and had proved himself a capable commander in the campagne de France. The Bavarian foreign ministry now contemplated various scenarios for an exchange of territories with Austria. It was considered certain that Bavaria would be able to hold on to the Innviertel, but the claim to Tyrol had already been as good as abandoned. The only part of Tyrol to remain under nominal Bavarian control was the Inn valley, which had been practically ungovernable due to unrest and revolts ever since Austrian troops had occupied the eastern and southern areas of the region until November 1813. Maximilian Graf Lerchenfeld, commissioner-general of the Innviertel, was removed from his post in January 1814.⁴⁵

A question mark hung over Salzburg. The Peace of Pressburg of December 26, 1805, had granted the Duchy of Salzburg, as it was then, along with Berchtesgaden, to the Habsburg Empire as compensation for the loss of Tyrol to Bavaria. After the 1809 conflict and a prolonged French occupation, Salzburg and Berchtesgaden were awarded to Bavaria in early 1810, along with the Innviertel, the western part of the Hausruckviertel, Bayreuth, and Regensburg. Faced with the prospect of ever less palatable losses in the Alpine region, Munich increasingly looked north for suitable compensation: to Main-Franconia (especially Würzburg), the Neckar-Kreis, and other areas along the Main and Rhine.⁴⁶

In May 1814, Wrede negotiated on these matters in parallel with the Paris peace talks: firstly with Johann von Wessenberg, the Austrian envoy in Munich, and then with Metternich himself.⁴⁷ Wessenberg wanted Salzburg, the Innviertel, and the Hausruckviertel in their entirety for Austria, whereas Wrede wanted Bavaria to retain at least the northern parts of Salzburg (the city and the lower-lying parts of the Flachgau). Metternich steered Wrede’s gaze to Würzburg, Aschaffenburg, Fulda, and—repeatedly—Mainz. In the end, however, Prussia—represented by Karl August von Hardenberg—laid claim to Mainz, which was a key strategic fortress that controlled the line of the Main, had served on a number of occasions as an important base for Napoleon, and lay at the intersection between the two military defensive blocs that Austria and Prussia were seeking to establish within the German Confederation.

The treaty that Metternich and Wrede signed in Paris on June 3, 1814, fleshed out the declarations of principle in the Treaty of Ried with concrete details.⁴⁸ The territorial arrangements were divided into two groups, according to when they would take effect:

– Bavaria had to immediately (within two weeks) relinquish Tyrol (excluding the district of Vils and Kufstein Fortress) and Vorarlberg (excluding the district of Weiler) to Austria; in return, it was to receive Würzburg and Aschaffenburg. This exchange was completed by the end of June; Wrede had already occupied the Franconian territories since October 1813.

– Bavaria would also have to return to Austria the Innviertel, the Hausruckviertel, and the Principality of Salzburg, except for the district of Laufen and the territory on the left banks of the Salzach and Saalach. However, Munich would only be obliged to hand over these territories once it had been given what it considered an acceptable “equivalent.” To this end, Metternich offered the city and fortress of Mainz and the “ancient Rhine-Palatinate” (l’ancien Palatinat du Rhin), which had passed to Baden in 1802/03. Other exchanges with Baden, Württemberg, Hesse-Darmstadt, and Nassau were considered in order to create a land bridge between the Main and the Palatinate.

To consolidate Bavarian claims on the left bank of the Rhine, too, Austria involved Bavaria in the provisional administration of the territories to the south of the Mosel that were being held in reserve to offer as compensation.

Neither Munich nor Vienna was especially happy with this compromise; Emperor Francis himself made a written note on Metternich’s report from Paris: “The treaty with Bavaria is bad. In particular, I do not like that we will not obtain Bertolsgaden or the Bohemian possessions [i.e., Redwitz in the Upper Palatinate].”⁴⁹ In reply, Metternich reminded his emperor of the overarching political interests, especially the need to cultivate good relations between Bavaria and Austria, so as to prevent Munich from developing any sort of closer political ties with Prussia. His words, surprisingly for the man in charge of the Habsburg Empire’s foreign policy, have the air of a profession of faith: “We have only one fixed point in our relationship with Germany. That point is Bavaria.”⁵⁰

Negotiations in Vienna

Despite reservations on both sides, Montgelas briefed the Bavarian king’s representative at the Congress of Vienna on the basis of the Peace of Paris. This representative was once again Marshal Wrede, since Montgelas himself refused to travel to the congress despite repeated urging from Max Joseph—a move he himself later conceded was a mistake. Montgelas hoped that Bavaria would be required to cede Salzburg and the Innviertel in exchange for the territories Austria had promised along the Main and Rhine. His instructions for the congress make explicit mention of Mainz, Wetzlar, Frankfurt, Hanau, and Fulda, as well as the “whole of the area on the left bank of the Rhine between this river, the new French border, and the Mosel.”⁵¹

The negotiations at the Congress of Vienna initially centered on Prussia’s claims to compensation—i.e., on Poland and Saxony. Once the crisis that threatened to derail the talks had been averted at the start of 1815, it was necessary to deal with Prussia’s territorial claims first, since these would determine the range of options available for all subsequent agreements. At the first meeting of the Committee of Five on January 12, 1815, Metternich had announced that Austria and Bavaria would deal with unresolved issues through bilateral talks.⁵² Wrede’s negotiations with Wessenberg and Metternich began on February 19 and centered once again on Frankfurt and Mainz. The Austrian minister consulted the Great Powers’ leading diplomats—Hardenberg for Prussia, Nesselrode for Russia, Wellington for Britain—to sound out the feasibility of meeting Bavaria’s demands. Wellington reported home that Wrede was not remotely interested in territories to the left of the Rhine for Bavaria and favored maintaining the status quo; he would in no case be given Mainz or Frankfurt.⁵³ Wellington further noted that territory still had to be found for the former viceroy Eugène Beauharnais, which should remain subordinate to the sovereignty of the king of Bavaria. Salzburg—“to which both Austrians and Bavarians attach the utmost importance”—was the thorniest issue. The Bavarian crown prince, Ludwig, who was especially attached to Salzburg, had made the matter personal; resolving it would require—to quote Wellington—“a good deal of coolness.” Discussing the strategic position of Salzburg, the British marshal sided with Austrian representatives such as Field Marshal Schwarzenberg, who saw Bavarian control of Salzburg as a potential threat to the line of the Danube and Austria’s links to Italy.⁵⁴ Therefore, Wellington concluded, “I conceive that Salzburg ought to belong to Austria.” In late February, Emperor Francis instructed his foreign minister to support all Bavarian claims in western Germany, and ordered him, with an air of finality, “to explain that I shall not concede the return of Salzburg under any circumstances.”⁵⁵

In the subsequent course of the talks, Mainz was taken off the table as a bargaining chip and replaced by the parts of the Palatinate on the right bank of the Rhine around Mannheim and Heidelberg, an area that had long been ruled by the Wittelsbachs. For a while, despite the emperor’s order, plans were also discussed to divide the Duchy of Salzburg along a line from Radstadt to the Gerlos Pass, via St. Johann im Pongau and Zell am See; Bavaria would retain the territory to the north of this line, while the area to the south would go to Austria. Wellington shared the view that Salzburg’s chief strategic value for Austria lay in the intra-Alpine link from Styria to Tyrol along the Enns and the Salzach, and that it would thus suffice to cede the southern portion of the duchy to Austrian control.⁵⁶

On April 23, 1815, representatives of the five powers in Vienna agreed to a treaty between Austria and Bavaria that had been negotiated by Wessenberg, Wrede, and Nesselrode; Metternich referred to it right from the outset with the qualifier “éventuelle.”⁵⁷ This treaty would have allowed Bavaria to retain the northern part of the Duchy of Salzburg and part of the Innviertel. The expansive potential gains for Bavaria along the Rhine and Main were subject to the results of as-yet-unconcluded negotiations with the governments of Baden (from which Munich hoped to obtain the entire Main-Tauber-Kreis and part of the Neckar-Kreis), Württemberg (where it hoped to obtain Nördlingen, Dinkelsbühl, Isny, Leutkirch, and other towns), the Grand Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt (Alzenau, Seligenstadt, Miltenberg, Amorbach, Wimpfen, etc.), and the Electorate of Hesse (the city of Hanau).⁵⁸ However, it could scarcely be expected that the princes of these states would consent to cede these territories to Bavaria. Especially unlikely was that the rulers of Baden would agree to return the Electoral Palatinate to Bavaria (“la réversibilité des parties de l’ancien Palatinat”) in the event that the male line of the ruling ducal house died out (article 16 of the treaty).⁵⁹ The text of the treaty was never formally ratified and thus is not included in the Congress of Vienna’s Final Act. As Wrede sarcastically yet clear-sightedly remarked to Montgelas: “It is a veritable sea we have to drink up. Now it is the turn of Baden, Württemberg, and Hesse to make difficulties for us.”⁶⁰

The Congress of Vienna thus “failed to resolve the Bavarian border and compensation problem.”⁶¹ As if that were not enough, on Metternich’s initiative the Austrian promises from April were quietly dropped in the final days of the congress. Article 51 of the Final Act gave Austria sole possession of the territories held in reserve on the left bank of the Rhine, which it had co-governed with Bavaria since summer 1814. On June 12, 1815, by which time the official negotiations were already over, Wilhelm von Humboldt signed a secret agreement (to which Russia and Britain were privy) in which Prussia supported Austria’s claims to Salzburg, the Innviertel, and even the Palatinate. A series of other reserve territories that might conceivably also have been used to compensate Bavaria were instead awarded to Austria, with full rights of sovereignty. Vienna and Berlin planned to share provisional command of the Fortress of Mainz; the city itself would later pass to the Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt.⁶²

Given this closing of ranks by the Great Powers over the settlement of south German affairs, the only political avenue left to Bavaria was to bide its time, engage in tactical maneuvers, and score the occasional pinprick against Austria. Wrede’s refusal to withdraw Bavarian troops from the left bank of the Rhine initially prompted displeasure and threats from Vienna. Later, when Metternich, in the course of the protracted, complicated negotiations over a second peace treaty with France in the fall of 1815, was looking for ways to curb Prussia’s aggressive claims, an unexpected opportunity opened up for Bavaria to retain the northern part of Salzburg. In a long memorandum from Paris in September, Metternich once again tried to persuade his emperor to claim the strategically important Mainz for Austria, and give up part of Salzburg by way of compensation: “If Austria wishes to play a worthy role in Germany, and not wholly relinquish this arena to Prussia, then there can be no doubt that it is essential to have possessions in Germany, specifically on the Rhine. Were Austria to hold Mainz with ample surrounding lands, it would truly rule the politics of all south German courts […] Acquiring the whole Bishopric of Salzburg, by contrast, will always be faced with considerable difficulties.”⁶³ Having presented Emperor Francis with the alternative of giving up either Salzburg or Mainz, Metternich was informed in a meeting with Field Marshal Schwarzenberg and General Duka, the emperor’s adjutant general, that the emperor had rejected his advice and that “for military reasons, the possession of Salzburg would have to take precedence over the possession of Mainz.”⁶⁴ Thus—as the Austrian emperor ordered with uncharacteristic bluntness and finality on September 28, 1815—the city itself and the entire Principality of Salzburg, the whole Innviertel, “every last village,” and the ceded part of the Hausruckviertel must be returned to Austria. Even the matter of the “Rupertiwinkel” was reopened, the cluster of judicial districts on the west banks of the Salzach and Saalach whose cession to Bavaria had been taken for granted since the bilateral negotiations began.⁶⁵ Ultimately, despite further appeals in which he went so far as to elevate the Austrian acquisition of Mainz to the status of a “moral question,”⁶⁶ Metternich had no choice but to reluctantly execute the decision to retain Salzburg, as ordered by the emperor in ever-sharper words. On November 3, 1815, the minister agreed to a treaty with the other Great Powers requiring Munich to immediately cede Salzburg and the territories around the Inn, and in return to accept the territory on the left bank of the Rhine, including the Fortress of Landau, that Austria offered as compensation. Metternich sent his emperor the following report on Ludwig’s reaction: “The crown prince of Bavaria is in a mighty rage over the cession of the city of Salzburg. He is [practically] knocking on the doors of all my colleagues in a blind fervor to assert his right.”⁶⁷ Count Aloys von Rechberg, who Montgelas had authorized to undertake further negotiations in Paris in the causa Salzburg, lodged a protest, but stood no chance against the united front of the Great Powers.⁶⁸

Lower Franconia, the Palatinate, and the Consequences of the Treaty of Munich (1816)

The final act of the territorial dispute between Bavaria and Austria—which proved brief but highly dramatic—began after the signing of the Second Peace of Paris with France on November 20, 1815.⁶⁹ Emperor Francis instructed Metternich: “I must order you to press through the Salzburg, Innviertel, and Hausruckviertel matter, if not by gentle means, then by force, and to do so soon.”⁷⁰ Before the year was out, Metternich had dispatched a high-ranking military official familiar with the area to Munich for bilateral talks,⁷¹ namely, Lieutenant Field Marshal Johann Peter von Wacquant de Geozelles, who had been Austria’s commissioner for handing over Salzburg and Berchtesgaden in 1810. Montgelas began the talks with a show of intransigence, insisting that Salzburg remain under Bavarian control and demanding better compensation, referring among other things to the claims of Eugène Beauharnais. This provoked a note of protest from the Great Powers and an advance of Austrian troops along the Enns at the beginning of 1816. In his comments on Metternich’s reports, Emperor Francis worked himself up into an uncharacteristically agitated state, declaring that he would “put an end to the affair with Bavaria” and assert his rights, by force if need be, and with “no half measures.”⁷² However, he did not believe the breakdown in relations was irreparable, and wanted to limit the military measures to threatening gestures.⁷³ In the end, it was the Bavarian king who backed down: in late January, he sent Crown Prince Ludwig, escorted by Rechberg, to speak directly with Emperor Francis, who was touring his new Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia. It was “not exactly a pleasure trip” (voyage de plaisir), Ludwig wrote to his father.⁷⁴ The emperor was unwilling to concede anything except in regard to Bavaria’s claims to the Main-Tauber-Kreis, to the south of the new Bavarian possessions on the Main between Würzburg and Aschaffenburg. This area, around Boxberg, Wertheim, and Tauberbischofsheim, currently belonged to Baden. In a letter to Max Joseph, dated February 7, 1816, Emperor Francis offered the king an annual compensation of 100,000 gulden if the Main-Tauber-Kreis were not ceded to Bavaria.⁷⁵

In February 1816, while the final negotiations were taking place, preparations were made in Munich for the withdrawal from Salzburg. Furniture from Schloss Mirabell and important documents were transported to Munich, and the quarries near Fürstenbrunn at the foot of the Untersberg were declared the private property of the Bavarian crown prince. In Munich, Prime Minister Montgelas refused with increasing stubbornness to be the sole signatory to the treaty with Austria, as he did not want to become the scapegoat for the loss of Salzburg. He bluntly declared, “I hate the treaty,”⁷⁶ and demanded that Rechberg, the envoy in Vienna, sign it instead. Rechberg sent his superior a barbed reply: “If one has had the rare fortune to idle around in the foreign ministry for seventeen years, it is scarcely comprehensible that one should fear a momentary storm.”⁷⁷ The king summoned the two quarreling officials, whereupon his minister said to his face that he had three portfolios to manage and hence no time for negotiations; Rechberg, who had been the king’s friend since his Zweibrücken days, responded that, as a Swabian who did not own an inch of land in Bavaria, he feared the nation would accuse him of having sold Bavaria to Austria. The agitated Max Joseph took to bed with colic; he had failed to “mediate between his two old confidants.”⁷⁸ It was Crown Prince Ludwig who finally managed to broker a compromise a few days later; as a result of his efforts, the Treaty of Munich of April 14, 1816, was signed not by the usual two parties, but by three: Montgelas and Rechberg both added their signatures next to that of the Austrian envoy Wacquant.⁷⁹

The provisions of the Treaty of Munich have shaped Bavaria’s outline on the map right down to the present day. The Innviertel, including Braunau, Ried, and Schärding, and the regions bordering it to the east, from the Hausruck to Vöcklabruck, returned to Austrian control, as did the Tyrolean district of Vils and the greater part of the Duchy of Salzburg. However, as agreed in 1814, Bavaria retained the areas of Salzburg on the left banks of the Salzach and the Saalach (and, as article 19 mentions in passing, Berchtesgaden). This area, known as the “Rupertiwinkel” and comprising the judicial districts of Tittmoning, Laufen, Waging, and Teisendorf, which have been part of Bavaria ever since, was equivalent to around 15 percent of the old archbishopric by population, 20 percent by area, and moreover contained the region’s best farmland—and therefore represented a significant loss for Salzburg.

Consequently, the new Bavaria of the nineteenth century expanded not southeastwards, but northwestwards. Numerous legal titles and lands belonging to myriad former owners were amalgamated into a new Lower Main District (Untermain-Kreis), which in 1817 comprised no fewer than forty-six judicial districts (Landgerichte) and thirteen judicial districts of the nobility (Herrschaftsgerichte).⁸⁰ From 1814, the chief part of the territory was made up of the “Grand Duchy” of Würzburg, which had formerly been under Bavarian control in 1802 and from 1803 to 1805 and then granted to the Habsburgian grand duke of Tuscany, and the “Principality” of Aschaffenburg, which in the Holy Roman Empire had formed the core of the Mainzer Oberstift, and, since 1803, had been part of the succession of states ruled by the archbishop, archchancellor, and prince-primate Karl Theodor von Dalberg (most recently, in 1810, the Grand Duchy of Frankfurt). Bavaria had been able to take possession of these two large territorial units following the Peace of Paris of May 30, 1814. Only two years later, with the Treaty of Munich of April 14, 1816, did (parts of) the districts of Hammelburg, Brückenau, and Bieberstein, nestled between Würzburg and Aschaffenburg, pass to Bavaria. This strip of land in the Rhön Mountains—which in the past had changed hands between the Bishopric of Fulda, the Principality of Nassau-Orange-Fulda, and the Grand Duchy of Frankfurt—had been occupied by Austrian troops since late November 1813, meaning that Vienna could cede it directly to Munich.⁸¹ With regards to the other areas mentioned in the Treaty of Munich, by contrast, Austria could merely promise to intercede with their current owners and attempt to persuade them to make concessions to Bavaria. These efforts bore fruit very quickly in the case of the Grand Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt, which on July 7, 1816, transferred to Bavaria several districts on the Main that consolidated the Aschaffenburg territory. These were Alzenau (which Darmstadt had acquired from Mainz in 1803), and then—up toward the Odenwald Mountains—Miltenberg and Amorbach (both of which had also originally belonged to Mainz and passed to Darmstadt in 1810, having been held by the Principality of Leiningen and by Baden in the interim), and Kleinheubach, which in the eighteenth century had belonged to the princes of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rochefort.⁸² Only in the Frankfurt General (Territorial) Recess of July 20, 1819, did Baden, with the mediation of the Great Powers and in exchange for an extensive package of political guarantees (articles 6–10), cede the part of the district of Wertheim situated around Steinfels to the south of Lohr on the left (east) bank of the Main, which before 1806 had also been a Löwenstein possession (article 1).⁸³

It was not just Lower Franconia (known from 1837 as “Lower Franconia and Aschaffenburg”) that was born from the spirit of a provisorium; the Austrian reserve territories on the left bank of the Rhine, chiefly comprising the districts of Zweibrücken, Kaiserslautern, and Speyer and the city of Landau, became the “Rhine Circle” (Rheinkreis). Although Ludwig I renamed this Bavarian Rhine Circle of 1816 “the Palatinate,” so as to suggest a historical continuity, in reality it was a new construct, assembled from territories previously belonging to over forty non-Wittelsbach owners during the Holy Roman Empire; that is to say, Bavaria was not having old lands restored to it, but rather being given a package of territories pieced together to compensate for the loss of Salzburg. However, the “old” Electoral Palatinate on the right bank of the Rhine did make a reappearance in the Treaty of Munich, whose first secret article confirmed the Wittelsbachs’ right of succession should the House of Baden die out (“la reversion de la partie du Palatinat du Rhin dite le cercle de Neckar”).⁸⁴ This clause was long a cause of tension in southern Germany, particularly between Baden and Bavaria, until it was revoked by the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818, which recognized the succession rights of the morganatic Hochberg line (the issue had assumed particular urgency following the death of Grand Duke Karl Ludwig Friedrich of Baden that same year). The Frankfurt Recess (July 1819) revoked any further claims Bavaria might have been able to derive from the treaty of 1816, which is why Ludwig I never formally acknowledged it, instead repeatedly pressing his claims to the Palatinate.⁸⁵

Bavaria was included in the French reparation payments, but there was no direct land link between the new territories on the Main and those on the Rhine. The treaty of April 14 provided only for a military road running from Würzburg to Frankenthal through Baden’s territory; secret article 5 also gave the option of a second military road through Hessian territory. The lack of a direct land bridge (Amorbach and Mannheim were separated by a distance of just under fifty kilometers, as the crow flies) violated the terms of the Treaty of Ried of 1813, and this was why the Austrian emperor had in principle recognized Bavaria’s claims to the Main-Tauber-Kreis (supplementary article 2). The territory remained under Baden’s control, but from 1820 onward Austria paid Bavaria an annual sum of 100,000 gulden (the expected annual revenue from the region, as calculated by the crown prince) as indemnity for there being no land bridge between Franconia and the Palatinate. This “contiguity compensation” (Kontiguitätsentschädigung) was not paid directly, but instead offset against the cost of the 200,000 centners of salt from Hallein that Austria supplied to Bavaria each year at a preferential price (supplementary articles 2–4).

As a result of the territorial exchanges between 1814 and 1816, Bavaria made a net gain of just under 100,000 inhabitants, meaning that, within borders more or less corresponding to those of the present day (apart from the Rhine Circle, a few towns along the Kinzig and in the Rhön Mountains, and the town of Coburg), it was home to a population of 3.5 million; by way of comparison, the equivalent figure today stands at 12.7 million, while at the start of the Napoleonic period, in 1801, the total population of the Wittelsbach possessions had been 2.3 million.

Like Prussia, Bavaria was not compensated in the east, as it had hoped and expected to be, but rather with territories to the west. It thus became part of the barrier of “middle states” (Mittelstaaten; mid-sized German states smaller than Prussia and Austria) established on the left bank of the Rhine in line with British policy so as to curb future expansion attempts by France, and thereby also a player in one of Europe’s central political arenas. The political and economic dynamism of the territories on the Rhine provided crucial impulses and challenges that fueled Bavaria’s modernization in the nineteenth century; by contrast, Salzburg, after its return to Austria on May 1, 1816, was downgraded to a district (Kreis) of Upper Austria, and, in 1825, Franz Schubert reported that grass was growing between the cracks of the paving stones in the city’s plazas.⁸⁶

Unlike the dispute over Poland and Saxony, which involved all the European powers and dominated the negotiations at the Congress of Vienna, Bavaria’s territorial claims and disputes were strictly between itself and Austria. This meant they could be resolved through bilateral agreements before and after the congress, in June 1814 and April 1816—though Viennese politicians did not shy away from mobilizing the support of Britain, Russia, or Prussia on the emperor’s behalf at critical moments, as in June and November 1815. At the congress itself, the Bavarian representative, Rechberg, played a key role in the final phase of negotiations in May/June 1815 in ensuring that the sovereignty of former members of the Confederation of the Rhine was recognized, that the results of the territorial consolidation of 1803/1806 were preserved, and that the German Confederation—i.e., the concrete realization of the “federative bond” stipulated by the earlier Peace of Paris, the details of which were fleshed out during the “second German conferences” in May/June 1815—only took the form of a very loose association.⁸⁷

The Treaty of Munich is, in many respects, better than the bad reputation it enjoyed in some quarters at the time—indeed, it proved, in the words of Eberhard Weis, to be a “real stroke of fortune for Bavaria.” The provisions of this treaty, signed precisely two hundred years ago, allowed Bavaria to develop lasting “good neighborly relations” with Austria,⁸⁸ following almost constant military confrontation between Munich and Vienna in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, from the War of the Spanish Succession through to the Tyrolean rebellion of 1809.

In late 1816, Emperor Francis I married the second daughter of King Max Joseph, Princess Caroline Augusta (it was his fourth and final marriage).⁸⁹ This marked the start of a series of better and lesser-known marital unions between the Habsburgs and Wittelsbachs in the nineteenth century. Personal relations never recovered between Metternich, who described the territorial negotiations with Bavaria as a “wretched” business, the “trickiest” and “most arduous” of his political life (the emperor seconded this view, describing them in March 1816 as “highly disagreeable” and thanking God they were over),⁹⁰ and the Bavarian crown prince, the later Ludwig I; the two men had taken too high a toll on each other’s nerves in the years from 1814 to 1816.⁹¹ However, there was gradual progress in terms of concrete economic collaboration: a series of treaties governing the borders around Berchtesgaden were agreed (the last coming in 1851), and salt production in the neighboring districts was coordinated. The Bavarian–Austrian Salt Treaty of 1829, which is still valid to this day (albeit revised in 1957), regulates mining and forestry rights in Hallein and Pinzgau in the mutual interest of both sides—a subtle continuation of premodern traditions that not only established Bavarian-owned woodlands on Austrian soil, but also respected the rights of the local population to the use of the land.⁹² The Munich–Salzburg–Vienna telegraph line was opened in 1850, and subsequent planning for the railway line connecting Munich to the east was coordinated across borders between the Maximilian Railway (Munich–Salzburg) and Empress Elisabeth Railway (Salzburg–Linz–Vienna). In 1860, the first train from Bavaria arrived at the new railway station in Salzburg.⁹³

The treaties of Ried, Paris, and Munich, concluded between 1813 and 1816, thus ushered in a profound transformation of relations between Bavaria and Austria.⁹⁴ A “secular rivalry” that just a few decades earlier, under Joseph II, had posed a very real threat to the integrity of the Wittelsbach possessions, came to an end in 1813. Austria “moderated its political interests,” “respected Bavaria’s independence,” and accepted the neighboring kingdom as a “strategic partner,”⁹⁵ as reflected in Metternich’s above-quoted description of Bavaria as a “fixed point” in Vienna’s relations with Germany.

Despite the conflicts described here in the years 1813–1816, in the critical situation in the second half of 1813, when Bavaria became the first member of the Confederation of the Rhine to join the alliance against Napoleon, it was Bavaria’s old rival Austria that recognized its status as a consolidated “middle power,” which Napoleon had initially granted it, respected its sovereignty, and became the guarantor of its continued existence in the new European order—and thus, as Michael Doeberl puts it, became Bavaria’s “savior.”⁹⁶

Notes

On these negotiations, which took place in Frankfurt in November/December 1813, see Oncken, Zeitalter., 713–720; Webster, The Foreign Policy of Castlereagh 1812–1822, 166–189; Sellin, Die geraubte Revolution, 75–86; Price, Napoleon, 233–258. This chapter is a revised and expanded version of a public lecture given on October 15, 2015, at the Annual Conference of the Commission for Bavarian History in the plenary hall of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Munich.↩︎
Webster, British Diplomacy 1813–1815, 58 (18 December 1813). See also Webster, The Congress of Vienna 1814–1815, 14–19; Bew, Castlereagh, 325–331.↩︎
Siemann, Metternich, 489.↩︎
See also Kielmansegg, Stein und die Zentralverwaltung 1813/14; Huber, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte seit 1789, 487–510; Duchhardt, Stein, 282–324.↩︎
Oncken, Oesterreich und Preußen im Befreiungskriege, 644 (instruction to Stadion, May 7, 1813); noted by Siemann, Metternich, 391.↩︎
Fournier, Der Congress von Châtillon, 307.↩︎
On the campaigns in Saxony between August and October 1813, see Plotho, Der Krieg in Deutschland und Frankreich in den Jahren 1813 und 1814; Lieven, Russland gegen Napoleon, 426–551; Price, Napoleon, 171–231.↩︎
For detailed accounts of the Austrian campaign in northern Italy in 1813/14, see Welden, Der Krieg der Österreicher in Italien gegen die Franzosen in den Jahren 1813 & 1814; Holtz, Die innerösterreichische Armee 1813 und 1814. For a general overview, see Rath, The Fall of the Kingdom of Italy (1814), 45–61; Uhlirz and Uhlirz, Handbuch der Geschichte Österreichs und seiner Nachbarländer Böhmen und Ungarn, 520–521.↩︎
Treichel, ed., Quellen zur Geschichte des Deutschen Bundes, 46–47.↩︎
Plotho, Der Krieg in Deutschland und Frankreich in den Jahren 1813 und 1814, 7; Rath, The Provisional Austrian Regime in Lombardy-Venetia 1814–1815, 17–18.↩︎
Rath, The Fall of the Kingdom of Italy (1814), 124–25. On the problem of supply faced by Eugène, who as well as being viceroy of Italy (1805) also bore the titles of Prince of Venice (1807) and Grand Duke of Frankfurt (1810), see the summary by Hintermayr, Das Fürstentum Eichstätt der Herzöge von Leuchtenberg 1817–1833, 2000, 56–80; Linker, “Territorium oder Finanzausgleich”.↩︎
Treichel, ed., Quellen zur Geschichte des Deutschen Bundes, 166.↩︎
Ibid, 158.↩︎
Reprinted in Müller, ed., Quellen zur Geschichte des Wiener Kongresses 1814/1815, 33–59; the quotations that follow come from pp. 33–34.↩︎
The best reproduction of the treaty text (based on the Prussian copy) appears in Treichel, ed., Quellen zur Geschichte des Deutschen Bundes, 153–168. For an overview of the provisions, see Stauber, Der Wiener Kongress, 38–40.↩︎
On this topic, see Vick, The Congress of Vienna, 261–265; Stauber, Der Wiener Kongress, 144–145.↩︎
Laven, Venice and Venetia under the Habsburgs, 59.↩︎
Helfert, Kaiser Franz I von Österreich und die Stiftung des Lombardo-Venetianischen Königreichs, 7–8.↩︎
Rath, The Provisional Austrian Regime in Lombardy-Venetia 1814–1815, 60–64; Siemann, Metternich, 473.↩︎
See Helfert, Kaiser Franz I von Österreich und die Stiftung des Lombardo-Venetianischen Königreichs, 207.↩︎
Sandonà, Il Regno Lombardo Veneto 1814–1859, 69–81; for a reproduction of the atto, see 77–80; Helfert, Kaiser Franz I von Österreich und die Stiftung des Lombardo-Venetianischen Königreichs, 117–119.↩︎
See Siemann, Metternich, 609–610.↩︎
The best summary of the founding phase of the Regno Lombardo-Veneto (1813–1815) can be found in Meriggi, Il Regno Lombardo-Veneto, 1–31, which is based on his older study, Meriggi, Amministrazione e classi sociali nel Lombardo-Veneto (1814–1848). See also Rath, The Provisional Austrian Regime in Lombardy-Venetia 1814–1815; Sandonà, Il Regno Lombardo Veneto 1814–1859; Helfert, Zur Geschichte des Lombardo-Venezianischen Königreichs; and Helfert, Kaiser Franz I von Österreich und die Stiftung des Lombardo-Venetianischen Königreichs.↩︎
Stauber, Der Wiener Kongress, 161.↩︎
Cited in Müller, ed., Quellen zur Geschichte des Wiener Kongresses 1814/1815, 465, 468.↩︎
Laven, Venice and Venetia under the Habsburgs, 78–81; Siemann, Metternich, 607–616.↩︎
Müller, ed., Quellen zur Geschichte des Wiener Kongresses 1814/1815, 461.↩︎
See Lentz, Le congrès de Vienne, 173–189; Stauber, Der Wiener Kongress, 151–168; Webster, The Congress of Vienna 1814–1815, 123–128.↩︎
Translated based on the German translation of the minutes of the meeting of the committee of the eight powers of November 13, 1814, given in Müller, ed., Quellen zur Geschichte des Wiener Kongresses 1814/1815, 481. The corresponding passage in the French original (l’Italie […] ne présente qu’une réunion d’Etats indépendants compris sous la même dénomination géographique) can be found in Angeberg, Le Congrès de Vienne et les traités de 1815, 425.↩︎
See Stauber, Der Wiener Kongress, 157–160.↩︎
Müller, ed., Quellen zur Geschichte des Wiener Kongresses 1814/1815, 490–491 (Metternich’s instruction to Bombelles of January 13, 1815).↩︎
Brandt, “Würzburg von der Säkularisation bis zum endgültigen Übergang an Bayern”, esp. 520–525.↩︎
Webster, The Congress of Vienna 1814–1815, 128.↩︎
For the seminal account, see Weis, Montgelas, 661–691. One older work notable for its detailed examination of sources is Doeberl, “Bayern und die deutsche Erhebung wider Napoleon I”; see here 378–398.↩︎
The text of the treaty is reproduced in Treichel, ed., Quellen zur Geschichte des Deutschen Bundes, 41–48. See on this topic Weis, Montgelas, 675–691; Sahrmann, Pfalz oder Salzburg, 7–22; Schwarz, Die Vorgeschichte des Vertrages von Ried. Two recent general surveys on the topic of Bavaria and Napoleon also offer detailed discussion of Bavaria’s shifting alliances: Junkelmann, Napoleon und Bayern, 154–173 (the quotation from Maximillian Joseph is cited here on p. 155); Schuler, ’Wir sind auf einem Vulkan’, 222–272.↩︎
Doeberl, “Bayern und die deutsche Erhebung wider Napoleon I”, 398.↩︎
Ibid, 387–388, 408.↩︎
Nipperdey, Deutsche Geschichte 1800–1866, 87–88.↩︎
Fournier, Historische Studien und Skizzen, 297, n. 1.↩︎
In an instruction for the negotiations in Châtillon in February 1814. Fournier, Der Congress von Châtillon, 307.↩︎
See Siemann, Metternich, 427, 433–437, 508, 516–517.↩︎
Doeberl, “Bayern und die deutsche Erhebung wider Napoleon I”, 403.↩︎
On the success of Bavarian recruitment measures between 1813 and 1815, see Planert, Der Mythos vom Befreiungskrieg: Frankreichs Kriege und der deutsche Süden, 417–419.↩︎
Junkelmann, Napoleon und Bayern, 166.↩︎
See Hamm, Die bayerische Integrationspolitik in Tirol 1806–1814, 335–344; Mertelseder, Mazohl, and Weber, 1809 – und danach, 97–106. For a very detailed account of events in Tyrol between 1813 and 1814, alternating between diplomatic and local history perspectives, see Hirn, Geschichte Tirols von 1809–1814 mit einem Ausblick auf die Organisation des Landes und den großen Verfassungskampf, 411–525.↩︎
Weis, Montgelas, 692–698; Sahrmann, Pfalz oder Salzburg, 22–32.↩︎
Ibid, 32–40; Kraehe, Metternich’s German Policy, 27–39; Winter, Karl Philipp Fürst von Wrede als Berater des Königs Max Joseph und des Kronprinzen Ludwig von Bayern (1813–1825), 129–153; Miedaner, “Salzburg unter bayerischer Herrschaft”, esp. 67–69.↩︎
French text: Martens, ed., Nouveau Recueil de Traités d’Alliance, de Paix […] des Puissances et états de l’Europe […] depuis 1808 jusqu’à présent, 18–23. Rather more favorable for Bavaria would have been the draft of a convention from May 28; see Sahrmann, Pfalz oder Salzburg, 37–38; Weis, Montgelas, 698–700.↩︎
Remark on a report from Metternich from Paris dated June 3, 1814; Austrian State Archives—House, Court, and State Archive [ÖStA HHStA], Staatskanzlei Vorträge, Kart. 195, fol. 172r.↩︎
London, June 25, 1814; ÖStA HHStA, Staatskanzlei Vorträge, Kart. 196, fol. 47r. See on this point and the matters discussed in the following section Landauer, “Die Einverleibung Salzburgs durch Österreich 1816”, esp. 1–7.↩︎
Montgelas’s instruction of September 24, 1814, reproduced in full in Treichel, ed., Quellen zur Geschichte des Deutschen Bundes, 442–458. For further detail, see Sahrmann, Pfalz oder Salzburg, 42–52; on Montgelas’s decision to stay away from the congress, see Weis, Montgelas, 724–727, who describes an attitude of “intransigence” (Verweigerungshaltung) (726).↩︎
Angeberg, Le Congrès de Vienne et les traités de 1815, 1883 –1884.↩︎
Wellington’s report of March 4, 1815, cited in Müller, ed., Quellen zur Geschichte des Wiener Kongresses 1814/1815, 455–456, from which the subsequent quotations have also been taken. See also Winter, Karl Philipp Fürst von Wrede als Berater des Königs Max Joseph und des Kronprinzen Ludwig von Bayern (1813–1825), 220–225.↩︎
On the dispute within Austria’s military and political leadership over the value of Salzburg, see Landauer, “Die Einverleibung Salzburgs durch Österreich 1816”, 5.↩︎
ÖStA HHStA, Staatskanzlei Vorträge, Kart. 197, fol. 273r; also quoted in ibid, 5 –6.↩︎
Sahrmann, Pfalz oder Salzburg, 47–49; Haas, “Vormärz, Revolution und Neoabsolutismus”, 661–717, cited here: 666. A sketch showing the planned dividing line can be found in Landauer, “Die Einverleibung Salzburgs durch Österreich 1816”, 7. The relevant excerpts from the Vienna meetings pertaining to the negotiations with Bavaria (from April 3 to 23, 1815) are collected in Kletke, Die Staats-Verträge des Königreichs Bayern in Bezug auf Justiz-, Polizei-, Administrations-, Territorial- […] Angelegenheiten, 279–287.↩︎
Angeberg, Le Congrès de Vienne et les traités de 1815, 1100.↩︎
The text of the provisional treaty of April 23, 1815, can be found in ibid, 1104–1109; Kletke, Die Staats-Verträge des Königreichs Bayern in Bezug auf Justiz-, Polizei-, Administrations-, Territorial- […] Angelegenheiten, 274–279; the corresponding protocol of the five negotiating powers, Bavaria, Austria, Russia, Prussia, and Britain, of April 23 can be found in Angeberg, Le Congrès de Vienne et les traités de 1815, 1099–1102. See also the visualization of the territorial claims in Franconia in map form in Spindler, ed., Bayerischer Geschichtsatlas, 36d.↩︎
Angeberg, Le Congrès de Vienne et les traités de 1815, 1108.↩︎
Sahrmann, Pfalz oder Salzburg, 50.↩︎
Weis, Montgelas, 707. See Winter, Karl Philipp Fürst von Wrede als Berater des Königs Max Joseph und des Kronprinzen Ludwig von Bayern (1813–1825), 215–230; Miedaner, “Salzburg unter bayerischer Herrschaft”, 69–73.↩︎
The corresponding negotiations of June 10 are documented in Angeberg, Le Congrès de Vienne et les traités de 1815, 1912–1914; the treaty of June 12, 1815, is reproduced in full in Griewank, Der Wiener Kongress und die europäische Restauration 1814/15, 398–400; see also ibid, 269–271.↩︎
Paris, September 21, 1815; ÖStA HHStA, Staatskanzlei Vorträge, Kart. 199, fol. 76–86, quotations 79r–79v. On this memorandum and the political background to it, see Landauer, “Die Einverleibung Salzburgs durch Österreich 1816”, 8–9 (with extensive citations), and Griewank, Der Wiener Kongress und die europäische Restauration 1814/15, 336–339.↩︎
Paris, September 27, 1815; ÖStA HHStA, Staatskanzlei Vorträge, Kart. 199, fol. 143r; see also Landauer, “Die Einverleibung Salzburgs durch Österreich 1816”, 9–10.↩︎
Note by the emperor on the memorandum mentioned in fn. 64, fol. 143v.↩︎
Ibid, 10.↩︎
ÖStA HHStA, Staatskanzlei Vorträge, Kart. 200, fol. 112v, also cited in ibid, 14.↩︎
For a detailed discussion of this point, see Sahrmann, Pfalz oder Salzburg, 53–68; the treaty of November 3 can be found in Angeberg, Le Congrès de Vienne et les traités de 1815, 1567–1574.↩︎
See on this point Landauer, “Die Einverleibung Salzburgs durch Österreich 1816”, 13–32; Sahrmann, Pfalz oder Salzburg, 69–73; Miedaner, “Salzburg unter bayerischer Herrschaft”, 75–86; Weis, Montgelas, 708–712.↩︎
Cited in Landauer, “Die Einverleibung Salzburgs durch Österreich 1816”, 13.↩︎
His reports from Munich from December 1815 to May 1816 are reproduced in Chroust, ed., Gesandtschaftsberichte aus München, 53–100.↩︎
Milan, January 6/12, 1816; ÖStA HHStA, Staatskanzlei Vorträge, Kart. 201, fol. 48r, 98r; also cited in Landauer, “Die Einverleibung Salzburgs durch Österreich 1816”, 18.↩︎
See ibid, 20.↩︎
Ibid, 29. See on this point also Winter, Karl Philipp Fürst von Wrede als Berater des Königs Max Joseph und des Kronprinzen Ludwig von Bayern (1813–1825), 252–254.↩︎
Milan, February 6, 1816; ÖStA HHStA, Staatskanzlei Vorträge, Kart. 201, fol. 109–110; see also Landauer, “Die Einverleibung Salzburgs durch Österreich 1816”, 29–30.↩︎
Weis, Montgelas, 711.↩︎
This English translation is based on the German translation given in ibid, 710 of the original French report by Wacquant (, Chroust, ed., Gesandtschaftsberichte aus München, 77). On Montgelas’s attempts between 1814 and 1816 to shuffle off senior officials who he disliked to territories that were about to be ceded (such as Anselm von Feuerbach, sent to Salzburg in March 1816), see Demel, “‘Beförderungen’ und Versetzungen”, esp. 112–123.↩︎
Weis, Montgelas, 710; see also Wacquant’s report of February 19, 1816, in Chroust, ed., Gesandtschaftsberichte aus München, 77–79.↩︎
The text of the Treaty of April 14, 1816, is reproduced in Angeberg, Le Congrès de Vienne et les traités de 1815, 1688–1695; an abridged version appears in Haan, Hauptstaat, Nebenstaat, 190–194. A summary of the territorial arrangements can be found in Sahrmann, Pfalz oder Salzburg, 80. See also , Weis, Montgelas, 712–714; Schuler, ’Wir sind auf einem Vulkan’, 267–272.↩︎
The complex territorial shifts can best be understood when they are visualized on a precise territorial map: see Spindler, ed., Bayerischer Geschichtsatlas, 35; based on Hofmann, Franken seit dem Ende des Alten Reiches, 41–72. See also Hofmann and Hemmerich, Unterfranken, 9–19 and map 2; Götschmann, “Das Jahrhundert unter den Wittelsbachern”, esp. 259–263.↩︎
Brandt, “Würzburg von der Säkularisation bis zum endgültigen Übergang an Bayern”, 497–525; Merz, “Die fuldischen Gebiete”, esp. 207–210.↩︎
Störmer, Miltenberg, 330–331 (from part III, by Roland Vocke: “Staatliche Veränderungen und Behördenbildung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert”); Christ, “Untermaingebiet, Spessart und Odenwald”, esp. 175–189.↩︎
Hofmann, Franken seit dem Ende des Alten Reiches, 69.↩︎
Miedaner, “Salzburg unter bayerischer Herrschaft”, 276.↩︎
Sahrmann, Pfalz oder Salzburg, 84–94; Winter, Karl Philipp Fürst von Wrede als Berater des Königs Max Joseph und des Kronprinzen Ludwig von Bayern (1813–1825), 254–259; Huber, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte seit 1789, 324–328, 579–582; Gollwitzer, Ludwig I von Bayern, 182–189; Mattheis, “Die Entstehung der Pfalz als Entschädigung für Bayern auf dem linken Rheinufer”, esp. 106–107; Weis, Montgelas, 751–753. The text of the Frankfurt Recess of July 20, 1819, can be found in Angeberg, Le Congrès de Vienne et les traités de 1815, 1772–1788.↩︎
Dopsch and Hofmann, Salzburg, 399. See also Dopsch, Kleine Geschichte Salzburgs, 165–170.↩︎
See Klemmer, Aloys von Rechberg als bayerischer Politiker 1766–1849, 42–80; Treichel, ed., Quellen zur Geschichte des Deutschen Bundes, CXXII–CXXXVII; Weis, Montgelas, 716–757; Gruner, Der Wiener Kongress 1814/15, 141–192.↩︎
Weis, Montgelas, 713.↩︎
Ibid, 747–748 (which also describes Montgelas’s suspicion that Metternich had ulterior motives for this union; Francis’s brother Ferdinand III of Tuscany had originally been intended as Caroline’s husband).↩︎
Milan, March 16, 1816; ÖStA HHStA, Staatskanzlei Vorträge, Kart. 202, fol. 144v.↩︎
Gollwitzer, Ludwig I von Bayern, 188–189.↩︎
Rumschöttel and Koller, “Salzburg”, cited here: 31.↩︎
On this and other aspects, see the instructive contributions in ibid, esp. 159–181, 199–212, and the list of the extensive older literature on pages 241–253.↩︎
In his detailed account of the “diplomatic revolution” of 1814/15 (, Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics 1763–1848, 478–484), Paul W. Schroeder goes so far as to interpret the treaty as “a signpost of […] deeper changes in international politics” (480).↩︎
Cited in Siemann, Metternich, 436, 472.↩︎
Doeberl, “Bayern und die deutsche Erhebung wider Napoleon I”, 400.↩︎

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Originally published as

“Roads to Europe”

Research on Contemporary Bavarian History

by Ferdinand Kramer

translated by Jennifer Neuheiser

2019-12-17

Ferdinand Kramer, ““Roads to Europe”: Research on Contemporary Bavarian History” in Bavarian Studies in History and Culture (2019) [originally published in German 2015], last modified 2019-12-17, https://www.bavarian-studies.org/2019/kramer
You can cite this publication by paragraph numbers (“para.”)

Originally published as

Ferdinand Kramer: “‘Wege nach Europa’ – Forschungen zur neuesten Geschichte Bayerns” in Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte (2015), 1-6.

This text is open access and licensed under the terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Ferdinand Kramer

“Roads to Europe”

Research on Contemporary Bavarian History

translated by Jennifer Neuheiser

2019-12-17

This text is open access and licensed under terms of CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Image: UPI/Süddeutsche Zeitung Photo

The Bavarian Prime Minister Hans Ehard with the French President Charles de Gaulle at his state visit in Munich, 1962

This summary refers to the following publication:

Ferdinand Kramer, ed.

Wege nach Europa

Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte 78 (no. 1 2015)

German

Even if Bavaria’s central location between European powers has provided fertile grounds for thinking and acting on a European level throughout its history, it cannot be denied that Europe took on a new significance in Bavarian politics and civil society after 1945. The notion that the future of Bavaria and Germany was as “European states” in the “United States of Europe” began to gain traction. Bavaria increasingly sought to distance itself from nationalism and the tradition of German-national and national-liberal political thought and to draw on the state’s long history of exchange with Romance-language culture.¹ Unified Europe² became a dominant idea in political discourse, and the realization of European unification in the European Communities and later the European Union created a new forum for Bavarian politics³ and civil society.⁴ Federalism⁵ was seen as the organizing principle that would enable Bavaria to maintain its relative political and cultural autonomy within the Federal Republic of Germany and the Europe of the future.⁶ Indeed, this conception of federalism was complex: it was embedded within Western Christian and humanist traditions⁷ and clearly set itself apart from Soviet Communism; but, it was also heavily influenced by a view of Bavarian history that centered on Bavarian statehood⁸ and by Bavaria’s long-standing reliance on the Catholic principle of subsidiarity. At the same time, Bavaria wanted to make a contribution to a renewed, united Europe that would rest on principles of individual freedom, rule of law and democracy and aim to promote international understanding and respect for the diversity of its member nations and regions while ensuring for peace and prosperity as well as trade standards and social rights.⁹ Many Bavarians have identified with these goals. They have travelled the “Road to Europe”¹⁰ at the state, national, and European level by taking trips, learning foreign languages, joining in on Europe-themed events, meeting people from different countries, participating in student exchange programs, volunteering in civil society organizations and sister city programs, becoming engaged in politics, church life, and the local community, working in trade, science, education, media, and the cultural sphere, and organizing cultural events. In doing so, they have created new social relations, practices, and a singularly European discourse.¹¹

Regional historians have as yet paid little attention to the European dimensions of society, culture, economics and politics in contemporary Bavarian history,¹² despite the fact that they have done considerable research on Bavaria’s relation to Europe in previous epochs¹³ and documented the increasing influence of Europe on Bavaria since the 1957 Treaty of Rome. Individuals and the economy have benefited from the new rights and possibilities afforded by a unified Europe, but this has also cost states and nations some of their old authority.¹⁴ Moreover, Bavaria has developed political initiatives to foster the idea of Europe both inside and outside of its own borders, becoming itself a player in the process of European unification. To name just a few examples: In September 1948, after Bavarian representatives Friedrich von Prittwitz und Gaffron (CSU) and Waldemar von Knoeringen (SPD) had returned from participating in the Congress of the European Parliamentary Union in Interlaken, Switzerland,¹⁵ Bavarian Landtag representatives of all political parties passed a resolution demanding that the Bavarian government do everything in its power to promote the idea of a United States of Europe and support its practical implementation.¹⁶ In 1946, the first party platform of the new CSU supported a European confederation and a European trade and currency union.¹⁷ Later, Bavaria helped develop the concept of a “Europe of Regions”¹⁸ and played an important role in making the subsidiarity principle part of the Treaty of Maastricht.¹⁹ Heinrich Aigner, a member of the European Parliament from Amberg, also worked tirelessly to establish the European Court of Auditors.²⁰ Finally, Bavaria was instrumental in the passage of the so-called Europe Article (Article 23) of the German constitution in 1992,²¹ which lays out the obligations of the German states in matters concerning the European Union, and it modified its own constitution in light of the developments at the European level by adopting Article 3a.²² As the Euro was being introduced, two high-ranking Bavarian CSU politicians – Federal Minister of Finance Theo Waigel, who was immediately responsible for the Euro’s implementation, and, as a critic of the Euro project, Bavarian Minister President Edmund Stoiber – played opposing yet important roles that extended well beyond Bavarian borders.²³ By providing a nuanced perspective on the role of states, communes and municipalities in the multi-level European system and on the processes that intertwine the various levels of state on the one hand and civil society on the other,²⁴ regional history promises to give us a better understanding of both the changes that Bavaria underwent in the second half of the twentieth century and the more general, multi-faceted and by no means linear process of Europeanization.²⁵

Since 2014, the Institute for Bavarian History at the Ludwig Maximilian University Munich has been working on a project called “Roads to Europe.” The project aims to analyze discourses of European unification, the steps taken to make it reality, and the various forms of criticism and resistance directed against it. Moreover, it seeks to study the changes in regional politics brought about by European unification and the effects that Europeanization has had on the lives of people living in Bavaria.²⁶ Raphael Gerhardt is doing research on agricultural policy, which was delegated to the authority of the European Economic Community – and, later, the European Union – to a high degree at a very early stage; as the Bavarian economy was traditionally heavily reliant on agriculture, Bavaria had to undertake a number of measures to conform to the new supranational rules and regulations.²⁷ Rudolf Himpsl is studying the history of Bavaria’s international trade relations, which were increasingly shaped by the EEC after the Treaty of Rome was signed. His research suggests that considerable reservations surfaced over the fact that only six states were part of the EEC.²⁸ Thomas Jehle is doing work on Bavaria’s interstate and international cultural policies, which sought to support both Bavaria’s autonomy as well as Germany’s reintegration into Europe and the international community.²⁹ Claudia Schemmer is seeking to understand the effects that Europeanization and internationalization have had on rural Bavaria by conducting a case study on the Traunstein region. More generally, her work aims to provide insights into the ways municipalities and civil society have influenced one another in their efforts to support the European idea.³⁰ Laura Ulrich is conducting research on politicians who have entered European politics in order to support the project of European unification as well as to promote Bavarian interests and perspectives.³¹ Finally, Alexander Wegmaier is analyzing Bavaria’s policies towards Europe, the various conceptions of and discourses on European politics represented and promoted by political parties, unions and civil society initiatives, and the ways these groups have sought to achieve their agendas.³² The articles collected here thus shed light on just a few aspects of the multi-faceted research sponsored by the project “Roads to Europe.”

Notes

Raffalt, “Europa”, 191–210; Traut, Ein Leben für die Kultur, 62–63.↩︎
Loth, Der Weg nach Europa; Loth, Europas Einigung.↩︎
Hübler, Die Europapolitik des Freistaates Bayern; Hübler, Bayern in Europa; Fuhrmann-Mittlmeier, Die deutschen Länder im Prozess der Europäischen Einigung, 58–61.↩︎
Schemmer, Internationalisierungsprozesse im ländlichen Raum Bayern, 60–81; Lanzinner, Kulturfestspiele mit politischem Anspruch.↩︎
Wegmaier, “Karl Schwend und Ernst Deuerlein”, cited here: 567, 584, 588, 589, 598, 599; Deuerlein, Föderalismus; Hoegner, Der Schwierige Außenseiter, 277–280; Härtel, Handbuch Föderalismus.↩︎
Ehard, “Die europäische Lage und der deutsche Föderalismus”, 547–559; Gelberg, Hans Ehard, 318–323; Walter, Jakob Fischbacher und die Bayernpartei, 316–319; Goppel, “Föderalismus”, 9–19; Gabert, “Der Föderalismus im Europa der Zukunft”, 26–32.↩︎
Schildt, Zwischen Abendland und Amerika, 21–82, cited here: 31, 37; Conze, Das Europa der Deutschen; Grossmann, Die Internationale der Konservativen.↩︎
Spindler, “Grundlagen der Kulturentwicklung in Bayern”, cited here: 4–7; Bosl, “Bayern im Kraftfeld europäischer Geschichte”, 1–15; Vollhardt, Staatliche Heimatpolitik und Heimatdiskurse in Bayern 1945–1970, 69–90; Rieder, Vom Armenhaus zur Aufsteigerregion, 80–81, 96, 100–101.↩︎
Ehard, “Bundesrat und Europäische Integration”, cited here: 86–87; Strauss, Entwurf für Europa; Strauss, Herausforderung und Antwort; Bertl, Vom korporativen zum marktwirtschaftlichen Denken, 123–129.↩︎
Lehning, Bayerns Weg in die Bildungsgesellschaft, 521; Grüner, Geplantes Wirtschaftswunder, 323–334; Friemberger, Alfons Goppel, 249–250; Goppel, Rückblicke 1957–1984, 109, 163, 167; Stoll, Kulturpolitik als Beruf, 109–110; Ulrich, Wege nach Europa; Rösch, Franz Josef Strauß, 360–363; Eisner, Das europäische Konzept von Franz Josef Strauß.↩︎
Schemmer, Internationalisierungsprozesse im ländlichen Raum Bayern, (as in fn. 4), 60–70, 189–206, 244–251.↩︎
Zorn, “Das Land Bayern in der Welt- und Europapolitik des 20 Jahrhunderts”, 449–460; Blessing, “Politischer Aufbruch und wirtschaftlicher Aufstieg”, 479–494.↩︎
See, for example, Spindler, “Grundlagen der Kulturentwicklung in Bayern”; Schindler, ed., “Bayern in Europa”; Bosl, “Bayern im Kraftfeld europäischer Geschichte”; Glaser, Kurfürst Max Emanuel; Kraus, “Die geistige Welt des Johannes Aventinus”, 41–61; Kraus, “Das Haus Wittelsbach und Europa”, 425–452; Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte in cooperation with the museums of the city of Regensburg, ed., Bavaria, Germania, Europa; Amann, Bayern und Europa; Schmid, Max III Josef und die europäischen Mächte; Schmid and Weigand, eds., Bayern mitten in Europa; Liebhart, “Bayern und Europa”, 495–505.↩︎
Kremer, Landesparlamente im Spannungsfeld zwischen europäischer Integration und europäischem Regionalismus; Michelmann, “The Federal Republic of Germany”, cited here: 222–228.↩︎
Salzmann, Europa als Thema katholischer Eliten, 44; Posselt, Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi und die europäische Parlamentarier Union; Mittag, “Europäische Profilbildung im Widerstreit”, cited here: 279, 283.↩︎
Kock, Der Bayerische Landtag, 53; “Stenographischer Bericht über die Verhandlungen des bayerischen Landtags, 88 Sitzung, 23 September 1948,” “Stenographischer Bericht über die Verhandlungen des bayerischen Landtags, 88 Sitzung, 23 September 1948”, p. 129.↩︎
“Das Grundsatzprogramm der Christlich-Sozialen Union in Bayern, Munich 15 November 1946,” “Das Grundsatzprogramm der Christlich-Sozialen Union in Bayern, Munich 15 November 1946”.↩︎
Ruge, Die Erfindung des “Europa der Regionen”, 295–303; Schelter and Wuermeling, Europa der Regionen; Hierl, Europa der Regionen.↩︎
Hübler, Die Europapolitik des Freistaates Bayern, 150–162.↩︎
Ulrich, Wege nach Europa.↩︎
Fassbender, Der offene Bundesstaat, 391–397.↩︎
“Bayern bekennt sich zu einem geeinten Europa, das demokratischen, rechtsstaatlichen, sozialen und föderativen Grundsätzen sowie dem Grundsatz der Subsidiarität verpflichtet ist, die Eigenständigkeit der Regionen wahrt und deren Mitwirkung an europäischen Entscheidungen sichert. Bayern arbeitet mit anderen europäischen Regionen zusammen”; “Bavarian Constitution of 1946, Amended in 1998,” “Bavarian Constitution of 1946, Amended in 1998”; Köhler, “Die europäische Einigung gehört in die Bayerische Verfassung”.↩︎
Dyson, “Germany and the Euro”, cited here: 195–196; Kiessling, Die CSU, 271–285.↩︎
Gehler, Kaiser, and Leucht, eds., Netzwerke im europäischen Mehrebenensystem.↩︎
Patel and Conway, eds., Europeanization in the Twentieth Century; Gehler and Vietta, Europa—Europäisierung—Europäistik; Kramer, “Landesgeschichte in europäischer Perspektive”, 209–218.↩︎
Wege nach Europa: Diskurse—Akteure—Politik: Länder und Regionen vor der Herausforderung der Europäischen Integration 1945−1989, Conference held from 12-13 November in Munich, Wege nach Europa: Diskurse—Akteure—Politik.↩︎
Gerhardt, Agrarmodernisierung und europäische Integration.↩︎
Himpsl, Europäische Integration und internationalisierte Märkte.↩︎
Jehle, Die auswärtige Kulturpolitik des Freistaats Bayern 1945-1978.↩︎
Schemmer, Internationalisierungsprozesse im ländlichen Raum Bayern, 189–206.↩︎
Ulrich, Wege nach Europa.↩︎
Wegmaier, 'Europäer sein und Bayern bleiben'.↩︎

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Originally published as

Ferdinand Kramer: “‘Wege nach Europa’ – Forschungen zur neuesten Geschichte Bayerns” in Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte (2015), 1-6.

On the 100th anniversary of Andreas Kraus’ birth (1922–2012)

The dedication of the “Fronimo” by Vincenzo Galilei

Recruitment by Duke Albrecht V.

The journey to Munich in 1578

The aftermath

Notes

Albert Einstein, Richard Willstätter, and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Spring 1933

I

II

III

IV

Appendix

1

2

3

4

5

Notes

Notes

Fundamental aspects of the multilevel system

The emergence of European multilevel governance—A look at the regions

I. Functional interdependencies and forms of intra-country cooperation

II. The self-image of the regions

IV. Exploring opportunities for political participation

V. Visibility through cooperation

VI. The openness of European institutions

VII. An opportunity for regions outside the European Community

Multilevel governance as a stimulus for historiography

Notes

The Prague Velvet Carnival as an Urban Liminoid Phenomenon

The discursive framing: The “Velvet Revolution” in the national culture of remembrance

The Velvet Carnival as an urban zone of the liminoid

Notes

Bibliography

Academic Publications of the Last Fifty Years

Introduction

Bibliography

Content

Theory and Methodology of Regional History

Source Editions

Cross-Epochal

9th to 13th Century: Early and High Middle Ages

13th to 15th Centuries: Late Middle Ages

16th to 18th Century: Early Modern Ages (General)

16th Century: Renaissance and Reformation

17th and 18th Centuries: Counter-Reformation, Thirty Years’ War, and Absolutism

18th Century: Age of Enlightenment

1806–1871: The Kingdom of Bavaria: Napoleon and the German Confederation

1871–1914: Bavaria in the German Empire

1914–1933: The First World War and Bavaria under the Weimar Republic

1933–1945: Nazi Germany

Bavaria after 1945

Biographies

Institutions / Museums / Exhibitions / Historic Sites

Defixionum tabellae Abusinenses (DT Abusina)

The Rhaetian Military Outpost in Eining and the Site Where the Tabellae Defixionum Were Found

The Location Where the Tabellae Defixionum Were Found

The Lead Tablets

DT Abusina 1

Script

Additional Information

Diplomatic Transcription

Textual Analysis

Edited Transcription

Translation

Commentary

Interpretation

DT Abusina 2

Script

Additional Information

Diplomatic Transcription

Textual Analysis

Edited Transcription

Translation

Commentary

Interpretation

DT Abusina 3

Script

Additional Information

Diplomatic Transcription

9^th to 13^th Century: Early and High Middle Ages

13^th to 15^th Centuries: Late Middle Ages

16^th to 18^th Century: Early Modern Ages (General)

16^th Century: Renaissance and Reformation

17^th and 18^th Centuries: Counter-Reformation, Thirty Years’ War, and Absolutism

18^th Century: Age of Enlightenment