Heart of Europe: A History of the Roman Empire (120 page)

The new German Democratic Republic established in 1949 had little interest in the Empire, simply continuing nineteenth-century interpretations repackaged within Marxist stadial history as the ‘feudal age’. Princely power supposedly triumphed over ‘universal imperial policy’ by 1550, condemning Germany to political weakness and retarding economic development, which Marxist historiography attributed to centralizing national states.
⁶⁹
Meanwhile, the GDR government continued the Nazis’ centralized state in a new form, reorganizing its territory into new ‘districts’ (
Bezirke
) in a deliberate attempt to break lingering regional identities.

Germany’s partition between 1945 and 1990 assisted the Western Allies’ project of de-Prussifying Germany, since the former Hohenzollern lands conveniently lay in the Soviet zone, including the rump of old Prussia that survives today as the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. Cold War historiography distinguished sharply between Western liberal traditions and alleged Eastern European authoritarianism. The standard interpretation of agrarian relations underpinned this with its
model of a ‘second serfdom’ developing east of the Elbe from the late Middle Ages (see
pp. 496–7
). This political project did not challenge received wisdom about the Holy Roman Empire, since the conservative reading of German history unwittingly provided evidence to support Anglo-American interpretations of that country deviating from a Western liberal norm along its own ‘special path’ to Hitler (see
p. 3
).

Meanwhile, the West German republic’s federal structure reinvigorated regional history, as each of the new federal states (
Bundesländer
) established or revived historical commissions and journals dedicated to its area’s history. Heraldic devices were borrowed from those of the leading principalities that had once existed within the boundary of each federal state, for example modern Lower Saxony’s use of the white horse of Hanover. Detailed historical atlases and multivolume regional studies all reinforced long-standing popular perceptions of the German past as consisting of a multitude of fragmented local histories in which medieval emperors might occasionally put in an appearance, but for which otherwise the Empire was largely irrelevant.

The word ‘Reich’ was now indelibly tainted with Nazism, inhibiting the wider reception of the more positive scholarly reappraisal of the early modern Empire under way since the late 1960s. Organizers of an exhibition on early modern Germany in Regensburg in 2000 deliberately avoided it, because they thought the public would confuse a reference to the Holy Roman Empire with Hitler’s Germany or Bismarck’s Second Empire.
⁷⁰
Exhibitions concentrated on displaying glittering medieval treasures and artworks, rather than explaining how the Empire had functioned. Already in 1946 the Allies returned the imperial insignia to Vienna from Nuremberg, where they had survived the war hidden in a bunker (see
Plate 34
). West Germany’s new Federal Parliament considered appealing in 1952 for their return, while Aachen’s cathedral chapter insisted that the three items removed by Austrian troops in 1794 were holy relics that should be restored.
⁷¹
Individual emperors remained fixed in public consciousness through their place in the school curriculum and depiction in popular TV dramas and documentaries, but perspectives remained stubbornly those of the nineteenth century.

At best, the Empire seemed harmless compared to Germany’s more recent past. A 9-metre high, 18-ton concrete figure was erected secretly one night in April 1993 on the stump of an old lighthouse in Konstanz’s
lakeside harbour (see
Plate 35
). Designed by sculptor Peter Lenz, the figure is named ‘Imperia’, but unlike the pompous monuments of the Second Empire, this does not refer to the Empire, but to a character in a story by Balzac, in turn loosely based on a courtesan who lived around a century after Konstanz hosted the famous church council. Probably the world’s largest monument to a prostitute, Imperia is also representative of the 700 real courtesans who actually serviced the council. Turning every three minutes on her own axis, the voluptuous figure holds diminutive naked figures of Pope Martin V and Emperor Sigismund – identifiable primarily by their headgear – in the palm of each upturned hand, while her tiara resembles a medieval fool’s hat, adding to the mockery of power. She remains the subject of continual objections from the diocese of Freiburg and local conservative politicians. Yet the council is powerless to remove Imperia, because her location belongs to German Federal Railways, which part-financed her erection, while she has become a major tourist attraction. Throughout, controversy has focused on the apparent mockery of the papacy, whereas no one complains about a naked emperor.
⁷²

THE EMPIRE AND THE EU

The Europeanization of Imperial History

The scholarly reappraisal of the Empire since the late 1960s is representative of a broader Europeanization of German history, reconnecting with traditions till then denigrated as inferior to Teutonic
Kultur
. One aspect has involved examining previously neglected themes, especially in German political history, and has tended to view the Empire through the lens of the post-1949 German Federal Republic and its place in European integration.
⁷³
Another element has been to reinterpret the history of Europe’s current states in less national terms. This has not progressed very far for the history of the Empire, which German historians are far more likely to refer to as ‘of the German nation’ than were its actual inhabitants.

In some respects the Europeanization of the imperial past resembles the nineteenth-century nationalist projects, especially in the way medieval history has been plundered for personalities and images that could
be appropriated to articulate present-day agendas. Since 1977, several exhibitions have promoted the Staufers as transnational European rulers whose Empire incorporated ‘regions of innovation’ transmitting culture, trade and ideas between Germany and Italy.
⁷⁴
Above all, Charlemagne has come to personify the links between the Empire and post-1945 aspirations for a united Europe, whereas other emperors, notably Charles V, remain viewed in national terms, even if these perspectives might now appear together in the same volume.
⁷⁵
Charlemagne’s new European status owes much to the superficial coincidence between his actual empire and the space occupied by France, West Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries behind initial post-war European integration. At a press conference in 1950, Charles de Gaulle presented Franco-German cooperation as ‘picking up Charlemagne’s project, this time on modern economic, social, strategic and cultural grounds’.
⁷⁶
Nationalists had found Charlemagne problematic by the 1870s, as he appeared too French for the Germans and too German for the French. Already in the 1840s, the French historian François Guizot seized on a ninth-century source’s presentation of Charlemagne as the ‘Father of Europe’ to claim the Franks were ‘European’. The annual Charlemagne Prize, inaugurated in Aachen in December 1949 as the new German Federal Republic’s first political award, is explicitly intended to promote European integration.
⁷⁷
Aachen Cathedral was the first German monument to be designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site (1978).

The Empire as Model

Conservative politicians favouring European integration found the Empire an attractive model with which to underpin their arguments. The heir to the Habsburg throne, Otto von Habsburg, in his speeches and writings during the 1970s drew on Austrian historiography of the 1920s and 1930s, which had already presented the medieval Empire as a positive factor in ordering Europe, and which chimed with his contrast between democratic Western European countries and the godless Communist Eastern Bloc: ‘the imperial idea will rise again in the form of European unity’.
⁷⁸
Although several leading historians of the Empire have explicitly rejected such arguments,
⁷⁹
others openly present the early modern Empire as a blueprint ‘to create a Europe of the regions’.
⁸⁰
These claims draw on the positive reappraisal of the early modern
Empire emerging from specialist studies published since 1967 and which some use to interpret it as polycentric, federal, and embodying the complementary division of responsibility between regions and the centre that the European Commission calls ‘subsidiarity’. Further alleged parallels include the Empire’s conciliatory tendencies, its internal rule of law, and its tolerance of differing identities, which provided ‘an ideal framework for flourishing and diverse cultures’ whilst inhibiting the development of a modern nationalism ‘that has spread so much evil across Europe and the world’.
⁸¹
The Council of Europe sponsored a major exhibition in Berlin and Magdeburg in 2006 to mark the bicentenary of the Empire’s dissolution. Opening the exhibition, the German culture minister Bernd Neumann presented the medieval Empire as a ‘model of a functioning supra-state order’. In the run-up to the fiftieth anniversary of the Treaty of Rome the following year, Neumann referred to the Empire as a model for the EU. Pope Benedict XVI drew similar parallels based on an oddly upbeat reading of medieval church–state relations.
⁸²

At least such statements have the merit of presenting the Empire in terms that make it intelligible to a wider public, by contrast with the stress on complexity, exceptions and qualifications that otherwise characterizes modern scholarship. Making a subject ‘relevant’ to the contemporary world is increasingly important as public funding becomes restricted to research that can demonstrate practical ‘impact’. However, two significant problems emerge. Despite record attendances at the recent exhibitions, the older negative narratives retain their grip on the broader public understanding of the Empire. Europeans still generally conceive their past through the prism of nineteenth-century nation states, and are often encouraged to do so by conservative governments and education policies. The past remains a ‘road to modernity’, with some routes rated better than others according to a common yardstick still largely defined by the national sovereign state. This can have direct political repercussions, as the German foreign minister Joschka Fischer discovered in spring 2000 when he compared an ‘expanded EU without institutional reform’ to the ‘late phase of the Holy Roman Empire’. Fischer’s understanding of the Empire was still the weak structure presented by older historiography, but the French interior minister Jean-Pierre Chevènement read the reference to ‘Reich’ to mean that Germans wanted to remove European nation states in order to
establish a new imperial dominance over the continent.
⁸³
Several leading German historians have also expressed alarm at their colleagues’ equation of the Empire with the EU, believing this could stir ‘latent fears of German hegemonic ambitions’, and mean that ‘German enthusiasm for Europe will be misinterpreted as a cloak for German national interests’.
⁸⁴

Beyond the potential for misunderstanding, there is a second problem of how the Empire’s history might actually help understand some of the problems facing today’s Europe. Since the 2004 enlargement and 2008 economic crisis, opinion on the EU has divided ever more sharply into two camps. One advocates forging a closer political union, including making the European Parliament a more effective democratic body. Older, negative assessments of the Empire provide ammunition for these arguments. Like Fischer, the British historian Brendan Simms has compared the unreformed EU to the Empire, claiming both ‘are characterized by interminable and inconclusive debate’. Echoing Hamilton and Madison’s equally dim assessment of 1787 (see
pp. 1–2
and
8
), Simms argues that the EU should become ‘The United States of Europe’ along Anglo-American lines, subordinating its member states to a fully federal system, whilst reforming the European Parliament to provide a democratic mandate for a new common government.
⁸⁵
The counter-argument is provided by nationalists like those in the UK Independence Party (UKIP) who believe that the EU can never match the vitality of sovereign states, both as governments and as foci for identity. For them, current problems can only be solved by reducing the union to a free trade area, or dissolving it entirely.

Although arriving at opposite conclusions, both perspectives are bound by the same understanding of the state as a single, centralized monopoly of legitimate power over a recognized territory. This definition is a European invention, retrospectively backdated to the Peace of Westphalia and used to articulate an international order based on mutually recognized sovereign states. Such states are supposedly hermetically sealed containers, with their populations free to decide internally how they are governed, whilst acting internationally with one voice through their national government. While this still underpins organizations like the United Nations, it is increasingly unlikely that such states are political history’s final destination: wide aspects of daily and national life are clearly beyond the effective control of most
governments, which are increasingly vulnerable to global economic, popular, technological and environmental forces.
⁸⁶

Imperial History as Guide for Today’s Issues

EU enlargement has been interpreted as hegemonic imperialism, acting in the manner of nineteenth-century European colonialism by imposing its own norms and standards of civilization on those it admits as new members.
⁸⁷
This perspective is close to the nationalist critique of the EU as a union that imposes an unwelcome uniformity on its citizens, smothering rather than liberating them. However, many Europeans regard their own national governments as more immediately oppressive than the European Commission, and feel they would be better off without them. In September 2014 the United Kingdom only narrowly avoided fragmentation when the Scots voted in a referendum against independence. It is far from clear that recovery of ‘national sovereignty’ along the lines advocated by UKIP and its equivalents in other countries would restore citizens’ confidence in national governments controlled largely by colourless politicians widely criticized for being out of touch with local and individual needs. There is considerable concern at a ‘democracy deficit’ throughout the Western world, where disillusionment with the political process is leading to self-disenfranchisement, manifest through dwindling voter turnout and widespread cynicism.