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The Smaller States of Germany
By the eighteenth century, none of the other states of the German empire were
strong enough to have territorial ambitions to match those of Prussia
and Austria. Some of the larger states, such as Saxony, Bavaria, and Wuerttemberg,
also maintained standing armies, but their smaller size compelled them
to seek allies, some from outside the empire. With the exception of the
free cities and ecclesiastical states, smaller states, like Austria and
Prussia, were governed by a hereditary monarch who ruled either with the
consent or help of the nobility and with the help of an increasingly well-trained
bureaucracy. Only a few states, such as Wuerttemberg, could boast of an
active democracy of the kind evolving in Britain and France. Except in
a few free cities, such as Frankfurt am Main and Hamburg, which were active
in international trade, Germany's commercial class was neither strong
nor self-confident. Farmers in western Germany were largely free; those
in the east were often serfs. However, whether in the east or the west,
most who worked the land lived at the subsistence level.
Despite its lack of popular democracy, Germany was generally well governed.
The state bureaucracies gained in power and expertise, and efficiency
and probity were esteemed. During the eighteenth century, the principles
of the Enlightenment came to be widely disseminated and applied. Although
there were no political challenges to enlightened absolutism, as was the
case in France, all phenomena, including religion, were subject to critical,
reasoned examination to determine their rationality. In this more tolerant
environment, differing religious views could still create social friction,
but ways were found for the empire's three main religions--Roman Catholicism,
Lutheranism, and Calvinism--to coexist in most states. The expulsion of
about 20,000 Protestants from the ecclesiastical state of Salzburg during
1731-32 was viewed by the educated public at the time as a harking back
to less enlightened days.
Berlin's Humboldt University was founded as the University of Berlin (Universität zu Berlin) in 1810.
Several new universities were founded, some soon considered among Europe's
best. An increasingly literate public made possible a jump in the number
of journals and newspapers. At the end of the seventeenth century, most
books printed in Germany were in Latin. By the end of the next century,
all but 5 percent were in German. The eighteenth century also saw a refinement
of the German language and a flowering of German literature with the appearance
of such figures as Gotthold Lessing, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Friedrich
Schiller. German music also reached great heights with the Bach family,
George Frederick Handel, Joseph Haydn, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
- The Age of
Enlightened Absolutism
- Austria and Prussia
- The Smaller States
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