Early modern Germany, 1477-1806

by Michael Hughes

Michael Hughes looks to the structure of the Holy Roman Empire in its final centuries and writes an account of Germany as a functioning, federative state, with institutions capable of reform and modernization. For nineteenth-and twentieth-century historians, the Empire was seen as the embodiment of division and weakness. But by examining the first Reich, Hughes reveals the persistence of the idea of Germanness and German national feeling during a period when, according to most accounts, Germany had virtually ceased to exist. At the same time, he examines "the element of continuity in Germany's development ... in an attempt to discover how far back in Germany's past it is necessary to go to find the roots of the 'German problem, ' the Germans' search for a political expression of their strongly developed awareness of cultural unity."--Publisher's description.