Luther's Legacy: The Thirty Years War and the Modern Notion of 'State' in the Empire, 1530s to 1790s

Robert von Friedeburg (Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam)

Luther's Legacy: The Thirty Years War and the Modern Notion of 'State' in the Empire, 1530s to 1790s
Format
Paperback
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Country
United Kingdom
Published
31 August 2017
Pages
447
ISBN
9781107530676

Luther’s Legacy: The Thirty Years War and the Modern Notion of ‘State’ in the Empire, 1530s to 1790s

Robert von Friedeburg (Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam)

In this new account of the emergence of a distinctive territorial state in early modern Germany, Robert von Friedeburg examines how the modern notion of state does not rest on the experience of a bureaucratic state-apparatus. It emerged to stabilize monarchy from dynastic insecurity and constrain it to protect the rule of law, subjects, and their lives and property. Against this background, Lutheran and neo-Aristotelian notions on the spiritual and material welfare of subjects dominating German debate interacted with Western European arguments against ‘despotism’ to protect the lives and property of subjects. The combined result of this interaction under the impact of the Thirty Years War was Seckendorff’s Der Deutsche Furstenstaat (1656), constraining the evil machinations of princes and organizing the detailed administration of life in the tradition of German Policey, and which founded a specifically German notion of the modern state as comprehensive provision of services to its subjects.

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