Challenge: End the HRE before 1500

At its height, it was far the strongest state in Europe - but since the interregnum, the emperor hadn't really much power anymore. Can you find a way to replace it by one or more kingdoms / republics / other kinds of states before 1500? If that's too hard: 1600, maybe? 1650? 1700? That's my last offer.
 
Maybe the Arch-Duke of Austria might try to exert too much influence on the Church, and the Pope absolves the HRE in retaliation?
 
Bright day
I am back mwahahaha!

<shameless nationalistic propaganda> have Ottocar II defeat Rudolph Habsburg, or Hussite movement be less anti-german and spread into Germany</shameless nationalistic propganda>

You need an indecisive conflict that would split the countryside, what happened OTL.
 
Perhaps No Hundred Years War, and France goes on an expedition to unite the old Frankish Empire, and for a time at least, succeeds?
 
At the moment I work on such a TL, yes... France takes piece after piece from the HRE. At the moment the French border is close to the border of the languages, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Bohemia and North Italy have left the HRE, but the rest is still standing...
 
Have a Protestant prince elected Holy Roman Empire (in OTL, the Spanish and other Catholic powers intervened in Bohemia b/c they feared this might eventually happen).

The Pope, of course, refuses to crown him. Said prince decides to start calling himself Emperor anyway, and this causes a civil war.

By the time it's done, the HRE is split into a Protestant north and Catholic south.
 
How about a strong German ruler emerging even pre-Reformation? This needn't be a "unification of Germany," just a north/west German state that raises itself enough above the welter of principalities, electorates, free cities, etc., to play on the big board.

At some point the ruler isn't gonna be content to be just a duke or elector; he is gonna want to be a king like the other big kids. Admitting a counter-example: the Dukes of Burgundy, so far as I recall, didn't seek to king themselves even when Burgundy was a leading power. Still, if a sizeable chunk of Germany proclaims itself a kingdom, not even nominally subject to the Emperor, that pretty much puts an end to the empire thing in Germany. Though the ruler of Austria might continue to use the title of emperor, as in OTL.

-- Rick
 
Well, there have been five rulers / dynasties in Germany who managed to acquire big parts of it. The first one was Henry the Lion who rebelled against the emperor, but was defeated. The second one was Ottokar Przemysl, who was also attacked and defeated when he became too powerful for the other princes. The third ones were the Luxemburg dynasty who acquired Bohemia, Silesia and Brandenburg, but lost it again. Number four and five are the Habsburgs and Hohenzollern.

Somehow I think it's not possible to unify Germany early, no matter what you do - after 1250 (the Interregnum), or maybe even before, it was so splintered that nobody could hope to unite it - the other princes, and maybe foreign powers would've stopped him no matter what. Remember, in OTL it took the works of three important men (I don't want to call them great, at least not all of them) to unite Germany (or at least to overcome the old system where the single states have lots of power and the central government doesn't): Napoleon, Bismarck and Hitler. And even today, German länder still have strong rights. That's why I don't think that a single man could do that. Maybe uniting parts of it, making his piece of the cake a bit bigger... repeat that often enough, until there are maybe three states left, but afterwards?

(OTOH, China was very splintered at the beginning until it was united during the spring- and autumn-time and the time of fighting empires... but how did they do it, than?)
 
Remember that historical Great Men and Great as in Great = Good, is not the same thing.




(and how does Hitler have any thing to do with German Unification? It was fully formed before he was even born! And he was pretty much responsible for losing a good chunk of it as well…)
 
Max Sinister said:
Somehow I think it's not possible to unify Germany early, no matter what you do - after 1250 (the Interregnum), or maybe even before, it was so splintered that nobody could hope to unite it - the other princes, and maybe foreign powers would've stopped him no matter what. Remember, in OTL it took the works of three important men (I don't want to call them great, at least not all of them) to unite Germany (or at least to overcome the old system where the single states have lots of power and the central government doesn't): Napoleon, Bismarck and Hitler. And even today, German länder still have strong rights. That's why I don't think that a single man could do that. Maybe uniting parts of it, making his piece of the cake a bit bigger... repeat that often enough, until there are maybe three states left, but afterwards?
Its called a federation, division in unity. You have what the US refers to as state rights. And remeber how long the individual strong states dominated over that? Its how most federal goverments work, though you may have seen a transition to more equality among individual German lander since Hitler and reunification. A sign that a federal goverment is working is that the central goverments powers are spread out among its internal states, and that all states are willing to work together in the consenus to make the Central Goverment work, despite disagreements.

Now this might be able to work within a earlier German unifcation scenario, were neither Prussia (face it, Prussia was a huge state after Napoleon and that messes up anything but Prussian or Austrian led unfication, but earlier we could see conditions arise that redraw a councilate of Princes amoung the German duke, electorate, and princedoms)or Austria wield much power.... Maybe have a diet based on a Polish Lithunianian model. Golden Liberties..ect..
 
Damn, I wrote too fast... yes, Hitler hadn't that much to do with it - the Weimar republic actually was more centralized than West Germany after the war. He is only responsible for a few corrections (Hanse city Lübeck lost its independency, a few border were corrected, the Mecklenburgs united) - and the fact that the Allies ordered Prussia to be broken up after WW2. Even here, Weimar made more changes. OK, so essentially the unification of Germany was caused by Napoleon, Bismarck and the people who wrote the Weimar Constitution.

Yes, in the US the states have many rights, but they still have more in common than the German states after 1871. And the US are a republic - most German states were monarchist.

Prussia was definitely second power in Germany after the 30-year war, and a great power after the seven-year war.

The Polish model? Yes, that would be possible... but remember how Poland ended... maybe that's a reason too why Prussia (located on the east side of Germany) became that powerful: Because they could expand into weakened Poland and hadn't much to fear from that side.
 
Max Sinister said:
Yes, in the US the states have many rights, but they still have more in common than the German states after 1871. And the US are a republic - most German states were monarchist.
Not quite the point. I was suggesting simularities between goverments rather than their differances. Pointing out because of strong divisions within the goverment that a federation would seem to work best within the frame work proposed for unfication of the Northern German States.
Prussia was definitely second power in Germany after the 30-year war, and a great power after the seven-year war.
And the Congress of Vienna cemented that power over not only its eastern local, but its gain in the west among much smaller German States which had been basically grounded into the dust from which it came.
The Polish model? Yes, that would be possible... but remember how Poland ended... maybe that's a reason too why Prussia (located on the east side of Germany) became that powerful: Because they could expand into weakened Poland and hadn't much to fear from that side.
The Polish model could work in the beginng, introduce gradual reforms, strengthen the central goverment over time.. how long did the Polish model hold out? 226 years it lasted. Thats longer than most of the now defunct federations.

The point was that there was a model that could be followed by any unfication of the multiple states within the area known as Germany. Given the right circumstances you could see earlier unfication, and thus an earlier disolving of the HRE, even to go as far as the ideals of Providential Republic based on strong regional powers within the princedoms, kingdoms, Dukedoms, counties, and electorates that made up the frame work of the HRE..
 
Othniel said:
Its called a federation, division in unity.

This might well work. There is a medieval precedent in Switzerland and an early-modern one in the Netherlands - admitting that the cantons and provinces were at least quasi-republican. But the late-medieval world had plenty of constitutional assemblies broadly analogous to Parliament.

A subtle question is how you define "end the HRE." A late-medieval or early-modern German federation might easily - perhaps even most likely - take the form and identity of a federal Empire, retaining the name Heiliger Roemischer Reich deutscher Nation and the title of Kaiser for the head honcho. But it would be quite different from the HRE as we know it in OTL.

-- Rick
 
Rick Robinson said:
This might well work. There is a medieval precedent in Switzerland and an early-modern one in the Netherlands - admitting that the cantons and provinces were at least quasi-republican. But the late-medieval world had plenty of constitutional assemblies broadly analogous to Parliament.

A subtle question is how you define "end the HRE." A late-medieval or early-modern German federation might easily - perhaps even most likely - take the form and identity of a federal Empire, retaining the name Heiliger Roemischer Reich deutscher Nation and the title of Kaiser for the head honcho. But it would be quite different from the HRE as we know it in OTL.

-- Rick
Fine, the end of the HRE as we known it!;) :p
 
Othniel said:
And the Congress of Vienna cemented that power over not only its eastern local, but its gain in the west among much smaller German States which had been basically grounded into the dust from which it came.

Yes, but other German states had more advantages from the Napoleonic wars. Austria got Salzburg and Venice for Belgium and the Breisgau - ok, not the best example - but Bavaria doubled its size, and Baden even quadrupled. Minor nitpick.

(Maybe I read that 100 years old lexicon printed in Prussia too often - they only ramble about how Prussia was screwed in 1815, that the territorial division in two parts had strategic disadvantages, that everyone else gained more, that they weren't allowed to keep half of Poland and Hanover, and so on.)
 
Max Sinister said:
(Maybe I read that 100 years old lexicon printed in Prussia too often - they only ramble about how Prussia was screwed in 1815, that the territorial division in two parts had strategic disadvantages, that everyone else gained more, that they weren't allowed to keep half of Poland and Hanover, and so on.)
Prussia only benfitted from it. And Baden wasn't exactly the biggest of states, taking up an area a bit bigger than Eastern Prussia. And the Bavarians can take up twice as much room because it has the beer to do so.. After all how many different states ended when Prussia got more than half of the Confederation of the Rhine? Poor Westphallians...
 
Venetia-Lombardy was quite a valuable possession, but other than that Austria didn't really get much out of Vienna (and Venetia-Lombardy would be all gone by 1867), and lost all that was left of Burgundy... and in exchange had to consent to Prussia gaining almost all of the Rhineland (but they lost Bayreuth, so clearly it was an even trade :rolleyes: ) and gaining a dominant position in Germany itself (though Austria managed to try to hold a strong position until 1866).
 
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