Early German Unification (post 1500)

What If the HRE centralized or a single state became more powerful then the rest during the year 1500 and onward?
 
I don't think it was actually possible. The political situation in the XIXth century was a fair bit more permissive of unification because the religious tensions had lost a lot of their sting because of nationalism (not that it wasn't an issue anyway), but the HRE in the 1500's is divided religiously, and the structure of the HRE isn't really conductive to unification unless a very, very strong monarch takes over (and his heirs can maintain his legacy, which was never easy).
 
What If the HRE centralized or a single state became more powerful then the rest during the year 1500 and onward?

I have some ideas on the subject that I'm not quite confident enough about to share in terribly great detail. But I think if you look to some of the sixteenth-century alliances of the Lutheran princes against the Habsburgs, you can see the beginning of something interesting.

Specifically, I'm thinking of the Ernestine Wettins who were the Electors of Saxony and patrons of Martin Luther. In the Battle of Muhlberg, the Elector John Frederick was defeated by the rival Saxon Duke Maurice, who was of the Albertine Wettins, and Charles V. Maurice thereafter becomes the Elector of Saxony.

This is crucial in German history because later I think the Saxon state under the Albertine Wettins sides with its Habsburg benefactors against the other Lutheran princes in the Thirty Years War. I think that factor is large enough to be significant.

Basically, I imagine an alternate end to the Battle of Muhlberg with the Ernestine Wettins winning enough leeway to practice their faith freely and weaken the authority of the Emperor. The other German protestant states begin accreting around Saxony for protection. Crucially at this point, East Prussia and Brandenburg are still separate entities so there really is no large Protestant rival to Saxony.

Gradually, the HRE sort of rots away around the emerging Protestant German state. Or, if the Thirty Years War happens in this timeline, the Protestants win, take the Kingdom of Bohemia, and thus either dissolve the Empire or, in the more fun option, have in Brandenburg, Saxony, Bohemia, and Palatine, the Electors necessary to do the unthinkable and elect a Protestant Emperor.

Quite likely this German state though would exclude the most strongly Catholic areas, like Bavaria and Austria.
 
Get Francis of Valois as HRE would be a good first step. AVoid his son death in a jousting accident by butterflies. Cue early religious wars as a way to get the King-Emperor to subdue unruly nobles, add some centralisation. Shake and mix.
 
Get Francis of Valois as HRE would be a good first step. AVoid his son death in a jousting accident by butterflies. Cue early religious wars as a way to get the King-Emperor to subdue unruly nobles, add some centralisation. Shake and mix.

Given that religious wars helped cripple Habsburg efforts to centralize Germany, I'm not sure how this would help.
 
Given that religious wars helped cripple Habsburg efforts to centralize Germany, I'm not sure how this would help.

We should first keep in mind that religious conflict in the early modern era both were problematic to England and France as countries and were boons to monarchical institutions. In the former, the English Reformation allowed Henry to centralize and personalize the government. Later and on the other side, Louis XIV used the rationale of fighting Protestants to justify wars that would further his imperial ambitions.

I think in the context of the sixteenth century, the antipathy of Protestants and Catholics doesn't help (it in fact hurts) the process because it places the most viable central institution (the Holy Roman Emperor) on the side of the Catholic Habsburgs, whose power centers (Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, the Spanish Netherlands, virtually all their lands but Austria, in fact) on lands that are peripheral and non-German, whereas the meat and sinew of what would have to become any German state was in the hands of the Protestant princes (Brandenburg, Saxony, Palatinate, Hesse).

So the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor and the Protestant princes spent the sixteenth century circling each other like great cats, knowing exactly what would happen if they failed to come to a liveable arrangement, and living in a world that still hadn't formulated any conception of the separation of church and state or even freedom of conscience, which made it all the more difficult.

In our history this resolves itself ultimately when the German states become absorbed into a Protestant kingdom (the Prussians), with the Habsburgs forming their own superstate out of their lands and the spoils of their wars with the Ottomans.

So I think to unify Germany in the sixteenth century, you somehow accelerate that basic process.

That's why in my idea I nominate the Saxon Electors of the sixteenth century for the job of building the nucleus that in our timeline Prussia became--lumbering, portly and quarrelsome as they were (seriously--clicking through their pics in chronological order on Wikipedia is like watching the evolution of the ship captains in the portraits in Wall-E).
 
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