The shaping of German identity : authority and crisis, 1245-1414 / Len Scales.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Scales, Len, 1961- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

National characteristics, German--History--To 1500.

National characteristics, German.

Nationalism--Germany--History--To 1500.

Nationalism.

Political culture--Germany--History--To 1500.

Political culture.

Monarchy--Germany--History--To 1500.

Monarchy.

Crises--Germany--History--To 1500.

Crises.

Germany--Politics and government--1273-1517.

Germany.

Germany--History--1273-1517.

Germany--Relations--Holy Roman Empire.

Holy Roman Empire--Relations--Germany.

Holy Roman Empire.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xvi, 619 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

German identity began to take shape in the late Middle Ages during a period of political weakness and fragmentation for the Holy Roman Empire, the monarchy under which most Germans lived. Between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, the idea that there existed a single German people, with its own lands, language and character, became increasingly widespread, as was expressed in written works of the period. This book - the first on its subject in any language - poses a challenge to some dominant assumptions of current historical scholarship: that early European nation-making inevitably took place within the developing structures of the institutional state; and that, in the absence of such structural growth, the idea of a German nation was uniquely, radically and fatally retarded. In recounting the formation of German identity in the late Middle Ages, this book offers an important new perspective both on German history and on European nation-making.

Contents:

Introduction: German questions

Modern history: inventing the medieval German nation

Ruled out: monarchy, government and 'state' in Germany

Realm of imagination: communicating power after the Hohenstaufen

Shades of a kingdom: in search of a German political community

The matter of Rome: universalising political identities

Roman empire, German nation: the German imperial tradition

Trojans, Giants and other Germans: peoplehoods forgotten, remembered and relocated

Rome's Barbarians: accounting for the Germans

East: applying identities

Being German (I): place and name

Being German (II): language and locality

Conclusion: Endings and beginnings.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-107-22441-1

1-139-36543-6

1-280-64726-4

9786613633316

1-139-37794-9

1-139-37508-3

0-511-98016-7

1-139-37651-9

1-139-37109-6

1-139-37937-2

OCLC:

794327705