NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD REICH? HISTORIOGRAPHICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE 200TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE END OF THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE 1806-2006

This review article discusses the most prominent German publications in the years 20052006 marking the 200(th) anniversary of the end of the Holy Roman Empire. Today's positive image of the Holy Roman Empire in Germany appears to be a complete repudiation of the traditionally negative view of the old Reich in its final phase (1648-1806). This change is the result of decades of German scholarship on the old Empire. New public interest in the old Reich became manifest in great exhibitions in Berlin and Magdeburg. However, it seems that historians of Germany have found a new battlefield now that the debate on the German 'Sonderweg' of the nineteenth century has ended. Two views of the old Empire stand nowadays opposed to one another: was it a 'Reichssystem' and a clearly corporatist hierarchy or a German protonation-state as has been claimed by Georg Schmidt? A strong tendency to compare the supranational structures of the Reich with the European Union is a dominating perspective in the actual 'normalization' of German history. The year of the jubilee brought new initiatives, including a new scholarly publication series (bibliothek altes Reich - baR). The most original contribution was the study by Wolfgang Burgdorf, who claims that the loss of the old Empire was for contemporaries a traumatic event. He thereby rejects the traditional view advanced by German historiography. Positive memories of the old Empire quickly disappeared under the weight of German historiography of the nineteenth century with lasting results for the development of the difficult German identity.