Franz Quarthal, Gerhard Faix, eds.. Die Habsburger im deutschen SÖ¼dwesten: Neue Forschungen zur Geschichte VorderÖ¶sterreichs. Stuttgart: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2000. 470 pp. 00, cloth, ISBN 978-3-7995-0124-8.
Reviewed by David M. Luebke
Published on HABSBURG (July, 2001)
Habsburg Rule in the German Southwest livened by debates surrounding the formation of At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the a southwest German federal state. [2] principle challenge facing the Habsburg dynasty The present volume consists of twenty-two in southwestern Germany was, in the words of papers presented at an international colloquium Thomas A. Brady, Jr., to consolidate a system of held in Endingen in November 1996. Its stated lordship and clientage "solid enough and rich purpose is to update the fndings of postwar enough to serve as a basis from which to strength‐ scholarship in light of archival documentation re‐ en its power over the rest of the Empire". [1] But organized and catalogued since the early 1980s. no alliance formed between Habsburg and the But as its title suggests, the volume's heuristic goal free cities and nobility of Swabia that was durable is to recast Outer Austria's position within the enough to withstand the religious and social up‐ broader system of Habsburg rule. If there is a sin‐ heavals of the 1520s, and with this failure gle thesis that unifes this disparate collection, it is Vorderoesterreich rendered variously in English that despite the transformation of Outer Austria's as "Outer", "Further", or "Hither" Austria gradual‐ role in Habsburg's geopolitical designs, the prov‐ ly assumed the role of military outpost. Because ince's political and administrative structures con‐ its relation to processes of state formation was tinued to develop at the intersection of three do‐ one of unfnished business and lost functions, the mains of interaction: between urban elites and province was never more than a side-show in the the executors of Habsburg Landvogtei; between nation-centered narratives of nineteenth-century central authorities and its delegates in the lord‐ German historiography. Even if it had been other‐ ships that made up the province; and in both of wise, the efects of Outer Austria's dismembering these cases, between Austria and Swabia as a re‐ in 1805-6 would have hampered archival re‐ gional network of clients and competitors. search: as Bernhard Theil explains, the dispersion The largest number of contributions address‐ and disorganization of Outer Austria's documen‐ es some aspect of Habsburg urban policy. As Mar‐ tary record was extreme, with holdings scattered tin Burkhardt observes, this oscillated between among archives in Vienna, Innsbruck, Stuttgart, support for civic autonomies and meddling pater‐ Karlsruhe, Colmar and elsewhere. These factors nalism, depending on momentary power-political in combination postponed scholarly interest in exigencies (p. 425). As long as Habsburg territorial the province until after 1948, when it was en‐ lordship remained fragile and its motives pecu‐ niary, the cardinal objectives of urban policy re‐ H-Net Reviews mained to preserve the fnancial strength of Breis‐ Habsburg policy was three centuries of near-inde‐ gau towns as sources of revenue and to suppress pendence in internal afairs. In domestic afairs, their freedom of independent political action. As a Konstanz too retained its imperial privileges until practical matter, therefore, the balance of local 1748. At the opposite pole, of course, small towns power between burghers and Landvoegte was de‐ were exposed to far greater interference from cisive: in moments of ducal weakness, such as the Habsburg representatives. But as Wolfgang Wuest imperial ban against Duke Friedrich IV in 1415, contends in his study of Burgau's relations with the Habsburg delegate was helpless to prevent al‐ its region and the Habsburg state, this familiar liance-making among the Breisgau cities. contrast requires qualifcation: the stability of Ducal interventions after 1450 increased the small towns, too, depended on the integration of Landvogt's formal authority over civic appoint‐ communal with territorial resources and person‐ ments, but as Juergen Trefeisen shows in his nel. Analyses of the Outer Austrian cities that fo‐ overview of urban policy, this by no means ended cus exclusively on formal power structures will Habsburg dependence on elected urban magistra‐ miss the full depth of symbiosis between town cies or put a halt to collective action among the and crown. towns. Instead, the consolidation of territorial Martin Burkhardt's study of Konstanz sug rule redirected their collective action in a manner gests a chronology that might be applied to towns that pushed the province toward greater institu‐ throughout the province: frst, a period of "active tional consolidation: the formation of an urban consolidation of Austrian territorial lordship curia in the provincial estates was the direct out‐ (Landesherrschaft)" over the towns, lasting from growth of surreptitious alliance-making among the mid-ffteenth to the early seventeenth centu‐ the Breisgau towns after 1430. ry; then a phase of "passive consolidation", in For Claudius Sieber-Lehmann, these factors which the promotion of self-governance pre‐ help explain why the Breisgau's burgher elites vailed. From the standpoint of urban history, the threw their lot with Austria: unable after decades centralizing and encapsulating administrative re‐ of sporadic warfare to sustain the costs of self-de‐ forms of Maria Theresa constituted a deep fense, Outer Austrian patricians accepted Habs‐ caesura. Despite many continuities between them burg "protection" as the price of inclusion in terri‐ and the Josephine reforms, argues Alexander torial estates and the stability it promised. Sieber- Klein in his study of poor relief, the greatest rup‐ Lehmann thinks that this contradicts Brady's ar‐ ture came in 1780, when the goals of administra‐ gument about the attractions of "turning Swiss" tion were fnally reoriented away from paternal‐ (p. 280-281) but this is to confuse the geopolitical ism and toward the security and order (pp. calculations of patricians with the communalist 452-453). reveries of peasants and artisans. A second group of studies explores the modal‐ According to Wendt Nassall, the price of sub‐ ities of territorial rule and the formation of an ad‐ jection was not high. In his survey of judicial prac‐ ministrative elite in Outer Austria. As with urban tice in Freiburg, Nassall demonstrates that practi‐ policy, Habsburg governance was motivated by cal departures from the Ulrich Zasius' civic code the often contradictory goals of efective rule and of 1520 were virtually unheard-of before the eigh‐ revenue-getting, which ensnared it in complex teenth century; indeed, the city's two civic tri‐ reciprocities with the patrician classes and inter‐ bunals acted with near complete autonomy until regional nobility of Swabia. If Dieter Speck is right the Constitutio Criminalis Theresiana nullifed about the origins of Freiburg university, this was the city's penal code in 1769. Thus the dividend of in part the outcome of trial and error: according
2 H-Net Reviews to his lengthy contribution, the university was of ed far beyond provincial boundaries long after a plan by Duke Albrecht VI, the only Habsburg the sixteenth-century dream of a "Western Aus‐ prince to establish a court in Freiburg tria" was lost. (1440-1458), to revive the Duchy of Swabia on the In what sense, then, can one speak of the for‐ basis of territorial rule with the Breisgau at its mation of a provincial administrative elite? Here core. The project failed for lack of funds and polit‐ the most striking distinction is that between pat‐ ical support, and resulting vacuum helps explain terns of recruitment for Habsburg ofcers among the province's loose organization and the relative nobles and non-nobles. While the Swabian nobili‐ autonomy its constituent estates enjoyed. ty continued to supply top-ranking personnel The institution of pledge lordship (Pfand‐ throughout the period, Wieland's prosopography herrschaft) epitomizes the entanglements that shows that non-noble functionaries were recruit‐ Habsburg penury generated, and Georg Wieland's ed increasingly from territorial subject popula‐ contribution on the personnel of the Swabian tions, especially in Habsburg cities between Tirol Landvogtei exposes the full depth of their com‐ and the Rhine; imperial cities constituted at best a plexity. It is customary to view pledge-lordship as secondary recruiting feld. This encouraged the incompatible with the consolidation of territorial formation of non-noble service dynasties, such as rule, but as Hillay Zmora recently argued and the Schmidlin families studied by Peter Johannes these studies confrm, Pfandherrschaft ofered Weber, who over the course of three centuries princes an efective means of drawing nobles into traded education and kin ties against ofce and closer association with their territories [3]. So did promotion. But their example is equivocal: if their debt: in his study of factionalization among the careers initially played out within provincial ffteenth-century Swabian aristocracy, Markus bounds, the eighteenth-century Schmidlins served Bittmann argues among other things that debt ef‐ in every corner of the realm. If anything, their lin‐ fectively increased the dependence of noble credi‐ eage argues against the "marginality" of Outer tors (pp. 75-88). But such reciprocities, he argues, Austria and describes its gradual integration with‐ produced no predicable diplomatic or military in the Habsburg system. It also confrms Wolfgang alignments in the fuid political environment of Zorn's characterization of Outer Austria as little the mid-ffteenth century. more than a jumping board for ambitious func‐ Of course, ofce-holding drew nobles and pa‐ tionaries. [4] tricians into the Austrian orbit: as Heinz All these fndings converge on the question of Nofatscher argues in his observations on social political identities. As Dieter Mertens shows in his mobility between Swabia and Austria, it ranked analysis of discourses on regional consciousness frst among the motives for change of residence (Landesbewusstsein), Humanist constructions of during the late ffteenth and early sixteenth cen‐ German nationhood were often grounded in Up‐ turies (pp. 321-340). But service to Habsburg did per Rhenish autostereotypes and mytho-historical not eliminate other obligations or bases of pres‐ narratives that in turn refected the situation of a tige. In his careful study of the ffteenth-century regional aristocracy navigating between a distant Outer Austrian Landvoegte, for example, Rolf prince and difcult Swiss neighbors (pp. 208-210). Koehn fnds salaried noble functionaries and an But it would be rash to speak of a well-developed early case of bureaucratization, but also tensions regional, let alone provincial consciousness between such subordination the elevated status among ffteenth-century elites; the interests this this ofce conferred (pp. 153-198). As these stud‐ discourse refected were simply too diverse. Ironi‐ ies reveal, tendrils of Habsburg clientage extend‐ cally, these studies suggest that strongest impetus
3 H-Net Reviews toward a regionally-defned identifcation with actions and regional identities that are at issue in Austria arose in social responses to the vulnera‐ these studies. [5] Peter Steuer's useful survey of bilities of Habsburg rule. As Martin Zuern shows information contained in the many repositories of in his superb overview of rural resistance move‐ Outer Austria's administrative records suggests ments, pledge lordship enabled peasants to forge the full range of social and economic relations potent links between communal grievances and and policies that defned Habsburg's position in Habsburg patriotism. In lordships subject to di‐ the German southwest. rect rule, by contrast, institutions of judicial ap‐ Notes peal efectively difused social tensions before vio‐ [1]. Thomas A. Brady, Jr., "The Common Man lence erupted. and the Lost Austria in the West", in E.I. Kouri and Angelika Westermann reaches a similar fnd‐ Tom Scott, eds., Politics and Society in Reforma‐ ing in her study of mining administration, that the tion Europe: Essays for Sir Geofrey Elton on his exercise of regalian rights drew the distant Austri‐ 65th Birthday (London: Macmillan, 1987) pp. an monarch more powerfully into the everyday 142-157. lives and consciousness of villagers and townsfolk [2] Friedrich Metz, ed., Vorderoesterreich: in Outer Austria's mining districts than elsewhere. Eine geschichtliche Landeskunde (Freiburg: Rom‐ Throughout the province, argues Zuern, the slo‐ bach, 1959; 2nd rev. ed. 1977); Hans Maier and gans of rebellion concealed the cold interest poli‐ Volker Press, eds., Vorderoesterreich in der Frue‐ tics of kin and clientage. Still, these phenomena hen Neuzeit (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke, 1989). attest to the ongoing vitality of corporatist con‐ These volumes contain the results of scholarly sciousness in Outer Austrian villages and show conferences held in 1955 and 1981, respectively. that where territorial rule was weak, peasants continued to fuse communalist reveries with an [3] Hillay Zmora, "Princes and Nobles in Late instrumental Habsburg "monarchism" well into Medieval Germany", Past and Present 153 (1996) the seventeenth century. pp. 37-63. The shortcomings of this volume stem for the [4] Wolfgang Zorn, "Vorderoesterreich als most part from a narrow understanding of the po‐ Karrieresprungbrett: Beobachtungen zur litical as a set of institutional transactions among Sozialgeschichte des Beamtentums", in Maier and urban or territorial corporations and from a pre‐ Press, eds., Vorderoesterreich in der Fruehen occupation with the sources of social stability. The Neuzeit, pp. 43-56. socio-economic bases of politics get short shrift: [5] See Tom Scott, Freiburg and the Breisgau: with the exceptions of Zuern, Sieber-Lehmann, Town-Country Relations in the Age of Reforma‐ and Bittmann, few of these studies take seriously tion and Peasants' War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, questions of social confict or examine the practi‐ 1986); and his Regional Identity and Economic cal exercise of power. Gender as a category of his‐ Change: The Upper Rhine 1450-1600 (Oxford: torical analysis is entirely absent. Similarly, the Clarendon Press, 1997). matter of Outer Austria's evolving location within Copyright (c) 2001 by H-Net, all rights re‐ economic and commercial networks is addressed served. This work may be copied for non-proft in depth only by Westermann. None of this is to educational use if proper credit is given to the re‐ suggest that the collection ought to be something viewer and to HABSBURG. For other permission, other than what it is: the point is rather that eco‐ please contact
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Citation: David M. Luebke. Review of Quarthal, Franz; Faix, Gerhard, eds. Die Habsburger im deutschen SÖ¼dwesten: Neue Forschungen zur Geschichte VorderÖ¶sterreichs. HABSBURG, H-Net Reviews. July, 2001.
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