The Rise and Rise of the Reichskammergericht
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Bernhard Diestelkamp, ed.. Das Reichskammergericht: Der Weg zu seiner Gründung und die ersten Jahrzehnte seines Wirkens (1451-1527). Quellen und Forschungen zur Höchsten Gerichtsbarkeit im Alten Reich. Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2004. 289 pp. EUR 39.90, cloth, ISBN 978-3-412-12703-9. Reviewed by Len Scales Published on H-German (June, 2009) Commissioned by Susan R. Boettcher It used to be possible to dismiss the Reich‐ tury rehabilitation are reflected, directly and indi‐ skammergericht with little more than a few rectly, throughout the seven pieces published choice quotations from Goethe. To nineteenth- here--all the work of scholars deeply immersed in century scholarship, the interminable proceed‐ sifting and interpreting the sources for imperial ings at the Holy Roman Empire's cameral court justice and administration in the ffteenth and six‐ seemed to encapsulate the woeful governmental teenth centuries. Two papers, by Ralf Mitsch and inadequacies of the Reich itself. For most of the Julia Maurer, draw on the fruits of a DFG-backed twentieth century, aspiring students had to make project to edit the documents for the cameral do with Rudolf Smend's monograph of 1911.[1] court (Kammergericht)--the ffteenth-century During the 1970s, however, the court took a a new monarchical forum that preceded the new court lease on life, when a vast project funded by the established at Worms in 1495. Eva Ortlieb's paper Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) was es‐ on the aulic council under Maximilian I and his tablished to catalogue its ca. 76,000 surviving case immediate successors draws upon her work on records, scattered among nearly ffty archives another large-scale project, under the auspices of across Germany and beyond. Since the 1980s a so‐ the Österreichische Akademie der Wis‐ ciety has dedicated itself to its study, and a muse‐ senschaften, investigating the formation of the um and research center have been operating at early modern Reichshofrat. Other major ventures Wetzlar, the court's last seat. The upward trajecto‐ are afoot elsewhere. ry of the Reichskammergericht continues and, as The willingness of public bodies to under‐ this collection of papers affirms, shows little sign write such grand schemes reflects in turn the of slackening. more sympathetic light in which the altes Reich it‐ The prodigious infusions of research money self has in recent decades come to be viewed. that have sustained the court's late-twentieth-cen‐ With the discrediting in postwar West Germany of H-Net Reviews the centralized Machtstaat came a growing will‐ and with its Habsburg-dominated counterpart, ingness to reassess supposed historic weaknesses and potential competitor, the post-1497 Hofrat as potential strengths, with encouraging rather (Ortlieb). In general, the collection holds together than disheartening contemporary lessons. And very well. That some themes--particularly the Re‐ just as the empire's judicial arrangements once ichskammergericht's relationship to its immediate seemed to lie at the root of the problem, so they forebear and the new court's early peregrina‐ now appeared to offer a key to a non-toxic, limit‐ tions--are visited repeatedly by different contribu‐ ed, and constitutional Reich--"ein Friedens- und tors is understandable and even, where they Rechtsverband," as Bernhard Diestelkamp, editor bring contrasting perspectives and sources to of the present volume and doyen of Reichskam‐ bear, illuminating. The "fresh-from-the-archive" mergerichtsforschung, has elsewhere reflected.[2] feel of most papers is also on the whole a great The growth of the European Union, meanwhile, strength--although their extensive heaping-up of was teaching the lesson that far-reaching judicial raw data might at times leave the reader over‐ institutions are not to be created overnight and whelmed. Clearly, the magisterial overviews will that a modicum of popular legitimacy might have to wait. In the meantime, we have here a prove to be worth any amount of executive mus‐ powerful exposition of the sheer weight of cle. The Reichskammergericht has therefore come records, some still lying uncataloged in the ar‐ to seem well worth knowing about. The resources chives, bearing upon the empire's much-maligned for its study have also, however, been trans‐ judicial organs at the close of the Middle Ages. formed in the past thirty years. Researchers have The two papers most centrally concerned been able to draw not only upon the fruits of ma‐ with the Reichskammergericht, by Hausmann and jor projects on the empire's judicial institutions Baumann, both combine an emphasis on continu‐ themselves, but on new volumes of Reichstagsak‐ ities with a picture of gradual change over the ten and, for the early period examined here, the course of the three decades after 1495. Hausmann published registers of Frederick III.[3] Never have charts in detail the itinerant existence and irregu‐ knowledge and understanding of the empire's lar sittings of the new court, characteristics it cameral court been so extensive or, it seems, the shared with the preceding cameral tribunals of climate for their dissemination so favorable. Maximilian and Frederick III, but which now reg‐ How does the present collection reflect and istered the fuctuating state of the tug-of-war be‐ extend this rich abundance? It is noteworthy, frst tween Maximilian and the estates that overshad‐ of all, that only two of the seven papers--by Jost owed its early years. Continuity with the past was Hausmann and Anette Baumann--are actually also reflected in the shifting locations: Frankfurt, concerned directly with the Reichskammerg‐ Nuremberg, Worms, and Esslingen, as well as ses‐ ericht. On offer here is a series of well-focused sions under the king's domination in Regensburg snapshots of specialized but important facets of and Augsburg, before the court fnally put down the court's early history, along with some of the lasting roots in Speyer in 1527. Here, dispropor‐ various contexts of its creation. The volume's tionately, were centers and regions which had, for main concentration (we might almost say agenda) much of the Middle Ages already, been "close" to is signaled in the subtitle. The background and the king, and whence were also to come a prepon‐ origins of the new forum--and the extent of its derance of the new court's customers and, as Bau‐ newness--are the principal concerns of three con‐ mann shows, the great majority of its early per‐ tributions, by Mitsch, Maurer, and Matthias Ko‐ sonnel. rdes. The two remaining essays deal with the backdrop to its creation at Worms (Peter Schmid) 2 H-Net Reviews Baumann, in a pioneering study of procura‐ merged beneath the nitty-gritty of day-to-day rou‐ tors in the Reichskammergericht down to 1529, tine. deploys prosopographical data to trace a compa‐ Reinforcing this stress upon contingency and rable mix of the persistence of the old with the complexity is the main contribution of Schmid's slow institutionalization of the new. Hers is one of dissection of the shifting international-relations several papers to draw attention to the predomi‐ context of the 1495 Worms Reichstag. Although nance of urban and high bourgeois elements dur‐ concerned hardly at all with judicial institutions ing this period, both as agents of the imperial jus‐ and their development, Schmid does successfully tice system and as a major source of demand for show how the pressure of unfolding events, par‐ its services. Also reflected in other papers is the ticularly in Italy, helped to redefine, even as it was growing importance of advanced learning traced sitting, the objectives of an assembly that had not here in procurators' careers. The substantial legal been summoned to discuss reform. Schmid too is expertise required of procurators allowed the at pains to undercut some of the polarities of high bourgeois careerists who now often flled more traditional accounts: the Reichstag, as he this office to conceive of themselves from the shows, encompassed a diverse range of views, po‐ court's inception as quasi-nobles: a letter written sitions, and interactions; and the king and the re‐ by fve such men in 1498 insisted that jurists with form party around Bethold of Mainz each had doctoral titles ought to rank as the equals of considerable understanding of the other's needs knights. and aspirations. Maximilian may subsequently Ortlieb's essay constitutes in many ways a have declared it his intention never again to be companion piece to Baumann's. Her delineation left, like King Gunther, tied up and hanging from of the personnel, organization, and work of the a nail in Worms; but the alliances and principles Habsburgs' aulic council to 1559 once again neces‐ in play were more multiple and complex, and the sitates much close scrutiny of individual careers. king's own position less beleaguered, than such a Ortlieb too discerns gradual processes both of in‐ stark image implies. stitutionalization and professionalization at work, The three remaining pieces all serve in vari‐ alongside the persistence of more traditional ele‐ ous ways to blur the 1495 divide in the empire's ments. Her examination of the business occupy‐ judicial history by locating the roots of the new ing the councils of Maximilian, Charles V, and Fer‐ cameral court in the development of monarchical dinand I reveals another recurrent element in institutions of justice during the preceding half- this collection: a tendency to soften and qualify century. Kordes draws on Reichskammergericht the Manichaean contest of principles between documents from Lower Rhenish archives to show monarchy and estates that provided a key to the that the court's early business included cases initi‐ imperial reform era for earlier generations of ated before the cameral court of Maximilian. Seen scholars. Viewed from the close-up perspective of in this way, the new court was in some degree these papers, matters appear rather more com‐ jump-started by a sharp burst of activity before plex.