Thirty Years’ War
The greatest single disaster in German
history was the Thirty Years’ War of 1618 to 1648. The war impeded the
flowering of the German nation for centuries after the last sound of
gunfire had faded away.
The war began as a conflict between
Protestants and Catholics. The Protestant side consisted of central and
northern Germany, Holland, Denmark, and Sweden. Catholic Europe was
represented by the German Holy Roman Emperor with a base in southern
Germany and with allies in Austria, Italy, and Spain. The initial
religious zeal turned into an excuse for political opportunism.
Whatever the motivation of the parties, the arena in which the struggle
was played out was German soil.
From a religious point of view, the
war was a draw. From political, cultural, and social points of view,
the big loser was the German citizen. At the start of the war, the
population of Germany was perhaps 18 million people and at the end of
the war the population was one-third to one-half of this. The
implications were tremendous. The income of rulers was sharply reduced
and, in an effort to boost the taxes, people were invited to move in
from other areas and nations. In the decades which followed, there was
a net exodus from Austria, Bavaria, and Switzerland to the west and
north. Many of our Germanna ancestors participated in this migration
which had both religious and economic overtones.
Thousands of villages and towns were
wiped from the map. Fields remained vacant. One consequence is that the
boundaries of minor jurisdictions became blurred, leading to future
arguments. Weakened by want, hunger, and epidemic disease, Germany was
impoverished and handicapped for many decades. The poet, Andreas
Gryphius lived through the war and expressed his thoughts in Tears of
the Fatherland, 1636. One verse read:
have been completely, yea more than completely laid to waste,
The blaring trumpet of the impudent
hordes of soldiers,
The blood-drenched sword, the
Have consumed all of the fruits of our
labor and diligence.
After the Peace of Westphalia, the
mouth of every major German river was under the control of foreign
nations. The towns and cities became mere shadows of their former
selves. Reconstruction was hampered by lack of raw materials and
skilled labor. Trade, commerce, and the economy in general were thrown
in near chaos.
The peace settlement recognized more
than three hundred separate German states as sovereign entities. The
petty German princes became more powerful at the expense of the German
Emperor. Conflicts between the princes and the inhabitants grew (and
were cited by our Germanna ancestors as a reason for emigration).
The decline in the cities and towns
caused a reduction in demand for agricultural products with a
consequent reduction in income for the small landowners and peasants.
At the same time, the princes were attempting to raise more money to
restore their place in the world. In some places, the peasants
recognized they had rights which were being ignored. This led in some
cases to armed conflicts between the classes.
The ruling trinity of power of was the
landed aristocracy, the military nobility, and the higher officialdom.
They remained in this position until the First World War. A second tier
of power consisted of the police, customs officials, tax collectors,
teachers, and clergyman. All of these officials cowed and controlled
the general population by means of intimidation and bureaucratic
As the seventeenth century and
eighteenth centuries unfolded, the German states became more and more
bureaucratic and the citizens exhibited a deference toward authority
that appeared excessive to non-Germans. Having faced death, famine, and
disease on a daily basis during the Thirty Years’ War and afterward in
the invasions of the French, the German citizens seemed to want an
authoritative system that seemed strong enough to prevent a recurrence
of the terrors of war and its aftermath.
In time this acceptance came to be the
norm and obedience to authority acquired the weight of tradition. The
arguments continued into the nineteenth century between the political
activists seeking an expansion of popular rights and the traditionists
who felt that the preservation of Germany depended on obedience in the
Life for a typical German was markedly
provincial with a marked indifference to life outside of their villages
and towns. In these close-knit, ingrown cities and towns, a strong
local pride developed with a desire to preserve traditions. Outsiders
and transients were looked on with mistrust and suspicion. Dialects in
speech developed. Family and local feasts were cherished. The outside
world had failed them; their strength lay in establishing a “safe
harbor” in their immediate area.
[These comments were adapted from
Robert Rabe in his German
Professions of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth
Return to Archives