Fürstenhof
A prince's court is understood to mean the system of administration , high society and advisers in the vicinity of a noble sovereign , in the narrower sense the residence of a prince in a city in his country.
Three contrary shapes
Each era has its own form of royal courts: it ranges from simple systems, for example in ancient Israel (where the people were able to have personal contact with the kings ) and the Roman Teutons, through the locally variable Palatinate of the medieval Holy Roman Empire, to very elaborate court holdings in antiquity and in the baroque (e.g. ancient Egypt , Roman Empire , Charles VI. , Louis XIV. ).
The European royal courts and today's ideas of court ownership were formed in the Middle Ages of the 12th to 15th centuries. In Germany and elsewhere, a strong field of tension can be determined here: the court as a representative place in the environment of the ruler and his hierarchy of communication was opposed to the “outside” areas in which the interaction of society at large and its everyday life took place. In terms of contemporary history, there was another area of tension due to the competing forces of royalty, nobility , cities or bourgeoisie and temporary unrest or peasant wars among the revolting population .
Identity of the leading layer
The type of court holding depends largely on the identity of its leaders and their function within the ruling society or society to which they are aiming.
For example, the divine right of grace - the conviction that one ruled a country on behalf of God - was usually associated with relatively strict rules of etiquette (e.g. Spanish court ceremonies ). The last European prince who saw himself expressly commissioned from a higher point of view was Franz Joseph . Before the beginning of the First World War he expressed this clearly in his manifesto “ To my peoples! " out.
In the last decades this attitude towards rule (which was also shared by parts of the population) can only be found outside of Europe - for example among some rulers in Africa (e.g. Uganda until around 1990 or Libya ). To what extent this view still exists among Europe's constitutional monarchs can hardly be judged. In any case, it is not opportune to express them in the age of democracy .
As far as the identity of the princes and their court is concerned, it was and is also dependent on the relationship between the internal and external views. In the history of Europe , for example, some weak monarchs had particularly conspicuous court rulings, but the reverse is not applicable: the aforementioned Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph, despite his high understanding of office (sometimes without great success), tried to make the court more modest. Here traditions have a particularly strong effect, such as B. at the British royal court is obvious. In many cases, despite some criticism, the population also wants a certain pomp, which is, among other things, related to the self-image of the nation .
See also
literature
Rainer A. Müller: The prince's court in the early modern times (= Encyclopedia of German History, Bd. 33), Oldenbourg, Munich 2004. Google Books