Class liberty

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The corporate liberty (from " status " and Latin libertas , freedom ) is a battle term and catchphrase from the political history of early modern Germany. Other well-known source terms are Teutsche Libertät or Teutsche Freiheit .

As the adjective "estates" indicates, the term denotes political rights, freedoms and autonomy, which - in contrast to central government - were or should be attributed to the traditional political intermediate powers , usually the so-called estates . In concrete terms, class freedoms often meant privileges that determined the individual political position and dignity of a class.

More generally understood, the claim to liberty also denoted the idea of ​​a specifically early modern freedom that was inherent in the political and legal order of the feudal society of the empire or, from the point of view of its aristocrats, should be inherent. Even in later times, this freedom was positively contrasted with the comprehensive, as suppressive, access of a modern, centralized state power to the citizen or subject.

Concept history

"Libertas Germaniae"

At the turn of the 15th to the 16th century, the time of humanism , the writings of the Roman historiographer Tacitus , especially in the form of " Germania ", became the starting point of a newly emerging German national consciousness among scholars, which first and foremost emerged as striving for freedom articulated against foreign tutelage, for example against the influence of the Roman Church on the empire. The historical figure of the Germanic prince Arminius , of whom Tacitus reports, was increasingly distorted by propaganda and gradually developed into the German national hero par excellence and was thus stylized as the champion of German freedom against Rome.

This libertas Gemaniae of the humanists was directed against the Ottoman Empire , the French or the Spaniards, who were reaching for world domination at this time, on whose side many German imperial estates after 1519 practically also their "domestic political antagonists" and their own liege lords , emperors Charles V , saw. In the course of the Reformation , the opinion prevailed among the estates that not only the papacy or other foreign powers were a threat to their own privileges and their own position of power, but also that the emperor , insofar as he exercised the monarchical power of his office , was unable to do so Trying to transfer reality could be a threat to the political position of his liegemen .

"German Liberty"

The “freedom of the estates” emerged as a fighting term that propagated and demanded the negative freedom of the estates within the framework of their feudal obligations from claims of the empire and other powers that were felt to be unjustified. It was thus also directed against an expansion of the emperor's monarchical power - an attitude that a century later was to be taken up again and even radicalized by the so-called Fürstenerians .

In the political environment of the Schmalkaldic League , German freedom was literally elevated to the constitutional principle of the empire. This could go so far that the emperor was understood exclusively as primus inter pares and it was assumed that the empire would be represented equally by all imperial estates . The election of Ferdinand of Austria , brother of Charles V , as Roman king in January 1531 had already provoked sharp protests from Protestant imperial princes and the Catholic Duke of Bavaria . Karl was accused of deliberately violating the principle of German freedom . When France's King Henry II tried two decades later to win the imperial crown for his house in league with opposition imperial princes, he was celebrated as the savior of Germany from the tyrant Karl and agreed in the alliance with the German princes, “ the to restore the old liberty and freedom of our beloved fatherland of the German nation ”and to eliminate the“ beastly, unbearable and eternal servitut ”as it was enforced under the rule of the“ Spanish emperor ”.

“ The imperial estates ”, as Georg Schmidt summarizes the further development, “ from then on always argued with the German (or estates) liberty whenever they sensed attempts at autocracy : the empire [ie its estates, note. d. Ed.] Has old, freedom-securing basic laws, it governs itself and is not subject to anyone - not even its own emperor. “Axel Gotthard unanimously defines“ class liberty ”as one

“The formula used very often in the political discourse of the Reich, which does not mean modern 'freedom' culminating in individual self-realization [...] , but political leeway for the Reich estates. Even authorities, rulers over their territories, did not see themselves as “subjects” of the emperor or the imperial authorities. 'Preservation of German liberty', this slogan was aimed at an empire that fulfilled certain protective and coordination tasks, but in the process took in and controlled its members as little as possible. "

In the decades and centuries that followed, talk of German or corporate freedom developed into an important part of the political culture of early modern Germany. In the course of the 17th century it gradually expanded in terms of content, because the scholars' claim to freedom was increasingly extended to the subjects of the sovereigns. Thus, the humanists' libertas Germaniae becomes a libertas Germanorum ("Freedom of the Germans"), which, especially in the legal thinking of the later Reich journalists , represents a kind of constitutional and fundamental rights- like attitude avant la lettre .

classification

As already indicated here, the demand for class or German liberty was characterized more by an anti- centralist than by a purely anti-monarchical idea. It reflected, as it were, a dualism between the empire and the imperial estates that had been in place in the empire since the earliest times and that has become more and more pressing over the centuries . Already during the Reformation, the striving for autonomy of the estates was combined with motives for religious denomination ( Protestant estates against the Catholic empire) or was rather additionally driven by the latter. While this confrontation between the crown and the estates in practical politics often culminated in military conflicts (for example in the Schmalkaldic and the Thirty Years War ), it found a meaningful expression in the political thinking of the time in the concept of dual sovereignty , which the empire as between princes and emperors interpreted shared rule.

Although the term has little in common with the modern conception of individual self-determination and autonomy, but from the outset refers to class, i.e. H. corporate rights and privileges, its role as an independent line of tradition in the history of the modern political concept of freedom must not be neglected. Michael Th. Greven emphasizes in this regard that the basic idea of ​​corporate freedom “ even after the French Revolution [helps] defend collective and corporate notions of autonomia et privilegium , which are primarily directed against the combination of democratic claims and the increasing centralization of state power. “This would result in direct links to the federalist principle , which, in connection with the democratic ideas of the 19th century, has decisively influenced the modern concept of freedom.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c cf. Georg Schmidt: Freiheit, Sp. 1154.
  2. ↑ Bernd Moeller: Germany in the Age of the Reformation. P. 165.
  3. ↑ Axel Gotthard: The Old Empire. P. 11.
  4. ↑ Cf. Georg Schmidt: Freiheit, Sp. 1154 f.
  5. ↑ Michael Th. Greven: Freedom. P. 118.

literature