Germany, which had always been a loosely compacted mass, was at the
close of the Hohenstaufen dynasty composed of 60 independent cities,
116 priestly rulers, and 100 reigning dukes, princes, counts, and
barons, always rivals and usually at war with each other, in
perpetually changing combinations for attack or defense.
Lying beneath this body of small and struggling sovereigns was a people
in whom was the first dawning consciousness of human rights; which
consciousness was gradually extending to that helpless mass underlying
the whole--the peasantry.
In 1273 the German princes succeeded in electing an Emperor; and the
Great Interregnum was over.
It is a curious fact that the two names _Hapsburg_ and _Hohenzollern_
should have appeared simultaneously in German history. Rudolf, Count
of Hapsburg, through the influence of his brother-in-law Frederick of
Hohenzollern, Count of Nuremburg, was chosen to fill the vacant throne.
It was during the reign of Albert, son of this first Hapsburg, that the
Swiss first revolted against imperial authority.
Gessler, who had been sent by Albert to subdue the refractory Alpine
shepherds, so exasperated them by his atrocities that he was shot by
William Tell. It was a long way from Tell to Swiss freedom and
independence. But the people from that hour never wavered in their
determination not to be serfs to the house of Hapsburg.
The Hanseatic League in North Germany, and the invincibly free spirit
in Switzerland, were the two things of deepest significance at this
time of political chaos.
Side by side with this assertion of political rights, there had
commenced a general intellectual awakening. The Bishop of Ratisbon,
Albertus Magnus, was so learned in mathematics and in science that
people believed he was a sorcerer.[1] Godfrey of Strasburg had written
an epic poem about King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.
Wolfram of Eschenbach had told of the Holy Grail in his Parsifal; and a
learned history of Denmark had been written, without which our own
literature would have suffered immeasurable loss, for in it Shakspeare
found the story of Hamlet!
It was at this time (1356) that the famous "Golden Bull" was issued, a
new electoral system, which reduced the number of electors to seven.
The idea was that as the sun and the seven planets illumined our
heavens, so that great luminary, the German Emperor, should be the
center of a political system composed of seven Electors.
These earthly luminaries, whose duty it was to elect a new Emperor,
were the Archbishops of Mainz, Cologne, and Treves, and the temporal
princes of Bohemia, Brandenburg, Saxony, and the Palatine of the Rhine.
The very first act of these seven wise men was to place upon the throne
Wenceslas, a brutal madman, who might better have been confined as a
maniac.
It was during the reign of his brother and successor Sigismund that the
burning of John Huss lighted the conflagration in Bohemia known as the
Hussite War.
John Huss, a professor of the University of Prague, had dared to raise
his voice against the temporal enrichment of a church whose Founder had
not where to lay his head, and who had put behind him the kingdoms of
this earth, when offered to him by Satan!
Huss, for this offense, came under the displeasure of the bishops.
Charges were brought against him that he had maintained the existence
of four Gods, and he was condemned and burnt (1415).
The Hussite war had none of the reforming purpose which led to the
martyrdom they wished to avenge. It was a mad strife, beginning over
some detail of the Communion Service, and ending in a war between
Bohemian and German, in which for nearly twenty years the country ran
with blood.
At this period an event occurred of trifling significance then, but of
profound importance to future Germany.
In 1411 the Emperor borrowed one hundred thousand florins of Frederick
of Hohenzollern, the Burgrave, or "Count of the Castle," of Nuremburg,
direct descendant from that first Hohenzollern who helped to found the
Hapsburg dynasty. For this loan Sigismund gave his creditor a mortgage
on the territory of Brandenburg. Frederick at once took up his
residence there, and subsequently made an offer of three hundred
thousand gold florins more to purchase the territory. The Emperor
accepted the terms, so the then small state was thereafter the home of
the Hohenzollerns, and was on its way to become Prussia.
Sigismund and his brother Wenceslas belonged to another dynasty, that
of Luxemburg. But after the death of the former, in 1440, the
Hapsburgs succeeded again to the crown, which they wore until it was
taken off at the bidding of Napoleon in 1806.
Just before the issuance of the Golden Bull, there had occurred that
most revolutionary event, the discovery of gunpowder. When a man in
leathern jacket could do more than a knight in armor, when safety
depended upon quickness and lightness, and ponderous iron and steel
were fatal--then a momentous change in conditions was at hand! The
destruction of feudalism was involved in this discovery of 1344.
Under Frederick III., that Hapsburg who came to the throne in 1440, the
Empire seemed to have reached a climax of disorder. Old things were
passing away, and the new had not yet come to take their place.
On the eastern shore of the Baltic the march of German civilization had
received an almost fatal check. The "German Order," an organization of
knights intended to keep back the Slavonic tide, had failed to do so.
Holland was becoming estranged from the German Empire. France had
obtained possession of Flanders. Luxemburg, Lorraine, and Burgundy
were becoming practically independent; while it began to seem as if
Switzerland were forever lost to Germany.
And now the Hungarians were setting up their new king, the valiant
Hunyadi; and the Bohemians theirs, George of Podjebrod. Not only were
these kingdoms and principalities slipping away, but the peasants in
the cantons of the Alps, and elsewhere in revolt, were some of them led
by great nobles.
Still another, and perhaps the gravest of all these dangers, was one
which yet darkens our horizon in this closing nineteenth century!
In the year 1250 the Turks had commenced their existence in Asia Minor,
with one little clan, led by one obscure chieftain. This clan had
grown as if by miracle into a great empire in the East, rivaling in
power that of the Saracens, whose successors they were as the head of
the Mahomedan Empire. The Turks had been steadily encroaching upon
Germany; had made havoc in Hungary; had devastated Austria, and were
now insolently pressing on toward their goal, the Imperial palace at
Vienna.
While the incompetent and drowsy Emperor Frederick III. was helplessly
viewing these stupendous overturnings, there occurred that other event,
as important in the empire of thought as the invention of gunpowder had
been in that of political institutions.
The invention of printing (1450),--that art preservative of all
arts,--was the greatest step yet taken in the emancipation of the human
mind.
The poor inventor was, after the manner of inventors, badly treated.
John Fust, on account of Gutenberg's inability to pay back the money he
had loaned him for his experiment, seized the printing press, and
himself proceeded to finish printing the Bible.
The rapidity with which the copies were produced, and their precise
resemblance to each other, created such astonishment that a report
spread that Fust had sold himself to the devil, with whom he was in
league.
This, together with the identity of names, led Victor Hugo, Klinger,
and other writers to confuse John Fust, the practicer of the Black Art
in mediaeval times, with John Fust the printer. And as the original
Fust had come to stand for the emancipation of the human intellect
through free learning, and as printing was above all else the means for
such emancipation, the coincidence, if such it be, was, to say the
least, remarkable!
When we approach the time of Isabella of Castile and of Columbus, and
when we are confronted with that familiar specter, the Turk, in
Southeastern Europe, we feel that we are in sight of the lights on
familiar headlands, and are not far from port. We are not very near to
that haven, but we are passing the line which divides the old from the
new.
[1] See chart of Civilization in Six Centuries, "Who, When, and What."