Description
Book Synopsis"First published in Germany as Das Heilige Reomische Reich Deutscher Nation: Vom Ende des Mittelalters bis 1806; Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck oHG, 2013"--Title page verso.
Trade Review"Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, one of Germany’s leading historians, provides an elegant, succinct, and thought-provoking account of that most baffling of states, the Holy Roman Empire. Her distinctive and novel approach balances the recent, more positive assessment of the empire as a functioning political structure with an innovative interpretation of its conservative political culture. Readers are given a clear explanation of why it overcame some problems and not others, and why it ended in 1806."
—Peter H. Wilson, author of Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire"This important book advances a new interpretation of the Holy Roman Empire that promises to free analyses of the empire's inner workings from the burdens of contemporary political memory. Stollberg-Rilinger makes the imperial political system, endlessly complex though it was, accessible and comprehensible to a wider audience."
—David M. Luebke, author of Hometown Religion: Regimes of Coexistence in Early Modern Westphalia
