Franz A. J. Szabo - Böcker

This is the first major archivally based study of the political career of Wenzel Anton Kaunitz, State Chancellor of the Habsburg Monarchy from 1753 to 1792. Author of the diplomatic revolution of 1756 and brilliant foreign minister of the Austrian Empire, Kaunitz was also the most important statesman in the development of enlightened absolutism in central Europe. Virtually the third head of state under Maria Theresia and Joseph II, he was the driving force behind the many reforms which sought to modernise the monarchy. Using Kaunitz as a focus, the author explores the dynamic of the development of enlightened absolutism in the Habsburg Empire through its most influential proponent and spokesman. Enlightened absolutism in the Habsburg Monarchy produced some of the boldest innovations in eighteenth-century Europe, and this book analyses the full complexity of the decision-making process.

Early modern Central Europe was the continent’s most decentralized region politically and its most diverse ethnically and culturally. With the onset of the Reformation, it also became Europe’s most religiously divided territory and potentially its most explosive in terms of confessional conflict and war. Focusing on the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, this volume examines the tremendous challenge of managing confessional diversity in Central Europe between 1500 and 1800. Addressing issues of tolerance, intolerance, and ecumenism, each chapter explores a facet of the complex dynamic between the state and the region’s Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Utraquist, and Jewish communities. The development of religious toleration—one of the most debated questions of the early modern period—is examined here afresh, with careful consideration of the factors and conditions that led to both confessional concord and religious violence.

This volume provides an historical overview of the relationship between Germany, German speakers, and successive waves of German colonists with their eastern neighbors over the period from the Middle Ages to the present. The collection of essays by 28 leading experts includes the most recent scholarship together with fresh perspectives on the subject. The problems and issues raised in this volume come as a result of different understandings of ""German"" and ""Germany"" from the Germanic tribes and German ""stem-duchies"" of the Middle Ages to the highly decentralized and multi-ethnic Holy Roman Empire of late medieval and early modern times and the German Confederation of the 1815-1866 period to the various forms of the German state from 1871 to the present. The relationship of German-speakers to their eastern non-German speaking neighbors, as well as that of ""Germany"" both to those neighbors and to German-speakers living beyond the borders of the modern German state are covered. In addition, some attention is given to the German perception of the ""East"" during this unfolding relationship. The Germans and the East is divided into five sections. The first section covers the medieval period which saw the first German colonial expansion eastward. The second section, devoted to the early modern period, reviews the role of German speakers in the development policies of enlightened absolutism. The third section looks at the problem during the age of emerging nationalism in the ""long"" nineteenth century from 1789 to 1914. The fourth and longest section covers the era of the two World Wars, including their aftermaths, which saw the expulsion of German-speakers from Eastern Europe. The final section addresses the relationship of Germany and Austria and their eastern neighbors from the Cold War to the new era of European integration.