Remember back in the Fritz/Joseph crackfic, when MT snarks at Fritz for not kneeling? I managed a few more pages of Blanning today, and ran into this:
Early in his reign [Frederick] had used his dominant influence on the Wittelsbach Emperor Charles VII to sever the remaining judicial and ceremonial ties binding Brandenburg in feudal subjection. Of great symbolic importance was liberation from the obligation of the Prussian representative to kneel in homage to a newly elected emperor. The right of Prussian subjects to appeal to imperial law courts went the same way.
The citation is Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, whom selenak has spoken highly of in the past. No idea, of course, if Blanning is misrepresenting what she says. But I thought it was interesting.
Especially since he continues,
Indulging both his anti-imperial and anti-Christian prejudices, Frederick also put a stop to the saying of prayers for the emperor in Prussian churches—“ an old and silly custom” he called it. His most celebrated symbolic rejection of the Holy Roman Empire was performed by proxy by his representative at Regensburg, Erich Christoph von Plotho, on 14 October 1757, when the imperial notary Georg Mathias Joseph Aprill arrived at the Brandenburg residence to deliver the Reichstag’s condemnation of Frederick’s invasion of Saxony. Plotho seized the document, shoved it down Aprill’s shirt front “with all possible violence” and summoned his servants to throw the messenger down the stairs and out into the street. This they did not actually accomplish, although the pro-Prussians chose to believe they had. By his own account, Aprill went home in tears. Needless to say, this episode soon made the rounds and grew with the telling. To pun the name of the unfortunate notary, it was later claimed that it had happened on April Fool’s Day. Lurid accounts in the press were supported with visual illustrations. According to Goethe, when Plotho traveled to Frankfurt am Main in 1764 he was lionized by the local people as the personification of Frederick’s victory over Catholic Austria.
The reason this was interesting, aside from the inherent drama, was that Blanning's footnote to the Reichstag's condemnation reads:
Despite contemporary use of the word Acht (“ outlawry”), this was not what was imposed on Prussia, despite the best efforts of the Austrians. Had they succeeded, they would have gained a legal justification for dismembering Prussia, for Frederick’s lands would have been forfeit— Wilson, “Prussia’s Relations with the Holy Roman Empire, 1740– 1786,” p. 350.
Now, way back when, I reported MacDonogh claiming that Prussia was kicked out of the HRE, and we side-eyed him. Now I think this must be what he's getting at. If Blanning's correct--and I suspect he is, because neither selenak nor I have heard of anything as dramatic as Prussia getting kicked out, and as she pointed out, it's contradicted by later events--then MacDonogh was relying too heavily on this use of "outlawry." But as usual, he's not making things up out of wholecloth.
So it's good to have that (probably) cleared up. I'm also now curious whether Fritz would have had to kneel in our hypothetical summit, to a non-newly-elected emperor. Do you have any additional information on this side, selenak? You're our HRE person.
Prussia and the Holy Roman Empire
Early in his reign [Frederick] had used his dominant influence on the Wittelsbach Emperor Charles VII to sever the remaining judicial and ceremonial ties binding Brandenburg in feudal subjection. Of great symbolic importance was liberation from the obligation of the Prussian representative to kneel in homage to a newly elected emperor. The right of Prussian subjects to appeal to imperial law courts went the same way.
The citation is Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, whom
Especially since he continues,
Indulging both his anti-imperial and anti-Christian prejudices, Frederick also put a stop to the saying of prayers for the emperor in Prussian churches—“ an old and silly custom” he called it. His most celebrated symbolic rejection of the Holy Roman Empire was performed by proxy by his representative at Regensburg, Erich Christoph von Plotho, on 14 October 1757, when the imperial notary Georg Mathias Joseph Aprill arrived at the Brandenburg residence to deliver the Reichstag’s condemnation of Frederick’s invasion of Saxony. Plotho seized the document, shoved it down Aprill’s shirt front “with all possible violence” and summoned his servants to throw the messenger down the stairs and out into the street. This they did not actually accomplish, although the pro-Prussians chose to believe they had. By his own account, Aprill went home in tears. Needless to say, this episode soon made the rounds and grew with the telling. To pun the name of the unfortunate notary, it was later claimed that it had happened on April Fool’s Day. Lurid accounts in the press were supported with visual illustrations. According to Goethe, when Plotho traveled to Frankfurt am Main in 1764 he was lionized by the local people as the personification of Frederick’s victory over Catholic Austria.
The reason this was interesting, aside from the inherent drama, was that Blanning's footnote to the Reichstag's condemnation reads:
Despite contemporary use of the word Acht (“ outlawry”), this was not what was imposed on Prussia, despite the best efforts of the Austrians. Had they succeeded, they would have gained a legal justification for dismembering Prussia, for Frederick’s lands would have been forfeit— Wilson, “Prussia’s Relations with the Holy Roman Empire, 1740– 1786,” p. 350.
Now, way back when, I reported MacDonogh claiming that Prussia was kicked out of the HRE, and we side-eyed him. Now I think this must be what he's getting at. If Blanning's correct--and I suspect he is, because neither
So it's good to have that (probably) cleared up. I'm also now curious whether Fritz would have had to kneel in our hypothetical summit, to a non-newly-elected emperor. Do you have any additional information on this side,