cahn | 18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 35

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In the previous post Charles II found AITA:

Look, I, m, believe in live and let live. (And in not going on my travels again. Had enough of that to last a life time.) Why can't everyone else around me be more chill? Instead, my wife refuses to employ my girlfriend, my girlfriend won't budge and accept another office, my brother is set on a course to piss off everyone (he WILL go on his travels again), and my oldest kid shows signs of wanting my job which is just not on, sorry to say. And don't get me started about Mom (thank God she's living abroad). What am I doing wrong? AITA?

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From:

selenak

Finding enough fodder for your horses and food for your men, and trying to balance not sucking friendly territory dry and committing war crimes with not being able to keep your army solvent: still the SINGLE HARDEST problem.

No kidding. In all wars, of course, but since this was was waged mostly across German speaking territory, that‘s, more than any of the other factors, why three decades onwards so little of the population was left, and partly why the various German speaking realms had to catch up with France and England in terms of sociological, artistic and scientific development.

Anyway, I‘m glad the Thirty Years War is now comprehensible to you, and await further comments with great anticipation. Also, Cahn, Schiller wrote a trilogy of plays that‘s really a duology and a short one act prequel about one of the main actors in this war, Wallenstein, which has all the good stuff (torn loyalties, angst, slashy relationships) but alas was not made into an opera, or several operas, by Verdi.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

In all wars, of course, but since this was was waged mostly across German speaking territory, that‘s, more than any of the other factors, why three decades onwards so little of the population was left, and partly why the various German speaking realms had to catch up with France and England in terms of sociological, artistic and scientific development.

Yeah, Münkler opens his book by talking about the German narrative of "Thirty Years' War-induced trauma" and how it intersected with the "Sonderweg thesis" (link for

cahn) narrative that Germany developed along a unique path because it lagged in various ways behind countries like France and England, and how these narratives evolved over time and shaped the self-image, historiography, and foreign policy of Germany.

TL;DR for

cahn: these narratives underwent many iterations and were espoused in different ways by different people, naturally, but one striking one is that it turns out if you're a 19th-early 20th century German expansionist, it's not hard to come up with or buy into a narrative that goes "Germany was victimized by everyone else in the Thirty Years' War," ergo "We didn't develop as quickly as everyone else," ergo "It's our neighbors' fault that we're not better off," ergo "They OWE us!" but also "Don't forget having wars fought on German territory is THE WORST, as the Thirty Years' War teaches us," ergo "Wars must be carried out on other people's territory, but also finished quickly with decisive battles, so they don't last thirty years and come back to bite us," ergo "INVADE! Blitzkrieg!"

Re Jülich and Berg: So, in the last three years of salon, I've always been wondering *why* people cared so very, very much about these little principalities that I'd never even heard of, so much so that it's even the reason why Hohenzollerns became Calvinist when their country was Lutheran.

Münkler explains that they were one of the most prosperous areas of Germany, and whoever owned them could expect a lot of profit (remember,

cahn, that this was also true of Silesia).

Plus they were in key positions along the lower Rhine, so the ability to impose tolls on or even block river traffic passing through, and controlling crossings of the Rhine (always important for armies), meant that whoever owned this area could be a major power player in the politics of northwestern Germany.

All of which makes sense of why they mattered to generations of Hohenzollerns, especially if your principality, aka Brandenburg, is known as the "sandbox of Germany." (Admittedly, I am told that a certain amount of Hohenzollern propaganda was at work in that reputation, downplaying the resources they actually controlled.) See, no one ever told me before this how prosperous Jülich and Berg were in proportion to their rather small size.

Speaking of which, one other thing that makes this book comprehensible despite its paucity of maps, is the last three years I spent staring at Google maps, and also becoming familiar with old-fashioned German placenames of Polish and Czech towns. It's paying off, in that I can now follow along in my head with the campaigns without visuals. I have to say that represents a real victory of salon, because your average American has no idea where, say, the Oder is, much less Marienwerder (today Kwidzyn, Poland)--I certainly didn't!--and Münkler sure as heck isn't going to show you.

Edited Date: 2022-05-07 04:10 pm (UTC)