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cahnLast post, along with the usual 18th-century suspects, included the Ottonians; changing ideas of conception and women's sexual pleasure; Isabella of Parma (the one who fell in love, and vice versa, with her husband's sister); Henry IV and Bertha (and Henry's second wife divorcing him for "unspeakable sexual acts"). (Okay, Isabella of Parma was 18th century.)
What the term Holy Roman Empire actually meant
Date: 2022-12-15 03:49 am (UTC)Here‘s a trivia addendum to the term Holy Roman Empire, owed to the fact Dirk covers it in his History of the Germans podcast, in one of the Barbarossa episodes:
Friedrich I. „Barbarossa“ of Hohenstaufen: I and my intellectual sidekick coined that term. Earlier Emperors did not use it. You see, by the time I made it to the top, we Emperors had a tough deal. Gone were the times when we invested bishops and appointed abbots and were looked at as the leaders of Christendom due to the fact the Popes were, well, that‘s where the term Pornocracy came in. Hence my long time predecessors able to install even Popes. Instead, by my day, Popes were handing out excommunications of monarchs left, right and center, investing bishops was out, and let‘s not even get into all the trouble with my secular German princes and all those uppity Italian cities. Basically, I needed something to invest me with numinous authority that wasn‘t the Pope. And that‘s when my scribes rediscovered Justinian‘s codified laws - wow, those were awesome! - and hit upon the glorious idea which I, and even more my grandson would follow: it‘s the Empire itself that is - and here the wording is important - sacrum. Not sanctus. Sanctus being specifically coded ecclesiastical. Sacrum Imperium, in a straight tradition from the Romans preceding Christianity. Ergo, I, Fredericus semper Augustus, was legitimized by the fact I was leading in the tradition of Augustus and leading an entity which by itself was something divine. The famous quip of your friend Voltaire not withstanding, it was Roman, holy, and an Empire. I mean, sure - I started a seventeen years long schism by installing an Antipope because bloody Alexander IIII didn‘t see it my way, and let‘s not even get into all the quarrels my grandson, Selena‘s problematic fave, had with several Popes. But the term I coined stuck! Till 1806! Sacrum Imperium fuck yeah!“ *shuffles off to the Kyffhäuser*
Re: What the term Holy Roman Empire actually meant
Date: 2022-12-15 08:21 am (UTC)Also Garibaldi and Risorgimento, we covered the two developments in conjunction.
That's what I mean by I had to learn at least something about the Holy Roman Empire: given the amount of time my teacher spent on UNification, it would have been hard to not to get at least a sense of things like the relationship between the Holy Roman Empire, Austria-Hungary, Prussia, and Germany. I suspect (?) that you can teach REunification without covering the Holy Roman Empire in enough depth that a teenager will remember it 20 years later.
But no, we never covered REunification in school. Although we technically could have, as I was only 5-6 when it happened, history in school as it was taught to me never made it past WWI or WWII. *One* time, in 11th grade American history class in preparation for a nationwide exam, we had a teacher disciplined enough to get us up to the 1960s so we could pass the (AP) exam.
But mostly my teachers got bogged down in 19th century detail--the 10th grade European history teacher on 1848 - German unification - Risorgimento, the 8th grade American history teacher (who had been in the army) in loving military history detail of the battles of the Civil War. We spent 3 days on the Battle of Gettysburg, which took 3 days to fight in real life! (And no, alas, 8th grade was 2 years before I discovered my interest in military history, so I did not benefit.)
But you're still old for remembering REunification. ;) I had just turned 6 when the Berlin Wall came down, and I doubt I even knew that there was such a thing as a Germany, much less two Germanies.
But my wife, who is almost exactly your age, was absolutely riveted in Brazil following the news as it was playing out in Germany, and she had a friend (cousin?) who was present when the wall came down, and that is why in my living room today there is a piece of the Berlin Wall on display.
The Soviet Union breakup in late 1991 was one of the first world events I remember being aware of as it happened, in that one teacher rushed into my third-grade classroom to dramatically announce that the Soviet Union had broken up. She was all "!!!!" My teacher said, "Wow, they're going to have to change all the maps." And my reaction was that there was this thing I had never heard of that no longer existed that the adults seemed very worked up about.
And the first event I remember actually having explained to me to where I understood it was the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, because my dad was active duty US military, and my parents had to explain that he might get sent into combat and where and why. (He did not.)
Re: What the term Holy Roman Empire actually meant
Date: 2022-12-15 02:03 pm (UTC)Riiiiight. Then I'm doubly impressed you learned about it in school, because we sure as hell learned next to nothing about the US Civil War, other than: "it happened, because slavery. These are the dates."
I should add that otoh, we did learn far more extensively about the US Civil Rights movement and Vietnam, but not in history class, in Sozialkunde (subsection: democratic protest movements).
Re: What the term Holy Roman Empire actually meant
Date: 2022-12-15 02:15 pm (UTC)Ironically, then you were ahead of me in this game, because we never covered Vietnam, and the Civil Rights movement only once, due to the date cutoffs I mentioned. But we did get quizzed on how to spell and define "Realpolitik", because 19th century!
Re: What the term Holy Roman Empire actually meant
Date: 2022-12-15 09:40 pm (UTC)Oh, thank goodness. I was sitting here going "I know I often have really mistaken ideas, but I thought we were talking about the Holy Roman Empire and I didn't think that was a major consideration in the 1980's?"
Haha, I am VERY FAMILIAR with never getting past WWI/WWII! (For American history.) Often we never really made it past Reconstruction. In AP American History we in theory made it to the 1960's, but that was also the class where we were told that the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis were the same thing, so, uh, never mind that.
As I am between your age and Selena's age, I do remember German reunification, and the Berlin wall coming down, being a super big deal. I actually remember saving the Time magazine with the news article in it for years because it was an Important Thing. (Though I was in middle school, so I didn't follow it in any sort of great detail.)
(The first world event I remember being aware of as it happened was the Challenger explosion. There were probably things before that, but that was the one that I remember being a Big Deal, partially because there was a schoolteacher on it so it had been hyped up at school.)
Re: What the term Holy Roman Empire actually meant
Date: 2022-12-16 07:53 am (UTC)...and then came AIDS. Yes, I think that was the first global thing I very consciously noticed in the 1980s when it was happening. In terms of politics. In the later 1980s of course Gorbachev, Glasnost and Perestroika. I was one year out of school when the Berlin Wall fell, but I'd started to pay attention to what was going on in the Soviet Union while still at school. Most of us did. It's not a little heartbreaking to think about now how much hope there was, as we could see Gorbachev actually following through with this.
Re: What the term Holy Roman Empire actually meant
Date: 2022-12-16 11:51 am (UTC)1980s elections: I do actually vaguely remember the 1988 election, in that that was where I, freshly turned 5 years old, learned what an election was and what political parties wrere, and that my parents and grandparents belonged to different parties, and I remember the name Dukakis, but I sort of wasn't counting that as my first, as what I got out of it was less a current event for me and more a political science lesson.
It's not a little heartbreaking to think about now how much hope there was, as we could see Gorbachev actually following through with this.
Oof, I can imagine. By the time I started paying attention, it was already not looking good.
Re: What the term Holy Roman Empire actually meant
Date: 2022-12-16 05:25 pm (UTC)Not really, I know, the analogy doesn't work for Lafayette's entire life - just for the French Revolution vis a vis Gorbachev & the Soviet Union, especially from a German perspective. He was and still is seen re: German reunification as Lafayette is seen from the US (you could tell in all the German obituaries this year, no matter whether in left, moderate or right papers), while Russia has the later-French-Revolution/Bourbon pov on him.
Once-current events that are now history
Date: 2022-12-16 09:14 pm (UTC)In the 80's: I remember acid rain being a big thing! I remember even writing a horror story about it in... probably third or fourth grade, haha. Nuclear power was never a big thing in the US, but the threat of nuclear annihiliation was. (Reading Watchmen, years and years later, took me back... I felt like it got that feel right, that there was always this undercurrent of "so we don't really think the world is going to end tomorrow... but it might!") I think I must have been too young to get much of the Satanic scare stuff, and I think my parents were much too pragmatic for it to really bother them in any case, though I do remember it being a cultural thing, very vaguely. By the time I was in late high school I played D&D a couple of times and it was fine, although I'm not sure my parents knew about it.
Oh, right, yes, I do remember being conscious of AIDS. Probably not in the early 80's, but certainly by the mid-to-late 80's I knew quite well it was a big thing. And Gorbachev, glasnost, and perestroika, yes, I remember those too; like German reunification, I wasn't old enough to get into it in great detail, but I certainly knew it was a Really Big Deal. And I remember how hopeful everything was.
Re: Once-current events that are now history
Date: 2022-12-16 09:21 pm (UTC)Nuclear annihilation: I missed out on this entirely! I remember reading Madeleine L'Engle in middle school and being *so* confused by what the characters were talking about. She clearly expected you to be able to fill in the blanks, and in hindsight I understand why, but it was a long time before my "history" knowledge was good enough to supply the context.
Satanic scare: That one made it onto my radar, as did Waco (omg Waco). As in, "Don't do things that might make people erroneously think you are a Satanist or cultist!"
AIDS, 90s: check.
Gorbachev, glasnost, and perestroika: Nope. This one I learned as history.
Re: What the term Holy Roman Empire actually meant
Date: 2022-12-16 11:41 am (UTC)Lol! I really thought that everyone would know which one I was talking about if I said "unification" instead of "reunification"! 'Cause yes, I don't really think the HRE goes with the 1980s very much either.
Unless we're talking about the big conglomerate that Sanssouci, Inc engaged in a hostile takeover with.Re: What the term Holy Roman Empire actually meant
Date: 2022-12-18 10:50 pm (UTC)Re: What the term Holy Roman Empire actually meant
Date: 2022-12-16 11:59 am (UTC)Lol, so I have a story for this one! I was 2, so I don't remember this myself, but I've since been told that the news kept showing the explosion over and over again, and that I, being 2 and having no idea what was going on, sat in front of the television clapping and cheering at each explosion, yelling, "Again! Again!"
...Once I got old enough to be told this story, I was like, "Oh, no!" But I understand why, when I was 2, I just thought it was like fireworks. Much like AW got on FW's good side for liking cannons as a toddler: it doesn't mean he's going to be a brave soldier someday and Fritz isn't, just that one is scared of loud noises and one thinks they're fun and doesn't know yet to connect them with his imminent death. (Which is the hard part of being a soldier, ffs, FW.)
There were probably things before that, but that was the one that I remember being a Big Deal, partially because there was a schoolteacher on it so it had been hyped up at school.)
Yeah, we got this in school a few years later for the same reason. I actually remember a detailed explanation of the O-ring problem in 5th grade, but that would have been in 1993, several years later.
Challenger
Date: 2022-12-16 09:17 pm (UTC)It's so weird to think of the O-ring problem being history now, but of course it is. I think I was too old to get it in school, but I read about it in Feynman's memoirs at probably around the same time. (And it's in one of my kids' pop-science/math books.)
Re: Challenger
Date: 2022-12-16 09:23 pm (UTC)Feynman's memoirs
Worth reading? I do voraciously consume memoirs of a certain kind.
Re: Challenger
Date: 2022-12-16 10:13 pm (UTC)Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman is a classic and I'm honestly sort of shocked you haven't read it yet. It's told as a series of vignettes spanning his life up to that point. It's really quite a lot of fun and the vignettes are extremely entertaining, especially the first half or so. I think you would love it actually, he's exactly the kind of character you would vibe with in a book, he's so interested and enthusiastic about the things he loves, and so absolutely unwilling to entertain any kind of crap, and he trolls basically everybody. Even my kids thought his college stories about MIT were super fun. I do remember him being kind of a jerk to women at times, so I should warn you about that. I remember the address "Cargo Cult Science" at the end of the book having a huge effect on me (I was quite young when I read this -- 9? 10?)
What Do You Care What Other People Think? is less zany fun and more serious. Part of the book is more stories, but even those are more serious (I think this is the one where he talks about his first wife's death). The second half or so is where he talks about the Challenger hearings. As a kid I liked the first volume better, because zany stories, but I suspect if I read them over again as a middle-aged adult who has Feelings about Science that the second volume might be more rewarding.
Re: Challenger
Date: 2022-12-17 10:42 am (UTC)I'm honestly sort of shocked you haven't read it yet.
I only started to like memoirs about 5 years ago! Before that, it was a genre I actively avoided.
Re: Challenger
Date: 2022-12-18 10:52 pm (UTC)Re: Challenger
Date: 2022-12-20 01:04 pm (UTC)One thing to keep in mind is just how isolated a tech geek I was. It was me in a small town, at an unacademic high school, in an unintellectual family. I had to find everything on my own. And shortly after starting college, for reasons with which you are familiar, I developed a physics aversion and avoided all mention of physics (and more or less science, too) for a good decade.
I only got back into science in the early 2010s thanks to picking up a book on genetic algorithms that was on the shelves in the office at my first tech job, reading the first few pages, and realizing I needed to learn how *genetics* worked, and then somewhat later, picking up the popular science book T-Rex and the Crater of Doom, which was a great book that I still reread and recommend to people. At that point, it had been long enough since my signal failure to become a physicist that I could emotionally stand to be reminded of science again.
Re: Challenger
Date: 2022-12-23 06:40 pm (UTC)I actually read it because my piano teacher liked books a lot, and had a copy (and I always read her books while my sister was taking her lesson). (She wasn't particularly into science, though it may have been for her oldest son, who was a few years older than I was and had more geeky interests than she did -- I remember at one point he tried to get me to read Roger Zelazny, which I was really too young for at the time.) And I feel like in my generation I've heard this story from several other people, who also just happened to pick it up because it was a best-seller at the time, and were captivated by it even at a young age because he's so appealing to the geek mindset. But I can see how it would have been much harder to find on one's own or by serendipity a few years later, once the buzz had died down.
Re: Challenger
Date: 2022-12-23 06:52 pm (UTC)Maybe! Because I certainly knew who Feynman *was*, but I had never heard of this book! When I was in middle school and high school, the book that would have been easy to pick by osmosis was A Brief History of Time.
I finished it today, and...I liked it. I didn't love it. It was a little too episodic for my tastes, I would have preferred more of a connected narrative. I will check out his other book that you said you might like better these days.
Re: What the term Holy Roman Empire actually meant
Date: 2022-12-15 08:35 am (UTC)In Barbarossa's day, yes, much less so when Voltaire was writing. That reminds me, when I got to this part of the podcast a couple months ago, I made a note to ask: does anyone know what the source for that Voltaire quip is? Do we know for sure if it's a real quote, or like "she cried and she took"?
Re: What the term Holy Roman Empire actually meant
Date: 2022-12-15 09:02 am (UTC)