The Nobility in Central Europe between Continuity and Discontinuity: The Imperial Knights in Transition to the Modern Era 1750-1850

Lise Meitner Position M 579 The Nobility in Central Europe between Continuity and Discontinuity 1750-1850 William GODSEY 08.05.2000 My project treats an important segment of the immediate nobility of the Holy Roman Empire: the imperial knights (`Reichsritterschaft`). For providing a broad perspective on the process of social transformation in Central Europe in the transition to the modem era, the imperial knights offer two important advantages. First, they were not constituted in a narrow territorial sense but were truly a `Reichsadel` with their holdings scattered across the western and southern parts of the Empire (Rhineland, Swabia, and Franconia). They dominated, politically and socially, two of the Empire`s electorates (Mainz and Trier) as well as a host of smaller ecclesiastical states. Furthermore, they possessed significant economic, social, and political ties to the imperial court in Vienna and more specifically to the Austro-Bohemian lands. Second, the imperial knights were directly and negatively affected by the revolutionary geopolitical changes (1789-1815) in ways, e.g., mediatization of their own territories and of the church-states that they dominated, shared by few other elite groups in Central Europe. The issue of revolutionary change rather than continuity stands then as the central problem of my work. What was the position of the Reichsritterschaft on the eve of the revolutionary era? What structural challenges did the imperial knights confront after 1792? What strategies did they use to meet such challenges? How successful were they in their efforts? What do answers to these questions tell us about the nature of hereditary elite groups in Central Europe between a society of estates and a modem class-society? Further, what insights do they provide about social transformation in the revolutionary era and about society in Germany and Austria in general in the first half of the nineteenth century? To examine this process, both socioeconomic and cultural -ideological perspectives have been adopted. The approach is narrative as well as analytical and prosopographical. The statistical basis of the prosopographtical part is provided by a sample of the 108 families of imperial. knights active in the electorate of Mainz in the second half of the eighteenth century, with particular emphasis on the 60 such represented in the cathedral chapter (1743-1803). The latter constituted not only the elite of the nobility of the Empire`s collegiate foundations (`Stiftsadel`) but the elite of the Reichsritterschaft-as well. The unavoidable bias toward the Catholic- Rhenish nobility is justifiable in that most previous work has been devoted to the Swabian and Franconian knights. My sample is nevertheless more generally representative of the entire corporation than samples used in previous studies, which have concentrated on only one of the three circles (`Kreisen`) and usually on only one or two of the more than dozen cantons (Kantonen) into which the knights were organized. In contrast, my sample includes families from all three circles (Rhineland, Franconia, Swabia) as well as both Catholics and Protestants. Moreover, the sample of 108 accounts for approximately one quarter of I the total number of families incorporated in the Reichsritterschaft at the end of the Empire. The monograph is conceived of as a series of seven loosely connected essays, each aimed at examining a particular facet of noble experience in the transition to the modem era. For some chapters a narrative framework has been adopted, for others an analytical approach. The choice depends on the problem under consideration as well as the methodology adopted for its examination. A variety of methodologies are being employed: social history, cultural history, history of ideas, gender history, and biography.