The Holy Roman Empire: A Short History

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From acclaimed historian Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, an incomparable introduction to this momentous period in the history of Europe The Holy Roman Empire emerged in the Middle Ages as a loosely integrated union of German states and city-states under the supreme rule of an emperor, and would endure until its dissolution in 1806 during the Napoleo

Reviews

Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, one of Germany's leading historians, provides an elegant, succinct, and thought-provoking account of that most baffling of states, the Holy Roman Empire. Her distinctive and novel approach balances the recent, more positive assessment of the empire as a functioning political structure with an innovative interpretation of its conservative political culture. Readers are given a clear explanation of why it overcame some problems and not others, and why it ended in 1806.--Peter H. Wilson, author of Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire
This important book advances a new interpretation of the Holy Roman Empire that promises to free analyses of the empire's inner workings from the burdens of contemporary political memory. Stollberg-Rilinger makes the imperial political system, endlessly complex though it was, accessible and comprehensible to a wider audience.--David M. Luebke, author of Hometown Religion: Regimes of Coexistence in Early Modern Westphalia

Author Bio

Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger is professor and chair of early modern history at the University of Mnster in Germany. Her many books include her acclaimed biography of Maria Theresa, which won Germany's prestigious Leipzig Book Fair Prize in 2017, and The Emperor's Old Clothes: Constitutional History and the Symbolic Language of the Holy Roman Empire. Yair Mintzker is professor of history at Princeton University.