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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 9, No. 9
Publication Date: September 25, 2022
DOI:10.14738/assrj.99.13064.
Wust, W. (2022). Imperial Patchwork “Flickenteppiche” as a Historical Metaphor for Chaos, Federalism and Diversity. Advances in
Social Sciences Research Journal, 9(9). 220-235.
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
Imperial Patchwork -- “Flickenteppiche” as a Historical Metaphor
for Chaos, Federalism and Diversity
Wolfgang Wüst
History Department., Faculty of Philosophy and Theology
Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg
ABSTRACT
With the recent research on the importance of the Estates, whose function often
went far beyond questions of taxation, the Imperial Circles and the simultaneous
deconstruction of European state formation as an absolutist top-down process the
view of the “co-organizing intermediate levels” changed. This is how Johannes
Burkhardt described these regional images in 2006 in “Gebhardt. Handbuch der
Deutschen Geschichte.” The new view of the Old Empire has been well received by
research in regional history, especially since differentiations on small-scale rule
and organization in Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Hesse, Thuringia, Saxony and
other federal states have traditionally been and still are part of the core business of
this discipline. “Flickenteppiche” as colourfully woven objects of diversity are
certainly still products in demand in the textile industry and consumer society, but
they are just as unsuitable as an explanatory model for the coherence of the Empire
and its Imperial Circles as they are for analyzing power and rule in the early modern
period. In their figurative meaning of the word, patchwork carpets ignore
communicative processes for decision-making just as much as they register cross- border action and design as a quantité négligeable.
Keywords: Patchwork, “Flickenteppich”, diversity, mapping, borders, nation building,
Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, Imperial Circles.
In memory of my academic teacher
Prof. Dr. Johannes Burkhardt (14.3.1943–4.8.2022)
PATCHWORK – A NAVEL-GAZING
The popular German journal G/Geschichte, which has been in existence for 35 years and which,
according to the editorial staff, acts according to the credo “History may be fun - with all the
necessary seriousness”, used the metaphor of patchwork carpet (“Flickenteppich”) in the context
of research on the Napoleonic era to record the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation as a
rotten old European (dis)order system in the March 2010 issue (see Fig. 1). Editor-in-Chief Dr.
Klaus Hillingmeier agreed with the readers on the article “Napoleon I. from Austerlitz to
Moscow” with the following sentences: “The troops of the Grande Armée opened the ghettos in
the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation instead of building them. The 'Code Napoléon' knew
no differences between religions and races, it was committed to the high ideals of the French
Revolution of equality and freedom. No one can say how long the old, rotten empire would have
passed away without Napoleon's influence. A colourful patchwork of principalities, small states,
dioceses and free cities – undoubtedly extremely decorative on the map, but a sad joke as a political
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Wust, W. (2022). Imperial Patchwork “Flickenteppiche” as a Historical Metaphor for Chaos, Federalism and Diversity. Advances in Social Sciences
Research Journal, 9(9). 220-235.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.99.13064
actor in the concert of European great powers [...].”i The mostly colourfully woven patchwork
carpets, which unfold creatively far beyond German living rooms from strips of fabric sewn
together in “weft”ii, have been misused on countless occasions as synonyms for cultural, social,
legaliii or political chaos, combined with confusion of decisions and conflict over competences.
The corresponding cartographic implementation of ridiculed German “small-scale statehood” in
Friedrich Wilhelm Putzger's Historical School Atlas was first carried out in the 1877 Leipzig
edition, only a few years after Bismarck's foundation of the German Empire. The standard work
is still available in the 104th edition (2012)iv with the multi-coloured territorial map of Central
Europe “at the beginning of the French Revolution” without the additional map of the Imperial
Circles (Reichskreise), which Peter Claus Hartmannv had requested. The small state model is a
typically German phenomenon – nourished by the Prussian-dominated national historiography
of the 19th and 20th centuries – which is not metaphorically represented in translated carpet
versions as “rag rugs” (English), “tapis en patchwork” (French), “alfombras de retazos” (Spanish)
or “tappeti patchwork” (Italian). In order to experience similar word creations of a comparative
nature in foreign languages, more idiomatic translations are required. The apt Italian
translation for our patchwork carpet therefore makes use of the mosaic (“mosaico”). vi
Territories and regions of the Ancien Régime appear as “mosaico di stati”. Despite the late
formation of nations during the Risorgimentovii, which was similar to the German development,
the complex composition of the mosaic stands as a primarily positive termviii for the technical- scientific description of the group of states as “compagine di stati”.ix In centralist France, the
patchwork quilt translated as “un tapis rapiécé de ...” does not coincide with the small-scale
additional meaning that is decisive for our topic. This can only be adequately represented as
“morcellement d'un territoire en petits États”.x
Fig. 1: Issue 3/2010 of the magazine. G/History, People - Events – Epochs
The loosely knotted patchwork carpet of the Old Empire is still widely used in the German
language as a fairy tale in the media today, even though early modern research has been
convinced of the opposite for decades. And regional history, whose main task includes a
microscopic view of regional and tiny structures, sought to find value-neutral substitutes early
on. Instead of rolling out the territorial patchwork carpet, one speaks rather of political or
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natural multidevided landscapes (“Kleinkammerung”) xi , of territorial diversity or
multiformity xii , of concrete multiple xiii or polyvalence xiv , of condominates xv or simply of
patchworkxvi . The latter was also often placed in the title page following interdisciplinary
models such as the study on “Identity Constructions: the Patchwork of Identities in Late
Modernism”
xvii by the social psychologist Heiner Keupp, who teaches at the Ludwig- Maximilians-University in Munich, and other authors. The changed viewxviii of the Old Empire's
achievements in integration has apparently not yet been taken on board in the field of the
specialist sciences, even in history lessons at grammar schools, when the following picture of
European developmentxix since the Middle Ages is recommended in “Geschichte kompakt” for
preparing for the “Abitur”: “The German 'patchwork' was a characteristic of the 'Holy Roman
Empire of the German Nation', which had its origins in the Middle Ages and existed for several
centuries in the territory of Germany today. It did not see itself as a state with a central
executive, military and fixed borders, but was a kind of confederation of states consisting of
over 300 rulers. In the course of time, numerous 'states' had developed since the 10th century
as a result of divisions, inheritances and peace alliances. Especially after the Thirty Years' War
in 1648, this small-scale statehood was increasingly practiced on German soil.”xx The renowned
German encyclopaedia of castles contains a survey article on the Old Empire written by Stefan
Grathoff, who was a research assistant at the Mainz Institute of Regional History from 2007 to
2017. In the account, the criticism of the early modernity-blocking early modern period is
followed by a visibly brighter passage on the legal successor to the Ancien Régime, the Rhine
Confederation: “Even if the Rhine Confederation system can primarily be described as 'a system
of exploitation and oppression' (Nipperdey), it triggered an enormous push for modernisation
in Germany. In addition to a radical simplification of the map (the colourful patchwork of the
almost thousand-year-old Holy Roman Empire disappeared), it brought a guarantee of civil
rights (Code Civil) and a radical modernisation in economy and administration and made
industrial development, which in any case was more hesitant in Germany than in France or even
England, possible in the first place.” xxi
The political-historical form of the patchwork quilt
served as a popular topic in university lecture series – in the winter term 1997, the
corresponding title of the lecture series at the Gerhard Mercator University in Duisburg was:
“From Patchwork Quilt to Rhine Province. The Change of the Political Map in the Lower Rhine
Region”xxii – as well as the editorials of renowned Sunday, daily and weekly journals.
In a weekend edition of “Die Welt am Sonntag” one could read a report on the current topic in
October 2011: “Germany, a patchwork carpet”. The journalist Ulli Kulke embeds the patchwork
carpet in the travel events of the early 19th century. Before the railway age, this meant for the
Prussian provinces of all places: “Travelling in the good old days: Whoever set out from Cologne
to Königsberg in the early 19th century, let's say in 1815, had to have patience. Not only because
horse and carriage loved the leisureliness. There were 80 customs stations along the route. And
this despite the fact that the road led largely through Prussia. But Prussia alone knew many
counties, principalities, duchies. Not to mention the countless sovereign states in the rest of
Germany, which in 1806, in the course of the Napoleonic Wars, had also lost its loose shell of the
Empire. 80 customs posts, and at each of them there was a small civil servant who examined
everything, collected one or another fee.”xxiii
In the euro crisis of 2010/2011, the fear that
Germany could fall back into the small statehood of the Old Empire was then overcome. The
latter would be a German invention as a synonym for patchwork quilt and is one of the few
words that “found their way into the English language unaltered.” In the end, the author gave
the article a positive twist to take the darkness out of the peace and order system of the Old
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Wust, W. (2022). Imperial Patchwork “Flickenteppiche” as a Historical Metaphor for Chaos, Federalism and Diversity. Advances in Social Sciences
Research Journal, 9(9). 220-235.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.99.13064
Empire with its more than 300 territoriesxxiv (see Fig. 2). The culinary patchwork rug at least
provided for diversity among bakers: “Germany today is famous for its 300 different types of
bread, and it is only partly coincidental that there are as many as there once were countries.”xxv
Fig. 2: The Holy Roman Empire around 1400 (map). Haacks Geographischer Atlas, 11979; dtv- Atlas zur Weltgeschichte 1. Von den Anfängen bis zur Französischen Revolution, 23th edition,
1989
THE OLD EMPIRE – RECEPTION OF A STATE MODEL?
At the outset, the question arises as to why research has for a long time recorded the Old Empire
as a strange and cumbersome body of states that could hardly be governed rationally, in which
most of the imperial estates down to the miniature lordships of the lesser nobility had no
European significance as “duodec princes”, but stubbornly insisted on their independence.
Couldn't the paradigm shift in the accounting of the Old Empire have taken place earlier? Apart
from a few early examplesxxvi, it was closely linked in time to the research achievements of Karl
Otmar von Aretin (1923–2014)xxvii, Johannes Burkhardtxxviii , Peter Claus Hartmannxxix, Anton
Schindling (1947–2020) xxx , Georg Schmidt xxxi , Axel Gotthard xxxii and Barbara Stollberg- Rilingerxxxiii, among others. In this perspective, the decades after 1806 appeared to be the birth
of the sovereign, authoritarian and militarily armed state. The indifference of many
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contemporaries to the dissolution of the old European order at the beginning of the 19th
century paved the way for national systemic criticism of the past. Johann Wolfgang Goethe is
told to have said in response to the news of the abdication of the head of the empire (see Fig.
3), which reached him later than his diary entry of 7 August purportsxxxiv, “This interested him
less than a quarrel between his coachman and a servant.” Coming from Karlsbad, he was just
travelling! And Joseph Görres (1776–1848), renowned Catholic publicist and ardent admirer of
the ideals of the French Revolution, commented earlier during the Rastatt Peace Congress
(Congrès de Rastatt) in 1797/1799 – the focus was on declarations of renunciation of the
imperial territories on the left bank of the Rhine – on the fall of the empire in the style of a
super-cooled doctor's bulletin: “On the thirtieth of December 1797, on the day of the transition
from Maynz [with the seat of the Imperial Chancellorxxxv], in the afternoon at three o'clock, died
at Regensburg at the flourishing age of 955 years, 5 months, 28 days, gently and blessedly of a
complete debilitation and added stroke, with complete consciousness and provided with all holy
sacraments, the Holy Roman Empire, of ponderous memory.”
xxxvi We also know comparatively
restrained judgements on the mediatisation of individual imperial states from the regions. The
chronicler of the imperial city of Weissenburg, Georg Voltz, also dryly summed up the end of
the imperial city's freedom: “This was followed by all the necessary precautions to organize our
Weissenburg as a Bavarian provincial city.” He did not explain this momentous event in more
detail, and in the next sentence, he approvingly attributed it to a natural event. It was
remarkable “that there were so many mice this year than any human being could have
imagined.”xxxvii
Fig. 3: The Holy Roman Empire after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 (map). Putzger -
Historischer Weltatlas, 89th edition, 1965
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Wust, W. (2022). Imperial Patchwork “Flickenteppiche” as a Historical Metaphor for Chaos, Federalism and Diversity. Advances in Social Sciences
Research Journal, 9(9). 220-235.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.99.13064
But there were also other voices. The judgments about the waves of secularisation and
mediatisation in the Old Empire that took place before and in the watershed year of 1806 were
more detailed and usually more affected than those we know from the general context. Here,
micro-history corrects the findings of the macro-level. In many cases, the empire was invoked
as an indispensable peace and protection alliance even shortly before its end. This contradicted
the older thesis that the Old Empire was structurally incapable of waging war. It was based one- sidedly on the judgements of the late 18th to early 20th centuries, which were shaped by
offensive warfare and which, with Friedrich Christian Laukhard (1757–1822) – he had studied
theology in Giessen and Göttingen with little success – believed that the old imperial army was
a “confusion army”. Among all the armies of Europe, it had been the “most unfit” of its kind for
the author of the “Zuchtspiegel für Eroberungskrieger [...] und Aerzte” (Paris 1799).xxxviii The
“Nuremberg Peace and War Courier” saw things differently. There, on 12. June 1806, after the
seizure of the Hohenzollern principality of Ansbach by Bavaria, there is a report on the
consequences for neighbouring Nuremberg: „Es ist allgemein bekannt, auf welche Weise die
hiesigen Vorstädte nebst dem ganzen umliegenden Reichswälder Gebiet der Stadt und einer
beträchtlichen Anzahl außerhalb desselben gelegener Unterthanen vor 10 Jahren, unter dem
Vorwande, als ob sie Zugehörungen der Fürstenthümer Anspach und Bayreuth wären, in Anspach
genommen, mit bewafneter Hand bese[t]zt und die hiesige Stadt auf einmal aus dem durch
Jahrhunderte geheiligten Besitz ihrer darauf zustehenden Rechte und Einkünfte gewaltsam
verdrängt wurde. Ein Anspruch des höchsten Reichs-Tribunals hat diesen empfindlichen Akt der
Gewalt vorlängst für unrechtmäßig und ungültig erklärt. Und obgleich die eingetrettenen
Zeitumstände die Reichsgese[t]zmäßige Wirkung dieses Anspruchs bisher gehemmt haben; so hat
doch die hiesige Reichsstadt nie aufgehört, ihre Ansprüche auf die Vollziehung desselben auf allen
denjenigen Wegen, welche dem Mindermächtigen offen stehen, mit Eifer zu verfolgen. Sie hat die
Hülfe des Allerhöchsten Reichsoberhaupts, den Verfassungsmässigen Beystand des gesammten
Reichs, die Unterstützung ihrer höchst- und hohen Kreiß-Mitstände und die Verwendung der
erlauchten Vermittler des le[t]zten ReichsFriedensExecutionsGeschäfts nicht ohne Erfolg
reklamirt.“xxxix
Fear of an uncertain future without the protection of the Old Empire was certainly also evident
in the Church, for which the years around 1800 brought massive losses of sovereignty, assets
and benefices. In the long run, they inhibited regional cultural and economic developments, as
the Catholic part of the “patchwork quilt” not only lost a sacral landscape. In the future,
secularised monasteries and convents, as lost cultural, commercial and economic centres,
would no longer provide any infrastructural impulses. The Imperial Church therefore also
relied on the imperial federation as a source of hope. The abrupt end in 1802/03 as a harbinger
of 6 August 1806 was painful. For many, closer relations with the emperor and the empire
seemed to be the only way out, although in the Austrian hereditary lands Josephinian church
reforms between 1782 and 1787 had led to the dissolution of about 800 monasteries.xl The
Bishop of Constance and Director of the Swabian Imperial Circle saw this – like many others –
as a remedy which he urged everyone to adopt: „Das einzige rettungs-mittel scheinet in dem
constitutionellen weeg eines näheren anschlußes an Kaiserl. Majestät als das reichs-oberhaupt,
unter engester verbindung wohldenkender stände, unter sich zu liegen, und es ist sehr zu
wünschen, daß eine solche verbindung und einverständnuß unter höchster kaiserlicher
auctoritaet und leitung in bälde bewirket werden möge.“
xli And his cathedral chapter specified,
in that the Mainz arch-chancellorship also came into the focus of interest. The Second Manxlii in
the Old Empire was to coordinate the foreign policy of the monasteries and high monasteries
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Wust, W. (2022). Imperial Patchwork “Flickenteppiche” as a Historical Metaphor for Chaos, Federalism and Diversity. Advances in Social Sciences
Research Journal, 9(9). 220-235.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.99.13064
ecclesiastical and 60 secular district estates, were now exactly the “right” size to reach
consensual decisions and reasonably reliable implementation in the central problem areas of
early modern politics. The Old Empire, as a whole, was thus equipped to cope with the
increasing coordination tasks through the territorial exchange coordinated in its Imperial
Circles. Despite early modern hardening of borders, the Imperial Circles still reflected open
spaces (see Fig. 7 and 8) that corresponded across borders externally and internally. Their field
of interaction between the imperial regiment, the imperial courts and individual imperial
territories was bound to the consensus of the county estates. Thus, the counties remained less
imperial executive bodies than supra-territorial, at the same time also regional and federal
parts of the imperial constitution.
Fig. 7: Circulus sive Liga Sueviae vulgo Schwäbische Kraiß. Map by David Seltzlin from 1572.
Seltzlin operated with a border fringe instead of hard border lines.
Augsburg State and City Library
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Wust, W. (2022). Imperial Patchwork “Flickenteppiche” as a Historical Metaphor for Chaos, Federalism and Diversity. Advances in Social Sciences
Research Journal, 9(9). 220-235.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.99.13064
Fig. 9: A patchwork quilt (“Flickenteppich”) 200x300 cm from Strehög of Sweden. Trendcarpet
Classic, 2022
i
G/Geschichte. Menschen – Ereignisse – Epochen, issue: March, 3/2010, URL: https://www.g-geschichte.de/jahrgang- 2010/napoleon/ (20.4.2022).
ii
In carpet or textile fabric formation, weft threads (also called weft, insertion or interlacing) are the parallel threads that lie
across the stretched warp threads in the loom. The way warp and weft threads are crossed is called weave. Cf. Ann-Kristin
HALLGREN et al., Flickenteppiche. 70 Anleitungen zum Weben, 1994.
iii
Annett JAGIELA, Vom Flickenteppich zur Europäischen Verfassung, in: Carsten BERG/Georg Kristian KAMPFER (ed.), Verfassung
für Europa. Der Taschenkommentar für Bürger und Bürgerinnen, 2005, p. 7.
iv
Armin WOLF, 100 Jahre Putzger. 100 Jahre Geschichtsbild in Deutschland (1877–1977), in: Geschichte in Wissenschaft und
Unterricht 29 (1978) p. 702–718.
v
Peter Claus HARTMANN, Der Bayerische Reichskreis (1500 bis 1803): Strukturen, Geschichte und Bedeutung im Rahmen der
Kreisverfassung und der allgemeinen institutionellen Entwicklung des Heiligen Römischen Reiches (Schriften zur
Verfassungsgeschichte 52), 1997; Peter Claus HARTMANN (ed.), Regionen in der Frühen Neuzeit: Reichskreise im deutschen
Raum, Provinzen in Frankreich, Regionen unter polnischer Oberhoheit. Ein Vergleich ihrer Strukturen, Funktionen und ihrer
Bedeutung (Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung, Supplement 17), 1994.
vi
Friendly advice from dott. Alessandro CONT, 38060 Villa Lagarina (Trentino), Italy.
vii
In selection cf. Anne BRUCH, Italien auf dem Weg zum Nationalstaat – Giuseppe Ferraris Vorstellungen einer föderal- demokratischen Ordnung (Beiträge zur deutschen und europäischen Geschichte 33), 2005; Denis Mack SMITH, Il Risorgimento
Italiano. Storia e testi, 1999; Carlo CARDIA, Risorgimento e religione, 2011.
viii