On his book Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire
Cover Interview of November 22, 2016
In a nutshell
The Holy Roman Empire’s history is central
to the European experience and the question of European identity. Founded with
Charlemagne’s coronation on Christmas Day 800, it lasted just over a millennium
before being dissolved in August 1806 by Emperor Francis II to prevent its
legacy being usurped by Napoleon. In addition to what is now Germany, it
encompassed at one point or another all or part of Austria, Switzerland, Italy,
France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Denmark, and Poland.
Other countries were linked to its history and internal affairs, such as
Hungary, Croatia, Spain or Sweden. Europe’s east-west and north-south tensions
intersected in the Empire’s core lands between the Alps and the Rhine, Elbe and
Oder rivers, while trade, cultural exchange and military campaigns ranged
across it in all directions.
Yet, the Empire scarcely figures in most
histories of Europe. If it is remembered at all, it is usually through
Voltaire’s famous quip that it was ‘neither holy, Roman or an empire’. Voltaire
was writing at a time when history was emerging as a professional academic
discipline that took the centralised national state as its primary focus.
Europe’s history came to be written as a series of discrete national stories,
each constructed around homelands, cultures and heroes and heroines credited
with forging modern states. Many of these states emerged in direct opposition
to the two predominantly German-speaking empires of the nineteenth century:
Austria-Hungary and imperial Germany. Nineteenth-century nation-builders in
Italy, the Netherlands or elsewhere had no use for the Empire’s history which
was reduced to that of medieval Germany. Meanwhile, German writers increasingly
regarded it as a source of national shame because it did not develop as the
kind of powerful, centralised national monarchy that they believed necessary in
their own time.
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
In a nutshell
The Holy Roman Empire’s history is central to the European experience and the question of European identity. Founded with Charlemagne’s coronation on Christmas Day 800, it lasted just over a millennium before being dissolved in August 1806 by Emperor Francis II to prevent its legacy being usurped by Napoleon. In addition to what is now Germany, it encompassed at one point or another all or part of Austria, Switzerland, Italy, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Denmark, and Poland. Other countries were linked to its history and internal affairs, such as Hungary, Croatia, Spain or Sweden. Europe’s east-west and north-south tensions intersected in the Empire’s core lands between the Alps and the Rhine, Elbe and Oder rivers, while trade, cultural exchange and military campaigns ranged across it in all directions.
Yet, the Empire scarcely figures in most histories of Europe. If it is remembered at all, it is usually through Voltaire’s famous quip that it was ‘neither holy, Roman or an empire’. Voltaire was writing at a time when history was emerging as a professional academic discipline that took the centralised national state as its primary focus. Europe’s history came to be written as a series of discrete national stories, each constructed around homelands, cultures and heroes and heroines credited with forging modern states. Many of these states emerged in direct opposition to the two predominantly German-speaking empires of the nineteenth century: Austria-Hungary and imperial Germany. Nineteenth-century nation-builders in Italy, the Netherlands or elsewhere had no use for the Empire’s history which was reduced to that of medieval Germany. Meanwhile, German writers increasingly regarded it as a source of national shame because it did not develop as the kind of powerful, centralised national monarchy that they believed necessary in their own time.