Abstract
AbstractThe traceless disappearance of the Holy Roman Empire from the map and the minds of nineteenth-century Germany was until recently a pervasive historiographical trope. Revisionist scholarship has since uncovered the empire's modern afterlife as a model for federative political order and archetype of the greater German (großdeutsche) nation. This article identifies a different kind of legacy, by examining the empire's role in shaping the constitutional configuration of an individual successor state – Prussia. In a debate over Prussia's unwritten historical constitution unfolding in the 1840s, narratives of the empire's constitutional history became the basis on which the juridical structure of the kingdom's sovereignty was negotiated by jurists and political actors. These included, among others, King Frederick William IV and his brother William, the leaders of the German historical school of jurisprudence Savigny and Eichhorn, and the Prussian statesman Kamptz. The article contrasts two rival interpretations of the imperial legacy: a teleological narrative focusing on the evolution of state sovereignty within the imperial constitution and a genealogical narrative highlighting the origins of sovereignty as a hereditary fiefdom. In doing so, it questions the rigid distinction that historians have drawn between the empire and the statehood that replaced it in 1806.
Highlights
The traceless disappearance of the Holy Roman Empire from the map and the minds of nineteenth-century Germany was until recently a pervasive historiographical trope
This article identifies a different kind of legacy, by examining the empire’s role in shaping the constitutional configuration of an individual successor state – Prussia
The disagreement prompted the involvement of some of the most prominent German legal scholars of this period: the founders of the historical school of law Friedrich Carl von Savigny and Karl Friedrich Eichhorn, and the former Prussian minister Karl Albert von Kamptz. Though these jurists stood on different sides of the constitutional dispute, they collectively turned to the history of the Reich to map out the legal configuration of Prussian sovereignty, by tracing its origin and evolution in the context of the imperial constitution
Summary
The disagreement prompted the involvement of some of the most prominent German legal scholars of this period: the founders of the historical school of law Friedrich Carl von Savigny and Karl Friedrich Eichhorn, and the former Prussian minister Karl Albert von Kamptz Though these jurists stood on different sides of the constitutional dispute, they collectively turned to the history of the Reich to map out the legal configuration of Prussian sovereignty, by tracing its origin and evolution in the context of the imperial constitution. A commission led by his son, the future Frederick William IV, attempted to resolve the problem in by setting up a decentralized system of provincial diets This change of direction in the constitutional politics of post-Napoleonic Prussia has, especially in the comparative literature on German and European constitutionalism, been interpreted predominantly as a failure, a failure to join the path of political modernization that France and the Southern German states are seen to have taken after. Frederick William IV was an enthusiastic reader of Edmund Burke’s constitutional thought, which hailed historically grounded institutions that accumulated and preserved the wisdom of previous generations as the most solid foundations of political life
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
