Uniform Fantasies: Soldiers, Sex, and Queer Emancipation in Imperial Germany

An interesting interpretive standpoint has come in recent years to characterize synthetic treatments of Imperial and Weimar Germany, and oddly, it is most often laid out in connection with discussions of reform and reformers. The history of reform in early twentieth-century Germany, we now consistently hear, is more complex than we once thought, and this fact is a central piece of evidence that early twentieth-century Germany, too, was more complex than we thought. In fact, the invocation of the sheer variety and creativity of Wilhelmine reform as a challenge to the available interpretive frameworks in the historiography on modern Germany is in danger of becoming formulaic. The available models, it appears, are unable to contain the massive proliferation of studies of the varieties of reform in Imperial Germany; they are beginning to burst at the seams. This is uniformly perceived as an exciting development, a chance to rethink modernity in Germany.

Reviewed by: Church Robbers and Reformers in Germany, 1525–1547: Confiscation and Religious Purpose in the Holy Roman Empire Sybil M. Jack Ocker, Christopher, Church Robbers and Reformers in Germany, 1525–1547: Confiscation and Religious Purpose in the Holy Roman Empire (Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions; v. 114), Leiden, Brill, 2006; hardback; pp. xx, 338; 6 b/w illustrations; RRP €99.00; ISBN 9004152067. Christopher Ocker is a well-established historian of theology in the medieval and early modern period. In this work, he turns his attention to the ideas underlying the confiscation of religious property in the Holy Roman Empire during the early reformation. This is a formidable undertaking as there were a multitude of states within the Holy Roman Empire with different legal customs and practices and varied relationships with the Catholic Church. Information about some aspects of the confiscations is patchy, and even the precise numbers of religious houses in the area remains to be established. Ocker's interest lies almost exclusively in examining the arguments that reforming theologians formulated about church ownership of property and how these related to the way in which different cities and states within the Holy Roman Empire acted when they resumed or redirected the use of church property. He is primarily concerned with what he sees as a Europe-wide standard (p. 5) and the 'universal' civil and canon law where discussions of property turn on issues of legitimacy and theft. He ascribes the only significant arguments to theologians, whom he describes as 'the technicians of religious legitimacy' (p. 13) and asserts that only the church had a 'truly impersonal concept of property' (p. 21). This is highly abstract as he formulates it, and sometimes leaves the course of events he is attempting to elucidate largely unintelligible, since he does not examine the concepts of law and justice and forms of rights over property embodied in territorial and feudal law, that are not necessarily similar to Canon law abstractions, but which are the usual basis for action in the secular courts of the realm and which justify the rulers' rights to make demands on church property. Even though Ocker recognizes that the major threat to the Augsburg confession was legal action not theological opposition and discusses the way the League responded in the Imperial Chamber Court, he gives a very limited explanation of the basis of that action. He begins from Canon Law dicta that viewed property once dedicated to religious purposes as inalienable, a general position that was modified in practice by a negotiated agreement that allowed rulers certain powers. He then struggles with the theologians' distinction between use and ownership, between rights that depend upon service and unencumbered Dominion, claiming that the Sachenspiegel – the vernacular recording that John III ordered in the fourteenth [End Page 213] century of formerly unwritten Saxon law- – illustrates this. He also struggles with the need to allow the ecclesiastical institution to use its property in various ways to support the purposes for which it is held. This concentration on academic theory ignores the long history of changing use or confiscation in the previous thousand years, such as the process associated with the fall of the Templars and the almost routine granting of papal permission for altered use of church property where its original purpose could not be maintained. After the Black Death, for instance, where the numbers of religious had dropped below a viable level, papal bulls permitted their property to be converted to other educational or welfare purposes. Ocker's largely factual account of the actual process of secularization in a selection of areas within the Empire and the Low Countries and the different approach of the secular rulers to appropriation of church possession does not elucidate the traditional power on which those rulers relied and the support they may have received from the representative assemblies in the individual states. Instead, he examines the complex relationship between the social hierarchy and the more privileged personnel of the church especially bishops and cathedral chapters, monks and nuns that, in the absence of the level of centralization that had developed in the Western monarchies, he thinks helps explain the diverging processes by which rulers...

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsGermany and the Holy Roman Empire, volume 1: Maximilian I to the Peace of Westphalia, 1490–1648. By Joachim Whaley. Oxford History of Early Modern Europe. Edited by R. J. W. Evans.Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. xxii+722. $160.00 (cloth). Germany and the Holy Roman Empire, volume 2: The Peace of Westphalia to the Dissolution of the Reich, 1648–1806. By Joachim Whaley. Oxford History of Early Modern Europe. Edited by R. J. W. Evans.Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. xxiv+745. $160.00 (cloth).Thomas A. Brady Jr.Thomas A. Brady Jr.University of California, Berkeley Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 86, Number 2June 2014 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/675482 Views: 136Total views on this site For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Recently social and cultural studies have experienced a 'spatial turn'. Space-related research seems ever expanding: some historians relate macroeconomics and human agency to regional contexts; others focus on micro-spaces like houses, taverns and parish churches; even virtual or imaginary spaces (such as Purgatory) attract increasing attention. In all of these works, space emerges as a social construct rather than a mere physical unit. This collection examines the potential and limitations of spatial approaches for the political history of preindustrial Europe. Adopting a broad definition of 'political', the volume concentrates on two key questions: Where did political exchange take place? And how did spatial dimensions affect political life in different periods and contexts? Taken together, the essays demonstrate that premodern Europeans made use of a much wider range of political sites than is usually assumed - not just princely courts, town halls and representative assemblies, but common fields as well as back rooms of provincial inns - and that spatial dimensions provided key variables in political life, both in terms of the embedding of practical governance and in the more abstract sense of patronage networks, conceptualizations of power and territorial ambitions. As such, this book offers a timely and critical engagement with the 'spatial turn' from a political perspective. Focusing on the distinct constitutional environments of England and the Holy Roman Empire - one associated with early centralization and strong parliamentary powers, the other with political fragmentation and absolutist tendencies, it bridges the usual gaps between late medievalists and early modernists and those between historians and scholars from other disciplines. Preface, commentary and a sketch of research perspectives discuss the wider implications of the papers' findings and reflect upon the potential and limits of spatial approaches for political history as a whole.Recently social and cultural studies have experienced a 'spatial turn'. Space-related research seems ever expanding: some historians relate macroeconomics and human agency to regional contexts; others focus on micro-spaces like houses, taverns and parish churches; even virtual or imaginary spaces (such as Purgatory) attract increasing attention. In all of these works, space emerges as a social construct rather than a mere physical unit. This collection examines the potential and limitations of spatial approaches for the political history of preindustrial Europe. Adopting a broad definition of 'political', the volume concentrates on two key questions: Where did political exchange take place? And how did spatial dimensions affect political life in different periods and contexts? Taken together, the essays demonstrate that premodern Europeans made use of a much wider range of political sites than is usually assumed - not just princely courts, town halls and representative assemblies, but common fields as well as back rooms of provincial inns - and that spatial dimensions provided key variables in political life, both in terms of the embedding of practical governance and in the more abstract sense of patronage networks, conceptualizations of power and territorial ambitions. As such, this book offers a timely and critical engagement with the 'spatial turn' from a political perspective. Focusing on the distinct constitutional environments of England and the Holy Roman Empire - one associated with early centralization and strong parliamentary powers, the other with political fragmentation and absolutist tendencies, it bridges the usual gaps between late medievalists and early modernists and those between historians and scholars from other disciplines. Preface, commentary and a sketch of research perspectives discuss the wider implications of the papers' findings and reflect upon the potential and limits of spatial approaches for political history as a whole.

Nation-state formation – Holy Roman Empire – Dissolution and realignment – Spain, fragmented – Reconquista – Charles V – Wars of succession – Centralisation under house of Bourbon – Napoleon – Spanish war of independence – History of the Cortes – Constitution of Cádiz – Weakness of Spanish Constitutionalism – German Confederation – Monarchical principle in Vienna Final Act – Old and new ideas of sovereignty – Metternich and fear of revolution – March revolution – Bismarckian empire as constitutional monarchy – Degeneration of the Reich – Exit the Kings – Enter Juan Carlos

The Holy Roman Empire, Reconsidered, edited by Jason Philip Coy, Benjamin Marschke, and David Warren Sabean. Spektrum: Publications of the German Studies Association, 1. New York, Berghahn Books, 2010 (hardback), 2013 (paper), xvii, 328 pp. $34.95 US (paper). The title of this book may not sound very enticing to many readers. After all, few historians spend a lot of time considering the Holy Roman in the first place, so why reconsider it? Yet in fact the Holy Roman Empire, which existed for over a thousand years and encompassed much of central Europe, is a subject of profound interest to anyone who wants to understand how such an unwieldy political organism could constantly reshape itself to meet the evolving needs of German society. Voltaire's tedious witticism that the Holy Roman was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire is too readily quoted by those who do not want to bother to find out how and why this remarkable political entity lasted so long and commanded so much allegiance before it finally collapsed under the weight of Napoleon's armies in 1806. At the annual meeting of the Gentian Studies Association in 2007, a total of ten separate sessions were devoted to reconsidering the Holy Roman Empire. Fourteen of the more than thirty papers given at that meeting have now been collected in this volume. All of the contributions are refreshingly short, reflecting their origins as twenty-minute conference papers. Many of these essays demonstrate the communicative turn in the study of history--the notion, simply stated, that signs, symbols, and words are not mere representations of the factors of power on which historians focus, but may be what political and social interactions are actually about. Though the Holy Roman was founded in the year 800, only one chapter in this volume focuses on the medieval Empire. Len Scales argues that the repeated transfer of the imperial crown from one great dynasty to another in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which is normally seen as a sign of the Empire's weakness, exposed the signs and symbols of imperial power to more and more people in various parts of central Europe. The other thirteen chapters deal mostly or wholly with the last three centuries of the Holy Roman Empire, corresponding to the early modern era of European history. Four authors focus on rulers, especially those whose unusual behaviour made them stand out from the multitude of German princes. Michaela Hohkamp revisits the story of Duke Ulrich of Wurttemberg, whose marital troubles in the 1510s contributed to his being driven out of his duchy by the Emperor. In the resulting war of words both the duke and his duchess were mercilessly smeared by their opponents, but Hohkamp shows that these competing accounts must not be taken literally as they drew on gendered stereotypes and served specific political goals. Michael Sikora examines a different kind of marital problem in princely families--cases when a prince insisted on marrying beneath his station, a seemingly private act which often had huge dynastic and political implications. Benjamin Marschke offers a new interpretation of the eccentric Prussian soldier-king Frederick William I, arguing that the king's famously unconventional behaviour actually posed little challenge to the Empire's fundamental values. Werner Trossbach considers princes who behaved so scandalously that imperial officials stepped in to remove them--but points out that this could only happen in the case of tiny territories whose rulers had no means to resist such intervention. …

The article concerns the attempts of the Livonian branch of the Teutonic Order to acquire the titles of princes of the Holy Roman Empire for the Livonian Master and for Livonian bishops. The principal factor that intensified the strengthening of ties between Livonia and the Holy Roman Empire was the subjugation of Prussia and the oath of fealty imposed upon Teutonic Grand Masters in Prussia by the Polish monarchy in 1466. The first initiative in this direction took place in the late 1460’s and then in the last decade of the 15th century. It is important to note, however, that they were attempts undertaken by the German masters of the Order. The war between the Kingdom of Poland and the Prussian branch of the Order in 1519–1521, as well as the deteriorating position of the Order in Prussia caused the Livonia branch to attempt similar initiatives. Efforts to achieve tighter relations with the Holy Roman Empire further intensified in the spring of 1525 when the Prussian branch of the Order was liquidated. On the basis of previously unused source materials from the Vienna archive, the author of the article provides a detailed analysis of the diplomatic activities taking place in the court of Charles V in years 1525–1527. On the 24th of December 1526, these diplomatic activities led to the granting of princely regalia to the Bishop of Courland, Hermann Ronneberg. Contrary to the established opinion that is popular in the literature, the Livonian Master Wolter von Plettenberg did not receive the title of prince on Christmas Eve of 1526 but rather one year later. In the meantime, the emperor awarded the German Master of the Order, Walther von Cronberg the title of the administrator of the office of the Grandmaster. Both dignitaries received these offices as fiefdoms during a ceremony arranged in July 26th, 1530, Augsburg. Though the tight relations between Livonia and the Holy Roman Empire were an important factor influencing the policies of the Livonian Masters during the next three decades, they did not prevent the dissolution of the Livionian branch of the Order in 1561/1562.

The historian and political philosopher Samuel Pufendorf in 1667 famously described the Holy Roman Empire (HRE) as an irregular body much like a mythical beast – I hesitate to employ the usual rendering monster since although monstrum does have a pejorative connotation it seems less strong in Latin than in English. Rather than something repellent or threatening what Pufendorf had in mind was probably more like a unicorn, a centaur, or a chimera, which combine features that nature assigns to separate and unmixable species. The context in which Pufendorf wrote was the contemporary debate about which of the classical political categories – more particularly, democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy – the empire fell into. Each position had its defenders. But Pufendorf argued that although the empire seemed to contain elements of each of those categories it did not fit any of them; hence it was irregular, a monstrum. Its existence contradicted received wisdom – the more so the longer it continued. Thus, a century after Pufendorf Voltaire would observe that the reasons that led to the collapse of the (west) Roman empire of antiquity were less obvious by far than the reasons that should long since have led to the collapse of the HRE, except that somehow it just went on regardless. Similarly, the European Union (EU) today presents itself as something very much sui generis, something that seems to defy comparison – except that that very fact actually invites comparison with the HRE. And it is not the only similarity. Both the HRE and the EU combine institutional complexity with cumbersomely slow decisionmaking; both have influential common institutions while lacking a central power; both have great difficulty formulating a common foreign policy, and while some members have quite impressive military capabilities their common organisation lacks military weight or ambition. Yet for all their apparent shortcomings both the HRE and the EU have never been challenged fundamentally by their members, which have always seen greater advantage in sticking with the organisation than in leaving it. On the other hand, there are also fundamental differences between the two which must call in question the validity of any comparison. The proposed paper will examine these issues. The aim is to achieve a better understanding of the EU and more generally of the utility of comparing political structures across periods.

This paper examines the rationality of Imperial Germany’s and post-Tiananmen China’s foreign policy from a defensive realist perspective, since defensive realism is a prescription for rational behavior, while offensive realism isn’t; other international relations theories might well be prescriptions for rational behavior, however, they fail to face the world as it is because of their bias towards idealism. A comparison between Imperial Germany and contemporary China matters because, comparing China to an actor – Wilhelmine Germany – which is commonly referred to as the paragon of an irrational actor, is not only unjust towards China, but also wrong, since Wilhelmine Germany wasn’t an irrational actor in the sense that it is widely conceived as. I argue that Imperial Germany was not an irrational before 1905-1907, years after first bringing up the indicative term depicting Germany as an irrational actor: “Weltpolitik”, an empty phrase which was not indicative of aggressive (enough) behavior because it wasn’t Weltpolitik which caused the formation of the Franco-Russian, Anglo-French, and Anglo-Russian alliances. Taking the number one premise of realism – state security / chances of survival – as the decisive factor to indicate rational state behavior, I argue that Germany became an irrational actor because it failed to adapt to the redistribution of capabilities in the system, first after 1904, but surely after 1907. On China’s part, we can say that it was an irrational actor from the early to mid-1990s. Starting in the late nineties, it followed a decade of representing a rational actor, resembling Bismarckian Germany so to say, only to go back to being an irrational actor again after 2008. Nationalism (rather nationalist ideology) played a role in interfering both on Germany’s and on China’s part with their Realpolitik approaches to their foreign policy.

Although Imperial Germany was begun before United States entered World War I, little in book however relates to that particular conflict. Rather, this is in large part study of divergencies in cultural development between English-speaking peoples and German-speaking peoples, and of consequences this produced in economic and social spheres. Suppressed by war censors, Imperial Germany was again released after war, and has assumed place as major contribution to economics and sociology alike. The comments on book have scarcely been altered by time. Charles A. Beard noted that Veblen wrote for centuries, not for days, and his Imperial Germany ranks with his immortal Theory of Business Enterprise. Wesley C. Mitchell, reflecting on book during World War II, wrote that the natural causes that made Imperial Germany efficient are at work under Nazi regime, and forecast that proved sound once may do so again. Lewis Mumford called Imperial Germany still best picture of residual barbarisms in German civilization; soil out of which Nazism grew. This new edition is graced with brilliant and insightful opening essay that is at once commentary on Veblen's volume, and statement of historic status of German economy and society. Written by Otto G. Mayer, director in leading German Think Tank, HWWA-Institut fur Wirtschaftsforschung-Hamburg, editor of Intereconomics, journal issued in English, and an author of major policy statements on economic and social issues, new opening statement underscores view of those who came before, that Veblen's book is a treasure chest of knowledge.

Although Imperial Germany was begun before United States entered World War I, little in book however relates to that particular conflict. Rather, this is in large part study of divergencies in cultural development between English-speaking peoples and German-speaking peoples, and of consequences this produced in economic and social spheres. Suppressed by war censors, Imperial Germany was again released after war, and has assumed place as major contribution to economics and sociology alike. The comments on book have scarcely been altered by time. Charles A. Beard noted that Veblen wrote for centuries, not for days, and his Imperial Germany ranks with his immortal Theory of Business Enterprise. Wesley C. Mitchell, reflecting on book during World War II, wrote that the natural causes that made Imperial Germany efficient are at work under Nazi regime, and forecast that proved sound once may do so again. Lewis Mumford called Imperial Germany still best picture of residual barbarisms in German civilization; soil out of which Nazism grew. This new edition is graced with brilliant and insightful opening essay that is at once commentary on Veblen's volume, and statement of historic status of German economy and society. Written by Otto G. Mayer, director in leading German Think Tank, HWWA-Institut fur Wirtschaftsforschung-Hamburg, editor of Intereconomics, journal issued in English, and an author of major policy statements on economic and social issues, new opening statement underscores view of those who came before, that Veblen's book is a treasure chest of knowledge.

Although Imperial Germany was begun before United States entered World War I, little in book however relates to that particular conflict. Rather, this is in large part study of divergencies in cultural development between English-speaking peoples and German-speaking peoples, and of consequences this produced in economic and social spheres. Suppressed by war censors, Imperial Germany was again released after war, and has assumed place as major contribution to economics and sociology alike. The comments on book have scarcely been altered by time. Charles A. Beard noted that Veblen wrote for centuries, not for days, and his Imperial Germany ranks with his immortal Theory of Business Enterprise. Wesley C. Mitchell, reflecting on book during World War II, wrote that the natural causes that made Imperial Germany efficient are at work under Nazi regime, and forecast that proved sound once may do so again. Lewis Mumford called Imperial Germany still best picture of residual barbarisms in German civilization; soil out of which Nazism grew. This new edition is graced with brilliant and insightful opening essay that is at once commentary on Veblen's volume, and statement of historic status of German economy and society. Written by Otto G. Mayer, director in leading German Think Tank, HWWA-Institut fur Wirtschaftsforschung-Hamburg, editor of Intereconomics, journal issued in English, and an author of major policy statements on economic and social issues, new opening statement underscores view of those who came before, that Veblen's book is a treasure chest of knowledge.

Reviewed by: Imperial Germany, 1871 - 1918: Short Oxford History of Germany William Mulligan (bio) James Retallack , editor. Imperial Germany, 1871 - 1918: Short Oxford History of Germany. Oxford University Press. xvi, 328. US$100.00 The study of imperial Germany remains vibrant, as the essays in this volume of the Short Oxford History of Germany demonstrate. A combination of well-established historians and the leading scholars of a new generation have written a series of lively contributions, each of which is opened by a [End Page 377] short anecdote illustrating some of the central issues identified in the excellent introduction by James Retallack. Alongside two chapters examining the politics of Bismarckian and Wilhelmine Germany, there are thematic essays on the economy, society, religion, culture, gender, bourgeois reform, political culture, militarism, and Germany in the world, before a concluding chapter on the First World War. Four themes form the 'interpretative arc' of the volume: social and economic change, the relationship of the middle classes to the state, conflict, and the relationship between authoritarian and modern features of imperial Germany. These issues have been at the heart of research since the 1960s, but in this volume they are reworked in important ways. In particular, Retallack notes that historians have developed different geographical frames in which to locate modern German history. The attention to the local and, at the other end of the scale, the global framework of German history in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has opened new perspectives. For example, national identity and the process of state formation were heavily influenced by responses to such diverse issues as the increasingly interdependent world economy and the emergence of new elites in towns and villages around the country. For example, Christopher Clark's chapter on religion begins with a story about a conflict over the commemoration of the Lutheran Reformation in Affaltrach in Württemberg and concludes with a comment on the Continent-wide dimension of church-state conflict in the late nineteenth century. A second important development is that the history of imperial Germany is no longer read as the precursor to the Third Reich. The debate about Germany's special path, or Sonderweg, gave a particular intensity to the historiographical debates between the 1960s and 1980s. The relationship between imperial and Nazi Germany remains on the research agenda, as recent debates about military culture and colonial warfare have demonstrated. In this volume, however, the editor and the contributors have generally resisted drawing a line between Bismarck and Hitler. Retallack concludes that the subjects of imperial Germany would have been astonished by the idea that the Third Reich would constitute their nation's future. Instead the half-century dividing the founding of the Kaiserreich and its downfall was a period of transition, in which contemporaries struggled, but often succeeded, in coming to terms with change. It was a period with many possible outcomes, 'an object worthy of study in its own right.' By releasing imperial Germany from the teleological straitjacket of 1933, it encourages historians to explore a much wider range of themes and issues than had been the case in the heyday of the Sonderweg debate. Topics such as reform-minded bourgeois groups and the rich texture of civil society become more interesting if they are not written off as the dead ends of German history. [End Page 378] If the volume is a marker for the state of the current debates on imperial Germany, Retallack also offers some sage advice about future research directions. Given the renewed interest in military history, in the broadest sense of the term, it is no surprise to see the First World War highlighted as an important area of research, though he suggests that the experience of the war years needs to be integrated into general histories of imperial Germany. Pushing the study of the emergence of mass politics in the 1870s and 1880s might give a more rounded view of the Bismarckian era, which is dominated by the character of the Iron Chancellor. By summarizing the complexities of the current debate and setting out fresh research agendas, Retallack's volume will offer an invaluable guide to both experts and students. William Mulligan William...

Martynas Jankus (1858–1946) is a famous worker of Lithuanian press in Prussia, a participant of national movement, a politician who supported bringing together two parts of the Lithuanian nation separated by the borders between German and Russian empires. Over more than 40 years he had published and printed 395 non-periodical and 27 periodical publications in Lithuanian and some in German and Byelorussian languages. Among the authors of these publications, there were many significant representatives of Lithuanian and other nations: writers, ethnologists, historians, Protestant theologians and politicians. Jankus’ personality was formed by the life style of a peasant family, social environment of his native Bitėnai village and the pressure of national discrimination affecting the indigenous people. He attended only a primary school and later self-educated himself by reading voratiously literature about Lithuania and Lithuanians. Lithuanian newspapers and especially the works by Georg Sauerwein, a defender of the interests of small nations in the German empire, published in them have increased his motivation for social activity. The active political movement of the end of the 19th century and the election campaigns to the Prussian Landtag and German Reichstag directly influenced his decision to participate in publishing. In 1879–1888 he published several leaflets in support of Lithuanian candidates, some books, pamphlets and calendars for the cultural education of Lithuanians. Among these publications Jankus included his own collections of original and folk poetry as well as prose translated from German and Polish languages augmented by polemic articles. When Jankus got acquainted with the members of the national movement in Great Lithuania, he became an editor and administrator of the Lithuanian periodical “Auszra” established by them. Other editors stayed on his farm in Bitėnai. As there was a lack of popular literature,Jankus and his companion published the Lithuanian “Auszra” calendar (“Lietuviškas “Auszros“ kalendorius”) in 1883 and 1884. The texts of educational and applied character were published in the calendar as well as literary texts, such as original and translated poetry and prose. They were written by Lithuanian authors Jonas Basanavičius, Andrius Jonas Vištelis, Petras Vileišis, and writers of other nations such as Sauerwein, Józef Ignac Kraszewski, Adam Mickiewicz, Ivan Krylov, Aleksandr Puškin, William Shakespeare and Guy de Maupasannt. For many Lithuanians these translations were the first acquaintance with the world literature.Martynas Jankus used to order printing of his books, calendars and “Auszra” in the printing houses of nearby towns, such as Ragnit (Lith.: Ragainė) and Tilsit (Lith.: Tilžė). Their production was disseminated in Lithuania Minor and smuggled to the Great Lithuania, which was under the strict ban on Latin printing introduced by the Russian tsarist regime. For this purpose, Jankus established a network of illegal disseminators of literature. It consisted of two sectors: secret book transporters over the border and disseminators in the Great Lithuania and legal storage owners near the border on the side of Prussia. This network was extended along the German-Russian border from Palanga till Dubeningken (Lith.: Dūbininkai; Dubeninki in present day Poland).The first stage of publishing activity was successful for Martynas Jankus. He acquired publishing expertise, knowledge of organizing illegal business, created long-term relations with the owners of printing houses, established the network for the dissemination of publications, developed skills to supply it with different printing materials and information. By March of 1889, the publisher from Bitėnai had established his own printing house in Ragnit and started printing business. This was the start of the second stage of Martynas Jankus’ activity.

Shortly after the proclamation of the Second German empire in 1871, the future Prussian court preacher Adolf Stoecker rejoiced, remarking: ‘The holy, Protestant empire of the German nation is now completed.’ This statement exemplifies the important, if often overlooked, contribution that Christianity made to the construction of modern Germany. The phrase itself recalls the ‘Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation’ that perished in 1806 and demonstrates the ongoing resonance of the imperial idea for conceptualising the nation throughout the nineteenth century. But by substituting the word ‘Protestant’ ( evangelisch ) for the word ‘Roman’, Stoecker also asserted that creating this new Germany was not simply a matter of ‘blood and iron’ or even of establishing acceptable constitutional relationships among the member states. In a very fundamental way it entailed resolving a question left open since the Reformation: what kind of Christian nation would Germany be? Christianity exercised a telling influence on the creation of modern Germany. After 1815 confessional pluralism existed in most of the major German states, compelling each one to develop new legal and social policies to deal with the reality of religious co-existence. The redrawing of state boundaries also necessitated alterations in ecclesiastical organisation and the clarification of church–state relations. Such measures were intended to promote interconfessional peace, but as religious revivals renewed a sense of confessional particularity among Catholics and Protestants, state policies increasingly touched off dissent and socio-political conflict. By mid-century, the heightened sense of confessional difference had constructed a minefield for German politicians that affected domestic politics, church–state relations and, above all, public discussions of the ‘German question’.