DOCUMENTATION | Exhibitions: 1648 - War and Peace in Europe |
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Essay Volumes > Tome II: Art and culture |
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CLAIRE GANTET
Peace Celebrations Commemorating the Peace of Westphalia in Southern German Cities and the Recollection of the Thirty Years' War (1648-1871) |
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A major altercation preceded the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War: in 1606 and 1607, the Protestants in Donauwörth attacked the Saint Mark's Day procession and made the relics and banners look ridiculous. Maximilian I of Bavaria occupied the city in December 1608 and banned the Protestant cult, thwarting any possibility of a settlement between the Catholics and the Protestants and leading to the creation of the Protestant Union and the Catholic League.
At the end of the war, however, peace celebrations took place. [1] Although historiography has examined some aspects of subversive celebrations, their function as a means of neutralising and euphemizing collective violence still remains largely unresearched. Though the conclusion of any war is normally celebrated in an atmosphere of euphoria, the scope and continuation of the Peace of Westphalia's celebration certainly seek their equivalent in history. Thus, beyond the attendant diplomatic and legal circumstances which set the Peace of Westphalia in motion, the treaties can also be depicted by the social and cultural practices connected to them.
I. Peace celebrations from 1648 until 1660
The signing of the various peace treaties which ended the general conflict was celebrated in four successive waves of festivities from May 1648 until August 1660. The first wave of peace celebrations was held in Münster, Osnabrück, the southern Netherlands and the United Provinces and paid tribute to the peace treaty between Spain and the United Provinces (15 May 1648). Ending eighty years of war, the Peace of Münster was viewed as a guarantee of the new republic's independence. The country's regained harmony was also cause for rejoicing. The peace was celebrated not only by the commercial cities of the north, for example Amsterdam, but also by the Catholic cities of the south, like Antwerp B although the latter had emerged as the losers of the war politically and economically. All these celebrations were municipal festivities, which took place around the city hall. In the fragile new Dutch Republic, although divided by conflict, the desire to remain conscious of the recent suffering and pass the memory on to other generations also existed beside the euphoric need to forget. [2]
The second and third waves of celebration were concentrated within the Empire. The signing of the peace treaty was celebrated at the end of 1648, in 1649 and upon its ratification in 1650. The peace of 1648 was viewed as a rebirth after the trauma of the war. After the general constitutional crisis and crisis of confidence which had culminated in the war, the desire above all to re-establish the harmony of the Imperial estates B "the old loyalty deceased / is renewed through the peace" [3] B as well as to restore normalcy, was evident. The year 1650 marked the war's actual end, however, and was regarded afterwards as the year zero, or the beginning of a new era of peace. (The priest Caspar Friedrich Nachtenhöfer from Meeder, a small village in Ernestine Saxony, began renumbering the years as of this date.) Consequently, the conclusion of the peace was most often celebrated in this year.
It has been shown that in 1650, eighty-three celebrations took place in the Empire, compared with forty in 1648 and forty-seven in 1649. The principal event of 1650 was the conclusion of the agreement signed at the congress in Nuremberg on 26 June, which confirmed the Peace of Westphalia and outlined the details of the occupation troops' withdrawal from Germany. Following an old Imperial free city tradition, Nuremberg thus became the centre of festivities in 1650. Reminiscent of court balls, they consisted of dances, a splendid banquet, and finally, a great fireworks display. In the festival program, compiled by poets and dramaturges of the Fruitful Society and the Pegnese Flower Order, the peace was placed in a sacral context, free of any political or social intent; the war, however, was aestheticised allegorically. Contemporaries were vaguely aware of the celebration's ambiguity B existing between affirmation and defensiveness, between joy and fear B and attempted to overcome the tension by bringing this ambivalence into play and transforming symbols of the war into ones of peace.
The echo of Nuremberg's celebrations was immediate and tremendous. At least sixty-seven celebrations were organised within the Empire between 26 July 1650 and the end of the year. Sigmund von Birken, Johann Klaj and Georg Philipp Harsdörffer found emulators not only in Weimar with Johann Thomas, but also in Coburg with Michael Franck. In Altenburg, the decision was reached on 6 August to organise a peace celebration throughout Ernestine Saxony for 19/29 August because it coincided with the date set in the Nuremberg agreement for the planned withdrawal of the occupation troops. This connection of the celebration with the peace's daily consequences was also evident in Frankenthal's peace celebration, which took place only after the settlement of the question surrounding the withdrawal of unpaid Swedish troops in 1652.
Local authorities often chose a date with local significance for the peace celebrations. The capital cities only celebrated this compromise peace in a traditional way B that is, with a Te Deum and fireworks. In Prague, capital of the rebellious kingdom where the war had commenced and ended, the celebration was the most spectacular; it consisted of a formal celebration on Sunday, 24 July 1650, with the pealing of bells, a Te Deum in all churches, and 108 salvos. Following this, public festivals took place: "Among other things, by such triumph, merry green birch branches were set up in front of the most distinguished residences and at night, lights were placed in the windows; in several places, bonfires were lit B on the bridge and on the little island B or Venice B on the water and then fireworks were thrown in front of the city, such that this day was remembered in all sincere joy." [4]
The fourth wave of celebrations occurred in 1660 on the occasion of the Peace of the Pyrenees. In France, there had been no reason to celebrate in 1648. In the Paris of the Fronde, suffering at that time from a blockade and famine, this event gave cause to the writing of satirical pamphlets about Cardinal Mazarin, the Mazarinades, in which domestic problems were continually combined with foreign policy issues. The rumours first spread the news of a general European peace; subsequently however, pamphlets explaining the "delay of the peace" with Spain's falsity or with the Fronde of the Parlement of Paris became rampant. The king's return to the capital on Saint Louis' Day was actually celebrated as a peace festival, [5] but even more as the celebration of a peace which had yet to be concluded.
The Peace of the Pyrenees, though, was celebrated with great pomp in Paris at the beginning of February and then again in August 1660. Celebrated more than the peace treaty, however, was the victory over the Habsburgs B the end of the prépondérance espagnole B sealed by Louis XIV's marriage to Maria Teresa, Philip IV's eldest daughter.
Thereby, the Parisian celebration of the Peace of the Pyrenees, the most magnificent celebration of the ancien régime, [6] began with the king's festive entry into the decorated city and ended with fireworks. The celebration of 1660 thus counter-pointed that of 1649: the procession of 1660 travelled along Saint Antoine Street B the street in which the duke of Condé had defeated the royal army, in which he was received and through which he entered into Paris B up to the Notre Dame Bridge, where barricades had been constructed during the rebellion against Mazarin. In this sense, the celebration of 1660 constituted a recollection of the Fronde. The large provincial cities, such as in Lyon and Reims, as well as several German cities, such as Memmingen and Augsburg, also celebrated the peace.
In spite of the varied political contexts surrounding these festivities, they displayed some similarities B particularly their effect on children. The anecdote recounted in Nuremberg of children on hobby-horses in the quarters of Piccolomini, who found this amusing and thus decided to have a double commemorative ducat minted, has a parallel in the Paris of 1649: Louis XIV, then only an eleven-year old boy, received some children fighting with wooden sabres, laughed about it, and therefore rewarded their leader with a banquet on Midsummer's Day. [7] At all the peace celebrations, children led the processions. In this context of virtual hopelessness, they were the most valuable possession and occupied a corresponding position in the culture of remembrance.
A two-fold character distinguished these celebrations: on the one hand, a public side, whereby the municipal authorities provided for their citizens in the city's symbolic area (for example, the wine fountains which bubbled in cities from Nuremberg to Amsterdam); on the other hand, a carnival-like side, where the symbols of the war were transformed and reused (the same trumpets and drums which the armies had carried on the march now heralded the peace; the cannons now fired salvos; and tears of joy followed tears of blood).
II. The geography of the celebrations
Altogether, at least 204 different peace celebrations have been counted in Europe between 1648 and 1660, of which 181 were held in the Empire. Of these, ninety-eight took place in Franconia, Württemberg and Swabia, only eighty-two, however, in the rest of the Empire. Maps of the distribution of these celebrations and their intensity display the predominance of Lutheranism (which explains the numerous celebrations in Saxony) and the urban network (which explains the numerous celebrations in Franconia and Swabia). Thus, these festivities were at once confessional and urban celebrations.
The rarity of peace celebrations in Catholic territories stands out immediately. The Catholic recollection of the Thirty Years' War revolved more around the Battle of White Mountain than around the peace. In 1650, a Marian pillar was erected in Prague in commemoration of the Peace of Westphalia B in fact, on the very spot where the Prague Court of Blood had taken place in 1621. As thanks for the victory at White Mountain, exact replicas of the relic of Loreto were constructed in Hradschin itself as well as in Vienna, Silesia, Moravia and southern Germany. The wife of Jaroslav Borita Martinic, one of the victims of the Defenestration of Prague, made an offering with a votive picture at the shrine of Altötting, which attracted the great Catholic families (the Slawatas and the Lobkowiczs) as well as the Jesuits expelled from Bohemia. This influx of visitors contributed to the upswing of Altötting, which became Bavaria's largest shrine and enjoyed the duke of Bavaria's protection because it housed Tilly's corpse. As of 1620, the "Prague Procession" occurred every year in Munich on the first Sunday after All Saint's Day; later, the celebration "Maria de Victoria" (3 October) was introduced at the Viennese court.
The majority of the peace celebrations took place in the Imperial free cities which felt a need to express their loyalty to the emperor and the Empire in the wake of the constitutional crisis and crisis of confidence of the war years. A similar need also explains the extent of the festivities in Saxony, which viewed itself as custodian of the Imperial constitution. The institutionalisation of the peace celebrations is, however, characteristic of the south. Three different forms existed: that of a new interpretation of earlier children's festivals (like May Day in Göppingen), that of a religious celebration (as in Oettingen, Pfadelbach, Schweinfurt and, in many respects, Coburg) and finally that of an annual peace celebration (for example in Lindau and Augsburg).
The confessional mixture constituted the main reason for the festivities' institutionalisation. The Peace of Westphalia, which awarded the same rights to Catholics, Lutherans and members of the Reformed church and which codified the system of parity in several cities, was naturally celebrated, especially by the Lutherans. Article V of the IPO, which established 1624 as the "normative date" for determining the state of ecclesiastical possessions and denomination, was not valid for religious celebrations and thus enabled the Lutherans to institute new celebrations. These celebrations expressed the desire to guarantee the Peace of Westphalia B that is, the political, and with it, the religious peace. Their annual recurrence alone ensured the peace's continuation, particularly since the co-existence of Catholics and Protestants brought with it a "staged separation" [8] and an extreme ritualisation of the gestures of everyday life. Curious and sarcastic philosophers of the Enlightenment depicted this state of affairs in a vicious way: "instead of their being able to draw near to each other and intermingle via their parity rights, they intentionally distance themselves the furthest possible each side pushing bigotry as far as possible.Y The holidays abolished in other places are held in Augsburg as in Regensburg with great ceremony". [9]
The celebrations in Augsburg and Coburg, though, stand out from all others. Here, they were institutionalised and held every year B a tradition maintained until the present in Augsburg and until at least 1855 in Coburg. Each of these cities displayed a very different character however. Coburg was the small Lutheran residence of the duke of Saxe-Coburg and had much of the character of a large rural village protected by the Franconian Forest, whereas Augsburg was a large cultural centre and an Imperial free city without territory, which was also endowed with parity rights, a fact which strengthened its residents' civic consciousness. Nevertheless, these cities had a similar role in the history of the Reformation. While under Imperial ban, Luther resided in Coburg's fortress; and in Augsburg, the Lutherans presented Charles V with the Augsburg Confession in 1530. Additionally, the Religious Peace of Augsburg was finally signed in the city on the Lech River in 1555.
From the beginning, Augsburg's peace celebration was intended as an annual festival. The news of the conclusion of the Nuremberg Agreement reached Augsburg on 28 June 1650; [10] the occupation troops were evacuated on 30 July and the festival organised for 8 August. It consisted of two parts: a great peace celebration planned for 8 August and a peace festival for children on the following Wednesday. The best evidence of the intention to found a festive tradition is provided by the copper etchings, or so-called peace paintings, which were distributed among the children from 1651 until 1789. [11] It had been decided early on that each year, a copper etching modelled after the illustrated Lutheran Bible should depict an excerpt from the Bible following the sequence of its books (with the exception of some scenes of a more allegorical or historical character). It seems a book had been planned, in which the children would have turned over a new page each year.
A teacher from the city documented the first peace celebration's course of events:
... the churches were adorned by us beforehand with birch branches / tapestries / and painted panels / and on this celebration day, it was not only a holiday / but Holy Communion was also given in all of our churches. / One went to church joyfully at five o'clock in the morning. / There, one heard not only a lovely sermon of thanksgiving / but also beautiful psalms sung / the organs resounded / before and after the sermon.... In many cases, the muskets were / removed from the city quarters. / In the evening, sermons were held again in all churches... and in the city, / the citizens looked out their windows the entire day long...." [12]
The children's peace festival was organised in its definite form in 1651:
Likewise, on the ninth Wednesday afterwards, the children's class was held / in a large assembly / in the three parish churches of Saint Anna / Parfüesser / and Saint Ulrich. / No children were exempt from reciting something.... The boys went in their Sunday clothes / but the girls were donned finely, prettily and cleanly / went bare-headed with pearled hair ribbons.... On this and the previous evening, various singing in a round by the girls / was held in the city. / They sung though nothing other / than Christian songs and psalms... until ten o'clock at night. / That did not please the Papists / but pleased the Evangelists well indeed. [13]
At a time in which amassment was preferred over synthesis, the churches were filled with a great many inscriptions, commemorating the emperor and the Empire as well as the history of the Reformation with allegorical pictures, tapestries and paintings, with May greenery, flowers and sand, which appealed to all the senses in a celebration totally overflowing with symbolism. The celebration as a form of representation has a largely hyperbolic character. Overlaid with the euphoric emphasis of the May greenery and flowers, political depictions can also be found:
... similarly, Barfüsser church was beautifully adorned with birch branches / instead of wall coverings, beautiful panels / hung up so on the church columns and on the high tower / for example, Mssrs. Weberi Senior / Gabelij Senior / Pauli Denischij / D. Lutheri / the king of Sweden / Duke Bernhard of Weimar and the royal princess of Sweden, Christinæ and others, portraits / and small painted panels / stood in the church on the gilded backs of the chairs / their beautifully written sayings and rhymes in Gothic print written over the church doors inside and out, for instance >through peace came joy / o joy / o peace'.... [14]
How were these celebrations of reconciliation received? What place did they occupy among the general public and to what extent did the population participate in them? In Coburg, the money raised by the celebration B financed by a ducal gift and public collections B remained astonishingly stable from 1650 until 1843. In Augsburg, the peace celebration in the Barfüsser church brought in between 108 and 120.45 florins every year from 1659 until 1664, between 50.51 and 97.54 florins from 1665 until 1676, [15] and between 28.55 and 56.19 florins from 1686 until 1708. [16] The income generated by the peace celebration was recorded in ecclesiastical reports, where it was listed as one of the year's four main religious celebrations next to Easter, Pentecost and Christmas. The peace celebration in Augsburg thus brought in the most revenue of all the religious holidays. In regard to the celebration's cost, details are only available regarding the production costs of the peace paintings, of which approximately 1,000 were produced and then distributed among the children of the Lutheran schools or sold outside the city. In 1722, for example, the production of the peace paintings cost the Barfüsser church 105.34 florins. [17] What purpose did the copper etchings serve? They were probably supposed to contribute primarily to awareness of the Thirty Years' War.
In any case, a distinct transformation existed from the conceptual to the actual celebration which, in the end, became a victim of its own success. In 1650, the participation of the faithful was very high; at the Barfüsser church alone, 981 communicants were counted and more than 200 children took part in the children's celebration, while on the anniversary of the Religious Peace of Augsburg on 25 September 1655, only 697 communicants were in attendance at the church. [18] But "at eight o'clock on this morning, the Lutherans celebrated... / the Peace of Münster, Osnabrück and Nuremberg / with feasting, drinking and zest for life. The entire day long no vaults and no shops were open, and continuously from morning until evening, they fired from their houses with muskets, rifles and pistols, from which a shot was fired in Anthonius Dabertshofer's dwelling, and fell close to his child" [19] B such that the Evangelical portion of the city council prohibited the use of weapons for firing salutes.
Symbolising the spread of order within the city, the celebration was actually potentially subversive because its depicted order collided with the order of everyday life, even though the municipal and Lutheran authorities organised it. The peace celebration in Augsburg, limited to the churches, neutralised the area which the Lutherans had to share with the Catholics on a daily basis. The only procession was comprised exclusively of children, a fact which eased and euphemised the festivities. On the other hand, the peace celebration in Coburg was characterised by a procession also led by children, followed, however, by council members, women and guild members. With the sound of psalms being sung in the background, the procession crossed through the city from its outer wall to the churches and the palace, then on to Coburg's fortress before returning again to the marketplace through the streets lined with noble homes.
As a ritual in the anthropological sense of the word, the celebration was a system of inclusion and exclusion, particularly because the confessional dynamics of its presentation excluded the Catholics. The latter responded to this with the reintroduction of carnival B a traditional target of Lutheran criticism B and with the emphatic celebration of the Feast of Corpus Christi (as of 1806, this was an officially recognised holiday and counterpart to the peace celebration in Augsburg). On the day of the peace celebration B a holiday for the Protestants B the Catholics redoubled their enthusiasm, especially in those places which were shared by both confessions according to the principle of parity. In this context, symbolic conflict played a greater role than actual social conflict; Wolfgang Sulzer's diary gives an account of the conflicts in great detail.
The celebration excluded some, but many also excluded themselves from it: in this case the poorest, starved and impoverished, those, in other words, who had absolutely nothing B particularly nothing to celebrate. The war profiteers could not celebrate freely either. A pastor from the area around Coburg, Martin Bötzinger, reported in 1650:
A short time later it was said once again that there was peace in the land, the Peace of Osnabrück and Münster, said my schoolmaster B but I did not believe it until I was in Coburg and took part in the great peace celebration, which was announced for Sebaldus Day of the year 1650.Y Many were there, they fell in each other's arms and wept so that one's heart could break; others cried out and did not want to be consoled by anyone, while several who had trafficked in goods and profited from food products stood alone and were treated with general contempt, one was even spit at in the face. [20]
What was there in fact to celebrate in the years between 1648 and 1650, which were still marked by the war? What was really celebrated? The only celebration held on 24 October B the anniversary of the signing of the Münster treaties B took place in the church of the Holy Cross in Augsburg, which the Catholics had destroyed, but the Protestants had already rebuilt and christened by 1653. The peace celebration in Augsburg occurred on 8 August in commemoration of 8 August 1629, the day on which the Edict of Restitution came into force in the city. At that time, all pastors were forced to convert to Catholicism under the threat of expulsion and all of the city's Lutheran churches and schools were closed. After 1635, the Protestant believers were only allowed to congregate in the church of Saint Anna's courtyard or at the cemetery; and as a symbol of the daily threat, gallows were erected on the square in front of the city hall. The peace celebration was thus both a public commemoration of the "wonder of the Peace of Westphalia", which saved the Lutherans from destruction, and a recollection of the traumatic events of the war. In the peace celebration of 8 August, many contradictory events were united, particularly the most negative event in the history of the Lutherans in Augsburg, the Edict of Restitution of 8 August 1629, and the war's most positive event for them, Gustavus Adolphus' entry into the city on 24 April 1632 and the restoration of Lutheranism. The memory of the war was therefore firmly connected to that of persecution. At the same time, the recollection was not organised chronologically, but determined rather by analogy with other periods of persecution. In the rhetoric of the sermons held for the peace celebration, the year 1629 stood for the "Deformation", which had almost destroyed the "Reformation" B that is, the reforms of Luther and Gustavus Adolphus. Beyond this, the peace celebration was also intended as a commemoration of 26 August 1551 (the abolition of the Lutheran priesthood) as well as the year 1591 (the first introduction of parity). On the other hand, though, 24 April 1632 was connected to 19 May 1633 and the year 1537 when the resident Catholics had been expelled from the city. These periods and dates of both Protestant and Catholic persecution reflected the course of the Reformation: 1530 (the Augsburg Confession), 1537 (the expulsion of the Catholic clergy), 1548 (the Interim of Augsburg), 1551 (the Religious Peace of Augsburg), 1552 (the reintroduction of the Lutheran priesthood), 1586 (the prohibition of the cult) and 1591 (the introduction of parity).
III. Institutionalisation: peace celebrations, anniversaries, and internalisation
The War of Spanish Succession B the first war impacting southern Germany after the Thirty Years' War B revealed that the era of Augsburg's glory was over. The peace celebration was the mirror in which one sought the nostalgic projection of the golden age. The phrase "justice and peace kiss each other", coined by Sigmund von Birken in 1650, was answered in a low voice by a chronicler in 1705:
Augsburg was in full bloom / happiness came in great quantities to its gates / splendour and abundance met each other on its streets / justice and peace kissed each other. But look! There a whirlwind arose unexpectedly together with a dreadful fire of war / which appeared to threaten almost the end of the good city.... But it has bad luck no less than good luck in it / that it never lasts forever... the city was saved again / and restored to its previous freedom.... Ex angustis ad Augusta.... [21]
The peace celebrations experienced a new upswing, however, with the anniversaries of the Reformation, whose institutionalisation occurred parallel to and in connection with that of the peace celebrations themselves. With the peace festivities, the Lutherans celebrated that which they could not celebrate previously and in doing so, made up for all the missed anniversaries. It is therefore not surprising that the Lutherans modelled their festivities after the peace celebrations in those places where they had been unable to celebrate the anniversaries of the Reformation earlier. The first of such anniversaries, the hundredth anniversary of the Religious Peace of Augsburg in 1655, was inspired by Augsburg's peace celebration and particularly by the children's peace festival. The children received a copper etching and a special church service was organised just for them. This interaction, which led to the peace celebration's expansion and incorporation into the history of the Reformation, experienced its height in 1730 on the two-hundredth anniversary of the Augsburg Confession. The anniversary adopted the ornament, sermons, cantata and peace paintings of the peace celebration. The Augsburg Confession was thus celebrated just like the Peace of Westphalia and Gustavus Adolphus' entry on 24 April 1632. At the same time, the Salzburg emigrants, expelled from their home because of their faith, were regarded upon their arrival in Augsburg as the successors of the city's Lutherans, who had been repressed during the Thirty Years' War. The combination of the traditions of the Reformation anniversaries and the peace celebrations was so great in Augsburg that in 1748, on the occasion of the preparations for the hundredth anniversary of the Peace of Westphalia, the authorities discussed its meaning, wondering if an anniversary of the Reformation, a large peace celebration, or a simple commemorative celebration should not be organised? They decided not to celebrate the Peace of Westphalia on 24 October 1748, but rather on 8 August with a magnificent peace festival.
In these years from 1730 until 1750, the Thirty Years' War became a specific subject in history books. The examination of 180 schoolbooks, which were printed before 1869 and exclusively, or at least partially, dealt with the Thirty Years' War, confirms the significance of the years between 1629 and 1635 as well as the local and confessional factors in the structuring of memory. The first schoolbook dealing exclusively with the Thirty Years' War appeared in Augsburg for the anniversary in 1748 in the form of ninety-one catechism-like questions which the children had to recite. [22] The confessional interpretation of the Westphalian treaties becomes apparent beginning with the fifth question, according to which the treaties should be viewed "as the reason for external peace and religious freedom, in the exercise of our Evangelical religion which we now enjoy after many previous torments".
In this book, one also finds the most dreadful pictures of the war. The children had to answer the forty-sixth question regarding the situation in Augsburg in 1635 with the following:
One found cut-up corpses in several houses; other houses stood completely empty or the people within could neither stand nor walk because of hunger and awaited, next to their starving children, the most miserable death. One found in most of the houses that people lived from horse and cat meat, as well as from mice and boiled leatherY. A great many citizens, residents and soldiers died of hunger in the alleyways and while at the time of the Swedish capture, approximately 80,000 people were situated in Augsburg, now hardly 18,000 remained.
This confessional and local characterisation was limited neither to the Lutherans of Augsburg, nor the eighteenth century. A Bavarian schoolbook published in 1853 [23] depicted in an illustration of the Thirty Years' War "The Bavarian commander Tilly having bread distributed among the starving population of Magdeburg. In the year 1631."
The quick and intense reception of Schiller's Wallenstein trilogy played an essential role in awakening interest in the Thirty Years' War at the beginning of the nineteenth century and in the progressive secularisation of argumentation. Thus, in one of the most widely used schoolbooks for the fifth and sixth school classes, [24] the section about the Thirty Years' War began with the words: "Those wishing to read a detailed history of the highly interesting Thirty Years' War should take Schiller's excellent workY in hand". The style of schoolbooks took on a dramatic form, the sentences became fragments, and the war was divided into scenes which disregarded the Peace of Westphalia. The last stage in the nationalisation of memory consisted of the depiction of the Thirty Years' War as a national catastrophe in the third volume of Gustav Freytag's Pictures of German History, which served as a schoolbook from the seventh until the tenth class.
Similar tendencies characterise the development of the peace celebrations in the nineteenth century. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, their cost and polemics began to be criticised; on 3 August 1796, the Lutheran portion of Augsburg's city council took measures to reduce the expenditure. In 1806, Augsburg's peace celebration adopted the name "Tolerance and Peace Celebration" B though without losing its Lutheran character B and limited itself to religious content. At the same time, the peace festivities for children evolved into a celebration in the Lutheran schools. In Coburg, the question was raised as to whether a peace celebration B the peace of an Empire which no longer existed B could still be held at all. It was decided that its celebration could be continued, but it was to be renamed a "Religious and Peace Celebration".
After 1815, the recollection of the Thirty Years' War was overshadowed by that of the wars of liberation and, beginning in the 1830s, focused on the figure of Gustavus Adolphus. The Lutheran war hero, and no longer the peace, was now remembered and although a commemorative service for the Peace of Westphalia was still held in 1748, similar ones in the years 1798 and 1848 can only be spoken of in a limited sense. [25] The simultaneous development of the peace celebrations was characterised by their nationalisation, militarisation and infantilisation. The example of the children's army of Dinkelsbühl provides the most substantial evidence of this development. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, the children marched with weapons. In a chronicle, the pastor Johann-Conrad Unold-Zangmeister described that in 1848, the children's army was made into a celebration of thanksgiving for Gustavus Adolphus B who would have threatened the city, but was then moved by the children's entreaties, which thus saved the city from destruction B although a commemorative service for the Peace of Westphalia had been planned. After 1848, the children paraded by in clothing which was supposed to represent the costumes of the Swedish army during the Thirty Years' War. In 1868, the children were grouped in a boy's band and marched to the sound of "Swedish" music.
In the duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the local association of the Gustavus Adolphus Foundation, established as early as 1832 in connection with Lützen's commemorative service, was brought into being on 19 August 1845, the day of Coburg's peace celebration. It was financed by donations and the proceeds from the peace celebration. This association seemed to exist only meagrely thereafter, as if it had lost its confessional and municipal motivation from this moment on.
At the end of this depiction, the question must be raised as to the confessional cultures' influence on the recollection of the Thirty Years' War. On the Catholic as well as on the Protestant side, attempts were made to overcome the rupture which the Thirty Years' War constituted by turning to the past. Within the framework of the Council of Trent's intense reception, however, the Catholics honoured the Virgin Mary more than a founding date, while the Protestants used significant dates as markers for the establishment of a tradition. The "historical" Lutheran recollection was full of conflict and torn back and forth between the extremely negative (1629 in Augsburg) and the extremely positive (1632), which threatened to fall into oblivion B "memory exists in forgetting" (Bergson). The public remembrance of the Peace of Westphalia legitimised the group; forgetting protected it. For both Catholics and Protestants, the need for joy therefore existed, torn between carnival-like, forgetful laughter, and the irony of the celebrations, yearning and "the pain of the distance's closeness" (Heidegger).
FOOTNOTES
Printing technicalities unfortunately make it impossible to print the German quotes in their original form. We would therefore like to refer our readers to the German edition of this catalogue and to the literature given in the notes.
1. This essay comprises the results of a dissertation for Professor Étienne François at the University of Paris I - Sorbonne.
2. "Il n'est pas de la Pais entre les Etats, comme des réconciliations particulières .... Et comment... entretenir cette jalouzie si nécessaire, sans une mémoire prézante des offances passées, qui conserve l'impression d'une juste crainte...." Devs Harangves panégyriqves, L'vne de la paix, l'avtre de la concorde, Amsterdam, 1648, folio A 5.
3. "Durch den Fried wird wieder neu / Die verstorbne alte Treu", inscription during the peace celebration in Augsburg.
4. Lünig 1719, I, pp. 57-65.
5. Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel: 10. 13 Pol. (82, 88, 98), Gk 2130 (44), 10. 10 Pol. (3-4, 21-22). Bibliothèque Nationale et Universitaire de Strasbourg: Cd. 115. 194, 26.
6. Compare to Möseneder 1983.
7. Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel: Gk 2116 (64).
8. Compare to François 1991.
9. Reise 1784, pp. 101-09.
10. Stadtarchiv Augsburg: Reichsstadt, Chroniken ad 17/III (Clemens Jäger), folio 103 r.
11. Compare to Jesse 1981.
12. Staats- und Stadtbibliothek Augsburg: 4° Cod. Aug. 134, Chronik von Ludwig Haintzelmann, folio 58 v-59 v.
13. Ibid., folio 67 v-68 v.
14. Staats- und Stadtbibliothek Augsburg: 4° Cod. Aug. 238, Diarium von Bartholomäus Beyer, folio 136 v.
15. Stadtarchiv Augsburg: Evangelisches Wesensarchiv 773.
16. Stadtarchiv Augsburg: Evangelisches Wesensarchiv 505.
17. Stadtarchiv Augsburg: Evangelisches Wesensarchiv 748 T.I.
18. Compare to Christell 1733, pp. 103-07.
19. Staats- und Stadtbibliothek Augsburg: 2° Cod. S 67, pp. 8-11.
20. Wünscher 1925, pp. 42 ff.
21. News from the city of Augsburg, place of publication unknown, circa 1705, preface folio 2 r-3 v.
22. Urlsperger 1748; quotes pp. 2, 23 ff.
23. Driendl 1853, pp. 118-32.
24. Gailer 1839; quote p. 725.
25. 1748: Festivities in Münster, Osnabrück, Wittenberg, Aachen, Hamburg, Braunschweig, Amsterdam, Augsburg, Lindau, Dinkelsbühl, Oettingen-Oettingen, Nuremberg, Schwäbisch Hall, Kaufbeuren, Leutkirch, Lindau, Memmingen, Coburg, Ulm, Fürth. 1798: Festivities in Oettingen-Oettingen. 1848: Festivities in Dinkelsbühl.
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