Table of Contents

1: Peter H. Wilson and Michael Schaich: Introduction
Part I. The Constitution History of the Empire
2: Karl Otmar von Aretin: The Old Reich: A Federation or a State of the German Nation?
3: Georg Schmidt: The Old Reich: The State and Nation of the Germans
4: Leopold Auer: The Role of the Imperial Auli Council in the Constitutional Structure of the Holy Roman Empire
5: Siegrid Westphal: Does the Holy Roman Empire Need a New Institutional History?
6: Peter H. Wilson: The Thirty Years War as the Empire's Constitutional Crisis
7: Karl Härter: The Permanent Imperial Diet in European Context, 1663-1806
Part II. The Religious History of the Empire
8: C. Scott Dixon: The Imperial Cities and the Politics of Reformation
9: Franz Brendle and Anton Schindling: Religious War and Religious Peace in the Age of Reformation
10: Dominic Phelps: The Triumph of Unity over Dualism: Saxony and the Imperial Elections 1559-1619
11: Trevor Johnson: Re-Catholicization in the Empire: Strategies, Problems, Consequences
12: Marc R. Foster: Catholic Culture and Rural Society
Part III. The Social and Cultural History of the Empire
13: Susan C. Karant-Nunn: Is there a Social History of the Holy Roman Empire?
14: Christian Wieland: German Aristocracies and Social Discipline: Noble Hierarchies, the State, and the Law in Sixteenth-Century Bavaria
15: Hillay Zmora: The Formation of the Imperial Knighthood in Franconia: A Comparative European Perspective
16: Joachim Whaley: A German Nation? National and Confessional Identities before the Thirty Years War
17: Markus Völkel: The 'Historical Consciousness' of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (Sixteenth to Eighteenth Century)
18: Wolfgang Behringer: The Holy Roman Empire as a Communication(s) Universe
19: Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger: On the Function of Rituals in the Holy Roman Empire

Reviews

This is a book which deserves our careful attention. A collection of this sort lends itself to being treated primarily as a guide to research. It serves that role admirably, but it is much more ... While the individual essays are of great value, the whole is even more provocative and provides ample proof that the time is ripe for a new history of the Holy Roman Empire. Research, revealing in the process some of the main areas of controversy.
*Wm. Bradford Smith, English Historical Review*

A 'handbook' for the history of the Holy Roman Empire from 1495-1806, an aid to orientation which reminds historians of where future research should go.
*Willi Eisele, Arbeitsgemeinschaft historischer Forschungseinrichtungen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland*