ABSTRACT
The eighteenth century was rightly perceived by contemporaries and later historians alike as the end of an era-the beginning of the modern age. After the Thirty Years War the German empire had splintered into a multitude of small and minute territories, and was by now more akin to a’monster’ (Pufendorf) than a modern state. Imperial territory had become a hopeless tangle of over 300 sovereign territories and a welter of semiautonomous provinces and towns. Although supreme imperial power in the Holy Roman Empire (das Heilige Römische Reich Deutscher Nation was the official title) remained in the hands of the German Emperor until 1806, it had by then dwindled to a few rights of largely symbolic value. Major political decisions were made by the states, which wielded power of legislation, the judiciary, national defence, police (including censorship), etc. independently of imperial power.
