ABSTRACT
The starting-point is the essential fact that authority in Germany lay in a mosaic of fragments. Considered in all the variety of its states the political organisation of Germany would seem, then, to have no coherence. The political structure of Germany was governed by the notion of sovereignty and subjection. There were no economic considerations operating over the whole of Germany to break down social barriers and to release into political life the energies of men with monied wealth. Until the mid-seventeenth century religion had been the most significant single factor in Germany’s history and political, economic and social struggles had used the language of religious combat. Germany stood at a turning-point in 1789. The wars which the French Revolution brought to Germany were to cause the disappearance of the Holy Roman Empire. Its end was to be accompanied by wholesale secularisation and the gradual disappearance of the religious colouring of German society.
