ABSTRACT
To the power and prestige, the poetic charm and beauty which invest the earliest times in the eyes of later observers, one must bid farewell in coming to the second great epoch of German history—the age of the territorial states. Meanwhile the development of the territorial states proceeded rapidly. Like all states, their first concern was to grow bigger. At the outset they were not solid geographical aggregates, but were composed of various separated areas, rags and tatters of land. They strove naturally to piece these together, to round off their territories. The multiplicity of the states south of the Alps, and their political and economic disunity, served the same purpose which German suzerainty had served earlier; the world trade routes remained open to Germans. The alternating aggregations of territory in the hands of the various dynasties were injurious to Germany in one respect—through the constant dynastical changes.
