ABSTRACT
No survey of the development of German culture in the century and a half following the Peace of Westphalia can begin without first acknowledging the supreme importance of religion, which after the Thirty Years War and beyond all differences which separated the various confessions, remained the single most clearly identifiable concern of all individuals and groups in all territories and at all levels of German society. The primary purposes of religion – the glorification of God and the elevation and constant rededication of mankind to the service of the divine will – continued to be a chief mandate not only of the churches themselves, but of all institutions of social culture, including law, government, education, the arts and literature. In spite of various emergent political, intellectual and artistic currents which were slowly nudging it in a more wordly-minded direction, this was not yet a secular culture and it is impossible to understand the spirit of the age without first realizing that Germans still took their religions very seriously indeed.
