German Federalism pp 15-41 | Cite as
Federal Habits: the Holy Roman Empire and the Continuity of German Federalism
Abstract
One of the more surprising recent contributions to the debate about the future of Europe was the accusation levelled against the Germans in June 2000 by the then French Minister for the Interior, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, that they were simply unable to stop dreaming about the Holy Roman Empire. The Germans, he meant to say, still diabolized the nation-state. In their relentless flight into a post-national world, they find themselves perennially caught up in ‘the nostalgic dream of a kind of federation that will hold differing parts together as regionally as possible, just as the Holy Roman Empire did…’.1 The occasion for his remark was a speech made by the German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer at the Humboldt University on 12 May 2000 in which he reiterated his belief that in the final stage of European unity a union of European states would evolve into a true federation.2 At one level the remarks simply demonstrated once more the underlying Germanophobia of the souverainisme of Chevènement’s left-wing Mouvement des Citoyens.3 They also testify to a questionable knowledge of history, which led Chevènement to claim even more absurdly that the Habsburg emperor was a ‘federator’ in the final phase of the Empire’s history.
Keywords
Eighteenth Century Political Culture Peace Treaty Early Modern Period European HistoryPreview
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Notes
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