The Dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire Part XI: Aftermath

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Bohemia and Croatia, Christian VII of Denmark, Congress of Vienna, Emperor Alexander I of Russia, Emperor of Austria, German Confederation, Gustaf IV Adolph of Sweden, Holy Roman Emperor Franz II, Holy Roman Empire, King of Hungary

Aftermath

The Holy Roman Empire, an institution which had lasted for just over a thousand years, did not pass unnoticed or unlamented. The dissolution of the empire sent shockwaves through Germany, with most of the reactions within the former imperial boundaries being rage, grief or shame.

Even the signatories of the Confederation of the Rhine were outraged; the Bavarian emissary to the imperial diet, Rechberg, stated that he was “furious” due to having “put his signature to the destruction of the German name”, referring to his state’s involvement in the confederation, which had effectively doomed the empire.

From a legal standpoint, Franz II’s abdication was controversial. Contemporary legal commentators agreed that the abdication itself was perfectly legal but that the emperor did not have the authority to dissolve the empire. As such, several of the empire’s vassals refused to recognize that the empire had ended. As late as October 1806, farmers in Thuringia refused to accept the end of the empire, believing its dissolution to be a plot by the local authorities.

For many of the people within the former empire, its collapse made them uncertain and fearful of their future, and the future of Germany itself. Contemporary reports from Vienna describe the dissolution of the empire as “incomprehensible” and the general public’s reaction as one of horror.

The German Confederation

In contrast to the fears of the general public, many contemporary intellectuals and artists saw Napoleon as a herald of a new age, rather than a destroyer of an old order. The popular idea forwarded by German nationalists was that the final collapse of the Holy Roman Empire freed Germany from the somewhat anachronistic ideas rooted in a fading ideal of universal Christianity and paved the way for the country’s unification as the German Empire, a nation state, 65 years later.

German historian Helmut Rössler has argued that Franz II and the Austrians fought to save the largely ungrateful Germany from the forces of Napoleon, only withdrawing and abandoning the empire when most of Germany betrayed them and joined Napoleon. Indeed, the assumption of a separate Austrian imperial title in 1804 did not mean that Franz II had any intentions to abdicate his prestigious position as the Roman emperor, the idea only began to be considered as circumstances beyond Habsburg control forced decisive actions to be taken.

Compounded with fears of what now guaranteed the safety of many of the smaller German states, the poet Christoph Martin Wieland lamented that Germany had now fallen into an “apocalyptic time” and stating “Who can bear this disgrace, which weighs down upon a nation which was once so glorious?—may God improve things, if it is still possible to improve them!”.

To some, the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire was seen as the final end of the ancient Roman Empire. In the words of Christian Gottlob von Voigt, a minister in Weimar, “if poetry can go hand in hand with politics, then the abdication of the imperial dignity offers a wealth of material.

The Roman Empire now takes its place in the sequence of vanquished empires”. In the words of the English historian James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce in his 1864 work on the Holy Roman Empire, the empire was the “oldest political institution in the world” and the same institution as the one founded by Augustus in 27 BC.

Writing of the empire, Bryce stated that “nothing else so directly linked the old world to the new—nothing else displayed so many strange contrasts of the present and the past, and summed up in those contrasts so much of European history”.

When confronted by the fall and collapse of their empire, many contemporaries employed the catastrophic fall of ancient Troy as a metaphor, due to its association with the notion of total destruction and the end of a culture.

The image of the apocalypse was also frequently used, associating the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire with an impending end of the world (echoing medieval legends of a Last Roman Emperor, a figure prophesized to be active during the end times).

Criticism and protests against the empire’s dissolution were typically censored, especially in the French-administered Confederation of the Rhine. Among the aspects most criticized by the general populace was the removal or replacement of the traditional intercessions for the empire and emperor in the daily church prayers throughout former imperial territory. Suppression from France, combined with examples of excessive retribution against pro-empire advocates, ensured that these protests soon died down.

Official and international reactions

King Gustav IV Adolph of Sweden, who in 1806 issued a proclamation to his German subjects that the dissolution of the empire “would not destroy the German nation.”

In an official capacity, Prussia’s response was only formulaic expressions of regret owing to the “termination of an honourable bond hallowed by time”. Prussia’s representative to the Reichstag, Baron Görtz, reacted with sadness, mixed with gratitude and affection for the House of Habsburg and their former role as emperors.

Görtz had taken part as an electoral emissary of the Electorate of Brandenburg (Prussia’s territory within the formal imperial borders) in 1792, at the election of Franz II as Holy Roman Emperor, and exclaimed that “So the emperor whom I helped elect was the last emperor!—This step was no doubt to be expected, but that does not make its reality any less moving and crushing. It cuts off the last thread of hope to which one tried to cling”.

Baron von Wiessenberg, the Austrian envoy to the Electorate of Hesse-Cassel, reported that the local elector, Wilhelm I, had teared up and expressed lament at the loss of “a constitution to which Germany had for so long owed its happiness and freedom”.

Internationally, the empire’s demise was met with mixed or indifferent reactions. Emperor Alexander I of Russia offered no response and King Christian VII of Denmark formally incorporated his German lands into his kingdoms a few months after the empire’s dissolution.

Franz I, Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, Bohemia and Croatia

King Gustav IV Adolph of Sweden (who notably hadn’t recognized the separate imperial title of Austria yet) issued a somewhat provocative proclamation to the denizens of his German lands (Swedish Pomerania and Bremen-Verden) on August 22, 1806, stating that the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire “would not destroy the German nation” and expressed hopes that the empire might be revived.

Possibility of restoration

The dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire was constituted by Franz II’s own personal abdication of the title and the release of all vassals and imperial states from their obligations and duties to the emperor. The title of Holy Roman Emperor (theoretically the same title as Roman Emperor) and the Holy Roman Empire itself as an idea and institution (the theoretically universally sovereign imperium) were never technically abolished. Dissolved yes, abolished no.

The continued existence of a universal empire, though without defined territory and lacking an emperor, was sometimes referenced in the titles of other later monarchs. For instance, the Savoyard Kings of Italy continued to claim the title “Prince and Perpetual Vicar of the Holy Roman Empire (in Italy)” (a title originating from a 14th-century imperial grant from Emperor Charles IV to their ancestor Amadeus VI, Count of Savoy) until the abolition of the Italian monarchy in 1946.

In the aftermath of Napoleon’s defeats in 1814 and 1815, there was a widespread sentiment in Germany and elsewhere which called for the revival of the Holy Roman Empire under the leadership of Emperor Franz I of Austria. At the time, there were several factors which prevented the restoration of the empire as it had been in the 18th century, notably the rise of larger, more consolidated kingdoms in Germany, such as Bavaria, Saxony and Württemberg, as well as Prussia’s interest in becoming a great power in Europe (rather than continue being a vassal to the Habsburgs).

Even then, the restoration of the Holy Roman Empire, with a modernized internal political structure, had not been out of reach at the 1814–1815 Congress of Vienna (which decided Europe’s borders in the aftermath of Napoleon’s defeat). However, Emperor Franz had come to the conclusion before the Congress of Vienna convened, that the Holy Roman Empire’s political structure would not have been superior to the new order in Europe and that restoring it was not in the interest of the Habsburg monarchy.

In an official capacity, the papacy considered the fact that the Holy Roman Empire was not restored at the Congress of Vienna (alongside other decisions made during the negotiations) to be “detrimental to the interests of the Catholic religion and the rights of the church”.

In the Holy Roman Empire’s place, the German Confederation was created by the 9th Act of the Congress of Vienna on June 8, 1815 after being alluded to in Article 6 of the 1814 Treaty of Paris, ending the War of the Sixth Coalition. The German Confederation, which was led by the Austrian emperors as “heads of the presiding power” would prove to be ineffective.

The Confederation was weakened by the German revolutions of 1848–1849, where after the Frankfurt Parliament, elected by the people of the Confederation, attempted to proclaim a German Empire and designate Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia as their Emperor.

King Friedrich Wilhelm IV himself did not approve of the idea, instead favoring a restoration of the Holy Roman Empire under the Habsburgs of Austria, though neither the Habsburgs themselves nor the German revolutionaries, still active at the time, would have approved of that idea.

Prussia went to war in 1866 with Austria in an attempt to remove Austria from German politics. With Austria successfully removed from any participation in the affairs of the German states, by 1871 Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck used the war against France (The Franco-Prussian War 1870-71) to unite the German states into a new German Empire under the authority of the Prussian king as the new German Emperor.

December 8, 1907: Accession of King Gustaf V of Sweden.

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Gustaf IV Adolph of Sweden, Gustaf V of Sweden, House of Bernadotte, House of Holstein-Gottorp, House of Vasa, Kings of Sweden, Oscar II of Sweden, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, Victoria of Baden, Wilhelm I of Germany

Gustaf V (Oscar Gustaf Adolf; June 16, 1858 – October 29, 1950) was King of Sweden from 1907 until his death in 1950. He was the eldest son of King Oscar II of Sweden and Sophia of Nassau, the youngest daughter of Wilhelm, Duke of Nassau, by his second wife Princess Pauline Friederica Marie of Württemberg. Duke Wilhelm of Nassau was also the father of Adolphe, Grand Duke of Luxembourg by his first wife, Princess Louise of Saxe-Hildburghausen.

King Gustaf V of Sweden

Reigning from the death of his father Oscar II on December 8, 1907, until his own death 43 years later, Gustaf V holds the record of being the oldest monarch of Sweden and the third-longest reigning after Magnus IV-VII of Sweden and Norway (1319-1364) and the present Swedish King, Carl XVI Gustaf. He was also the last Swedish monarch to exercise his royal prerogatives, which largely died with him, although formally abolished only with the remaking of the Swedish constitution in 1974. He was the first Swedish king since the High Middle Ages not to have a coronation and hence never wore a crown, a tradition continuing to date.

Gustaf’s early reign saw the rise of parliamentary rule in Sweden, although the leadup to World War I pre-empted his overthrow of Liberal Prime Minister Karl Staaff in 1914, replacing him with his own figurehead Hjalmar Hammarskjöld (father of Dag Hammarskjöld) for most of the war. However, after the Liberals and Social Democrats secured a parliamentary majority under Staaff’s successor, Nils Edén, he allowed Edén to form a new government which de facto stripped the monarchy of all virtual powers and enacted universal and equal suffrage, including for women, by 1919.

Meeting of the three kings in Malmö, December 18, 1914: Haakon VII of Norway, Gustaf V of Sweden, and Christian X of Denmark.

Bowing fully to the principles of parliamentary democracy, he remained a popular figurehead for the remaining 31 years of his rule, although not completely without influence – during World War II he allegedly urged Per Albin Hansson’s coalition government to accept requests from Nazi Germany for logistics support, refusing which might have provoked an invasion. This remains controversial to date, although he is not known to have shown much support for fascism or radical nationalism; his pro-German and anti-Communist stance was well known also in World War I.

On September 20, 1881 he married Princess Victoria of Baden in Karlsruhe, Germany. Victoria of Baden was the daughter of Grand Duke Friedrich I of Baden, and Princess Louise of Prussia, the second child and only daughter of German Emperor Wilhelm I and Augusta of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. Victoria was named after her aunt, Crown Princess Victoria of Prussia, the eldest child of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

Gustaf and Victoria

German Emperor Wilhelm I and Empress Augusta were present at the wedding, and marriage was arranged as a sign that Sweden belonged to the German sphere in Europe. The marriage was popular in Sweden where she was called “The Vasa Princess”, because of her descent from the old Vasa Dynasty

Victoria of Baden was the granddaughter of Princess Sophie of Sweden, Grand Duchess of Baden, the daughter of the deposed King Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden and his wife, Frederica of Baden. Victoria’s marriage to Gustaf V united the reigning Bernadotte dynasty with the former royal house of Holstein-Gottorp, which claimed descent from the House of Vasa which brought Sweden its independence and thus was popular throughout Sweden.

The kings of the House of Holstein-Gottorp, which produced the kings of Sweden from 1751 to 1818, often emphasized their Vasa descent, albeit through a female line. The current ruling house of Bernadotte similarly prides in its Vasa descent: Carl XIV, the first Bernadotte king, was an adopted son of Carl XIII, the last from the House of Holstein-Gottorp; his son Oscar I married a Vasa descendant Josephine of Leuchtenberg; and the focus of this blog post, his grandson Gustaf V, married Victoria of Baden who was, as we’ve seen, a great-grandchild of Gustav IV Adolf of the house Holstein-Gottorp.

Gustaf and Victoria were brought together by their families and their marriage was reported not to have been a happy one. Their marriage produced three children:

1. King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden (1882-1973) (aged 90) married 1) Princess Margaret of Connaught (1882–1920), had issue (four sons, one daughter), married 2) Louise Mountbatten (1889–1965), a stillborn daughter.

2. Prince Wilhelm, Duke of Södermanland (1884-1965)(aged 80) married Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia (1890–1958), had issue.

3. Prince Erik, Duke of Västmanland (1889-1918) (aged 29) died unmarried of the Spanish flu, no issue

Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden with her mother, Grand Duchess Louise of Baden (only daughter of Wilhelm I, German Emperor) and her eldest son, baby Gustaf Adolf, 1883.

In 1890–1891, Victoria and Gustaf travelled to Egypt to repair their relationship, but it did not succeed, allegedly due to Victoria’s interest in one of the courtiers, and she repeated the trip to Egypt in 1891–1892. After 1889, the personal relationship between Victoria and Gustaf is considered to have been finished, in part, as estimated by Lars Elgklou, due to the bisexuality of Gustaf V.

Victoria of Baden, Queen Consort of Sweden

An avid hunter and sportsman, Gustaf V presided over the 1912 Olympic Games and chaired the Swedish Association of Sports from 1897 to 1907. Most notably, he represented Sweden (under the alias of Mr G.) as a competitive tennis player, keeping up competitive tennis until his 80s, when his eyesight deteriorated rapidly. He died from flu complications and was succeeded by his son as King Gustaf VI Adolf.

Following his death at age 92, in 1950, Gustaf V was implicated in a homosexual affair in the Haijby affair. His alleged lover Kurt Haijby was imprisoned in 1952 for blackmail of the court in the 1930s. Homosexuality was a criminal offense in Sweden until 1944, though Gustaf’s position would have granted automatic immunity.