Fraktalität. Raumgeschichte und soziales Handeln im Alten Reich

Abstract

Summary Fractality. Spatial History and Social Action in Early Modern Germany Over the last four decades, research on the early-modern Holy Roman Empire has undergone a dramatic renaissance, which has entailed the production of a considerable amount of research on and a positive reinterpretation of this political body. The outlook and the methods of this Reichsgeschichte, however, are likely to allow space for further proposals. This article aims to show how different approaches to the early-modern German society (e.g. the Empire-focused and the territories-focused approaches; social, political and confessional/religious history; legal history; the divisions introduced by classifications in the archives) can be reconciled and recombined by viewing the imperial space as a social construct which had, in turn, many effects on society. This proposal is based on a metaphor inspired by mathematics: „fractality“, a notion that highlights some specific features of the Holy Roman Empire, such as the complexity and...