The Peace of Westphalia Revisited: The Peace as the Constitution of the German Nation, Known as the <i>Reich</i>

Abstract The Thirty Years War fought in Germany and Bohemia was concluded with a reset of the German constitution. Prewar rules were modified, and the political multilevel system was anchored such that the emperor could not become legal sole ruler, which had been an aim of the German estates and the European powers who fought first against Ferdinand II and then against Ferdinand III. That the diffuse ambitions of the warring parties could end in a compromise peace that stabilized the empire and the European balance of powers is testimony to the desire of all parties for peace and to the negotiating skill of the diplomats. Recognizing that other parties felt threatened, the negotiators agreed to an amnesty and perpetual forgetting, to compensation payments and territorial changes, and to the coexistence, and even toleration, of people of different Christian confessions. These rules did not apply to the three powers that served as guarantors of the peace: the Holy Roman emperor, the ruler of France and the ruler of Sweden. The multilevel form of government in the German nation, also known simply as the ‘Empire’, was thus unique. The Austrian Habsburg court insisted upon the confessional unity of the Habsburg hereditary lands. Since the peace made it impossible for the Habsburgs to use the German nation as their power base, they envisaged that their hereditary lands would now serve as the foundation of a new Habsburg empire.