Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Former countries/HRE task force/Archive 1

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Archive 1

Focus

To get conversation started, I guess the initial question to ask is "Which states to focus on?" I would suggest that working backwards from the Germanic Confederation is not the most logical thing to do. The County of Schaumburg-Lippe was but one of dozens of small comital states in the Empire, only distinguished by the fact that it, unlike most of the others, survived the empire. I would suggest that fairly clearly, two types of state took up most of the territorial mass of the empire, and as such should be our first priority. These are:

  1. The Territories of the Ancient Princely Houses
  2. The Ecclesiastical Principalities.

It is to be added that some of the new princely houses also had considerable territories - I think particularly of the Nassaus (who were, I believe, the only protestant new princely family), and to a lesser extent the Hohenzollerns, but I think this is a good start. The Ancient Princely Houses, defined as the houses possessing voices in the council of princes in 1582, were as follows (thanks to Val Rozn's useful site):

  1. The Dukes of Saxe-Lauenburg (extinct 1689, to the Dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg)
  2. The Dukes of Saxe-Wittenberg, divided into the lines of...
    1. Electoral Saxony and the
    2. Ernestine Duchies
  3. The Dukes of Lorraine and Bar, who inherited after 1780 all the lands of the extinct House of Austria
  4. The Dukes of Bavaria and Counts Palatine of the Rhine
  5. The Princes of Anhalt
  6. The Dukes of Mecklenburg
  7. The Dukes of Pomerania, who became extinct 1637; the Peace of Westphalia divided their lands between the Margraves of Brandenburg and the Kings of Sweden
  8. The Margraves of Brandenburg, including
    1. The Electors of Brandenburg
    2. The Margraves of Brandenburg-Ansbach and Brandenburg-Bayreuth
  9. The Margraves of Baden, normally divided into at least
    1. Baden-Baden and
    2. Baden Durlach
  10. The Landgraves of Hesse, normally divided into at least
    1. Hesse-Kassel and
    2. Hesse-Darmstadt
  11. The Archdukes of Austria, etc., extinct 1780, to the House of Lorraine
  12. The Dukes of Brunswick and Lüneburg, including the
    1. Electors of Hanover, after 1714 Kings of Great Britain; and the
    2. Dukes of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, the two lines surviving into the 18th century
  13. The Dukes of Jülich-Kleve-Berg; extinct 1609 - Jülich and Berg to Palatinate-Neuburg; Cleves and Mark to Brandenburg
  14. The Dukes of Savoy
  15. The Dukes of Burgundy (i.e., the Spanish Habsburgs, extinct 1700, their lands eventually to the Austrian Habsburgs after a brief spell under the Spanish Bourbons)
  16. The Dukes of Holstein, normally divided into the
    1. Dukes of Holstein-Glückstadt, also Kings of Denmark (Royal Holstein); and the
    2. Dukes of Holstein-Gottorp (Ducal Holstein), who in 1774 traded their duchy for Oldenburg and becames Dukes of Holstein-Gottorp-Oldenburg
  17. The Dukes of Württemberg, also Princely Counts of Mömpelgard
  18. The Princely Landgraves of Leuchtenberg, extinct 1714, to the Dukes of Bavaria
  19. The Princely Counts of Henneberg, extinct 1583 or thereabouts, to the Dukes of Saxony (and partly to the Landgraves of hesse-kassel, but they didn't get to share the voice in the imperial diet)
  20. The Dukes of Arenberg [which are really more similar to a new princely family than to an old princely one, but are still technically counted as one of the ancient houses, as far as I can tell].

The Ecclesiastical states

  1. The Prince-Archbishoprics of
    1. Besançon
    2. Bremen (secularized to Sweden, 1648; to Brunswick-Lüneburg 1720)
    3. Cologne
    4. Magdeburg (secularized to Brandenburg, 1648)
    5. Mainz
    6. Salzburg
    7. Trier
  2. The Teutonic Order
  3. The Prince-Bishoprics of
    1. Augsburg
    2. Bamberg
    3. Basel
    4. Brixen
    5. Chur
    6. Eichstädt
    7. Freising
    8. Halberstadt (secularized to Brandenburg, 1648)
    9. Hildesheim
    10. Kammin (secularized to Brandenburg, 1648)
    11. Konstanz
    12. Liège
    13. Lübeck
    14. Metz (secularized to France, 1648)
    15. Minden (secularized to Brandenburg, 1648)
    16. Münster
    17. Osnabrück
    18. Paderborn
    19. Passau
    20. Ratzeburg (secularized to Mecklenburg-Strelitz)
    21. Regensburg
    22. Schwerin (secularized to Mecklenburg-Schwerin)
    23. Speyer
    24. Strassburg
    25. Toul (secularized to France, 1648)
    26. Trent
    27. Utrecht (secularized to Burgundy, 1530 or so)
    28. Verden (secularized to Sweden, 1648; to Brunswick-Lüneburg 1720)
    29. Verdun (secularized to France, 1648)
    30. Worms
    31. Würzburg
  4. The Order of St John
  5. The Prince-Abbacies of
    1. Fulda (later a bishopric)
    2. Kempten
    3. Ellwangen
    4. Berchtesgaden
    5. Weissenburg
    6. Prüm
    7. Stablo and Malmedy
    8. Korvey
    9. Hersfeld (secularized to Hesse-Kassel)

The whole thing ultimately gets fairly complicated, even within these relatively few groupings, but I think that's a decent start, and that these entities make sense as initial priorities. Note that this is a list strongly biased towards the later centuries of the Empire. john k 14:37, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Nice start! My thoughts on where to start were with the electorates. There is relatively more information available about them than many other states. Starting with a later period in the Empire is fine by me - that allows us to take advantage of some of the organisation that was in place at this time (eg. imperial circles)
Well, the electorates are obviously included among the states listed. If we want to start more specifically with them, that makes a lot of sense. In terms of the time period, I was thinking that this project ought to focus on the period from ~1500 to 1806. Things are a lot more fluid in the earlier period, and, as you say, there weren't imperial circles to organize things. By 1500, most of the old princely families had been princified, some of the various territories had been reunified from rather absurd levels of division (notably Bavaria, which adopted primogeniture around 1500), and the Reformation is just about to start secularizing ecclesiastical territories. john k 17:17, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
You're right. The final 3 centuries is more than enough to start with. - 52 Pickup 18:37, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
Something that I would like to see is the creation of separate entries for the city states. I find it a little misleading to link to the modern city when discussing the city-state. The creation of separate entries also fits in better with the infoboxes in terms of tracking the existance of these cities. For example Free City of Lübeck.
This is a good idea. I'd say the six free cities that survived the first round of mediatizations - Augsburg, Bremen, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Lübeck, and Nuremberg - are significant enough states to qualify with the ones I've listed above, especially the Hanseatic cities and Nuremberg, which held a gigantic amount of territory in Franconia, comparable to some of the Italian city-republics - I'd imagine it was larger than Lucca. It's possible that some other cities qualify as well - I think particularly of Regensburg (home of the Imperial Diet), Aachen (where the Emperors were crowned) and the Rhenish cathedral free cities of Cologne, Speyer, Worms, and Strasbourg. Most of the other free cities are rather tiny, and should perhaps be considered at the next level of development. john k 17:17, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
The only city-state that might not need a separate entry is Hamburg, whose identity has not really changed over time (city-state of the HRE to city-state of modern Germany) even though the history section of this page is pretty short. The same might be said for Bremen (state). For the moment, we should create entries for all of these cities, but have them as redirects to the city itself, and properly fill in the entry later on (eg. Free City of Frankfurt). That way, the amount of link fixing that will need to be done later on will be reduced. Actually, setting up redirects like this holds true for all entries. - 52 Pickup 18:37, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
To handle the mass of different entities, some new navbars are needed. I just found this one {{Lower Rhenish–Westphalian Circle}} - others should be made for the other Imperial Circles. That should also give us a good idea about what pages still don't exist yet. - 52 Pickup 16:43, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
Yes, navbars are key. A standard infobox would be nice. As I noted in my original proposal, I'd also particularly like to see maps - particularly if we could get standard wiki style maps that highlighted whatever state in red against a white background showing the empire as a whole - would be wonderful. john k 17:17, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
What things would you like to see in this infobox? I can either modify {{Infobox Former Country}} to suit, or make a dedicated infobox. I would prefer the first option - minimising the number of templates makes maintenance easier. If we can find a good base map to start with, I can give it a try. I've had some success with some other German maps (see: here). Recently I set up a Cartography department for WPFC in an attempt to attract some mapmakers. To co-ordinate what elements are needed for a given page, see {{WPFC}}. - 52 Pickup 18:37, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

In terms of navbars, the one for Lower Rhine-Westphalia looks fairly good. I might suggest also having navbars for the Council of Electors, for the Secular and Ecclesiastical Benches of the Council of Princes, and for the Colleges of Prelates of the Rhine and of Swabia, and Counts of Swabia, the Wetterau, Franconia, and Westphalia, and for Imperial Free Cities. Thus, most articles would have two nav-bars - one for their circle, and one for their bench in the Reichstag. I'd also suggest that in addition to the navbars for the circles, we have a navbar for the Lands of the Bohemian Crown, and another one for the various other territories that were not part of any circle (like Jever and Knyphausen). john k 17:22, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

I've just put up a Navbar section on the project page, and roughly added your above requests to it. That way we can keep track of what needs to be done without losing anything in the talk pages. I'm currently working on organising all templates related to WPFC so we know what has already been done and needs to be done. Many entries will ultimately have quite a few navbars but if we keep them collapsable, correctly ordered, and don't go silly with colors, we should be fine. For example: Oldenburg (state). - 52 Pickup 18:37, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
I've created a navbar for the Upper Rhenish Circle at {{Upper Rhenish Circle}}, including divisions into four benches. I'll probably proceed to do more tomorrow. john k 21:40, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
Nice. I tried one last night: User:52 Pickup/Drafts/Template:Circlelrwf. It's along the same lines as the other navbars that I've made, but I think I prefer yours. - 52 Pickup 07:56, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
Then I shall proceed to make more. john k 15:11, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Another thing to do is to make sure we have separate articles for Prince-Bishoprics and modern Dioceses. They are quite distinct, and, indeed, the lands over which the various Prince-Bishops were spiritual overlords were always considerably more extensive than their temporal domains, so the two should really be separated as much as possible. john k 17:42, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Good point. Perhaps you would like to list all of these different article categories on the project page - that should help in co-ordinating efforts. - 52 Pickup 18:37, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Naming Conventions

Thought I'd start a new section. Since many articles do not yet exist, we can choose what naming conventions to use for all entries. We should probably do this at the start, so then all articles and navbars can follow these lines. Many entries just use the place name, without saying if its a county, bishoporic, etc. This can lead to confusion (similar to my concern about city-states). Any thoughts? - 52 Pickup 07:56, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, please. I think that the prince-bishoprics should have articles separate from that about the church diocese. What do you suggest for Archbishopric of Mainz, for example? The German article about the state is at de:Kurmainz. The Free Cities should also have extra articles, possibly called Free Imperial City of Somewhere. Kusma (討論) 08:02, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
A separate entry for the electors is a good idea - in addition to de:Kurmainz, the German wiki has a separate article for the bishopric itself de:Bistum Mainz, with its electoral duties discussed in the history section. I've translated the elector navbar from the German wiki {{Electors of the Holy Roman Empire after 1356}} but the links that it contains are by no means final. - 52 Pickup 14:38, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
I'd suggest that when no disambiguation is necessary, just usage the name - Hesse-Marburg, Saxe-Altenburg, Öttingen-Wallerstein, etc. As far as I can think, this is mostly going to apply to hyphenated secular states. I'm not sure what to do about the cadet Palatine lines. Should they be at Palatinate-Neuburg or Pfalz-Neuburg? I vaguely incline towards the latter. For the electoral states, the "Kurmainz" for would translate to Electoral Mainz. Electoral Saxony would certainly work as a title, but I'm not sure for the rest. Electorate of Mainz, Electorate of Saxony, etc., might be better. For not electorates, I'd think this form would be the one to use. Princely County of Henneberg; Free City of Ulm; Prince-Bishopric of Münster; Lordship of Anholt, Prince-Abbacy of Fulda, etc. john k 11:39, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
Good point about the hyphenated names, that will probably suffice for them. Once we have decided on the final format, a list should be placed on the project page so we do not forget and so new members know what to do. As for Palatinate/Pfalz-Neuburg, I'm not sure which one to go with (i have no strong feelings about either), but just so long as the one that we don't pick becomes a redirect to the one that we do choose, then I'm happy. There are a lot of entries that just contain "(state)" as part of the entry title (eg. Hanover (state)) - I would like to see these changed to more meaningful names (eg. Electorate of Hanover, Kingdom of Hanover). What are your thoughts about these articles? - 52 Pickup 14:38, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
I would agree. This would also make it easier to distinguish between the Holy Roman Empire states and the 19th century ones. Only a few states retained the exact same title between the pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary periods - the Saxon duchies (other than Weimar) and the Hohenzollern and Schwarzburg principalities are the main ones I can think of. So we have Margraviate of Baden for the Imperial polity and Grand Duchy of Baden for the later one. I would suggest that for hyphenated entries we also have redirects at the non-hyphenated forms, e.g. Principality of Wolfenbüttel and County Palatine of Neuburg. john k 15:09, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
Also worth noting is the one hyphenated name which doesn't work - Baden-Baden. john k 17:30, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Coordination hub for the HRE, Austria and Germany

I think the HRE task force is really interesting and worthwhile in itself, but I am perhaps even more interested in a coordinated effort directed at all the states of the Holy Roman Empire, Austria and Germany. One of the reasons why this catches my interest are the many inherent and complex coordination issues within this body of articles that needs to be solved, and the impact this will have on the entire Former countries project. In fact this would be a good testing ground for the various kinds of problems that are likely to arise, which needs to be solved not just for these articles, but for the entire project. I suggest that the HRE task force should be used also for this more far-reaching coordination issues rather than creating new task force for this specific purpose. This would expand the scope to also include the various incarnations of Germany and Austria up until 1918. -- Domino theory 16:40, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

There is now a Austria-Hungary task force covering the Habsburg Monarchy in HRE up to the dissolution of the Dual monarchy after World War I. A level of coordination between the task forces will be important, not the least due to the overlapping parts. Welcome to join up! -- Domino theory 09:35, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

County of the Mark

There is a discussion of what the ideal title for this state is at Talk:County of the Mark. Further input and/or clarification would be helpful. Olessi 19:46, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Elections article

This project looks slightly moribund, but if anyone is still paying attention, the article Imperial election could use a little help with additional sources and details, correction of errors and so on. RandomCritic 20:15, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

New article

I'm working on the new article Armorial of the Holy Roman Empire, and I need some help finding a good source for the coats of arms of HRE states. So far, all I have are websites, and I've seen a book that has arms of princes, but it's not helpful because it doesn't say which part of the princes' arms belong to which state. The talk page could use your project banner as well (I would put it there myself, but I don't know whether or not it's good etiquette). Anyway, take a look and give me any feedback you might have. Thanks! -- I. Pankonin (t/c) 10:39, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Reviving

I wonder if we might revive this. The coverage of ecclesiastical principalities, in particular, is poor and inconsistent as a result of the confusion between Catholic diocese and ecclesiastical principality. john k 01:35, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

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Überlingen Free Imperial City

I've been working on the modern Überlingen article, largely (and loosely) translated from the German wikipedia article. Not nearly as much detail, but... Question, though: as I'm working on the history section, I've realized that it is going to get too big too fast. Should I create a free Imperial city of Überlingen article? and link it to that? to cover the period from the 13th century to 1803? How should this be handled? --Auntieruth55 (talk) 21:34, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Middle Francia merge proposal

A discussion is occurring at Talk:Middle Francia#Merger Proposal, where it has been proposed that Middle Francia be merged into Lotharingia. -Rrius (talk) 04:38, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Lotharingia kindgom Infobox

Discussion is accuring regarding the use of the Former Country Infobox on the Lotharingia article in its Kingdom section. Spshu (talk) 19:56, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

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History of Württemberg

History of Württemberg needs to be reassessed.86.46.242.37 (talk) 15:07, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Naming dispute at Prince-Bishop

We're having a minor revert war over the name used for the prince-bishop of the place now known as Olomouc, which was known as Olmütz in German. This prince-bishopric was a vassal of the Bohemian Crown within the Holy Roman Empire.

If anyone has strong feelings on the matter, they may wish to contribute to the conversation at Talk:Prince-Bishop#Nationalist / anti-nationalist place naming, where I am trying to seek consensus. — OwenBlacker (Talk) 13:51, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

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