Blog #2: 15th to 17th Century Germany

The textbook talked about the rights of people living in cities (chapter 2, pg 39).  It didn’t mention which century exactly this custom took place, but the author wrote:

Only a portion of the residents of a city possessed the rights of citizens.  In addition to old established families and local patricians, this ‘honorable estate’ included merchants and members of craft guilds.  Typically excluded from citizenship were such groups as domestic servants, tradesmen’s assistants, journeymen and apprentices, invalids, beggars, knackers (Word says knackers are people who kill old horses or people who demolish buildings), and hangmen, but also members of the nobility and the clergy, civil servants, and Jews.

That seems like a large number of people.  It almost looks like no one was a citizen, especially when the author wrote that some nobles and clergy didn’t have citizenship (although, the clergy members part makes some sense because they have to give up some human rights or desires).  Did not granting citizenship to some nobles classify the differences between higher and lesser nobles?  And then civil servants usually deal with the government or matters of the state.  They are considered higher in society today, so this custom is also difficult to fathom.

Other than that, everything else pretty much makes sense to me.  Merchants and craftsmen often were the lesser of a caste system in many societies.  Apprentices and assistants are lower in status to their masters (I guess that means they never were citizens in the first place, unless they lost citizenship by becoming an apprentice).  Hangmen and knackers kill and destroy things, so they may have been considered “dirty” or “impure” to higher society.  And Jews always got the short stick in history…(slaves in Egypt, the holocaust)

I guess over the centuries social order and hierarchy changed immensely in Germany.  More people received rights, higher positions in status, etc.  Maybe this changed with the changes over who was in charge, especially when it changed from a monarchy to an elected government (especially since civil servants have high status in society today).

The syllabus sheet said to compare and contrast an event in German History to American history:  During the rule under Britain, the American colonists had few freedoms under the high taxes and fervent control.  However, once they revolted and won the American Revolution, they entered into democracy that has lasted for centuries and hasn’t fallen out of practice (unlike in Germany).  I’ve never heard anything about who had rights as citizens in a particular city, but of those who had rights as Americans.  Freedom is often discussed in place of citizenship, and those who had freedom were white people.  Not merchants or farmers or tradesmen.  As long as you were white in early America, you had rights as citizens.  Only until after the civil war and the emancipation proclamation did African Americans receive freedom, but not until then do we ever learn the difference between rights as citizens and freedom in great detail.  Over the course of history, African Americans and women had to protest and work harder for more rights, thus more freedom.

The above image is of Hitler, elected to lead Germany and changed politics in Germany forever.  Hitler pretty much ended democracy in Germany, and any belief that democracy could actually work.  Therefore, historic Germany went from monarch ruled nations (few rights to the people), to a democratic nation (more rights and citizenship for all or most people), and to Hitler’s regime (cut of rights and freedoms of many people not considered beneficial to the Aryan race).  It’s like a roller coaster! Up and down, up and down.

To end on a slightly happier note: Otto III (left) vs. peasant people of the 17^th century (right, a juggler entertaining children).  Otto III was monarch of Germany in the late 900’s, and he is obviously classified as a citizen (seeing as he runs his kingdom).  The image on the right possibly shows no people who hold citizenship (especially the juggler.  He’s classified as a journeyman, and possible doesn’t even stay in one city for very long).

Word count:  681