For the next 200 years, the history of the German empire presents very few features of interest, and may be briefly passed over. Adolf of Nassau, who was elected to suc ceed Rudolf, was compelled in 1298 to yield the crown to the son of the latter, Albrecht I. (1298-1308), whose reign is chiefly memorable as the period in which three Swiss can tons, Unterwalden, Schwytz, and established their independence. After the mur der of Albrecht, the throne was occupied in rapid succession by Henry VII. (1308-1313), who added Bohemia to the empire; and conjointly by Frederick of Austria and Ludwig of Bavaria (1318-1399). Charles IV. (1399-1378) of Luxembourg was the successful candidate among many rivals, and although he attended specially to the interests of his hereditary possessions of Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia. and Lusatia, be did not entirely neglect those of the empire, for which he provided by a written compact, known as the Golden Bull, which regulated the rights, privileges, and duties of the electors, the mode of the election and coronation of the emperors, the coinage, customs, and commer cial treaties of the empire, and the rights and obligations of the free cities. His SOD, Wenceslaus (1378-1900),. who was finally deposed, broUght the royal authority into con tempt, from which it was scarcely redeemed by Ruprecbt of the Palatinate (1400-1410). The nominal reign of Sigismund (1410-1437). the brother of would demand no notice were it not for his connection with the councils of Constance and Basel, at the former of which Huss was condemned, and which was followed by the disastrous Hussite wars. The readiness with which Sigismund lent himself to the interests of Henry V. of England, and of all other princes who ministered to his love of personal display, brought discredit on the imperial dignity, while his dishonorable desertion of Huss will ever attach Ignominy to his name. Albrecht II. of Austria (1938-1440), after a brief reign of two years. in which he gave evidence of great capacity for governing, was succeeded by his cousin, Frederick III. (1490-1993), an accomplished but avari cious and indolent prince, whose chief object seemed to be the aggrandizement of the House of Austria, with which the title of emperor had now become permanently con nected (see AUSTRIA), while -he neglected the interests of Germany collectively, and suffered the infidels to make unchecked advances upon its territory. Maximilian I. (1493-1519), the son and successor of Frederick, resembled him in few respects, for he was active, ambitious, and scheming, but deficient in steadiness of purpose. His mar riage with Mary, the rich heiress of her father, Charles the Bold, of Burgundy, involved him in the general politics of Europe, while his opposition to the reformed faith preached by Luther exasperated the religious differences which disturbed the close of his reign. Maximilian had, however, the merit of introducing many improvements in regard to the internal organization of the state, by enforcing the better administration of the 16.w, establishing a police and an organized army, and introducing a postal system. With him originated, moreover, the special courts of jurisdiction known as the ' Imperial Chamber' and the 'Aulic Council;' and in his reign, the empire was divided into ten circles, each under its hereditary president and its hereditary prince-convoker. Maxi milian lived to see the beginning of the Reformation, and the success that attended Luther's preaching; but the firm establishment in Germany of the reformed faith, and the religious dissensions by 'which its success was attended, belong principally to the reign of his grandson, Charles I., king of Spain, the son of the Archduke Philip and of Joanna, the heiress of Spain, who succeeded to the empire under the title of Charles V. (1519-56). The management of his vast possessions in Spain, Italy, and the Nether lans, and the wars with France, in which he, was so long implicated, diverted him from his German territories, which he committed to the care of his brother Ferdinand. The princes of Germany were thus. left to settle their religious differences among them selves, and to quell, unaided by the head of the state, the formidable insurrection of the peasants which threatened to undermine the very foundations of society. This rising of the lower orders was due to the preaching of the fanatic Milnzer, and other leaders of the sect of Anabaptists, which had arisen from a perverted interpretation of Some of the tenets advanced by Luther. Charles's determined opposition to the refor mers rendered all settlement of these religious differences impracticable; and although, by the aid of ally, Maurice of Saxony, he broke the confederation of the Protestant princes, known as the Union of Smalkald, he was forced by his former ally to make con cessions to the Lutherans, of which he disapproved; and in his disgust at the complicated relations in which he was placed to both parties, he abdicated in favor of his brother Ferdinand (1556-64), who put an end to much of the religious dissension that had hitherto distracted the empire, by granting entire toleration to the Protestants. Although Fe•di nand was, personally, mild and pacific, his reign was troubled by domestic and foreign aggressions—the different sects disturbing the peace of the empire 'at home, while the French and the Turks assailed it from abroad. During the next fifty years the empire was a prey to Internal disquiet. Maximilian II. (1564-1'6) was indeed a wise and just prince, but the little he was able to effect in reconciling the adherents of the different churches, and in raising the character of the imperial rule, was fatally counteracted by the bigotry and vacillation of his son and successor, Rudolf II. (1576-1612), in whose reign Germany was torn by the dissensions of the opposite religions factions, while each in turn called in the aid of foreigners to contribute towards the universal anarchy which culminated in the thirty years' war, begun under Rudolf's brother and successor Matthias (1612-19); continued under Ferdinand II. (1619-37), an able, bul cruel and bigoted man; and ended under Ferdinand III. (1637-57), by the treaty of Westphalia, iu 1648. The effect of the thirty years' war was to depopulate the rural districts of Germany, destroy its commerce, burden the people with taxes, cripple the already debilitated power of the emperors, and cut up the empire into a multitpde of petty states, the rulers of which exercised almost absolute power within their own territories. Leopold I. (1658-1705), a haughty, pedantic man, did not avail himself of the opportunities afforded by peace, for restoring order to the state, but suffered himself to be drawn into the coalition against France, whilst his hereditary states were overrun by the Turks. Although success often attended his arms, peace brought him no signal advantages. The reigns of Joseph I. (1705-11) and Charles VI. (1711-40), With whom expired the male line of the Hapsburg dynasty, were signalized by the great Victories won by the imperialist gen., Prince Eugene, in conjunction with Marlborough, over the French; but they brought no solid advantage to the empire. The disturbed condition of Spain and Saxony opened new channels for the interference of Germany, which was further distracted, after the death of Charles, by the dissensions occasioned by the contested succession of his daughter, Maria Theresa, and, through her, of her husband, Francis I. of Lorraine (1745-65), after their rival, the Bavarian elector, Charles VII., had, through the intervention of Prus sian aid, been elected in 1742 to the imperial throne, which, however, he was obliged to cede, after a brief occupation of three years. Constant disturbances, intensified during the seven years' war, when Frederick the great, of Prussia, maintained his char acter of a skillful general at the expense of the Austrians, made the reign of these sover eigns one of trouble and • disaster. Joseph II., their son (1765-90), during the lifetime of Maria Theresa, who retained her authority over all the Austrian states,. enjoyed little beyond the title of emperor, to which he had succeeded on his father's death. But when he ultimately acquired his mother's vast patrimony, be at once entered upon a course of reforms: which were, however, premature, and unsuited to the cases to which they were applied, whilst hiS attempts to re-establish the supremacy -of the imperial power in the s. of Germany were frustrated by Prussian influence. Leopold II., after a short reign of two years, was succeeded in 1792, by his son, Francis II., who, after a series of defeats by the armies of the French republic, and the adhesion, in 1805, of many of the German princes to the alliance of France, which led to the subsequent for mation of the Rhenish confederation under the protectorate of Napoleon, resigned the German crown, and assumed the title of emperor of Austria. From this period till the congress of Vienna in 1814-15, Germany was almost entirely at the mercy of Napoleon, who deposed the established sovereigns, and dismembered their states in favor of his favorites and dependents, while he crippled the trade of the country, and exhausted its resources by the extortion of subsidies or contributions. As a reconstruction of the old empire was no longer possible, those states which. still maintained their sovereignty combined, in 1815, to form a German confederation. Of the 300 states into which the empire had once been divided, there now remained only 40, a number which has since been reduced to 35•by the extinction of several petty dynasties. The diet was now reorganized. and appointed to hold its meetings at Frankfurt-on•the-Main, after having been formally recognized by all the allied states as the legislative and executive organ of the confederation; but it failed to satisfy the expectations of the nation, and soon became a mere political. tool in the hands of the who simply made its decrees, subservient to their own efforts for the suppression of every progressive movement.
The French revolution of 1830 reacted sufficiently on some of the few German states to compel their rulers to grant written constitutions to their subjects; but the effect was transient; and it was not till 1848, that the German nation gave expression, by open insurrectionary movements, to the discontent and the sense of oppression which had long possessed the minds of the people. The princes endeavored, by hasty concessions, to arrest the progress of republican principles, and, fully recognizing the inefficiency of the diet, they gave their sanction to the convocation, by a provisional self-constituted assembly, of a national congress of representatives of the people. Archduke John of Austria was elected vicar of the newly organized national government, but he soon dis appointed the hopes of the assembly by his evident attempts to frustrate all energetic action on the side of the parliament, while the speedy success of the anti-republican party in Austria and Prussia damped the hopes of the progressiimists. The refusal of the king of Prussia to accept the imperial crown which the parliament offered him was followed by the election of a provisional regency of the empire, but as nearly half the members had declined taking part in these proceedings, or in a previous measure, by which Austria had been excluded, by a single vote, from the German confederation, the assembly soon lapsed into a state of anarchy and impotence, which terminated in its dissolution. The sanguinary manner in which insurrectionary movements had, in the meanwhile, been suppressed by Prussian troops both in Prussia and Saxony, put an effectual end to republican demonstrations; and in 1850, Austria and Prussia, after exhibiting mutual jealousy and ill-will, which more than once seemed likely to end in war, combined to restore the diet, whose first acts were the intervention in Slesvig-Hol stein in favor of Denmark, and the abolition of the free constitutions of several of the lesser states. Since that period, the diet has been the on which Austria and Prussia have striven to secure the supremacy and championship of Germany, and every measure of public interest has been made subservient to the views of one or other of these rival powers. These states did, however, conclude a treaty of alliance in 1854, guaranteeing to each other the mutual defense of their possessions against all enemies—a compact in which the diet soon joined. In 1858, a currency convention was concluded between all the states of the German confederation, which had pre viously entered into similar alliances for the adjustment of international postal and commercial relations; and in the same year the diet adopted a resolution by which the Danish government was called upon to submit to the legislative assemblies a new project for the political organization of the duchies of Holstein, Lauenbnrg, and Slesvig. In 1859, after many stormy discussions, the assembly passed a resolution to mobilize the whole federal army, and to appoint tile Prussian prince regent commander in-chief, subject to the control of the diet, or virtually of Austria, with which rested the casting-vote in the federal assembly. This appointment did not satisfy the views of Prussia, which, however, abstained, for a time, from making any direct attempt to secure the political leadership in Germany. The anti-Napoleonic feeling, which at a later period swelled to such a tide, manifested itself decidedly during the difficulties .between France and Austria in the discussions and apprehensions to which this sentiment gave rise, together with the consideration of the Slesvig-Holstein difficul ties, constituted the principal questions, under discussion in the federal parliament, down to the rupture between Prussia and the dissolution of the bund in 1866. For the later history of Germany, see GERMANY and BISMARCK in Surr., Vol. X., also FRANCE.—Scriptores Rerum German. apud Menkeniune; Manned, Gesch. d. Teutsehen; Sismondi, Histoire des Francais; Putter, History of the German Constitution; Rau tner, Ha of the Hohenstaufen; Coxe, House of Austria; Eichhorn's Deutsch. &ants Rechtsgesch.; Carlyle. Hist. of Fred. IL; Schulze, Einteitung in das Deutsche Staatsrecht, etc. (Leip. 18671; Meyer, Grundzage des Norddeuachen Bundesrecht (Leip. 1868); Hirth, Annalen des Nordd. Buluies, etc. (Bed. 1868); and Annalen des Dent. Reich* (1871); Auerbach, Das' neue Deut. Reich, send seine Verfassung (Berl. 1871); and Hansen, Die Verfassung des Deut. Reichs (Nordl. 18711.
German Language and Literature.—The numerous dialects which were spoken by the different confederacies and tribes of ancient Germany were all derivatives from one branch of the Aryan or Indo-Germanic family of languages, which separated from the parent stock at a very early period, although subsequently to the separation of the Celtic. We can trace the to existence of the two branches of Teutonic speech known as low-German and high-German as far back as the 7th c., but there is no evidence to show that they as common uniform languages, from which their vpriously modified dialects were respectively derived. According to the eminent philologist, Max Midler, there never was one common Teutonic language which diverged into two streams; while the utmost we can venture to assert in regard to the various high and low-German dialects is, that they respectively passed, at different times, through the same stages of grammatical development. The high-German branch—which was spoken in the dialects of Swabia, Bavaria, and Austria, and parts of Franconia and Saxony —has been the literary language of Germany since the days of Charlemagne. It may be classified under three periods—the old high-German, dating from the 7th c. and extend ing to the period of the Crusades, or the 12th c.; the middle high-German, beginning in the 12th c., and Continuing till the reformation; and the new high-German, dating from Luther's time to our own days. The low-German, which in Germany itself has been little used in literature, comprehends many dialects, as the Frisian (q.v.), the Flemish, Dutch, Platt-Deutsch, etc. The oldest literary monument of low-German belongs to the 9th c., and is a Christian epic known as the Helfand (the Healer or Savior); and although there are traces of popular low-German literature up to the 17th c., the trans lation of the Bible into high-German by Luther decided the fate of low-German. In addition to the various dialects which are commonly included under the heads of high and low-German, an important evidence of the cultivation of a form of German, differing equally from the high and low groups, has been preserved to us. This important linguistic monument is a fragment of a Gothic translation of the Bible, which was made in the 4th c. by bishop Ulfilas, and used by all the Gothic tribes when they advanced into Italy and Spain. The Gothic language died out in the 9th c.; and after the extinc tion of the power of the Goths, the translation of Units was forgotten and lost sight of till the accidental discovery, in the 16th c., of a MS. preserved in the abbey of Werden, and containing fragments of this important work. This MS. is a copy made in the 5th c. of Ulfilas's translation, and, fragmentary as it is, it affords evidence of the high degree of development to which this dialect had been carried, And exhibits a form of speech which belongs to neither the high nor low-German group, but very possibly may have been merely one among numerous other allied forms of Teutonic speech which have perished.
The diffusion of Christianity among the Germanic tribes had the effect both • of sup pressing the use of the Runic characters that had been common to them, and of chang ing the character of their literature, for instead of the heroic songs and "beast-epics ' of a sanguinary paonnism.(Their-eposVscriptural paraphrases, legends, and hymns were now selected; while the ancient form of alliteration by degrees gave place to the rhyth mical arrangement of the Latin versification common in the early periods of the middle ages. Latin, moreover, became the language of the court, thb church, and the law, under the Saxon emporers, while German was left entirely to the people, until the new ideas, which were diffused both in regard to literature and language during the Crusades under the rule of the accomplished emperors of the Hohenstauffen line, had the effect of reviving the use and cultivation of the vernacular dialects, among which the Swabian, as the language of the court, soon acquired a -marked preponderance over the others. In that age of chivalry and romance, the art of song was cherished by princes and nobles, many of whom belonged to the order of the Minnesinger (or singers of love), and composed in the Swabian or high-German dialect of the imperial court. The sub jects chiefly selected during the 13th and 14th centuries, both by courtly and popular singers, were based on the legendary lore of and his paladins, and king Arthur and his knights, and of the Sangrael; and it is to this period that we must refer the IsRbetungen Lied and Gudrun, which rank as the greatest treasures of German national literature. Among the most successful poets and minne-singers belonging to the Swabian period, we may specially indicate Heinrich von Veldeke, Hartmann von der Atte, Wolfram von Esthenbach, Walther von der Vogelweide, Neidhart of Bavaria, Heinrich von Ofterdingen, etc. The taste for the received a new impetus among the people in the middle of the 12th c. by the re-translation, from the Walloon into German, of the ancient poem of Reinhard Fuchs, which, according to the distin guished philologist Jakob Grimm, originated with the Frankish tribes, who carried it with them when they crossed the Rhine and founded an empire in Gaul, and from whom it was diffused among the neighboring tribes of Northern France and Flanders.