European travel log part 4: The Holy Roman Empire

I have been busy and have not kept up my travel notes from my recent European trip. So here is the next installment. When I last left off, I had just climbed aboard a train in Verona, destined for Augsburg, near Munich.

As we left Milan and proceeded through Trento, Bolzano, Innsbruck and on to Munich, I realized that I was really going to be touring through the Holy Roman Empire, an area where people speaking mostly German, but also Italian and Czech, as well as other languages, had been ruled by various Kings and Princes, and that here had been may wars fought wars in the name of different royal houses, and in the name of the two great branches of the Western Christendom, Protestantism and Catholicism.

Yet ever since Charlemagne, there had existed an overarching vision of a German mission to unify Europe, or at least a great part of it, as the successor state to the Roman Empire. It was said apparently that the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, as it was called, was neither Holy, nor Roman nor an Empire. The vision if a unified German speaking state remained a goal, at least for some of the ruling powers. But in reality German speaking Europe remained politically disunited, while other European states established themselves.

When I visited the Medieval squares of Augsburg or Prague or and when I saw the magnificent Cathedral in Cologne, or when I saw the hill just outside Prague where the 30 years war began, I did have a sense of the cultural connection between those cities.

Of course it was left to Prussia, with its capitol in Berlin, to finally unite much of the German speaking part of Europe. Austria, and therefore Prague (at the time under Austria)  were left out of this united German state. And after World War I a new Czechoslovakian state was created, but its capitol Prague, now the capitol of the Czech Republic, retains plenty of evidence of German cultural influence, in its buildings and in some of its most famous literary figures like Kafka.I gather that ever since the Middle Ages Prague has been the scene rivalry between Czech speakers and German speakers. But most of history consists struggles of on kind or another.

I enjoyed all the cities for different reasons, but Prague, with its pedestrian streets and Medieval atmosphere, is the most unique and probably the one that I would most recommend to visitors. Munich and Berlin would be close seconds, for different reasons.

And I do recommend traveling with a Eurailpass and staying in inexpensive hotels in the old Holy Roman Empire.

Comments

[Ryan]

That's pretty cool Steve. That sounds very much like something I'd like to do.