CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SMALLER GERMAN STATES

In determining princely aims and how these affected policy-making, we must avoid the trap of reducing the motivation for every action to one cause. Clearly, individual character, upbringing and religion, not to mention the shape and location of territory and the general intellectual atmosphere, created a different set of criteria for each prince. Clearly also, these criteria changed in response to interaction with other individuals, groups and states. In some cases, pursuit of ‘higher ideals’ through patronage of the arts, or the desire to benefit the population by benevolent reforms, looms large. Never absent, however, are dynastic and political goals, and it is upon these that this chapter will concentrate. In doing so we need to beware of automatically regarding all other aspects of princely policy as subordinate to these ends.

It is a popular but fallacious criticism of the notion of absolutism, especially the ‘enlightened’ sort, that all reforms were designed to strengthen the state's potential to achieve political ends. Furtherance of political aims and the advancement of the ‘common good’ were not necessarily mutually exclusive. A tax reform might both introduce a fairer distribution of financial burdens and raise more money for the army. Assessing just which motive was foremost in a particular ruler's mind at the time is always problematical, and is probably best left to the biographer. Our concern is with those aims that had the greatest impact on the shaping of the internal structure of the state.