Peter Blickle, Peter Kissling, Heinrich R. Schmidt. Gute Policey als Politik im 16. Jahrhundert: Die Entstehung des öffentlichen Raumes in Oberdeutschland. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2003. 596 S. EUR 49.00 (gebunden), ISBN 978-3-465-03272-4.
Reviewed by Jason Coy (Department of History, College of Charleston)
Published on H-German (August, 2005)
Policing and Politics
The topic of the collection of essays reviewed here stems from a seminar on the development of Kempten's sixteenth-century Landesordnungen at the University of Bern. The essays included in Gute Policey als Politik examine the evolution of this comprehensive piece of legislation as well as the application of gute Policey among the various principalities and city-states of Swabia and the Swiss Cantons during the 1500s. As the title of the collection suggests, the central contention of the contributors is the close link between policing and politics in this region during the early modern period.
Gute Policey als Politik begins with a pair of valuable introductory essays that provide structure for the individual contributions that follow. After an engaging foreword by Peter Blickle that lays out the general contours of the work's subject matter, Andreas Hieber provides an exhaustive survey of recent scholarship on the development of Policeyordnungen in early modern Europe, highlighting recent works on the subject by Peter Blickle, Karl Härter, Peter Kissling, and Michael Stolleis.[1]
Part 1 of the work consists of a transcription of a late sixteenth-century Landesordnung from the Grafschaft of Kempten, followed by a series of detailed essays that examine specific aspects of this exhaustive legislation. The editor of this important example of Policey legislation, Peter Kissling, has provided useful notes and commentary that clarify its internal structure and show its gradual development. This valuable source demonstrates the wide range of early modern police regulations, with articles covering offenses that range from adultery to sorcery. The essays that make up the remainder of this section cover diverse topics, including the relationship between state formation and police regulations in the territory, the regulation of religious expression and economic activity in the Landesordnungen, and the prominence of both Strafrecht and Sittenzucht in these police ordinances. Andreas Hieber's contribution to this section of the collection, a thorough examination of the Kemptener Landesordnungen's role in the legitimization of central authority in the territory is especially relevant, given the book's focus on the interaction between policing and politics.
A detailed series of local case studies that examine the role of Policey in the regulation of early modern society comprise part 2 of the collection. These essays analyze policing in territories ranging from urban polities to rural communities to monastic territories situated across southern Germany and Switzerland. While all of these offerings are informative, Arman Weidenmann's study of the shifting relationship between Zwinglian theology and policing in sixteenth-century Zurich is particularly interesting, examining the mutually reinforcing relationship between ecclesiastical and secular authorities at the heart of Reformation-era disciplining efforts.
The third and final section of Gute Policey als Politik consists of several challenging essays that examine the larger political implications of early modern policing: the role of gute Policey in political legitimation. Peter Kissling's contribution on the relationship between the impulse to conserve scarce natural resources in alpine areas and the detailed economic provisions contained in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century disciplinary initiatives in these regions is particularly provocative. Approaching the problem from the perspective of environmental history, Kissling opens exciting new avenues for research. Peter Blickle's essay in this section is also significant, as he investigates the role of popular complaints in the construction of disciplinary legislation and how this normative consensus in turn supported the consolidation of early modern central authority.[2]
The individual essays presented in the volume are interesting in their own right, but the greatest strength of the work is the way that the local case studies and broad theoretical discussions work together to shed new light on the role of policing in reinforcing political authority in early modern Oberdeutschland. The merit of this approach lies in highlighting the rich diversity that marked the German principalities during this period while maintaining a tight focus on the role of disciplining in the consolidation of central authority. Furthermore, the contributors' exhaustive examination of the Kemptener Landesordnungen, augmented by the transcription of this important legislation, provides researchers interested in legal history or early modern social control initiatives with valuable comparative material.
Overall, this collection of essays is well edited and includes a wealth of helpful tables and charts, as well as a useful general index, a rarity in an edited volume. The work does not, however, include a comprehensive bibliography. Furthermore, despite the dizzying array of polities large and small mentioned in the text, the editors do not provide any maps, a more serious shortcoming. Given the quality of the essays included in Gute Policey als Politik, and its broad implications for the history of early modern central Europe, it should interest scholars researching early modern state formation, legal developments, and official disciplinary efforts. The collection is also relevant in light of current historiographical debates surrounding the continued validity of the "Sozialdisziplinierung" and "confessionalization" paradigms.[3]
Notes
[1]. See Peter Blickle, "Gute Policey oder Sozialdisziplinierung?," in Politik--Bildung--Religion: Festschrift für Hans Maier zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. T. Stammen, H. Oberreutner, and P. Mikat (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1996); Karl Härter, ed., Policey und frühneuzeitliche Gesellschaft (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 2000); Peter Kissling, "Gute Policey" im Berchtesgadener Land: Rechtsentwicklung und Verwaltung zwischen Landschaft und Obrigkeit 1377 bis 1803 (Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1999); and Michael Stolleis, ed., Policey im Europa der frühen Neuzeit (Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1996).
[2]. For an interesting essay on the role of consensus in official social control efforts, see Martin Dinges, "Justiznutzungen als soziale Kontrolle in der Frühen Neuzeit," in Kriminalitätsgeschichte. Beiträge zu einer Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte der Vormoderne, ed. Andreas Blauert and Gerd Schwerhoff (Konstanz: Universitätsverlag Konstanz, 2000), pp. 503-44.
[3]. Works central to these models include: Norbert Elias, Über den Prozess der Zivilisation (Basel, 1939; English reprint edition: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); Gerhard Oestreich, "Strukturprobleme des europäischen Absolutismus," Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 55 (1969): pp. 329-347; Wolfgang Reinhard, "Zwang zur Konfessionalisierung? Prolegomena zu einer Theorie des konfessionellen Zeitalters," Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 10 (1983): pp. 437-460; Heinz Schilling, Konfessionskonflikt und Staatsbildung. Eine Fallstudie über das Verhältnis von religiösem und sozialem Wandel in der Frühneuzeit am Beispiel der Grafschaft Lippe (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1981); and more recently Heinz Schilling, "Profil und Perspektiven einer interdisziplin[ä]ren und komparatistischen Disziplinierungsforschung jenseits einer Dichotomie von Gesellschaft- und Kulturgeschichte," in Institutionen, Instrumente, und Akteure sozialer Kontrolle und Diszpilinierung im frühneuzeitlichen Europa/Institutions, Instruments and Agents of Social Control in Early Modern Europe, ed. Heinz Schilling (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1999), pp. 3-36. For the current state of these debates, see the comprehensive treatment of recent historiography on the subject provided by Francisca Loetz in Mit Gott handeln: Von den Zürcher Götteslästerern der Frühen Neuzeit zu einer Kulturgeschichte des Religiösen (Göttingen, 2002), pp. 50-56--see H-German review by Jason P. Coy at <http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=314711093955804>, as well as the current H-Net forum on "Confessionalization, " located at <http://www.h-net.org/~german/discuss/Confessionalization/Confess_index.htm> .
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Citation:
Jason Coy. Review of Blickle, Peter; Kissling, Peter; Schmidt, Heinrich R., Gute Policey als Politik im 16. Jahrhundert: Die Entstehung des öffentlichen Raumes in Oberdeutschland.
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
August, 2005.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=11109
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