Age of Religious Schism : Germany

The smoldering dissatisfaction with the church broke out - mainly through the actions of Martin Luther from 1517 - in the Reformation, which quickly spread. Its consequences went far beyond the religious sphere. Social unrest abounded. In 1522/23 the Reich knights rose up, and in 1525 the Peasants’ Revolt broke out, the first larger revolutionary movement in German history to strive for both political and social change. Both uprisings failed or were bloodily quelled.

The territorial princes profited most from the Reformation. After the changing fortunes of war, they were given the right to dictate their subjects’ religion by the 1555 Peace of Augsburg. This accorded the Protestants equal rights with those of the Catholics. The religious division of Germany was thus sealed. On the imperial throne at the time of the Reformation was CharlesV (1519-1556), heir to the biggest realm since the time of Charlemagne. His international political interests were too demanding for him to be able to assert himself within Germany. After his abdication, the empire was split up. The German territorial states and the western European national states together now formed the new European system of states.

At the time of the Peace of Augsburg, four fifths of Germany was Protestant, but the struggle between the faiths had not ended. In the following decades, the Catholic Church was able to recapture many areas (Counter-Reformation). The differences between the faiths sharpened; religious parties - the Protestant Union (1608) and the Catholic League (1609) - were formed. A local conflict in Bohemia then triggered the Thirty Years’ War, which widened into a European conflict over religious and political differences. Between 1618 and 1648, much of Germany was devastated and depopulated. The 1648 Peace of Westphalia brought the cession of territories to France and Sweden and confirmed the withdrawal of Switzerland and the Netherlands from the Reich. The estates of the Reich were accorded all major sovereign rights in religious and temporal matters as well as the right to enter into alliances with foreign partners.