There can be no doubt that the Peace of Westphalia, which among other things linked the constitutional order of the Reich to neighbouring states, effected not inconsiderable territorial alterations, ended an 80-year process of emancipation for one new republic, and formally recognised the unrestricted sovereignty of another new political entity (this one in the form of a confederation), represents a crucial turning-point in European history. Yet it is equally true that the pax christiana of 1648 has never succeeded in achieving the status of a European lieu de mémoire. It is true generally, in fact, that few or no reference points exist for a culture of remembrance having validity for the whole of Europe; there are no events or individuals of pan-European relevance such as might indirectly support or accelerate the process of European integration. Many have openly lamented this "myth deficit” on Europe's part.[1] Obviously only events bearing a positive connotation could come to occupy the function of lieux de mémoire, and they would need to have been of significance for much of the continent. Since ultimately this was true neither of Tours/Poitiers 732, nor of Liegnitz 1241, nor of Vienna 1683, since it could be said neither of the Crusades nor of the 1848 Revolution, and since it applied neither to Charlemagne nor to Napoleon Bonaparte, a common culture of remembrance has never even begun to come about and, like it or not, contemporary Europe must be content to draw on the round anniversaries of the Treaties of Rome for its lieu de mémoire.

Nor, of course, is it possible to use political publicity to elevate particular historical dates or occurrences to the status of a European event. Certainly, in the case of the Peace of Westphalia, any such attempt would be doomed to failure. A political event may be of undeniable importance without necessarily finding a correspondingly positive echo in and access to collective awareness. The Peace of Westphalia, admittedly, was in many respects a compromise; it left many problems unsolved, it failed to build a lasting European peace, and until well into our own century it met with massive reservations from the Catholic section of Europe. Notwithstanding a pronounced culture of remembrance in Protestant Germany and in certain neighbour states subject to special, positive German influence, this has always proved insufficient to establish the Peace of Westphalia as a "deed of foundation” of today's Europe — in the sense of a beacon of tolerance, say, or of modern international law. The Peace of Westphalia does not lend itself (or only in a very limited way) to providing a European lieu de mémoire, even though its political importance in the course of the modern history of the continent is beyond dispute.

However, this has not prevented it from occupying a prominent place in the folk memories of individual states. In Germany, of course, which finds it much harder than many of its neighbours to elevate events in its own history that have a positive connotation to the rank of myths and factors influencing the collective awareness, the Peace of Westphalia has always had difficulty in gaining general acceptance. Indisputably, it furnished a sound, sensible settlement of the constitutional law of the Old Reich and (something of a myth-inhibitor, this) for a century and a half provided a legal basis for the whole body of the Reich (though one over the interpretation of which, as well as its application to individual questions, lawyers were constantly at loggerheads).[2] Nevertheless, in the public mind of the ancien régime it was seen as a "Protestant” document that had dealt Catholicism a blow from which it would never recover. Not surprisingly, then, a specific culture of remembrance evolved in Protestant cities and in those municipalities that derived lasting benefit from the Peace of Westphalia in consequence of its recognition of religious equality. One thinks here not only of Augsburg and its annual peace festival, invariably accompanied by high-quality popular art,[3] but also of the south-German imperial cities from Nuremberg to Lindau, which at least on "round-number” anniversaries minted commemorative medals[4] and marked the occasion with special church services. The same was certainly not, however, true of the Catholic treaty city of Münster, where it was not until the 250th anniversary in 1898 that the Peace of Westphalia was so to speak "rediscovered” on a major scale.[5]

Following the markedly unspectacular end of the Old Reich, a further factor emerged that might be described as a fundamental change of paradigm and that had a strongly negative effect on the way in which the Peace of Westphalia was regarded. This was the belittling of the Old Reich for not having steered a consistent course towards the united nation state and for having exposed itself in consequence to shameless exploitation by its neighbours. From that standpoint (represented by the Berlin historian Friedrich Rühs and his history of Franco-German relations, for example),[6] the Peace of Westphalia was seen as having played an absolutely crucial role, marking the start of a disastrous period of outside control of the German Reich by its more powerful neighbours and representing the victory of particularism and regionalism over the trend towards political centralisation. It was not until the 1950s and 1960s that this view (which had received a further enormous boost as a result of National-Socialist ideology)[7] was replaced by a fresh paradigm that was able to pay proper respect to the Old Reich as a body united by law and peace and that no longer saw the powerful nation state as the be-all and end-all of German history.[8] A century and half of this negative view has left such deep traces that (particularly in conjunction with the similarly negative image of the Peace in Catholic Germany) there is little chance of the Peace of Westphalia ever becoming a genuine national lieu de mémoire.

It is important to make this point in such sober, unemotional terms, although of course there is general acknowledgement of the many problems that an association of territorial states that did not give itself a national form of organisation until 187l could not help but have in developing national lieux de mémoire.[9] Commemorations of the German victory at Sedan and of the Kaiser's birthday were attempts to arouse something like a culture of celebration that would create or at least stimulate a sense of national identity. All in all, however, such attempts proved vain. Their failure was undoubtedly due in part to two circumstances: ordinary people (those who were not dignitaries, in other words) were insufficiently involved, and inadequate appeal was made to historical myths and symbols. Significantly, after a very short time the political authorities abandoned the process of trying to turn the Imperial Proclamation of 18 January 1871 into a national day of commemoration: there was simply not enough response. From the time of its becoming a nation state, Germany suffered from a deficit of national myths; in fact, it was highly significant that, in the post-1871 Reich, a special "German National Festivals” society was formed to remedy this lack. Admittedly (and quite understandably), not even this society, founded in conservative circles in 1897, ever contemplated a national festival associated with the Peace of Westphalia, seeking instead to elevate the 1883 Niederwald Monument to the status of a national lieu de mémoire. National feeling, if nothing else, forbade any "official” commemoration of an event in which Germany's neighbour across the Rhine had (actually or allegedly) been on the winning side.

The problem was of course different so far as other European countries were concerned, particularly those for whom the Peace of Westphalia had furnished a birth certificate, as it were. Here one thinks particularly of the Netherlands,[10] which in the first part of the cluster of peace treaties, namely the separate peace with Spain signed on 30 January 1648, was literally granted independence for the first time. And it is indicative of the high value still placed on the Peace of Westphalia in present-day Holland that it was there (in Nijmegen, and also in Kleve) that the first of a number of major conferences on the subject was held in August 1996, that a national committee is currently busy making preparations for the commemorative celebrations, and that no fewer than five exhibitions are planned in different Dutch cities.

Before we undertake a closer examination of the culture of remembrance in the Netherlands, it must of course be conceded that general, all-round appreciation of the Peace of Westphalia has always been qualified by a certain ambiguity. The reasons for this are twofold: the way in which the Dutch people were irrevocably split by the events of 1648, and their country's division into two states (whose political successors did eventually, in the early nineteenth century, make one further, short-lived attempt to restore ethnic unity). Down the centuries (though perhaps least of all on the occasion of the centenary celebrations in 1748) there have been not a few politicians and historians who, favouring a "greater” Netherlands, entertained reservations about the settlement with Spain that was made at that time and that paved the way for an (almost) unlimited commercial and economic boom.

However, this did and does not apply as regards the vast majority of the Dutch people, for whom the Peace of Westphalia has always been a key element in their collective awareness. This is undoubtedly true even of the province that refused to sign in 1648. Although quite other problems preoccupied the Netherlands and its people in the winter of 1747-8 (a war that had spread directly to the republic and of which no end was yet in sight, social unrest whose causes had to do with that war, a devastating outbreak of rinderpest), the centenary saw a mass of commemorative events, many of which addressed and played variations on one and the same theme, namely the Peace of Münster as special proof of God's commitment to his chosen people, the "other Israel”. As well as volumes of poetry, to which some famous writers contributed and in which connections were often drawn with the current "year of peace” (where this was already visible, depending on the date of publication), and as well as a number of commemorative medals, one thinks here mainly of certain journals that supported the idea of commemorating the Peace. They included de Europise staatssecretaris, for example, which called upon all inhabitants of the republic to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the Peace of Westphalia. The sub-text was one of a consecration of national history: no new European state had come into existence since 1648, so the Dutch Republic (to use a biblical metaphor) was the last-born Son of God — God who had already, prior to 1648, saved the polity in miraculous fashion, and who had actively assisted its birth. The theme was of course taken up again and again in the many commemorative sermons preached up and down the country.

Circumstances dictated that 1748 did not in fact see a festival performance of Joost van den Vondel's "classic” play, De Leeuwendalers, which had been premiered in 1648, and unlike a hundred years earlier there were no processions and other public demonstrations. However, that does not alter the fact that in 1748 the Peace of Westphalia (in the form of the separate Spanish-Dutch treaty) was ranked as an event of supreme symbolic importance for the national history of the Netherlands and, so far as possible in the light of the current situation, was also celebrated as such. Even in 1948, that did not change. Again in far from favourable external circumstances, a national committee for the first time co-ordinated a broad range of events from lectures, newspaper articles, and radio plays to a national festival of remembrance and a highly praised exhibition in Delft's Prinsenhof. Academic publications from that same commemoration year (1948) stressed clearly that the Peace of Westphalia should be seen as one of the most important milestones in the nation's history. For the Netherlands, which of course were unable to associate their existence and independence with anything in the more distant past, the Peace of Westphalia (together with the Union of Utrecht and William the Silent) commanded and continues to command a weight of emotional dignity that has never become defamiliarised in myth.

In the case of the other state that 1648 literally (albeit indirectly) launched into final sovereignty, the picture is very different. In the Swiss Confederation, a kind of national myth had clearly taken shape well before the middle of the seventeenth century, a key to people's understanding of themselves that, while it did not yet find expression in centenary celebrations, was nevertheless tangible. This was the myth of the Bundesbrief of 1291.[11] With that to contend with, the Peace of Westphalia seems never to have managed to establish itself in the collective consciousness as a constitutive document. The fact that over the centuries Johann Rudolf Wettstein, Mayor of Basel (the brilliant Swiss representative at Münster), did retain a degree of popularity in his native city and parts of German-speaking Switzerland does nothing to alter such a verdict.

Let us turn briefly to France, for whose historians since the eighteenth century and in whose national history there had of course been events of far greater resonance, lieux de mémoire such as the Peace of Westphalia could not anyhow have rivalled, be it the baptism of Clovis, Joan of Arc, or 14 July 1789, to pick out only the most striking. However, the Alsace aspect (in other words, the fact of having wrested a culturally, economically, and geo-strategically important territory from the Habsburg rival and the neighbouring group of states, paving the way for permanent, unconditional annexation of the whole of Alsace) ensured that the Peace of Westphalia would enjoy a position of great and lasting importance in French public opinion, exerting a formative influence on the country's view of history. Against that background, it was not by chance that in 1949, still suffering terribly from the effects of the recent war, France nevertheless found the strength and the resources to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the Peace of Münster with a brace of exhibitions; and it was equally symptomatic that one of those exhibitions, held in Strasbourg's Palais de Rohan under the title "L'Alsace Française 1648-1948”, was devoted purely to the subject of Alsace.[12]

In France, perhaps more than in any other European country, historians make a huge contribution towards forming and amending people's view of history, so it makes sense to examine the work of at least two nineteenth-century French historians and see what they said about the Peace of Westphalia. I have deliberately chosen historians who, in writing general accounts of the period, were obliged to deal with the Peace of Westphalia. The fact is, the French public takes very much more notice of such general accounts than of specialist treatments. This was and is all the more the case when the historians in question also play a part in their country's public life. Henri Martin's massive Histoire de France[13] (which until Lavisse superseded it was regarded as the leading textbook of French history) enjoyed an extraordinarily broad currency among France's educated middle class. The volume of interest to us here ("...depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu'en 1789”), first published in 1835, was significantly in its fourth edition by 1855. According to Martin's interpretation, the importance of the Peace of Westphalia came down essentially to two aspects: the liberation and organisation of Germany and the expansion of France and Sweden. Regarding the first point, Martin was concerned to show the collapse of imperial power, on the ruins of which a federal system was erected. This had been particularly extensive, Martin wrote, because the estates' right to form alliances appeared to exceed even the bounds of a federation. However, what had rendered the federal system functional was the fact that it was controlled by the guarantee of France, based on the "tradition immémoriale de la Germanie”. Martin devoted even more space to the territorial changes that (where they concerned France) need to be seen in the context of his basic position, which was that he himself considered and condemned the then frontiers of France as arbitrary on the grounds that they impaired France's natural balance. To that extent he can hardly have been in agreement with the Lothringian settlement ("c'est un abandon à peine déguisé”), while on the other hand he regarded the accession of Alsace to the French crown as a natural recompense for its military engagement and for its assumption of the role of guarantee power. Martin held that this was in line with the logic of the moment in that Alsace in any case comprised territories that rightfully belonged to France: "[...] la Germanie restitue l'Alsace à la vieille Gaule, qui franchit joyeusement les Vosges pour retrouver son humide frontière des anciens jours”. Against the fundamental premise of the unquestionable and continually unfolding national unity of France, contemporaries must be presented with a picture highlighting not only the legitimacy but also the irreversibility of the events of 1648, together with subsequent unions.

For historians writing after 1871, the argument (where it did not seek refuge in naked revanchisme) was of course made more difficult partly because, in connection with the reintegration of Alsace/Elsass, historical factors had been cited on the German side as well. Remarkably, in his introduction to the Austrian volume (published in 1884) of the Recueil des instructions,[14] the volume that launched that vast publishing enterprise, Albert Sorel does not devote most space to the Alsace aspect; for Sorel, while the territorial concessions of 1648 had been politically and legally beyond doubt, the treaty partners had chosen such potentially misleading forms of words that a whole series of conflicts with the "Casa d'Austria” had arisen in consequence. Austria (in Sorel's view) had sought deliberately to exploit those ambiguities in order repeatedly to challenge and cast doubt on the rights of the French crown. In the period that followed (and there is no mistaking Sorel's "he who has ears, let him hear”), France's policy tended to be one of protecting the smaller states of Europe against the covetous designs of larger ones. For this reason the "Renversement des Alliances” of 1756 had in fact detracted from France's European function by failing to strengthen its role as protector of weaker states.

Unquestionably, nineteenth-century French historians placed a very high value on the Peace of Westphalia so far as their national history was concerned because it was associated with the acquisition of an important province and represented a triumph (in their eyes) over the neighbour across the Rhine. However, since in the course of its history France had acquired more than one province, the Peace of Westphalia never achieved the status of an undisputed national lieu de mémoire in that country.

One is tempted to extend this line further here: to Spain, for example, where the Peace of Westphalia (remember: the Habsburg state was excluded from both Instrumenta Pacis of October 1648) has to be seen as a low point in the nation's history, apt at best to constitute a negative lieu de mémoire, or to Sweden, where subsequent generations, counting the costs of their successes, are likely to have seen the Peace of Westphalia as a (downward) turning-point in their history. Not least for lack of adequate historical groundwork, we must refrain from such speculation. However, even without proper light having been thrown on these areas of research, it is possible to advance the cautious proposition that scarcely anywhere in the countries involved did this thoroughly sober and unspectacular document, which was very much in the nature of a compromise and long remained in effect in terms of current law, lend itself to becoming a true lieu de mémoire; even in the Netherlands, while it was of crucial importance both politically and emotionally, it hardly constituted a focal point of national self-discovery enjoying mythic status. The many academic and political activities planned for the jubilee year will not fundamentally alter that fact and will certainly not permit the Peace of Westphalia to be hailed as an early form of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe or a forerunner of the European Union.

FOOTNOTES