The Palatinate in the 17th and 18th Centuries

As a young girl I was quite in interested in the English and British monarchy. When I read about the "Electorate of the Palatinate" in reference to Charles I's daughter Elizabeth and her daughter Sophia, the mother of George I, I thought it referred to a country in which the citizens elected their rulers. Not quite. Up until 1806, an Elector was a ruler who had the right to elect the so-called Holy Roman Emperor. The German title is Kurfürst, from küren, to choose or elect, and Fürst, a prince or sovereign.

Before the unification of Germany in 1871, central and northern Europe was a patchwork of kingdoms, grand duchies, duchies, electorates, margravates, counties, principalities and imperial cities. Afer the Reformation, the rights of the residents of these entities often depended on whether or not their religious beliefs aligned with the beliefs of their rulers. The situation could change suddenly when one ruling line died out and was replaced by a more-or-less related line. The Palatinate - in German, der Pfalz - was one of these entities.

What follows is a once-over-lightly discussion of politics and religion in the Palatinate in the 17th and 18th century, written by someone who's learning German history as she goes along. For a more detailed and knowledgeable discussion that's also a good read, I highly recommend "Contested Identities: Religious Affiliation and Diversity in the Palatinate," Chapter 3 of Rosalind Beiler's Immigrant and Entrepreneur: the Atlantic World of Caspar Wistar, 1650-1750 (2008).

The Kingdom of Bohemia (located in what's now the western part of the Czech Republic) was another such entity. It enjoyed an unusual degree of religious freedom from 1436 until the early 1600s. The Catholic Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia, upheld this tradition as late as 1609. However, in 1617 Rudolph's brother and successor, Matthias, was succeeded in turn by their cousin, the far less tolerant Ferdinand II. The result was the Bohemian Revolt. The leaders of the revolt were Protestants, specifically a variety of Hussite. They appealed to the Calvinist Friedrich V, Elector of the Palatinate, for protection, hinting that there was a kingdom in it for him. Friedrich (Elizabeth's husband, Sophia's father) took them up on it, a decision which was to trigger the Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648.

For our purposes, the important point here is that the Palatinate was invaded by Imperial and Spanish troops and pretty much smashed flat. Control of the Palatinate was given to Friedrich's distant cousin, the Duke of Bavaria, Maximilian I. The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 returned control of the Lower Palatinate, der Rheinpfalz, to Friedrich's son Karl I Ludwig, while the Upper Palatinate, der Oberpfalz, remained with Maximilian. Karl I Ludwig was succeeded in 1680 by his son, Karl II, the last of Protestant Simmern line.

In 1685 Karl II was succeeded by the Catholic Philipp Wilhelm of Neuberg. This was already not great news for Protestants, but to make things worse, Karl II's sister Lieselotte (Elisabeth Charlotte) was the sister-in-law of Louis XIV, the King of France. Louis used Philipp Wilhelm's succession as an excuse to invade the Palatinate in 1688, kicking off the Nine Years' War or War of the Palatinate Succession, 1688-1697. The French instituted a scorched earth policy, burning entire cities.

Philipp Wilhelm died in 1690 while the war was still in progress. His son Johann Wilhelm was able to retrieve most of the Palatinate's territory from the French under the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697. However, he could only do so under the condition that the Palatinate not "revert" to Protestantism. For example, one of the policies he instituted was that Protestant church buildings could be used by anyone, Reformed (AKA Calvinist), Lutheran or Catholic. The different services were scheduled at different times in the same building. Catholic church buildings, however, were reserved for the use of Catholics.

The Palatinate was not one of the main combattants in the War of the Spanish Succession, 1702-1715, but it was caught in the middle between other, larger countries. For the residents, the result was pretty much the same: invasion by troops from France, England and other parts of Germany. Johann Wilhelm chose to ally with the Protestant Germans and English rather than the Catholic French. This may have been in part because Bavaria was allied with the French and Johann Wilhelm saw a chance of regaining the Oberpfalz from Bavaria. However, in order to gain the protection of his new allies, particularly Brandenburg-Prussia, Johann Wihelm had to ease up on Protestants living in his own realm. The result was the Kurpfälzische Religionsdeklaration (Palatinate Religious Declaration) agreed to on 21 Nov 1705 between Brandenburg-Prussia and the Palatinate.

The key points of the Religionsdeklaration were the guarantee of freedom of conscience and the abolition of the simultaneities, ie, the joint use of Protestant churches. Church buildings were divided between the Reformed and Catholic faiths by a ratio of five to two. Lutherans, however, were granted only those churches they had owned since 1624. (The choice of this particular year was an artefact of the Peace of Westphalia, which designated it as a standard year for determining which religions had which rights in which particular territories.) It's sometimes too easy to see post-Reformation Europe in terms of Protestant vs Catholic, when in reality each Protestant faith had its own interests to look out for.

Johann Wilhelm was briefly successful in regaining the Oberpfalz from Bavaria in 1707 but then was forced to give it back in 1714 under the terms of the Treaty of Baden. He died two years later and was succeeded by his brother, Karl III Philipp.

The Palatinate continued to get caught in the middle of other people's wars. France used the War of the Polish Succession, 1733-1738, to make a grab for the Duchy of Lorraine, whose ruler was connected to Hapsburgs who ruled the Austrian Empire. Lorraine is west of the Rhine and south of the Palatinate, but somehow in the course of battling the Austrian troops, French troops ended up driving up the Rhine through the Palatinate as far as Mainz, 66 km north of Mannheim. Rosalind Beiler, above, mentions that in 1733 French troops occupied Heidelberg, which had been the capital of the Palatinate until the capital moved to Mannheim in 1720.

Other wars that seem likely to have sent foreign troops marching through the Palatinate were the War of the Austrian Succession, 1740-1748, and the Seven Years' War, 1754-1763. (Yes, I know that's nine years.)

Karl III Philipp died without issue in 1742, ending the Neuberg line of Palatinate Electors. He was succeeded by Karl IV Theodor of Sulzbach. On its own, this might not have been so bad. However, in 1777 the last Duke of Bavaria of the junior (Bavarian) Wittelsbach line died. After a brief scuffle, Karl IV Theodore inherited the title as the heir of the senior (Palatinate) Wittelsbach line. Rule of both the Electorate of the Palatinate and the Duchy of Bavaria was now invested in a single person. Four decades later, this would lead to the destruction of the Palatine's identity as a separate state.

This background information provides a setting for what we know of families in Freinsheim in the late 17th and 18th centuries, including the Werner and Engel families as well as many others.

(You may also be interested in: Language in the Palatinate.)