Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs 48. (2000)
LAVERY, Jason: Emperor Maximilian II. and the Danish-Swedish Struggle for Baltic Hegemony 1563–1576
Jason Lavery rial throne in 1564, Emperor Maximilian II had committed himself to ending the Scandinavian rivalry as a means of protecting the Empire’s internal order and external interests. An investigation of Maximilian’s intervention in the Scandinavian conflict challenges scholarly assumptions of him on two counts. First, the emperor’s persistent, programmatic, and ultimately successful mediation efforts undercut the widespread understanding of him as a weak leader. Behind Maximilian’s peace initiatives stood a consensus inside of the Empire that sought to prevent a Swedish victory over Denmark through mediation. Both assumption of initiative and attention to consensus were vital to the success of the emperor’s efforts. Second, Maximilian’s diplomacy in northern Europe broadens our understanding of him as a peacemaker. Recent scholarship has illuminated the emperor’s endeavors to strengthen peace inside of the Empire.1 Maximilian sought greater harmony not only within the Empire, but outside of it as well. Emperor Maximilian II and Imperial Politics Emperor Maximilian’s intervention in the Scandinavian rivalry relates to three larger questions concerning the sixteenth-century Empire. The first pertains to the Empire’s effectiveness as a political organization. Since World War II, scholars have challenged long-standing assumptions about the Empire’s political weakness. They have scrapped the understanding of the Empire as a failed nation-state and instead have tried to define the Empire on its own terms.2 According to this new interpretation, the Empire was foremost a ’’legal order“ that protected the rights of all constituent parts, whether large principalities, Imperial cities, or the small slivers of land ruled by Imperial knights.1 1 Recent examples of scholarship on Maximilian and peacemaking are: Edel, Andreas: Der Kaiser und die Kurpfalz. Eine Studie zu den Grundelementen des politischen Handelns bei Maximilian II. München 1997 (Schriftenreihe der Historischen Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaft 58); Lanzinner, Maximilian: Friedenssicherung und politische Einheit des Reiches unter Maximilian II. München 1993 (Schriftenreihe der Historischen Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 45); Louthan, Howard: The Quest for Compromise: Peacemakers in Counter-Reformation Vienna. Princeton 1997; Luttenberger, Albrecht: Kurfürsten, Kaiser, und Reich. Politische Führung und Friedenssicherung unter Ferdinand I. und Maximilian II. Mainz 1994 (Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Europäische Geschichte Mainz, Abteilung Universalgeschichte, 149. Beiträge zur Sozial- und Verfassungsgeschichte des Alten Reiches 12). 2 The best example of this call to reevaluate the Empire was made in a short article by Mora w, Peter - Press, Volker: Probleme der Sozial- und Verfassungsgeschichte des Heiligen Römischen Reiches im späten Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit (13.-18. Jahrhundert), ln: Zeitschrift für historische Forschung 2 (1975), pp. 95-108; Strauss, Gerald: The Holy Roman Empire Revisited. In: Central European History 11 (1978), pp. 290-301. 1 A r e t i n , Karl Otmar Freiherr von: Das Alte Reich 1648-1806. Stuttgart 1993, vol. 1, Föderalistische oder hierarchische Ordnung 1648-1684, p. 10; Gross, Hanns: The Holy Roman Empire in Modem Times: Constitutional Reality and Legal Theory. In: Vann, James A. - Rowan, Steven (eds.): The Old Reich: Essays on German Political Institutions 1495-1806, Brussels 1974 198
