Adel im "langen" 18. Jahrhundert

Drawing on previously largely unknown or ignored primary sources, these 15 articles deal with a number of aspects of the nobility in the “long” 18th century. They open up many immediate opportunities for comparisons, for example with regard to the paths of social advancement taken by individual families starting from often comparably “simple” backgrounds and advancing over successive generations, or with regard to the need for an education and qualification (in early modern times) or informal knowledge in order to serve in (the court of) the developing pre-modern (military) state. They also enable us to examine the procedures of the Landtag in a way which has long not been possible, thereby demonstrating, among other things, the high, and for many of the nobility, barely affordable material costs which were often involved in participating in sessions of the Landtag. Patriotism and supranationality became the distinguishing mark of this early modern elite society, which was by no means hermetically sealed against a slide downwards, and whose members had connections across the whole of Europe thanks to a common canon of education and culture. A number of these aspects are illustrated vividly from the perspective of a noblewoman. What, however, also becomes clear is how little the contemporary (male) critics of the nobility towards the end of the 18th century were aware that their judgement was often to become the basis of (national), political and ideological evaluations for generations to come.