Strasbourg

STRASBOURG

STRASBOURG. Founded in 16 c.e., the Alsatian city of Strasbourg owed its subsequent prosperity and influence to its situation on the left (western) bank of the Upper Rhine, where it commanded the last bridge over that river before its mouth. The city's trading network extended north and south along the Rhine, as well as east deeper into the Holy Roman Empire, and west into France. Though an annual fair was held beginning in 1228 and the city became a regional banking center by 1500, it failed to develop an indigenous manufacturing sector beyond cheap woolen goods known as "Strasbourg gray." The city remained vulnerable to external pressures that threatened to disrupt its livelihood and food supply.

The most important of these pressures was the local prince-bishop, who initially controlled the city, but was ejected by its inhabitants in 1262 and took up residence in Dachstein castle, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) to the west. Though the city was now a self-governing free city, the bishop still exercised jurisdiction over its clergy, convents, and the huge cathedral that was never finished. The bishop was a prince of the empire with a voice in imperial institutions and his own territory extending across 276 square miles (715 square kilometers) of land to the west, south, and southeast and populated by around sixty thousand people by the late eighteenth century. Strasbourg itself had sixteen thousand inhabitants in 1444, rising to between twenty and twenty-five thousand by the early sixteenth century. The population thereafter remained stable, reflecting the city's declining influence and economic stagnation that set in from the 1550s. There were another ten thousand or more peasants outside the walls who lived under the city's jurisdiction.

Urban government was transformed by a series of violent protests between 1332 and 1449 that secured representation through the city's twenty guilds, but the patriciate gradually hardened into a new oligarchy of thirty to forty families who controlled the key decision making committees. This process was not yet complete by 1522 when many councillors accepted the Reformation. Strasbourg intellectual life had been stimulated by local humanist scholars, including Jacob Wimpfeling (1450–1528), Johann Geiler von Kaysersberg (1445–1510), and Sebastian Brant (1458?–1521), who helped make the city an important publishing and educational center. However, their attempt to reform local spiritual life contributed to the already strong tradition of anticlericalism left by the earlier struggles against the bishop. The Reformation was introduced with popular support but passed swiftly into the hands of the magistrates, who ensured a moderate course after 1529. The chief reformer was Martin Bucer (1491–1551), who sought a theological compromise between North German Lutheranism and Swiss Zwinglianism; in this Bucer complemented the council's strategy, guided by its leader Jacob Sturm (1489–1553), of negotiating a broad Protestant urban alliance. The city was drawn into the Schmalkaldic League and suffered from its defeat by Emperor Charles V in 1547. Conservatives controlled the council until 1562, when Calvinist influence grew and radicals again called for a more energetic external policy, culminating in armed intervention in the bishop's affairs in 1593–1594. Moderates regained control and reaffirmed orthodox Lutheranism in 1598. Though Strasbourg joined the Protestant Union in 1608, it remained neutral after 1618 and avoided further political ambitions. Johannes Sturm (1507–1589) made a lasting impact on Protestant German education and also founded a grammar school in 1538 that became the University of Strasbourg in 1621. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a student there and received a law degree, but the university was closed by the French revolutionaries in 1793 and not reopened until 1872.

New defenses, built 1633–1680, failed to save Strasbourg from French annexation in 1681 as the magistrates surrendered rather than face a bombardment. The bishop also acknowledged French jurisdiction over his lands west of the Rhine and was allowed to return to the city. Sébastian Le Prestre de Vauban strengthened the fortifications 1682–1690, and Strasbourg became a major French garrison, held by ten thousand mainly German-speaking soldiers. Urban self-government remained while the economy revived, and the population grew to fifty thousand by 1789. French became the second language, and half the population converted to Catholicism. Strasbourg became a symbol for early German national sentiment, but little effort was made to recover it, although in 1697 the French were obliged to surrender the small fort of Kehl, built at the eastern end of the Rhine bridge between 1683 and 1688. The empire failed to maintain Kehl, which the French periodically recaptured (1703–1714, 1733–1735), and the place was abandoned in 1754. The bishopric remained formally part of the empire, but in 1682 the emperor refused to acknowledge the election of the French candidate, Wilhelm Egon von Fürstenberg, and his successors after 1704 were appointed from Paris. Strasbourg's full incorporation within France only came after 1789, while the bishopric maintained a precarious existence in its lands east of the Rhine until these were annexed by the state of Baden in 1803.

See also Brant, Sebastian ; Free and Imperial Cities ; Holy Roman Empire ; Reformation, Protestant ; Schmalkaldic War (1546–1547) .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abray, Lorna Jane. The Peoples' Reformation: Magistrates, Clergy and Commons in Strasbourg 1500–1598. Ithaca, N.Y., 1985.

Brady, Thomas A., Jr. Protestant Politics: Jacob Sturm (1489–1553) and the German Reformation. Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1995.

——. Ruling Class, Regime and Reformation at Strasbourg 1520–1555. Leiden, 1978.

Chrisman, Mariam Usher. Strasbourg and the Reform: A Study in the Process of Change. New Haven and London, 1967.

Ford, Franklin L. Strasbourg in Transition 1648–1789. Cambridge, Mass., 1958.

Livet, Georges, and Francis Rapp, eds. Histoire de Strasbourg des origines à nos jours. Vol. 2, Strasbourg des grandes invasions au XVe siècle. Vol. 3, Strasbourg de la guerre de Trente Ans à Napoléon, 1618–1815. Strasbourg, 1981.

O'Connor, John T. Negotiator out of Season: The Career of Wilhelm Egon von Fürstenberg, 1629 to 1704. Athens, Ga., 1978.

Rapp, Francis. Réformes et Réformation à Strasbourg: Église et société dans le diocese de Strasbourg (1450–1525). Paris, 1974.

Wunder, Gerhard. Das Strassburger Gebiet: Ein Beitrag zur rechtlichen und politischen Geschichte des gesamten städtischen Territoriums vom 10. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert. Berlin, 1965.

Peter H. Wilson