A középkori Patria Németország vonatkozásában, birodalomszervezés és regionális tudatformák között
Mediaeval Patria in a German context, between the organization of an empire and regional forms of consciousness

Summary/Abstract: The paper discusses the origin and development of the concept of patria in mediaeval Germany in a two-directional, terminological and phenomenological, as well as historiographical, approach, utilising the achievements of the abundant recent German literature on the subject. The importance of the issue is indicated by the fact that German historians have tended to link the analysis of the concept of patria with the examination of the appearance of the sense of nationality and the sense of identity in the Middle Ages. Modern German historiography has done quite a lot since 1989 for a novel discussion and reinterpretation of these issues. It has discarded, for instance, the notion of a nation that has fallen behind in development, or that of the Empire obstructing the rise of the nation, as well as the idea of Sonderweg , which allowed ample room for determinism and apologetics. It has compared French and German developments, facilitating thereby the rejection of the myth of ancient ethnicities. Within these investigations, the concept of patria has received special attention because, on the one hand, in Germany this is closely associated with the issue of various regions, and, on the other, it has made possible a worthwhile comparison with the French model. Taking into account the most important achievements of modern German historiography, the author voices his doubts, too, at the end of his paper and stresses the importance in certain respects of further investigations.

• Details
• Contents