Stefan Ehrenpreis, ed. Der DreiÖŸigjÖ¤hrige Krieg im Herzogtum Berg und in seinen Nachbarregionen. Neustadt an der Aisch: Schmidt, 2002. 375 pp. EUR 15.00 (paper), ISBN 978-3-87707-581-4.

Reviewed by Jason Lavery (Department of History, Oklahoma State University)
Published on H-German (January, 2005)

The Lower Rhine between the Wars

The 350th anniversary of the Peace of Westphalia in 1998 was observed in a variety of ways. This book is a collection of articles based on papers given in two conferences in 1998 concerning the Thirty Years' War in the lower Rhine region. Most of the articles focus on the most contested part of this region, the territorial amalgam known as Cleves-Jülich that consisted of the duchies of Cleves, Jülich, and Berg, as well as the counties of Mark and Ravensberg.

A collection of essays is often difficult to review. Word limits make it challenging to evaluate every article thoroughly. Often collections lack any common themes. The major strength of this collection is that the articles support common arguments. The two main theses are advanced in the book's opening article by Jörg Engelbrecht. First, the lower Rhine region did not suffer thirty, but rather almost seventy years of war from the outbreak of the Cologne War in 1583 until the end of the Düsseldorf "Cow War" (Kuhkrieg) in 1651. Second, during this time, the region served as a battlefield for two conflicts: the Spanish-Dutch war, and the Empire's political-religious conflicts (pp. 10-25).

Rolf-Achim Mostert's article on the Cleves-Jülich succession crisis 1609-1614 challenges the widespread understanding of the conflict as a dress rehearsal of the Thirty Years' War. He argues that before 1609 Cleves-Jülich lay more in the orbit of the Spanish-Dutch conflict than in the tensions in the Empire. Furthermore, the dress rehearsal thesis fails to address the particulars of the claims to Cleves-Jülich made by Count Palatine Wolfgang William of Neuburg and Elector Johann Sigismund of Brandenburg after the death of Duke John William of Cleves-Jülich in 1609. The war did not automatically lead to the events of 1618 in Bohemia (pp. 26-64). While all of these are valid points, the Cleves-Jülich conflict does offer interesting parallels to the Bohemian War in that both conflicts were succession struggles driven by religion and the interests of the Empire's leading princely houses.

The book's editor, Stefan Ehrenpreis, examines Count Palatine Wolfgang William's rule of Jülich and Mark in the wider context of the crisis of territorial rule unleashed by the Thirty Years' War. Wolfgang William did not have the resources to actively oppose the larger powers that marched through the lower Rhine during the war. In this respect, he was like hundreds of other Imperial princes of small territories during the war. Through a policy of opportunistic neutrality Wolfgang William sought to exploit the moves of the various powers, in particular those of Spain, in an effort to extend his rule from Juelich and Berg to Cleves, Mark, and Ravensberg. Failing to achieve his ambitious goals, Wolfgang William channeled his opportunistic impulses into keeping the territories he had before the war (pp. 66-101).

Hans-Wolfgang Bergerhausen's study of the city of Cologne during the Thirty Years' War is based on the understanding of the lower Rhine as a region between two wars. In respect to the Spanish-Dutch war, commercial interests guided the city to avoid conflict with its Dutch neighbors. The city had a more equivocal stance toward the conflict in the Empire. On the one hand, the war was an opportunity to advance the Catholic cause in Germany. On the other hand, the city kept its distance from the Catholic League, largely because, unlike most of the League's members, Cologne had powerful Protestant neighbors. The preponderance of Protestant power grew with the advance of the Swedish army into northwestern Germany in the early 1630s. The failure to establish a neutrality agreement with Sweden finally drew the city formally to the side of Germany's Catholic princes--while struggling to uphold neutrality in the Spanish-Dutch conflict (pp. 102-131).

A partial explanation for the success of Cologne and Wolfgang William in avoiding conflict with the Dutch is offered by Helmut Gabel in his study of Dutch policy toward Jülich-Berg during the Thirty Years' War. Countering the argument that Dutch foreign policy was driven by religious concerns, Gabel effectively argues that Dutch policy toward Jülich-Berg and the lower Rhine as a whole was based more on the aim of enhancing security. Small wonder, then, that the rulers of the lower Rhine succeeded in reaching an accommodation with the Dutch (pp. 132-179).

The book's two theses are advanced in three articles that examine the everyday experiences of the people of the lower Rhine during war. Michael Kaiser surveys the entire region and concludes that while the lower Rhine suffered fewer losses of population than other regions in Germany during the Thirty Years' War, the nearly seventy years of conflict made war a part of everyday life for the people of the area (pp. 181-233). Wolfgang Motte and Ulrike Unger chart the impact of movements of Hessian, Dutch, Spanish, Swedish, and Imperial soldiers by focusing on the towns of Radevormwald and Hilden respectively (pp. 234-274, 275-297).

The book's last two articles examine the Peace of Westphalia. Johannes Arndt makes a persuasive case that the lower Rhine, peripheral to the outbreak of the war, was a part of the larger Rhine region that was the focus of peacemaking (pp. 299-327). Dieter Breuer examines the peace in terms of the poetry of the Baroque period. His literary research confirms what political historians have long asserted: the peace ushered in an era in which Europeans were making greater distinctions between the sacred and profane (pp. 328-360).

As a whole this book has two weaknesses. First, there is a lack of definition concerning the region in question. The book's title identifies the area in question as the duchy of Berg and neighboring areas. In the book, the area more frequently is identified as the lower Rhine. In most of the articles, the lower Rhine is synonymous with Cleves-Jülich. A reader looking for a comprehensive treatment of the lower Rhine region would find little on, for example, electoral Cologne. A reader looking for an examination of the neighboring areas of Berg would find little on Westphalia or Münster. Second, the book, which is visually very rich, could have provided the reader with more detailed maps. Some locations that figure prominently in the book, such as Radevormwald, do not appear on any of the maps. The wars in the Cleves-Jülich complex consisted of struggles over small pieces of real estate. The maps should have reflected these conflicts.

These weaknesses aside, this book makes a solid and lasting contribution to the new scholarship on the Thirty Years' War. Stefan Ehrenpreis, a noted historian of the lower Rhine region, did a professional editing job. His imprint on the book goes beyond the normal tasks of editing. He not only contributed an article, but also a selected bibliography of the most recent scholarship on the Thirty Years' War in the lower Rhine. Many of the color pictures in the center of the book were taken by the editor as well.

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Citation: Jason Lavery. Review of Ehrenpreis, Stefan, ed., Der DreiÖŸigjÖ¤hrige Krieg im Herzogtum Berg und in seinen Nachbarregionen. H-German, H-Net Reviews. January, 2005.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=10121

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