Nobles and Nation in Central Europe

William D. Godsey, Jr. is Tenured Research Fellow of the Historical Commission at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna. He is the author of Aristocratic Redoubt: The Austro-Hungarian Foreign Office on the Eve of the First World War (1999).

• Introduction; 1. Wealth and noble autonomy: the free imperial knights in Maine on the eve of revolution; 2. Nobles becoming Germans: the transformation of a concept; 3. Nobles becoming Germans: the destruction of a 'geo-cultural landscape'; 4. Between destruction and survival: knights on the Middle Rhine 1750–1850; 5. The past recaptured: knights in the Habsburg Empire 1792–1848; 6. From cathedral canons to priests: the Coudenhoves and the 'Catholic revival'; 7. The beginnings of conservative German nationalism: the 'naturalization' of Baron Carl vom und zum Stein (1757–1831); Conclusion; Appendix. Families of Free Imperial Knights (1797).

"William Godsey has written a highly insightful portrayal of the Holy Roman Empire’s imperial nobility during its crucial century of outward decline. Specialists will be pleased that this volume is no mere historiographical digest of recent works. Rather, it is the product of exhaustive research conducted in nearly two dozen public and private archives within Austria, the Czech Republic and Germany. For this reason, Godsey consistently offers his readers not only fresh perspectives, but also fresh material." - H-German, Todd Berryman, Department of History, Hendrix College