[p. 593]
|593| spoken of among the teachers of public law, then [there is] not a word to be wasted on their political unimportance. But in regard to the former state connection of these lands too it is to be remarked that they were not in connection with the German state, but with the Roman Emperor, in his former quality as head of Christendom, lord of the world etc., and that the connection does not concern the German state; that the Roman Emperor and king in Germany, as it is still separated in the title, was in essence separated; and the German Empire had neither the interest and the will nor the strength to maintain that which could be reckoned to the dominion of the Roman Emperor, and such an unnatural union of lands; yet it could and would not preserve as integral parts of itself those states which stood in an actual state connection with it.
The Lombard kingdom stood in closer relation to Germany, and traces of it have been preserved down to the most recent times, but these traces are still weaker [than the relations] in which the German estates stand with the Empire, and can therefore not come into consideration in regard to the state.
As regards the lands belonging essentially to the German Empire and possessing full standing as estates of the Empire, almost every war of the Empire has ended with the loss of such estates for it; this loss embraces two kinds; namely, apart from the subjection of German lands to foreign overlordship and their complete tearing away from all rights and duties towards the Empire, apart from this loss of Germany, it must be regarded as a loss for the state that so many lands, while indeed remaining in all their former legal relation towards Emperor and Empire, received princes who are at the same time monarchs of independent realms. It is this circumstance, which is apparently no loss, which apparently left everything as it was, [but] which has undermined the coherence of the state in its fundamental pillars, because these lands have thereby become independent of the executive power of the German state, of state power.
Without going back to earlier times, we wish to give a survey of how, from the Peace of Westphalia onwards, the impotence of Germany, its fate in relation to foreign powers and to the extent of its territory, has manifested itself; of what Germany’s loss through the peace has been; for the damage through the war itself is too immeasurable for any statement.31)
31) Editors: There follows a survey of the German territorial losses.
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