Eichendorf, collectors and compilers of folk songs Arnim, Brentano, etc.).

The Golden Bull confirmed the freedom to elect a Czech king in the Czech Sejm in the event of the cessation of the dynasty, and the emperor could not independently appoint a Czech king or change the status of the Czech kingdom. He was given the right only to approve the already elected monarch. The subjects of the Czech kingdom were to be tried only by a Czech court. The Czech king could acquire land and property in any part of the empire, while other electors elected by the emperors were not entitled to acquire property in the Czech lands.

For this orientation of politics, some contemporaries accused Card IV that « for the Czechs he was a father, and for the Germans – a stepfather. » In fact, the reasons for this course were much deeper.

Particular attention to the Czech Republic (bohemianism) as the political center of the empire was manifested in Charles IV’s efforts to raise the status of Prague. During his reign, this city was considered not only the capital of the Czech Crown, but also the center of the archbishopric and the residence of the emperor.

In fourteen special charters (1348) Charles defined the place of Bohemia in the empire and confirmed the rights, freedoms and privileges of the Czech kings. The documents defined the territories that belonged to the « lands of the Czech Crown »: the Czech Republic, Moravia, the Silesian principalities, Upper and Lower Lusatia. Charles also included Luxembourg and the Margraviate of Brandenburg in his state. Each of these lands had its own Sejm, and the decisions of the Czech Sejm were binding on the gentry of other lands of the Czech Crown. At the same time, the Sejm of each land had the right to speak about the policy and personality of the monarch, to decide internal issues, but did not have the right to conduct an independent foreign policy.

In pursuing a course aimed at strengthening the central government, Charles used the contradictions within the nobility. However, in order to finally curb the lordly oligarchy, he set out to develop an all-Czech code, known as « Majestas Carolina » (« Majestic Carolina »). 109 points of this code of legal customs and norms regulated economic and legal relations between the royal authorities and the subjects of the Czech crown. However, at the General Sejm in 1355, the great nobility – a supporter of « unwritten law » – failed to adopt a new code. In the draft law, Charles’s desire to finally centralize power has gone too far, while the historical conditions for their exercise have not yet matured.

Charles IV’s policy contributed to the economic strengthening of the Czech Republic. During this period, farming, animal husbandry, hop growing, mineral production, etc. are actively developing here. Authorities ensured the stable functioning of river and land routes.

Charles IV paid special attention to the development of education, science and culture, considering them a significant political counterweight to the encroachment of the nobility on power. Knowledge and education (Karl himself spoke five languages), in his opinion, created a solid foundation not only for the system of governing society, but also for the prosperity of the Czech lands in general.

In 1348 a university was founded in Prague – the first in the Holy Roman Empire. All this led to the fact that the Catholic Church lost its monopoly on education, which now became available to the laity. From the very beginning of its operation, the university was characterized by a certain democracy, and the relative freedom of academic discussions contributed to the development of advanced ideas, the formation of a critical attitude in the human mind to the world around.

Leading European scientists were invited to the University of Prague, thanks to which not only subjects were taught here, but also the basis for research in the field of exact and natural sciences: astronomy, mathematics, medicine. The level of school education has increased. There were 25 schools in Prague alone. Schools existed in every royal city. Charles IV took care of the development of art, literature and music, gathering in the Czech Republic the best cultural forces in Europe.

With the help of the monarch developed beautiful writing, especially historical prose. Thus, to write historical chronicles, the emperor personally selected writers and drew up a plan of the work: to the chronicles of Benish Krabice and Przybik Pulkawa, he added the « Svyatovatslav legend » and his own « Autobiography ».

During the reign of Charles IV, new cathedrals, palaces and bridges across the Vltava were built in Prague. Music and theater developed in the Czech lands. Significant achievements were made in the publishing business and other spheres of cultural activity.

Thus, during the reign of Charles IV, the Czech Republic reached the peak of its power. However, in the multifaceted activities of the emperor there were not only positive moments. Already in the 60s of the XIV century. the inhibition of the economic development of the Czech lands became noticeable, the cause of which were the objective laws inherent in the feudal mode of production.

At the end of the reign of Charles IV in the country exacerbated social contradictions. The emperor was an extremely gifted man, highly educated, intelligent politician, but he, like other medieval rulers, was characterized by treachery, treachery and cynicism. Until the last days of his life, the supreme law for him remained the state and dynastic interests, for which he was ready for anything.

literature

Great Moravia. Its historical and cultural significance. Moscow, 1985. History of the southern and western Slavs: In 2 vols. Moscow, 1998. Vol. 1. Kozma Prague. Czech chronicle. Moscow, 1962. A brief history of Czechoslovakia: From ancient Bremen to the present day. Moscow, 1988. Lapteva LP History of the Czech Republic in the period of feudalism (V century – 1648). Moscow, 1993. Legends about the beginning of the Czech state in ancient Russian writing. Moscow, 1970. Trzesztik D., Dostal B. Great Moravia and the birth of the Czech state // Early feudal states and peoples (southern and western Slavs VI-XII centuries.). Moscow, 1991. A textbook on the history of the southern and western Slavs: In 3 vols. Minsk, 1987. T. 1. Khropovsky B. Slavs. Historical, political and cultural development. Prague, 1988.

08.09.2012

The main features of the second stage of German romanticism. Abstract

The phenomenon of « dry » romanticism at all historical stages is very heterogeneous and multifaceted with its artistic motifs and characteristics.

The main ones are defined by science more or less completely, and if we resort to a general list of them, we get approximately the following series: disappointment in modern reality, rejection of it and an attempt to « escape » from it to another, ideal world; due to disappointment in the power of reason and the ability to achieve harmony on the basis of rationalism, justification of the self-worth of the human person, freed from the duties of the state, attempts to understand life from the standpoint of historicism, national characteristics and nationality.

This series of motives and features can be continued (focusing, in particular, on the problem of the mentioned « active » and « passive » romantics), but it is important for us to find out why these motives and signs appeared? Answering this question, we can call the « ultimate goal of romanticism » that is – to determine the semantic feature of it. An analysis of the legacy of the Romantics shows that their rejection of modern reality, their attempts to see in man the soul of the people and its history appear as a result of the desire to reach the human ideal, to explain the world through the personal principle in man.

If in the artistic work of previous epochs anthropocentric motives arose spontaneously, romanticized as one of the components of life, in the Romantics they are accentuated spiritualized, become the main and defining in all their theory and practice.

As a result, the scope of the very concept of « literature » (its folklore period, ancient, medieval, etc.) is expanding; both universal and national features are actualized in it; thematically it covers both regional problems and religious feelings, and the writer himself is interpreted as the chosen one of high spiritual power, the chosen one of God.

In the work of each individual romantic, we will never be able, of course, to identify « the whole register » of these motives and characteristics. Some individual ones prevailed, but the desire for the ideal united them all, as did the common forms of struggle for it. The search for these forms is a complex, painful process, but in the first place it put forward the rejection of any aesthetic regulations and simply a pious inclination to looseness, freedom to use the image as the basis of creativity.

In their pursuit of « boundless » freedom, in the desire for human perfection and in the pathos of civic and personal independence, romantics relied primarily on the life and aesthetic experience of all the progressive aesthetics of past eras.

Conclusion. Thus, romanticism, in contrast to other artistic trends, which were ideas for a narrative established in their rights evolutionarily, came to art as a true revolutionary. The most significant and earliest this was in the literary movement in Germany.

The second wave of German Romantics went down in history as the « Heidelberg School » (in Heidelberg), which is characterized by a special interest in the problems of beliefs, national antiquity, folklore (brothers J. and W. Grimm, poet J. Eichendorf, collectors and compilers of folk publications songs by Arnim, Brentano, etc.). Based on the mythological ideas of Schelling and the Schlegel brothers, the Heidelberg Romantics finally formulated the principles of the first scientific direction in folklore and literary studies – the mythological school.

From 1805 to 1808, A. von Arnim and K. Brentano, professors at the University of Heidelberg, published a collection, The Magic Boy’s Flute, which caused a great resonance in the country. For the first time, the world community, and the Germans themselves, saw and appreciated the charm of folk ballads about Dr. Faust, about the rat-hunter from Hamelin, and others. Some of the poems included in the collection were author’s, based only on folk legends, for example, the ballad « Lore Lay » (1802) was created by Brentano, and all the same – Heine could rightly say that in these ballads « b » is the heart of the German people. «

The « Brothers and Family Tales » (1812-1822) of the Brothers Grimm received an even broader response. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm did a great job of collecting and publishing purely folk tales, trying to preserve the peculiarities of speech, the color of the folk tale.