German identity began to take shape in the late Middle Ages during a period of political weakness and fragmentation for the Holy Roman Empire, the monarchy under which most Germans lived. Between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, the idea that there existed a single German people, with its own lands, language and character, became increasingly widespread, as was expressed in written works of the period. This book the first on its subject in any language poses a challenge to some dominant assumptions of current historical scholarship: that early European nation-making inevitably took...

German identity, a key force in history, took shape during the late Middle Ages. This book explains how and why.