The Early Modern Era, 16th To 18th Centuries
Starting from the 16th century, trade and the arts flowered in Frankfurt. Science and innovation progressed, and the invention of the printing press in nearby Mainz promoted education and knowledge. From the 15th to 17th centuries, the most important book fair in Germany was held in Frankfurt, a custom which would be revived in 1949.
In the early 17th century tensions between the guilds and the patricians, who dominated the city council, led to substantial unrest. The guilds asked for greater participation in urban and fiscal policies as well as for economic restrictions of the Jewish community's rights. In 1612, after the election of Emperor Matthias the council rejected the Guild's request, to read out publicly the imperial privileges given to the city. This caused the so-called Fettmilch Rebellion, named after its leader, the baker Vinzenz Fettmilch. A part of the populace, mainly craftsmen, rose up against the city council. In 1614, the mob began a pogrom in the city's Jewish ghetto, and the emperor had to ask Mainz and Hessen-Darmstadt to restore order.
In the Thirty Years' War, Frankfurt was able to maintain its neutrality; the city council had avoided siding with one opponent or another after its negative experiences in the Schmalkaldic War. This issue became critical between 1631 and 1635, when the Swedish regent Gustav Adolf came to Frankfurt demanding accommodation and provisions for himself and his troops. But the city mastered these adversities more easily than what was to follow the war: the plague ravaged the city, as it would most of Europe at this time. In the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, Frankfurt was confirmed as an Imperial Free City, and soon reached new heights of prosperity.
Read more about this topic: History Of Frankfurt Am Main
Famous quotes containing the words early, modern and/or centuries:
“If there is a price to pay for the privilege of spending the early years of child rearing in the drivers seat, it is our reluctance, our inability, to tolerate being demoted to the backseat. Spurred by our success in programming our children during the preschool years, we may find it difficult to forgo in later states the level of control that once afforded us so much satisfaction.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“Families have always been in flux and often in crisis; they have never lived up to nostalgic notions about the way things used to be. But that doesnt mean the malaise and anxiety people feel about modern families are delusions, that everything would be fine if we would only realize that the past was not all its cracked up to be. . . . Even if things were not always right in families of the past, it seems clear that some things have newly gone wrong.”
—Stephanie Coontz (20th century)
“The Cad is the entire epitome, the complete blossom and fruit in one, of what we are told is an age of culture. Behold him in the vélodrome as he yells insanely after his kind as they tear along on their tandem machines in a match, and then ask yourself candidly, O my reader, if any age before this in all the centuries of earth ever produced any creature so utterly low and loathsome, so physically, mentally, individually, and collectively hideous?”
—Ouida [Marie Louise De La Ramée] (18391908)