Citizen committees in Aachen in the late period of the Old Empire. Civic participation attempts between communal liberalism and clientelism

旧帝国晚期亚琛的公民委员会。

• 批准号: 405222537
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Stephan Laux
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Lehrstuhl für Geschichtliche Landeskunde
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2017-12-31 至 2021-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/405222537?language=en
• 关键词: Citizen; committees; Aachen; late; period

Since the late Middle Age, the appearance of the bodies of political representation was changing in many German cities: As an addition to the traditional magistrate and aldermen councils there appeared citizens committees of various names. They urged for taking over control and thus for immediate participation in the execution of the official functions of municipal councils. Often these committees existed over long periods or, however, they developed out of situations of conflict. Being well attuned tools of the representation and articulation of public opinion among the citizens, citizens committees became ever more crucial actors in the context of those struggles within the cities as becoming ever more frequent in the about two decades prior to the French Revolution. This project pursues the goal of discussing the diversification of urban power structures and ways of participation in the tension area between a primarily economically motivated distribution battle and an urban republicanism which was most of all based on ideals. In doing so, the project focusses the heavy conflicts in the Imperial City of Aachen which started to escalate in the mid 1780s and overlapped the French Revolution until the ultimate seizure of the city in 1794. The main interest of the project is the further development of participative institutions of urban political culture and its significance for the development of German constitutionalism and early liberalism at about 1800.The research project starts out from the premise that the social form of the “city” was based on citizen participation in all issues concerning the “common good”, as the main idea of its cooperative self-organisation. Thus, participation was somewhat an expression of the nature of urban existence, for only by way of participating in public offices the individual´s civil liberty crystallised, at least in the ideal case. However, as this capability of participation was in principle connected to taxability and thus economic exclusivity, inequality was a momentous concomitant of the corporative principle of the “city”. These contradicting objectives require that the analysis of the ways of participation and participation demands of citizens committees refers to the many dimensions of inequality of urban society. By the end of the 18th and early 19th centuries an age of societal transition and political innovations will be viewed at, when new and old ways of participation were developing in the closest possible connection to changes of established inequality structures in the city. The project aims at analysing the institutional kinds and functions, however in particular the idealistic main ideas of citizens committees in the late period of the Old Empire and their connections to the various dimensions of urban inequality.

自中世纪晚期以来，许多德国城市的政治代表机构的外观正在发生变化：除了传统的地方法官和市议员议会之外，还出现了各种名称的公民委员会。他们敦促接管控制权，从而立即参与执行市议会的正式职能。这些委员会往往存在很长时间，或者是在冲突局势中发展起来的。公民委员会是代表和表达公民舆论的良好工具，在法国大革命前的大约二十年里，在城市内部的斗争越来越频繁的背景下，公民委员会成为越来越重要的行为者。本项目的目标是讨论城市权力结构的多样化以及参与主要以经济为动机的分配战与主要基于理想的城市共和主义之间的紧张地区的方式。在此过程中，该项目聚焦于亚琛皇城的严重冲突，这些冲突在18世纪80年代中期开始升级，并与法国大革命重叠，直到1794年最终占领这座城市。该项目的主要兴趣是城市政治文化参与制度的进一步发展及其对1800年左右德国宪政和早期自由主义发展的意义。该研究项目的前提是，“城市”的社会形式是基于公民参与所有与“共同利益”有关的问题，作为其合作自组织的主要思想。因此，参与在某种程度上是城市存在性质的一种表达，因为只有通过参与公职，个人的公民自由才得以具体化，至少在理想的情况下是这样。然而，由于这种参与能力原则上与可征税性和经济排他性有关，不平等是“城市”的合作原则的重要伴随物。这些相互矛盾的目标要求在分析公民委员会的参与方式和参与需求时，要考虑到城市社会不平等的许多方面。到18世纪末和19世纪初，社会转型和政治创新的时代将被视为，当新的和旧的参与方式的发展与城市中既定的不平等结构的变化最密切的联系。该项目旨在分析机构的种类和功能，特别是旧帝国晚期公民委员会的理想主义主要思想及其与城市不平等的各个方面的联系。