A. V. German National Symbols and  Allegories in the Period of the Thirty Years’ War (Lazareva1618–1648)

Abstract: The article analyzes the formation of nationalism in Germany during the Early Modern Period, in one of the most difficult periods of German history – the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), which changed the fundamental base of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation. In the search for new foundations in the “reversed world” (as contemporaries wrote), German publicists turned to the idea of nation, considering that only national unity can return to the German duchies their “ancestral glory”. The multifaceted images of the Thirty Years’ War, which appeared in the publications of the epoch, had a significant impact on the development of the Germans’ perceptions of the German nation. Distinctive images became the symbols of the era. These symbols awakened in contemporaries, living for decades in wartime chaos, the sense of pride for their people, reminded them of their “glorious past” and helped them come to terms with their difficult reality, thus validating claims of power and political leadership. The article utilizes the imagological scientific approach to analyze and understand the images that appeared during the period of the Thirty Years’ War in German daily publicism. The article also presents a body of little studied sources: German illustrated leaflets of the Thirty Years’ War epoch. Despite the vast popularity of illustrated leaflets among contemporaries and their extensive use in foreign modern historiography, they remain a little known historical source among the Russian scholarly community.

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