Politisch partizipieren – aber in wessen Namen? Politische Repräsentation als Argument in frühneuzeitlichen Ständekonflikten

The estates of the territories of the Holy Roman Empire are generally regarded as representative institutions acting and speaking ‘in the name of the country’. This representative capacity is understood as an essential characteristic of the ‘Landstände’. From the perspective of a constitutional history inspired by the cultural turn, however, such characteristics are never simply given, but made; they are the result of practical sense-making, and in this case can be analyzed primarily as results of successful arguments. Accordingly, the article shows that in the first half of the 17th century, the Hessian estates theorized their traditional practice of political participation, i. e. they connected it to the scholarly discourse on political representation in order to arrive at a claim to representation with which their participation could be secured. In order to make this thesis plausible, the article first outlines the political participation of the estates in the 16th century, and then describes the new legal paradigm established by the discipline of public law from around 1600. Subsequently, the right of self-assembly is used as an example to explain why, in what way and with what side effects political representation was used as an argument during the decisive constitutional conflict in Hesse (1646–1655). With comparative intent, the constitutional conflict in Kleve-Mark is then briefly included to make the generalization of the Hessian case plausible.