Thirty years is enough: the Peace of Westphalia

The treaty ends the Thirty Years’ War

The Thirty Years’ War (1618–48) was one of the most devastating periods in German history. The German states, the emperor and other European powers had slugged it out over power, territory and religion for thirty years, devastating Germany in the process. Robbery, looting and the extraction of financial tribute shattered the economy, and the population declined through violence, disease and hunger. Some areas suffered from the consequences for more than a century. Despite the general exhaustion of the warring parties, it took five years before the Peace Congress of Münster and Osnabrück came to its long-awaited conclusion on 24 October 1648.

The Peace of Westphalia granted Reformed Christians the same rights as Lutherans and shifted the balance of power away from the emperor and towards the imperial estates. Whilst the larger princes gained sovereignty and independence, the emperor and the imperial cities lost out. Together with a reduction in the size of the empire – as areas of northern Germany were ceded to Sweden, lands in the Rhineland and south-west were lost to France, and the Netherlands and Switzerland left the empire – this effected a decline in the power of the empire as a whole. Despite the lengthy negotiations, not all contentious issues could be resolved at once, and a “peace implementation congress” was convened in the imperial city of Nuremberg in 1649 to discuss disarmament and compensation. This ended the following year with the “Peace of Nuremberg”.