Kaiser Ferdinand III.

Ferdinand III. inherited the Thirty Years' war from its father, Ferdinand II.. In the centre of his reign, the war ended in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia and thereby the long time of the confessional arguments going along with denomination questions. The Peace of Westphalia was at the same time an important stage in the decay of the alliance of the Spanish and Austrian Habsburger which had emerged under Karl of the V. and which had polarised Europe about for one century. Now the Peace helped to create sovereign member states in Europe. For Ferdinand III. this multilayered epoch change presented itself as a number of dilemmas. These resulted from his search for peace and at the same time his attempts to fight for more favourable peace conditions; his separation from Spain against his consent and nevertheless his attempts to hold on to his Iberian relatives which were nevertheless slipping away; his timid protection of peace after 1648 and nevertheless his return against his consent to the European wars of the 1650er-Jahre. For a new comprehension of the time of Ferdinand III, it seemed important it to me to particularly stress some structural aspects, above all the close entwine