Prachtvolle Epoche

Prachtvolle Epoche
1862–1913
Wiesstadt in Cislania, Werania in 1900.
Including	Weranian Empire Historicism
Monarch(s)	Adalbert, Leopold IV
Leader(s)	Prince of Oppolzer, Ludwig Gustav von Middendorff, Konrad von Höhnel, Casper von Kléber
← Preceded by Weranian Unification Followed by → Great Collapse

The Prachtvolle Epoche ("Splendid Epoch") was a period in Weranian history lasting from the early 1860s to the Great Collapse in 1913. The period retroactively named following the Great War was famed for its economic prosperity, political liberalism, social stability, imperial expansionism and scientific and cultural innovations. Compared to both the revolutionary violence and regional wars that marked the unification period and the political and social polarisation that dominated Werania from the Great Collapse through to the Kirenian-Weranian War the Prachtvolle Epoche is regarded as a period of optimism and peace both at home and abroad. The period also encompasses the Ruttish national revival.  

Terminology and periodisation

The Prachtvolle Epoche traditionally encompasses the majority of the reign of king Adalbert (who reigned from 1850 to 1913) leading to the period to sometimes be called the Adalbertine period. The period tends to be dated around the end of the Jurgaitytė rebellion in Ruttland from 1861 to the beginning of the Great Collapse in 1913. Some date the period to have begun following the conclusion of the War of the Triple Alliance and the Easter Revolution in 1856 which signalled the end of Weranian Unification, although the economic depression and social polarisation from 1856-1862 is often not generally considered to be in keeping with the perceived optimism of the period.

The Prachtvolle Epoche is an anachronistic term created by historians in the 1930s that sought to contrast the revolutionary violence of the early 19^th century and world war of the early 20^th to the joie de vivre of the late 19th^th century. According to Hugo Weizenbaum the use of the term was meant to invoke a supposed golden age contrasted to the perceived Satrian summer of post-war Werania "invoking a nostalgic image of prosperity, peace and power, of the politics of grandeur". The nostalgia for the supposed social stability and progress of Prachtvolle Epoche is often considered to mask the profound social tensions of the era - historian Casper Hildebrandt remarked that "only with the benefit of hindsight does the Prachtvolle Epoche emerge as a golden age. For those who lived through it there was substantial social instability and the supposed progress of the era was as uneven as it was splendid."

Sometimes the Prachtvolle Epoche is divided into two periods - one of conservatism, aestheticism and imperialism from the 1860s to one of avant-garde and modernity from the 1890s onwards, both interlinked by scientific and economic progress.

The Prachtvolle Epoche is roughly analogous to the Long Peace in Estmere, xxx in Gaullica, Oslovite Soravia, the Anni di Serenità in Etruria, xxx in Rizealand and the Xiyong era in Shangea.

Politics

King Adalbert ruled Werania throughout the Prachtvolle Epoche.

The politics of the Prachtvolle Epoche were marked by the development of constitutional parliamentarianism over radical republicanism and absolutism. Over the period centre-right national liberals generally dominated parliamentary politics with rapprochement to the church, economic liberalism and centralisation. Members of the two main parliamentary blocs, the Right and the Left, generally formed large coalitions to block the republicans and later the socialists from holding influence. Many on both the right and the left would move to the political centre to maximise parliamentary majorities, a system known as the eisenring (iron ring) as it supposedly locked both the far-left and the far-right out of power. In practice the eisenring marginalised the left whilst empowering the right.

The end of the period saw the eisenring collapse due to a mixture of popular pressure from below and the growth of organised political parties, particularly the Radical Party and the Weranic Section of the Workers' International (OSAI). From the 1890s onwards a party system emerged with organised political parties displacing the loose parliamentary blocs. By 1906 with the introduction of universal male suffrage the trend had move decisively towards liberal democracy.

Eisenring

Prior to the Prachtvolle Epoche Werania had been governed by the moderate left who had forged an uneasy alliance with the radical republicans to achieve unification. This nationalist coalition fell apart after the War of the Triple Alliance and the Wiesstadt rebellion when the radical republicans tired of the compromises made by the moderate left and increasingly attracted to socialism attempted to overthrow the state and reinstitute the Weranian Republic. The bloody suppression of the Wiesstadt rebellion decimated the radical left whose leaders were thrown into exile or executed during the Butchering of Wiesstadt.

After a period of counter-revolutionary reaction in 1860 the moderate left returned to power under the Prince of Oppolzer. Oppolzer and King Adalbert both believed that to prevent the return of revolutionary violence that had punctuated Weranian politics from 1785 that rapprochement had to be made with more conservative forces in society. Ostensibly to prevent both reactionary absolutists or radical republicans from power Adalbert and Oppolzer created the "eisenring" (Iron Ring) of an alliance between the traditional conservative institutions of the crown, the church and large landowners alongside the rapidly expanding bourgeoise and industrialists. This alliance effectively gave the government a permanent supermajority as differences between the right and the left were downplayed in favour of national unity.

Although on paper this represented a fusion of the left and the right in practice it shifted the moderate left to the right. The moderate and radical left had previously agreed on the necessity of a secular state and philosophies such as realism, positivism, materialism with the post-unification Weranian state having worked hard to extract the church from having public influence, particularly in education. By incorporating the Solarian Catholic Church into the ruling majority had effectively signalled its intent to end the secularising reforms and come to an albeit limited truce with the church.

The eisenring was decried by the left for effectively reversing the liberalism of the 1840s but it did not herald a return to the reactionary politics of pre-unification Werania. Importantly the reconciliation with the church did not result in the recognition of papal infallibility and generally speaking the state did not reverse secularising measures passed in the unification period. Rather the role of the church and of the state in general was effectively frozen under the eisenring system. Historian Samuel Bennett remarked that the period under Oppolzer and his immediate successors politically reflected stagnation and an ossification of the political system rather then a counter-revolution.

Moral Order

Members of the National Guard suppressing the 1883 general strike.

Art

Architecture

A photochrom print of the Vorderstein Castle, commissioned by king Adalbert as part of the castle romanticist (burgenromantik) movement.