The Salzburg Transaction

Book excerpt: In this elegant book Mack Walker not only provides the most complete available account of the expulsion but also makes a strikingly original contribution to historical method. He tells the story in five different ways: as an episode in the history of the Salzburg archbishopric, in the history of the Prussian state, in the confessional and constitutional life of the Holy Roman Empire, in the experience of the emigrants themselves, and in the legendry of German (especially Prussian) Protestantism. His unusual narrative method enables him to reveal, as perhaps no previous historian has done, the intricate inner workings of the Holy Roman Empire, where conflicting confessional, dynastic, political, and economic interests were held in constantly shifting balance. The exile of the Salzburg Protestants, Walker shows, satisfied all parties concerned - except possibly the migrants themselves.