The image of the city: the search for a tolerant society in early modern Hamburg.

The implementation of the toleration mandate in 1785–6 marked a true watershed in the history of Hamburg. The struggle for the liberties it granted had dominated the city since before 1600. The gradual realisation of the mandate's constitutional implications was to preoccupy the city's elite for much of the following century. Of course, both before and after 1785, other issues also stand out, and certainly other European developments had a crucial bearing on Hamburg's evolution. But from the point of view of the local dignitary, whether in the secular or in the ecclesiastical domain, the present was interpreted and articulated in primarily religious terms. The city's relationship with its non-Lutheran minorities thus provided a touchstone on which attitudes were tested and broader issues defined. For this reason the debate over religious toleration can only be fully understood in the context of the broad social and cultural development of early modern Hamburg. This chapter will thus amplify many of the problems raised in the first five chapters, and, by looking at the self-image of the city, explore some of the political, social and cultural dimensions of the debate. One major question arises from much of the analysis above: why did it take so long to concede so little? Throughout, it might seem that the battle lines were relatively clearly drawn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]