Sybel-Ficker controversy
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The Sybel-Ficker controversy (German: Sybel-Ficker-Streit) is the name given to a dispute in the second half of the 19th century between the historians Heinrich von Sybel (1817–1895) and Julius von Ficker (1826–1902). It involved a discussion concerning relations between Rome (that is, the papal see) and the Holy Roman Empire, which also had an important bearing on the Austria–Prussia rivalry—whether Austria was to be part of a federal Germany, or whether Germany would continue without Austria (as a Lesser Germany).
![Thumb image](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/17/Heinrich_von_Sybel.jpg/220px-Heinrich_von_Sybel.jpg)
![Thumb image](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Julius_von_Ficker.jpg/220px-Julius_von_Ficker.jpg)
Heinrich von Sybel fired the first shot in the dispute in an 1859 lecture, in which he condemned the medieval politics of the German Empire as "unnational". Julius Ficker countered in 1861 in lectures at the University of Innsbruck, in which he justified the emperors' national politics, which he also presented as universal. While Sybel's was a "kleindeutsch-norddeutsch-protestantische" (Little German-North German-Protestant) concept of history,[1] Ficker promoted a Greater Germany which would include Austria.