The Reformation and Counter-Reformation divided Germany and produced two major civil wars which ended only after extensive involvement by foreign powers. At the same time, the century between 1540 and 1640 produced solutions in federal public law which guaranteed the internal religious uniformity of each of the approximately 300 territorial states, while establishing heterodoxy at the federal or Reich level. After the Peace of Westphalia attempts were made to remove religion from federal politics by forming two blocs of territories in the Reichstag or imperial assembly – the corpus catholicorum and the corpus evangelicorum. In practice, the right of territories to ‘split into parts’ at the federal political level was used sparingly, and then only by the Protestants, especially around 1700, an indication that they were the weaker party. In the mid eighteenth century Christian August Beck, tutor in public law to the future Emperor Joseph II, admitted:

Beck was aware of the threat that religious dissent still posed to peaceful cooperation within federal Germany.