International relations, 1648–1814 and cultural achievement. Historian Frederick Nussbaum says it was: The worst came during the Thirty Years' War, 1618–1648, which had an extremely negative impact on the civilian population of Germany and surrounding areas, with massive loss of life and disruption of the economy and society. Scholars taking a "realist" perspective on wars and diplomacy have emphasized the Peace of Westphalia (1648) as a dividing line. It ended the Thirty Years War (1618–1648), where religion and ideology had been powerful motivating forces for warfare. Westphalia, in the realist view, ushered in a new international system of sovereign states of roughly equal
Treaty of Xanten in Westphalia to be governed by the House of Hohenzollern, and were the oldest constituents of the future Prussian Rhineland and the future Province of Westphalia. Treaty of Xanten The Treaty of Xanten () was signed in the Lower Rhine town of Xanten on November 12, 1614 between Wolfgang Wilhelm, Count Palatine of Neuburg and John Sigismund, Elector of Brandenburg, with representatives from England and France serving as mediators. The treaty ended the War of the Jülich Succession and all hostilities between Wolfgang William and John Sigismund. Based on the terms of the treaty, the territories of Jülich-Berg and Ravenstein