My Queries about the Manuscript

[bi3mw]

It also discourages theorists from any of the modern nations that have land in the Alps who have ethnonationalist motives for claiming the VMS as their people’s cultural property.

Of course the Holy Roman Empire, for example, was also just a "patchwork carpet" of different principalities and duchies. These were largely autonomous and could often only be integrated with difficulty by the emperor. One can say that the kings in other European countries had more power in their territories than the (elected) emperor in the HRE.

Ethnonationalist motives for claiming the VMS as a cultural asset could therefore at best be limited to a small region that is far from being national in today's sense. At least as far as the HRE is concerned. The term "nation" was adopted into German around 1400. Before that there was not even a term for it.