Once disregarded as a backward monstrosity, the Holy Roman Empire has become the subject of extensive revisionist historiography over the past three decades. This research has altered our understanding of how the empire functioned and has highlighted the importance of ritual for expressing relations within the empire. Fewer scholars have investigated what the empire meant in the daily lives of people on the local level. Daniela Kah's comparative study of three German imperial cities explores this terrain, examining how the empire was understood in self-governing cities that recognized the emperor as their sole overlord. Kah looks at Augsburg, Lübeck, and Nuremberg, all major trading centers with sizeable populations that sat at different distances from the centers of imperial power. Chronologically, she focuses on the late Middle Ages, a time period when a sophisticated language surrounding the Empire emerged. Her study stops before the Reformation, which marks a missed opportunity to explore how the late medieval imperial identity of each city interacted with the pressures of religious reform.

This minor critique aside, Kah's study exhaustively catalogues the myriad ways in which the empire was used to support a variety of goals in each city. She structures the book around three English terms: “shaping,” or the physical layout of cities; “corporate branding,” which examines each city's self-representation; and “physical presence,” which focuses on property linked to the empire and the emperor's visits to cities. In the shaping section, Kah argues that each city's topography changed in reaction to privileges granted by the emperor. Each imperial privilege spurred growth and expansion to match the city's new status. Increased autonomy gave rise to new spaces, such as city halls and central plazas, where the rituals of civic independence could occur. Urban planning in all three cities connected closely to commercial interests and the right to hold markets, one of the most important privileges received from the emperor.

The corporate branding section examines the media techniques utilized in each city to establish an imperial urban identity. Different forms of media—such as the minting of coins, the decoration of seals, and the display of coats of arms—presented a city's allegiance to the empire in public ways that could reach wide swaths of the population. They created symbolic, visual connections between city and empire that reinforced the commune's special status by making it visible on a day-to-day basis. Kah finds that the introduction of images tying a city to the empire often came in the wake of crisis or change in society, where the imperial linkage served to stabilize the city's identity and status. In Augsburg, for example, much of the imperial iconography employed by the council evolved through jurisdictional conflicts with the local bishop. In this context, aligning oneself with ancient and imperial authority supported the council's claims to power and helped solidify its autonomy. Kah notes similar processes at work in Nuremberg and Lübeck as well.

The third section examines the physical presence of the emperor or property related to the empire in each city. This category includes imperial structures, civic buildings used for imperial purposes, and objects such as the imperial crown jewels. Physical presences allowed urban inhabitants to experience the empire in a concrete fashion. At the same time, civic authorities sought to domesticate imperial presences by subjecting them to the council's control and employing them to legitimize the council's rule. Thus, both corporate branding and imperial presences had ambivalent meanings that could be wielded in a variety of ways.

The book is well illustrated, and Kah does well to show how similar processes occurred in all three cities while allowing for local variation. It might have been useful to include a non-imperial city such as Bamberg, a bishop's city located near Nuremberg that housed a wealth of imperial iconography. Such a move would have enabled Kah to determine whether the patterns she identifies for imperial cities also occurred in other types of cities. Overall, though, Kah's study offers thoughtful analysis of how ideas about the empire took root in late medieval cities. It lends new clarity and precision to considerations of how autonomous urban communes understood themselves before the Reformation.