von Stein, Dr. Zimmermann as a valued correspondent; its Grand Duke
Karl August and his consort; Herder, who jealous of the renown of
Goethe, and piqued at the insufficient consideration he received, soon
departed, to return only when the Grand Duchess took him under her
wing and thus satisfied his morbid pride; its love affair, for did not
the beautiful Frau von Werthern leave her husband, carry out a mock
funeral, and, heralded as dead, elope to Africa with Herr von
Einsiedel? But Weimar was as far away from what we now agree to look
upon as the great events of the day, as were Lords Glengall and
Yarmouth at White's, in Saint James's.
It requires imagination to put Goethe and Schiller and Wieland in the
bow window at White's, and to place Lords Glengall and Yarmouth in
Frau von Stein's drawing-room in Weimar; but the discerning eye which
can see this picture, knows at a glance why England misunderstands
Germany and Germany misunderstands England. For White's is White's and
Weimar is Weimar, and one is British and one is German as much now as
then! In the one the winner of the Derby is of more importance than
any philosopher; in the other, philosophers, poets, professors, and
playwrights are almost as well known, as the pedigrees of the
yearlings to be sold at Newmarket, are known at White's. They still
have plover's eggs early in the season at White's, and they still
recognize the subtle distinction there between "port wine" and "port";
while in Weimar nobody, unless it be the duke, even boils his
sauerkraut in white wine!
One could easily write a chapter on Weimar and its self-satisfied
social and literary activities. There were three hundred or more
capitals of like complexion and isolation: some larger, some smaller,
none perhaps with such a splendid literary setting, but all
indifferent with the indifference of distant relatives who seldom see
one another, when the French Revolution exploded its bomb at the gates
of the world's habits of thought.
No intelligent man ever objected to the French Revolution because it
stood for human rights, but because it led straight to human wrongs.
The dream was angelic, but the nightmare in which it ended was
devilish. The French Revolution was the most colossal disappointment
that humanity has ever had to bear.
More than the demagogue gives us credit for, are the great majority of
us eager to help our neighbors. The trouble is that the demagogue
thinks this, the most difficult of all things, an easy task. God and
Nature are harsh when they are training men, and we, alas, are soft,
hence most of our failures. Correction must be given with a rod, not
with a sop. There lies all the trouble.
The political and philanthropic wise men were setting out for the
manger and the babe, their eyes on the star, laden with gifts, when
they were met by a whiff of grape-shot from the guns commanded by a
young Corsican genius. The French Revolution found us all sympathetic,
but making men of equal height by lopping off their heads; making them
free by giving no one a chance to be free; making them fraternal by
insisting that all should be addressed by the same title of,
"citizen," was soon seen to be the method of a political nursery.
It was no fault of the French Revolution that it was no revolution at
all, in any political sense. Men maddened by oppression hit, kick,
bite, and burn. They are satisfied to shake the burden of the moment
off their backs, even though the burden they take on be of much the
same character. "It is perfectly possible, to revive even in our own
day the fiscal tyranny which once left even European populations in
doubt whether it was worth while preserving life by thrift and toil.
You have only to tempt a portion of the population into temporary
idleness, by promising them a share in a fictitious hoard lying in an
imaginary strong-box which is supposed to contain all human wealth.
You have only to take the heart out of those who would willingly labor
and save, by taxing them ad misericordiam for the most laudable
philanthropic objects. For it makes not the smallest difference to the
motives of the thrifty and industrious part of mankind whether their
fiscal oppressor be an Eastern despot, or a feudal baron, or a
democratic legislature, and whether they are taxed for the benefit of
a corporation called Society or for the advantage of an individual
styled King or Lord," writes Sir Henry Maine. In short it matters not
in the least what you baptize oppression, so long as it is oppression,
or whether you call your tyrant "Jim" or "My Lord," so long as he is a
tyrant. Many people are slowly awakening to the fact in England and in
America, that plain citizen "Jim" can be a most merciless tyrant in
spite of his unpretentious name and title. No royal tyrant ever dared
to attempt to gain his ends by dynamiting innocent people, as did the
trades-unionists at Los Angeles, or to starve a whole population as
did the trades-unionists in London. We have not escaped tyranny by
changing its name. The idea of the Contrat Social and of all its
dilutions since, has been that individuals go to make up society, and
that society under the name of the state must take charge of those
individuals. The French Revolution was a failure because it fell back
upon that tiresome and futile philosophy of government which had been
that of Louis XIV. Louis XIV took care of the individual units of the
state by exploiting them. He was a sound enough Socialist in theory.
France gained nothing of much value along the lines of political
philosophy.
Whether it is Louis XIV who says "l'etat c'est moi" or the citizens
banded together in a state, who claim that the functions of the state
are to meddle with the business of every man, matters little. It is
the same socialistic philosophy at bottom, and it has produced to-day
a France of thirty-eight millions of people pledged to sterility, one
million of whom are state officials superintending the affairs of the
others at a cost, in salaries alone, of upward of five hundred million
dollars a year.
In no political or philosophical sense was the French Revolution a
revolution at all. It was a change of administration and leaders, but
not a change of political theory. The French Revolution put the state
in impartial supremacy over all classes by destroying exemptions
claimed by the nobility and the clergy, and thus extended the power of
the state. The English Revolution without bloodshed reduced the power
of the state, not for the advantage of any class, but for individual
liberty and local self-government. We Americans are the political
heirs of the latter, not of the former, revolution.
Germany was stirred slightly to hope for freedom, but stirred mightily
to protest against anarchy later. These were the two influences from
the French Revolution that affected Germany, and they were so
contradictory that Germany herself was for nearly a hundred years in a
mixed mood. One influence enlivened the theoretical democrat, and the
other sent the armies of all Europe post-haste to save what was left
of orderly government in France.
But Prussia was not what she had been under Frederick the Great.
Frederick was more Louis XIV than Louis XIV himself. The economic and
political errors of the French Revolution found their best practical
exponent in Frederick the Great. In the introduction to his code of
laws we have already mentioned are the words: "The head of the state,
to whom is intrusted the duty of securing public welfare, which is the
whole aim of society, is authorized to direct and control all the
actions of individuals toward this end." Further on the same code
reads: "It is incumbent upon the state to see to the feeding,
employment, and payment of all those who cannot support themselves,
and who have no claim to the help of the lord of the manor, or to the
help of the commune: it is necessary to provide such persons with work
which is suitable to their strength and their capacity."
When Frederick died he left Prussia in the grip of this enervating
pontifical socialism, which always everywhere ends by palsying the
individual, and through the individual the state, with the blight of
demagogical and theoretical legislation. The fine army grew pallid and
without spirit, the citizens lost their individual pride, the nation
as a whole lost its vigor, and when Napoleon marched into Berlin, he
remarked that the country hardly seemed worth conquering.
The century from the death of Frederick the Great, in 1786, to the
death of William the First, in 1888, includes, in a convenient period
to remember: the downfall of Frederick's patriotic edifice; the apathy
and impotency that followed upon the breaking up of the bureaucracy he
had welded into efficiency; the shuffling of the German states by
Napoleon as though they were the pack of cards in a great political
game; a revival of patriotism in Prussia after floggings and insults
that were past bearing; the jealousies and enmities of the various
states, the betrayal of one by the other, and finally the struggle
between Austria and Prussia to decide upon a leader for all Germany;
and at last the war against France, 1870-71, which was to make it
clear to the world that Germany had been Prussianized into an empire.
Frederick William II, the nephew of Frederick the Great, who succeeded
him, was King of Prussia from 1786 to 1797. Frederick William III, his
son, and the husband of the beautiful and patriotic Queen Louisa, was
King of Prussia from 1797 to 1840. Frederick William IV, a loquacious,
indiscreet, loose-lipped sovereign, of moist intellect and mythical
delusions, was King of Prussia from 1840 to 1857, when his mental
condition made his retirement necessary, and he was succeeded by his
brother, Frederick William Ludwig, first as regent, then as king in
1861, known to us as that admirable King and Emperor, William I, who
died in 1888.
Perhaps the most remarkable characteristic of these sovereigns, to
those of us who look upon Germany to-day as autocratically governed in
fact and by tradition, is their willing surrender to the people, on
every occasion when the demand has been, even as little insistent as
the German demand has been. In the case of Frederick William IV, his
claim, at least in words, upon his divine rights as a sovereign was
the mark of a wavering confidence in himself. He was not satisfied
with a rational sanction for his authority, but was forever assuring
his subjects that God had pronounced for him; much as men of low
intelligence attempt to add vigor to their statements by an oath. "I
hold my crown," he said, "by the favor of God, and I am responsible to
Him for every hour of my government." Much under the influence of the
two scholars Niebuhr and Ranke, he hated the ideas of the French
Revolution, and dreamed of an ideal Christian state like that of the
Middle Ages. He was caricatured by the journals of the day, and
laughed at by the wits, including Heine, and pictured as a king with
"Order" on one hand, "Counter-order" on the other, and "Disorder" on
his forehead.
Though Frederick William II marched into France in 1792, to support
the French monarchy, neither his army nor his people were prepared or
fit for this enterprise, and he soon retired. In 1793, Prussia joined
Russia in a second partition of Poland, but in 1795, angry with what
was considered the double dealing of Austria and Russia, Prussia
concluded a peace with France, the treaty of Basle was signed in 1795,
and for ten years Prussia practically took no part in the Napoleonic
wars.
Napoleon took over the lands on the left bank of the Rhine, took away
the freedom of forty-eight towns, leaving only Hamburg, Bremen,
Frankfort, Augsburg, and Nuremberg, and in 1803 he took Hanover.
Later, in 1805, Bavaria, Wuertemberg, and Baden aided Napoleon to fight
the alliance against him of Austria, England, Russia, and Sweden. In
that same year the Electors of Wuertemberg and Bavaria were made kings
by Napoleon. In 1806 Bavaria, Baden, Wuertemberg, and Hessen seceded
from the German Empire, formed themselves into the Confederation of
the Rhine, and acknowledged Napoleon as their protector. In 1806
Francis II, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, resigned, and there was
neither an empire nor an emperor of Germany, nor was there a Germany
of united interests.
In 1806 Frederick William III, driven by the grossest insults to his
country and to his wife, finally declared war against France; there
followed the battle of Jena, in which the Germans were routed, and in
that same year Napoleon marched into Berlin unopposed. In 1807 the
Russian Emperor was persuaded to make peace, and Prussia without her
ally was helpless. The Peace of Tilsit, in July, 1807, deprived
Prussia of the whole of the territory between the Elbe and the Rhine,
and this with Brunswick, Hessen-Cassel, and part of Hanover was dubbed
the Kingdom of Westphalia, and Napoleon's youngest brother Jerome was
made king. The Polish territory of Prussia was given to the Elector of
Saxony, who was also rewarded for having deserted Prussia after the
battle of Jena by being made a king. Prussia was further required to
reduce her army to forty-two thousand men.
It is neither a pretty nor an inspiriting story, this of the mangling
of Germany by Napoleon; of the German princes bribed by kingly crowns
from the hands of an ancestorless Corsican; but it all goes to show
how far from any sense of common aims and duties, how far from the
united Vaterland of to-day, was the Germany of a hundred years ago. It
adds, too, immeasurably to the laurels of the man who produced the
present German Empire out of his own pocket, and stood as chief
sponsor at its christening at Versailles in 1871.
This Prussia that sent twenty thousand troops to aid Napoleon against
Russia, and which during the retreat from Moscow went over bodily to
the enemy; this Prussia whose vacillating king simpered with delight
at a kind word from Napoleon, and shivered with dismay at a harsh one;
this army with its officers as haughty as they were incapable, and its
men only prevented from wholesale desertion by severe punishment, an
army rotten at the core, with a coat of varnish over its worm-eaten
fabric; this Prussia humiliated and disgraced after the battle of
Jena, in 1806, in seven years' time came into its own again. Vom
Stein, Scharnhorst, the son of a Hanoverian peasant, and Hardenberg
put new life into the state. At Waterloo the pummelled squares of red-coats
were relieved by these Prussians, and Bluecher, or "Old Marschall
Vorwaerts" as he was called, redeemed his countrymen's years of
effeminate lassitude and vacillation.
"Such was Vorwaerts, such a fighter,
Such a lunging, plunging smiter,
Always stanch and always straight,
Strong as death for love or hate,
Always first in foulest weather,
Neck or nothing, hell for leather,
Through or over, sink or swim,
Such was Vorwaerts--here's to him!"
Napoleon goes to Saint Helena and dies in 1821. What he did for
Germany was to prove to her how impossible was a cluster of jealous,
malicious provincial little state governments in the heart of Europe,
protecting themselves from falling apart by the ancient legislative
scaffolding of the Holy Roman Empire. He squeezed three hundred states
into thirty-eight, and the very year of Waterloo, on April the 1st, a
German Napoleon was born who was to further squeeze these states into
what is known to-day as the German Empire.
The Congress of Vienna was a meeting of the European powers to
redistribute the possessions, that Napoleon had scattered as bribes
and rewards among his friends, relatives, and enemies, so far as
possible, among their rightful owners.
From the island of Elba, off the coast of Tuscany, Napoleon looked on
while the allies quarrelled at this Congress of Vienna. Prussia
claimed the right to annex Saxony; Russia demanded Poland, and against
them were leagued England, Austria, and France, France represented by
the Mephistophelian Talleyrand, who strove merely to stir the discord
into another war. In the midst of their deliberations word came that
the wolf was in the fold again. Napoleon was riding to Paris, through
hysterical crowds of French men and women, eager for another throw
against the world, if their Little Corporal were there to shake the
dice for them. He had another throw and lost. The French Revolution in
1789, followed by the insurrection of all Europe against that strange
gypsy child of the Revolution, Napoleon, from 1807-1815, ended at last
at Waterloo. This lover, who won whole nations as other men win a maid
or two; this ruler, who had popes for handmaidens and gave kingdoms as
tips, who dictated to kings preferably from the palaces of their own
capitals; this fortunate demon of a man, who had escaped even Mlle.
Montausier, was safely disposed of at Saint Helena, and the ordinary
ways of mortals had their place in the world again.
The Congress of Vienna reassembled, and the readjustment of the map of
Europe began over again. Prussia is given back what had been taken
away from her. A German confederation was formed in 1815 to resist
encroachments, but with no definite political idea, and its diet, to
which Prussia, Austria, and the other smaller states sent
representatives, became the laughing-stock of Europe. Jealous
bickerings and insistence upon silly formalities paralyzed
legislation. Lawyers and others who presented their claims before this
assembly from 1806-1816 were paid in 1843! The liquidation of the
debts of the Thirty Years' War was made after two hundred years, in
1850! The laws for the military forces were finally agreed upon in
1821, and put in force in 1840!
There were three principal forms of government among these states:
first, Absolutist, where the ruler and his officials governed without
reference to the people, as in Prussia and Austria; second, those who
organized assemblies (Landslaende), where no promises were made to the
people, but where the nobles and notables were called together for
consultation; and third, a sort of constitutional monarchy with a
written constitution and elected representatives, but with the ruler
none the less supreme. One of the first rulers to grant such a
constitution to his people was the Grand Duke who presided over the
little court at Weimar.
The mass of the people were wholly indifferent. The intellectuals were
divided among themselves. The schools and universities after 1818 form
associations and societies, the Burschenschaft, for example, and in a
hazy professorial fashion talk and shout of freedom. They were of
those passionate lovers of liberty, more intent on the dower than on
the bride; willing to talk and sing and to tell the world of their own
deserts, but with little iron in their blood.
When a real man wants to be free he fights, he does not talk; he takes
what he wants and asks for it afterward; he spends himself first and
affords it afterward. These dreamy gentlemen could never make the
connection between their assertions and their actions. They were as
inconsistent, as a man who sees nothing unreasonable in circulating
ascetic opinions and a perambulator at the same time. They were dreary
and technical advocates of liberty.
At a great festival at the Wartburg, in 1817, the students got out of
hand, burned the works of those conservatives, Haller and Kotzebue,
and the Code Napoleon. This youthful folly was purposely exaggerated
throughout Germany, and was used by the party of autocracy to frighten
the people, and also as a reason for passing even severer laws against
the ebullitions of liberty. At a conference at Carlsbad in 1819 the
representatives of the states there assembled passed severe laws
against the student societies, the press, the universities, and the
liberal professors.
From 1815-1830 the opinions of the more enlightened changed. The fear
of Napoleon was gradually forgotten, and the hatred of the absolutism
of Prussia and Austria grew.
In 1830 constitutions were demanded and were guardedly granted in
Brunswick, Saxony, Hanover, and Hesse-Cassel. In 1832 things had gone
so far that at a great student festival the black, red, and gold flag
of the Burschenschaft was hoisted, toasts were drunk to the
sovereignty of the people, to the United States of Germany, and to
Europe Republican! This was followed by further prosecutions. Prussia
condemned thirty-nine students to death, but confined them in a
fortress. The prison-cell of the famous Fritz Reuter may be seen in
Berlin to-day. In Hesse, the chief of the liberal party, Jordan, was
condemned to six years in prison; in Bavaria a journalist was
imprisoned for four years, and other like punishments followed
elsewhere. It was in 1857, when Queen Victoria came to the throne,
that Hanover was cut off from the succession, as Hanover could not
descend to a woman. The Duke of Cumberland became the ruler of
Hanover, and England ceased to hold any territory in Europe.
From 1839-1847 there was comparative quiet in the political world. The
rulers of the various states succeeded in keeping the liberal
professorial rhetoric too damp to be valuable as an explosive.
Interwoven with this party in Germany, demanding for the people
something more of representation in the government, was a movement for
the binding together of the various states in a closer union. In 1842
when the first stone was laid for the completion of the Cologne
Cathedral, at a banquet of the German princes presided over by the
King of Prussia, the King of Wuertemberg proposed a toast to "Our
common country!" That toast probably marks the first tangible proof of
the existence of any important feeling upon the subject of German
unity.
At a congress of Germanists at Frankfort, in 1846, professors and
students, jurists and historians, talked and discussed the questions
of a German parliament and of national unity more perhaps than matters
of scholarship.
In 1847 Professor Gervinus founded at Heidelberg the Deutsche Zeitung,
which was to be liberal, national, and for all Germany.
I should be sorry to give the impression that I have not given proper
value to the work of the German professor and student in bringing
about a more liberal constitution for the states of Germany. Liebig of
Munich, Ranke of Berlin, Sybel of Bonn, Ewald of Goettingen, Mommsen in
Berlin, Doellinger in Munich, and such men as Schiemann in Berlin to-day,
were and are, not only scholars, but they have been and are
political teachers; some of them violently reactionary, if you please,
but all of them stirring men to think.
No such feeling existed then, or exists now, in Germany, as animated
Oxford some fifty years ago when the greatest Sanscrit scholar then
living was rejected by a vote of that body, one voter declaring: "I
have always voted against damned intellect, and I trust I always may!"
A state of mind that has not altogether disappeared in England even
now. Indeed I am not sure, that the most notable feature of political
life in England to-day, is not a growing revolt against legislation by
tired lawyers, and an increasing demand for common-sense governing
again, even if the governing be done by those with small respect for
"damned intellect."
The third French revolution of 1848 set fire to all this, not only in
Germany but in Austria, Hungary, Roumania, and elsewhere. We must go
rapidly through this period of seething and of political teething. The
parliament at Frankfort with nothing but moral authority discussed and
declaimed, and finally elected Archduke John of Austria as
"administrator" of the empire. There followed discussions as to
whether Austria should even become a member of the new confederation.
Two parties, the "Little Germanists" and the "Pan Germanists," those
in favor of including, and those opposed to the inclusion of Austria,
fought one another, with Prussia leading the one and Austria, with the
prestige of having been head of the former Holy Roman Empire, the
other.