MAIN CURRENTS IN NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE
BY
GEORG BRANDES
IN SIX VOLUMES ILLUSTRATED
VI
YOUNG GERMANY
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN.
1905
[Illustration: GOETHE]
CONTENTS
I. THE POLITICAL BACKGROUND
II. PHILOSOPHY AND REACTION
III. SPIRIT OF THE OPPOSITION
IV. INFLUENCE OF THE REVOLUTION OF JULY.
V. INFLUENCE OF BYRON
VI. VALUE OF THE NEW LITERATURE
VII. BÖRNE
VIII. BÖRNE
IX. BÖRNE
X. BÖRNE
XI. HEINE
XII. HEINE
XIII. HEINE
XIV. HEINE
XV. HEINE AND GOETHE
XVI. HEINE
XVII. HEINE
XVIII. LITERATURE AND PARTY
XIX. IMMERMANN
XX. HEGELIANISM
XXI. YOUNG GERMANY AND MENZEL
XXII. GUTZKOW, LAUBE, MUNDT
XXIII. RAHEL, BETTINA, CHARLOTTE STIEGLITZ
XXIV. FREDERICK WILLIAM IV. OF PRUSSIA
XXV. THE NEUTRAL LITERATURE
XXVI. POLITICAL POETRY, PHILOSOPHICAL REVOLUTION
XXVII. REVOLUTIONARY POETRY
XXVIII. REVOLUTIONARY POETRY
XXIX. THE REVOLUTION
XXX. CONCLUSION
LIST OF PORTRAITS
GOETHE
CHAMISSO
BÖRNE
HEINE
IMMERMANN
HEGEL
GUTZKOW
"_Si l'artiste ne se précipite pas dans son oeuvre, comme Curtius dans
le gouffre, comme le soldat dans la redoute, sans réfléchir; et si,
dans ce cratère, il ne travaille pas comme le mineur enfoui sous un
éboulement; s'il contemple les difficultés au lieu de les vaincre une
à une, l'oeuvre reste inachevée, elle périt au fond de l'atelier, ou la
production devient impossible, et l'artiste assiste au suicide de son
talent"_--BALZAC.
YOUNG GERMANY
I
THE POLITICAL BACKGROUND
From the days of the Holy Alliance onward, the spirit of systematic
reaction brooded over the German countries--a reaction which dated
from the Congress of Vienna, and had its centre in Austria. Its most
typical representative, Metternich, a pupil of Talleyrand, a less
adroit but far more mischievous man than his master, hoped to extend
it to the whole of Europe. Everything that had been shaken, loosened,
or overturned by the Revolution or by Napoleon was to be repaired and
re-established. In the struggle with the great enemy they had been
obliged at last to resort to every possible method, had been forced
to appeal to the people instead of simply commanding, to appeal to
their sentiment in place of their allegiance, and even to promise a
thing as contrary to all cabinet policy, as youthfully revolutionary,
as "the regeneration of Germany." There had been, it is true, a very
noticeable difference between the Austrian and the Prussian watchwords.
"Justice and Order," "Order and Peace," were the cues of the Austrian
proclamations; those of the Prussian were "The Nation," "Freedom and
Honour," "Germany." Still both of the great German States had made more
concessions to the spirit of the times than at all suited the ideas of
their leading statesmen. And no sooner was the enemy driven off, the
heir of the Revolution crippled, and "the war of freedom" ended, than
it became their object to put an end to the freedom as they had put an
end to the war.
The generation that had grown up during the war with France had
expected to see a united Germany arise as the result of victory. As
far back as 1812, Stein had sketched a plan for the reunion of the
scattered parts of the former German Empire, and Arndt and Görres had
given expression to the same idea. But the Peace of Paris, in 1814,
decreed: "The German States shall be independent, and united by a
federative league;" and herewith all hopes of unification were dashed
to the ground. Almost a generation passed before the people were again
animated by the thought. In place of the unified State arose the German
Confederacy, _der deutsche Bund_, or, as Jahn called it, _Bunt_, a
many-coloured harlequin's garb for the nation; and the disappointment
was a bitter one.
The dream of freedom shared the fate of the dream of unification. To
animate their peoples in the struggle with Napoleon, several of the
princes had promised them constitutional government. Of the larger
States, only Bavaria, Baden, and Würtemberg, the former members of
the Napoleonic Rhenish Confederacy, kept these promises. Bavaria and
Baden received constitutions in 1818; Würtemberg, where for once the
king was more liberally minded than the estates, in 1819; and in
little Saxe-Weimar, Karl August, the pioneer of political freedom in
Germany, had given his people a free constitution and inaugurated a
Parliamentary idyll as far back as 1816.
All this, however, was of small significance in view of the fact
that Austria, after, as well as before, the Peace, represented the
reactionary principle, and that Prussia, with a population more
inclined than any of the others to political activity, adhered
unhesitatingly to the Metternichian principles.
Yet the Prussian people not only desired a constitution, but possessed
a right to it. They had it in black and white. In an edict of 1810, the
Chancellor, Prince Hardenberg, the restorer of the power of Prussia,
had held out the prospect of representative government. During the
war with Napoleon the promise had been repeated, and finally, in an
ordinance of the 22nd of May 1815, a formal promise had been made to
the people, a clear intimation of the king's intention to appoint
without delay a committee whose task it should be to prepare the draft
of a constitution. But as the Metternichian principles gained ground,
the realisation of this plan was postponed. When Görres ventured to
present to Hardenberg an address from the Rhine provinces, in which
the King of Prussia was reminded of his promise, the only answer he
received was, that the king who had given the promise had also, in
his wisdom, reserved the right to judge of the proper time for its
fulfilment. On several later occasions the king declared himself to
be bound by his promise, but at the same time always insisted that
the question of time must be left to his fatherly care to decide.
And meanwhile full twenty-five years passed--the rest of the king's
life.[1]
The object of the Powers was to eradicate every trace of the Napoleonic
administration. In Hanover, for example, the _Code Napoléon_, with
its public, verbal judicial proceedings, was abolished, and the old
inquisitional system of the sixteenth century, with its secret modes of
procedure, was re-established. The peasants, who had been liberated by
the French, had to return to serfdom and villeinage. The principle of
equality before the law was set at naught, the aristocracy re-acquiring
the political and social privileges which they had possessed in the
eighteenth century.
And just as the first germs of a freer political life were ready to
sprout in South Germany, an event occurred which gave the signal
for much stronger, much hastier reaction, one symptom of which was
the employment of the most violent measures in the repression of
unimportant and innocent expressions of popular feeling. This event was
the assassination of Kotzebue, or, to be more correct, the enthusiasm
for the assassin which his deed awakened throughout Germany, then
suffering from oppression and espionage.
The strong national feeling and the enthusiasm for freedom which
had asserted themselves during the conflict with France, had in the
years following on that conflict given birth to two movements among
the youth of Germany, to which the attention of the Governments were
now directed--the gymnastic and the student movement (Turnwesen and
Burschenschaftswesen).
Jahn, the populariser of gymnastics, who succeeded Fichte in the
favour of the youth of Germany, opened the first school of gymnastics
in Berlin. He had belonged to Lützow's free-lance Jaegercorps, was
a German of Germans and a hater of the French, and went about with
his long, unkempt grey hair hanging over his shoulders, bare-necked,
his broad shirt-collar thrown wide open, and a thick, knotted stick
in his hand. In the course of the holiday excursions which he made
with his pupils, whenever they came upon a French sign-board or met a
fashionably-dressed man, they would draw up round the object of their
detestation, bawling: "Oh! Oh!" On these excursions the strictest
temperance in food and drink was observed; they lived chiefly on
bread and water, and bivouacked at night under the open sky. From
round the fire rose the strains of the worthy Massmann's beautiful
_Turnerwanderlied:_
"Stubenwacht, Ofenpacht,
Hat die Herzen weich gemacht,
Wanderfahrt, Turnerart
Macht sie frank und hart."[2]
This Massmann, who, besides being one of the leaders of the
gymnastic movement, was one of the founders of the students' unions
(Burschenschaften), is the same who figures so frequently as scapegoat
in Heine's poems and prefaces.[3]
Jahn soon became the object of the most ardent admiration, not only on
the part of immature youth, but of men of note and of public bodies.
Poets inscribed their verses to him; a philologist like Thiersch
dedicated his _Pindar_ to him, and compared German to Greek gymnastics;
two universities invested him with an honorary degree. He himself was
a most loyal subject, but it was the fashion among his long-haired,
bare-necked gymnasts with the unbleached linen jackets to jeer at
the army, especially at the dandy officers of the guard. They raved,
too, against abstract enemies; among their rules was one for the
assassination of the enemy of the good cause; they were to aim with a
dagger at his eyes, and, when the victim covered his face, to strike at
his heart.
This movement emanated from Berlin, the student movement from
Thuringia. The latter began as a sort of semi-national, semi-Christian
enthusiasm, and aimed among other things at the reform of the low
standard of manners and morals among the students. Originating in one
of the small States of Germany, it took for its programme that famous
song of Arndt's which declares the whole of Germany to be the German's
fatherland.
Amongst the Jena professors a certain Fries had most influence among
the students, the same Fries who, in the preface to Hegel's _Philosophy
of Right_, is loaded with invective as being the representative of
shallowness. He was a violent Liberal, who had said that Hegel's new
theories did not grow in the gardens of science, but in the hotbeds
of servility; and under his fostering care the endeavour after unity
and abstract liberty spread amongst the youth of the universities. The
banner of the Burschen was black, red, and gold, said to have been
suggested by the colours of the uniform of Lützow's Corps, black, with
red facings and gold buttons.
The Reformation commemoration-festival in 1817 first drew general
attention to the gymnastic and student societies (Turner and Burschen).
It had suggested the idea of a meeting at the Wartburg of delegates
from all the German student unions. In a pamphlet published on the
occasion of the festival by Karl Sand, he names as the three enemies
of German nationalism from time immemorial, Roman imperialism,
monasticism, and militarism. On the 18th of October, five hundred
students, headed by several professors, marched up from Eisenach to
the Wartburg, where they dined in the Knights' Hall, placed at their
disposal by the liberal Karl August. After the repast the gymnasts gave
a display of their agility for the benefit of the astonished natives.
In the evening great bonfires were lighted, and then Jahn proposed
that, following the example of Luther, who had burned the Papal Bull,
they should burn what the enemies of the good cause had written.
Massmann feelingly expressed his approval of the proposal, and bundles
of old printed paper were produced, on which were inscribed the titles
of the detested books written by the enemies of the gymnasts. There
were three by the notorious Schmalz, the first Rector of the University
of Berlin, the Police Statute Book of the equally notorious Prussian
Minister of Justice, Herr von Kamptz, the _Code Napoléon_, Kotzebue's
_Deutsche Geschichte_, Haller's _Restauration_, &c, &c. The last things
thrown into the flames were a Uhlan's corset, a queue, and a corporal's
baton.[4]
When Fries in high-flown language bade the students farewell, he
particularly impressed on them that they had been in the country of
German liberty, liberty of action and of thought: "Here there is no
standing army," &c.; an expression rendered more absurd by the fact
that the army of Weimar consisted of a number of worthy artisans, who
at times, in consideration of a small payment, appeared as hussars,
with high riding-boots and spurs, but without horses. In Hegel's
preface to the _Philosophy of Right_ he remarks, _à propos_ of this
speech, that Fries was not ashamed, on the occasion of a notorious
public demonstration, to say of the constitution of the State that
it was from below, from the people, that life would come, if true
public spirit prevailed; that only by the sacred chain of friendship
could a community, a society, be inviolably united. Hegel calls this
the very hall-mark of shallowness, this melting down of the elaborate
architecture of a rationally designed state into "a broth of feeling,
friendship, and enthusiasm."
Massmann published an account of the festival, in which he described
how night still brooded over Germany, but proclaimed that the blood-red
dawn was about to break.
Metternich succeeded in persuading both Prince Hardenberg and the
Emperor Alexander to bring pressure to bear on Karl August in the
matter of this festival, and ever afterwards Karl August's nickname at
the court of Vienna was "der Altbursche."
Amongst the books burnt in effigy at the Wartburg were some of
Kotzebue's. Kotzebue was publishing at this time in Weimar his
_Litterarisches Wochenblatt_, a journal which flattered Russia and made
merry over the youth of Germany. Little as Goethe generally sympathised
with youth, he rejoiced with them, for once, at the insult offered to
his old enemy.[5]
As Councillor of the Russian Legation, Kotzebue from time to time sent
communications to St. Petersburg, and was consequently supposed to be
a Russian spy. It is probable that his communications were no more
than harmless reports on literary matters, but, be this as it may, in
the eyes of the students, he was Beelzebub--Beltze- or Kotze-bue. At
the University of Giessen at this time, under the leadership of three
brothers Follen, fanatical Republicans, a species of Radicalism had
developed, which gloated over the idea of the assassination of tyrants
and their instruments. In the students' songs such expressions occurred
as: "Freiheitsmesser gezückt!--Hurrah! den Dolch durch die Kehle
gedrückt." (Draw freedom's knife from its sheath!--Hurrah! Thrust
the poniard into the throat.) Karl Follen, the leading spirit, had
completely under his influence that young, narrow-minded mystic, Karl
Sand, who had the image of Jesus constantly before his eyes, and who,
on the 23rd of March 1819, drove his poniard into old Kotzebue's neck.
On a strip of paper which he left lying beside the corpse, was, amongst
other writing, this line by Follen: "You, too, may be a Christ."
It was perfectly clear that this murder, committed in a moment of
religious exaltation, could not be laid to the charge of the Liberal
youth of Germany; nevertheless, and more especially as Sand became
a species of saint in the popular estimation, Metternich and Gentz,
the Emperor of Austria, the King of Prussia, and the Czar, who was
irritated by this expression of Russophobia, took united action, and
the Resolutions of Karlsbad were passed--provisional, exceptional
legislation for the universities, the "demagogues," and the press. Thus
a censorship of the German press came into existence, answering to that
prevailing in Russia now. Gentz was not mistaken when he called this
the greatest retrograde movement that had taken place for thirty years.
Under the pretext of combating a great revolutionary party, which they
knew did not exist, the Governments began a war of persecution against
what was then called Liberalism. Even the professor of theology at the
University of Berlin, De Wette, was dismissed, because he had written
a private letter of condolence to Sand's mother, which was seized and
opened by the police. The reaction went the length of attacking the men
who represented the German national feeling which had arisen during the
war. Jahn was arrested, first confined in a fortress, and then sent to
live in a small town under police supervision. Arndt was entangled, as
a "demagogue," in a criminal case, and lost his appointment. Görres,
who was dismissed, escaped over the frontier.
In Prussia the censorship was not only exercised in the case of books
and newspapers printed in the country, but extended to foreign printed
matter. All German newspapers published in England, France, or Holland
were forbidden. The whole stocks of some publishers, Brockhaus, for
example, were subjected to a special censorship, on account of one
or two pamphlets published by them. At all the universities trusted
agents of the Government were appointed to watch over the disposition
of the students and the lectures of the professors. All gymnastic
and student societies were put down. The so-called old German dress,
and the black, red, and gold colours were forbidden. The police
especially distinguished themselves in the carrying out of these
last prohibitions; they hunted coats, caps, tassels, ribbons, and
pipe-bowls, and any man caught wearing a straw hat, a red waistcoat,
and a black coat was imprisoned on a charge, of high treason.
Some Marburg students in the Twenties had ordered foils from a
manufactory in Solingen, and it was reported that the usual trade-mark,
"Prince," was wanting on these particular foils. The government of
Hesse-Cassel instituted an inquiry for the purpose of discovering if
the omission had been ordered by the students. To the great annoyance
of the police, no cause for accusation was found. "I am sorry for your
statesmen," said the French Minister, Comte de Serre, to the famous
Niebuhr about this time; "they are making war on students."
A specially keen look-out was kept for prohibited combinations among
students. When Arnold Ruge was imprisoned, Herr von Kamptz set the
whole police on the chase after a walking-stick belonging to him, on
which the names of some Jena students were carved, the _corpus delicti_
being finally confiscated in Stralsund. Ruge was tortured by long
pauses between his examinations, having to spend the intervals in a
cell where life was rendered unendurable by vermin. Fritz Reuter had to
expiate the crime of having "worn the German colours in broad daylight"
by imprisonment, first in a miserable hole in Berlin, and after having
been condemned for high treason, in dirty fortress cells. A youthful
political offender in Bavaria was sentenced to fortress-imprisonment
for treason on an indictment of which one of the gravest clauses was
that something resembling a German prince's robe had been found in
his room. Chiefly at the instigation of Austria, thousands of young
Prussians were either imprisoned or driven into exile. In short,
the Liberal middle-class youth of the Germany of those days was as
unprotected by the law and as much persecuted as are, in our days, the
Socialistic youth of the fourth estate of the same country, or the
Liberal youth of Russia.
Political and religious reaction went, as usual, hand in hand. In the
year 1821, the Prussian Government concluded a concordat with the
Pope, which gave the Roman Catholic Church an influence in Prussia
such as would have been unimaginable under Frederick the Great. In
the following year a new liturgy, more nearly resembling the Roman,
was introduced into the Protestant Church. And it is exceedingly
significant that the word Protestantism now fell into disrepute.
By a Ministerial decree of the year 1821, the terms Protestant and
Protestantism were forbidden in Prussia; the censors received orders
not to pass these words, but to substitute the word Evangelical.
The sadness that takes possession of all progressively inclined minds
during long and apparently hopeless periods of reaction now weighed
upon the spiritual _élite_ of Germany. But the great majority fell
a quick prey to carelessness and political indifference. With the
reaction, at first forced on them from without, they soon familiarised
themselves. Many began to be of opinion that a representative
constitution, such as had been promised to Prussia, was a thing of
no value. Others felt it deeply that Prussia, which had made such
sacrifices in the war with Napoleon, had not succeeded in obtaining
a constitution, while the South German States, which had to the last
made common cause with the enemy, had long enjoyed popular government
and the privilege of Parliamentary debate; but they concealed their
shame under a mask of contempt for these skirmishers, a contempt
that had a strong family resemblance to envy and anger. It was
malevolently pointed out that the Bundestag, in which Austria and
Prussia predominated, took good care that the trees of the South German
Parliamentary system were well pruned down. The various Governments
had, moreover, succeeded in bringing such opposition as arose in
the South German States into disrepute. Ministers often succeeded
in preventing an election that was objectionable to them; they also
won over opponents by direct bribery or fear of dismissal; and they
had always the final resource, to which they frequently resorted, of
completely disregarding the oppositionist resolutions of the Chambers.
As the power was in the hands of the Governments, it lay in the nature
of things that the proceedings of the Parliaments, up to 1830, were of
no serious interest.
The German press had never occupied a high position. All discussion
of State matters being now prohibited, it had to confine itself, as
regarded politics, to the simple chronicling of facts, and to fill its
columns with court news, accounts of storms and floods, the birth of
marvellous monsters in the animal, and the appearance of new stars in
the theatrical, world.
The cultivated classes sought a kind of compensation for their
exclusion from politics in a frantically exaggerated interest in the
theatre. Never had the adoration of a prima donna or a ballet-dancer
been carried to such an extreme. In the Berlin of the Twenties every
other interest was swallowed up in the question of the superiority of
German or Italian music. People thought of nothing but the rivalry
between Spontini and Weber. When Börne came to Berlin in 1828, the
public mind was so engrossed with the famous singer, Henriette Sontag,
that no one remembered anything about Börne, except that he had written
an article on her. In his _Letters from Paris_ (in "Härings-Salat")
he gives a witty and yet veracious account of how he was met and
saluted everywhere with the cry: "This is the man who wrote about
Sontag!" Even in 1832, everything--the agitation in France, the Polish
defeat, sympathy with the exiled Poles--everything was forgotten in
the enthusiasm for the feet of the great _danseuse_ Taglioni, which
were then setting out on their triumphal progress through Europe.
The chief representative of the reactionary spirit in Prussia, the
Hofmarschall and future diplomatist, General Theodor Heinrich von
Rochow, writes in May 1832 to von Nagler, the Postmaster-General: "She
is to dance, consequently there is great rejoicing, and occupation
in abundance.... Taglioni's mimetic grace has dispelled the
threatening signs of the times."[6] The word occupation here
is significant. The performance did not merely please, it occupied.[7]
As regards literature, the generation of that day luxuriated in an
idolisation of the octogenarian Goethe, which accepted everything that
the aged master wrote or said as wisdom, and beauty, and inspired
poetry. All his life long he had had to struggle against hatred and
misunderstanding; now the reverence for him verged on the ridiculous;
in Berlin it verged on idiocy.[8] In Zelter's _Letters to Goethe_ he
writes, on the subject of the latter's _Elpenor_: "Posterity will not
believe that the sun of our days beheld the forthcoming of such a
work."[9] All those who had obstructed Goethe's path so long as his
name still belonged to combatant literature, became his votaries from
the moment that that name conveyed undisputed authority, and could
be employed as a sort of Conservative and national emblem. Otherwise
literature languished. The day of romantic poetical fancy was at an
end--Raupach and Müllner ruled the stage, Clauren fiction. Light
literature sank deeper and deeper into the slough of vulgarity and
pruriency.
[1] Biedermann: _Dreissig Jahre deutscher Geschichte_. Prutz: _Zehn
Jahre_, i. and ii.
[2]
Soul and body lose their strength
Covering idle by the stove
Free beneath the open sky
Must the hardy gymnast rove.
[3] _Wintermährchen_, Kap. xi.; _Lobgesänge auf König Ludwig_; preface
to _Romancero_.
[4] Treitschke: _Deutsche Geschichte,_ ii. 383-443.
[5] Epigram:
"Du hast es lang genug getrieben,
Niederträchtig vom Hohen geschrieben.
Dass du dein eignes Volk gescholten,
Die Jugend hat es dir vergolten."
Thou hast long enough had thy way, long enough reviled what is great;
youth now requites thee for the insults offered to thine own nation.
[6]
"Sie wird tanzen und somit ist grosse Freude und
Beschäftigung vollauf ... die Mimik der Grazien der Taglioni haben die
drohenden Zeichen der Zeit verdrängt."
[7] "Preussen und Frankreich zur Zeit der Julirevolution. Vertraute
Briefe des Generals von Rochow, herausgegeben von E. Kelchner und K.
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy."
[8] A certain Geheimrath Schulz, of the Berlin "Wednesday Society,"
addressed the following birthday poem to Goethe: "Ich wollt, ich war
ein Fisch--so wohlig und frisch--und ganz ohne Gräten--So war ich für
Goethen--gebraten am Tisch--ein köstlicher Fisch" _Translation:_ I
would I were a fish--lively and fresh--and without any bones--Then I
should be for Goethe--fried for his table--a delicious fish.
[9] Die Nachwelt wird es nicht glauben, dass die Sonne unsrer Tage ein
solches Werk hervorgehen sah.
II
PHILOSOPHY AND REACTION
German philosophy, all the branches of which shot out vigorously after
the flood of Romanticism had fertilised the ground with its deposit,
at the same time changed colour. Through the unpropitiousness of
circumstances, it became farther removed from reality than heretofore,
though more closely bound up with existing conditions.
Hegel is the great example. In March 1819, Karl Sand murdered Kotzebue;
on the 22nd of October of the preceding year, Hegel entered on his
professorial duties at the University of Berlin. From the programme
which he gave his audience in his opening address, it could be clearly
deduced that Hegel's philosophy and the Prussian State in its existing
form were closely connected; for the said philosophy was based on
the omnipotence of the Idea, the State on the power of intelligence
and culture. Of the fact that Prussia, allowing herself to be led
by Austria, was at this very time proving false to her character
and traditions by entering on a policy of spiritual and political
reaction, no account was taken. Yet the Resolutions of Carlsbad were
already drafted, and it was Prussia that took the initiative in issuing
all the petty tyrannical regulations which soon placed the whole of
Germany under police surveillance. But the sentimental politics of the
students were as obnoxious to Hegel as sentimental philosophy; the
Wartburg rendezvous was to him a piece of romantic foolery, and Sand's
poniard-thrust an abomination. In the preface to the _Philosophy of
Right_, the first and most important work he produced in Berlin, he
not only condescended to defend the persecution of the demagogues, but
demeaned himself by playing police agent, and denouncing his former
colleague, Fries, to the Governments: "It is to be hoped that neither
office nor title will serve as a talisman for principles destructive
both of morality and public order." From this time onward Hegel became
the philosophic dictator of Germany. He ruled from Berlin over the
whole domain of German thought.
Yet in this same philosophy, even in a work with such a pronounced
Conservative tendency as the _Philosophy of Right_ there existed a
portentous ambiguity. As early as in the above-mentioned notorious
preface we find the proposition which was to become the classic motto
of the age, which was first appropriated eagerly by the Conservatism
of the Restoration period, and then used as a battering-ram by Hegel's
younger disciples. It is in larger print than the rest, in two lines:
"What is rational is real,
What is real is rational."
What does this mean? Hegel goes on to explain that when reflection,
feeling, or whatever other form the subjective consciousness may
assume, regards the present as vanity, it is itself false, finds itself
in emptiness. But, on the other hand, the doctrine that the idea is a
mere idea or figment, philosophy meets with the assertion that nothing
is real except the idea. What is all-important is to recognise that
which is eternal in the present, temporal, transient; in other words,
in this case, not to construct a state, but to understand the state as
it exists.
Hegel's biographer, Haym, rightly says that not even the doctrine
of divine right is so dangerous as this, which declares everything
existing to be sacred. But, on the other hand, it may with equal right
be maintained that not even the destructive ardour of the youthful
revolutionaries went so far as this doctrine, which grants reality
only to what is rational, and to all else nothing but a mock reality,
which can and should be defied, disregarded, overturned, exploded.
Hence Robert Prutz could say of this same proposition that by it all
doubt was removed, the old God of darkness hurled into the abyss, and
a new, eternally reigning Zeus, the idea that comprehends itself, man
as a thinking being, raised to the throne.[1]
The interpretations of Hegel's philosophy that soon appeared were
many and widely different, but the kinship between his doctrines
and Goethe's poetry was felt by all the initiated. Hegel became the
strongest ally of the little circle of Goethe votaries in Berlin, and
the two men, known as the absolute poet and the absolute philosopher,
were the objects of a common veneration. The orthodox Hegelian even
saw a significant coincidence in the circumstance that Hegel was born
on the 27th of August and Goethe on the 28th. In the Twenties, the
faithful gathered round the festive board on the evening of the 27th of
August, drank the toast of the master in the kingdom of thought, and
called to mind the saying in the preface to the _Philosophy of Right_
about the owl of Minerva, which begins its flight only when the shades
of night are gathering. "But as soon as the midnight hour had struck,
an orator rose to proclaim the glad tidings that Apollo, the God of
day and of song, was now in his sun-chariot, ushering in the 28th, the
glorious day."[2]
The patriotism which in 1813 had driven the enemy out of the country,
contained two radically different elements, a historical, retrospective
tendency, which soon developed into Romanticism, and a liberal-minded,
progressive tendency, which developed into the new Liberalism. When
the reaction came, it sought support in many of the theories of
Romanticism, and finally took the whole movement into its pay. Men
like Görres, Friedrich Schlegel, and others, passed from the camp of
Romanticism into that of reaction.
The freedom-loving group had, of course, during the wars with Napoleon,
shared the Romanticists' hatred of France. But when their sympathies
came to take the shape of wishes and demands (for liberty of the press,
constitutional government, the franchise, &c), the hatred of France
inevitably evaporated. And the stronger the reaction became, the
more keenly were all eyes turned to that neighbouring country which
possessed Parliamentary government. The heroes of French Liberalism
were soon men of great consequence in the estimation of the German
Liberals; indeed at a distance they seemed of more consequence than
they did at home. In Germany, after the victory over Napoleon, as after
the great defeat, quietness was the first duty of the citizen.[3] All was
obedience and silence. And the result was what it usually is when a
highly gifted but unenergetic people are incapable of throwing off a
yoke; its pressure generated self-contempt, and the self-contempt a
kind of desperate wit, of chronic "gallows-humour"; the better sort
developed a real passion for solacing themselves with derision of their
own impotence. The observation of existing conditions gave constantly
recurring occasion for irony directed against themselves--against
visionary Romanticism, the spirit of patience and submission in the
domain of politics, orthodoxy and pietism in the domain of religion.
Caricature-like developments of political life, religion, and poetry
incited to sarcasm, that sometimes ruthlessly wounded patriotic
feeling, sometimes assumed a frivolous tone which, taken in connection
with the French leanings of Liberalism, was, or inevitably seemed to
be, more French than German.
[1] Haym: _Hegel und seine Zeit_, p. 365; R. Prutz: _Vorlesungen über
die deutsche Litteratur der Gegenwart,_ p. 259.
[2] Treitschke: _Deutsche Geschichte_, iii. 686.
[3] "_Die erste Bürgerpflicht ist Ruhe,_" These words occur in an
official notice posted in the streets of Berlin after the defeat of
Jena.
[Illustration: CHAMISSO]
III
SPIRIT OF THE OPPOSITION
The most notable of the freedom-loving poets and prose authors of the
period are embodiments of some of the shades of opinion which have
been alluded to. Adalbert von Chamisso, who, by virtue of his famous
prose tale, _Peter Schlemihl_, and certain of his qualities, belongs
to the German Romantic School, while in other respects he approaches
more nearly to the French ideal of thought and writing, is, in some of
his most characteristic poems, and even in his epigrams, a mouthpiece
of the grief of the better sort over the steadily growing political
and social reaction. As early as 1822, in his poem, _Die goldene
Zeit_ ("The Golden Age"), he ridicules an age in which that man is a
Jacobin who has openly expressed his belief that 2 and 2 make 4; in
the _Nachtwächterlied_ ("Watchman's Song") he scoffs at the power of
the Jesuits; in _Joshua_ and _Das Dampfross_ ("The Steam Horse"), at
those who have robbed time of its secret, and learned how to force
it backwards day by day; in _Das Gebet der Wittwe_ ("The Widow's
Prayer") he gives a darkly pessimistic picture of the heartless rule
of the powers that be, with its complete indifference to the fate of
the common people; finally he sums up his view of the times in this
bitterly humorous quatrain, which greets us sadly in the form of a
four-part catch:
KANON.
"Das ist die Noth der schweren Zeit!
Das ist die schwere Zeit der Noth!
Das ist die schwere Noth der Zeit!
Das ist die Zeit der schweren Noth!"[1]
Count August von Platen-Hallermünde, whose youthful efforts were
Romantic, both in their choice of subject and in their imitation
of the forms of the Spanish drama, afterwards waged systematic war
with Romanticism. Its latest developments in Germany he holds up to
ridicule, without possessing enough of critical tact to discriminate
between the authors who did and those who did not belong to the
Romanticist group. He quits the literary drama to cultivate the
political lyric muse, as he gradually arrives at the conviction that
the pitiable condition of public affairs is also at the bottom of the
German people's lack of appreciation of power and style and form in
poetry. He finds life in Germany impossible to endure, and seeks, under
the sunny skies of Sicily, amidst its reminiscences of antiquity, to
forget the heavy atmosphere and the political abuses of his Northern
home. But he cannot completely distract his thoughts from the ignominy
there. He writes his Berlin national song, which begins with the
chorus:
"Diesen Kuss den Moscoviten,
Deren Nasen sind so schmuck;
Rom mit seinen Jesuiten
Nehme diesen Händedruck!"[2]
We find also the following bitter outburst of national self-contempt,
written in wrath over the maltreatment of his poems by the censor:
"Doch gieb, o Dichter, dich zufrieden,
Es büsst die Welt nur wenig ein;
Du weisst es längst, man kann hienieden
Nichts Schlechtres als ein Deutscher sein."[3]
Romantically as Platen's adversary, Heinrich Heine, starts, the modern
spirit soon makes itself perceptible in his prose. Even before he
touches on the subject of politics proper, he amuses himself, in his
_Reisebilder_, by making taunting allusions to German conditions and to
the way in which German stolidity accommodates itself to them.
And the love of liberty, abstract, political liberty, was all along
the true passion of Ludwig Börne, who long appeared to occupy himself
with purely æsthetic matters, being known for whole decades only as a
dramatic critic and writer of short stories.
That these authors found readers and admirers bears witness to the fact
that the thinking part of the German people at the end of the Twenties
was laying aside its faith in authority in the domain of politics as
well as in general intellectual matters. At this time the persecution
of the students' unions (Burschenschaften) was being carried on with
the utmost ardour. They were broken up everywhere. But they formed
again at once, and in one German State, Bavaria, after the accession of
King Ludwig, they were actually sanctioned by the police. The divisions
that occurred among them show the directions of the various currents of
public opinion at that time. In Erlangen, after 1827, there were three
unions, at feud with each other--Teutonia, Arminia, and Germania.
Teutonia was the organ of pure Romanticism, of religious mysticism, and
declared that politics in no way concerned it. Arminia's principles
were strict morality and the pursuit of science; it aimed at the
reformation of the conditions of public life, and also at the unity
and liberty of Germany. Germania answered to the Radical tendencies
of the day. It dropped the older _Tugendbund's_ requirement of strict
morality, emancipated itself from the rule of authority, including
authority in the matter of religion, and declared the belief that its
aim--which in the case of this union also was the unity and liberty
of Germany--could only be attained by revolution. Though it was
essentially a political organisation, it would be ridiculous to call it
an important and dangerous one.
These three main movements were soon represented at all the German
universities, and significantly enough, it was, as a rule, the one
represented by Germania, which had the greatest influence.
[1]
This is the need of these hard times!
These are the hard times of need!
This is the hard need of these times!
These are the times of hard need!
[2] This kiss is for the Moscovites, with their handsome noses; this
hand-clasp for Rome with her Jesuits.
[3] Console thyself, O poet! 'tis but little the world loses; thou hast
long known that on this earth a man can be nothing worse than a German.
IV
INFLUENCE OF THE REVOLUTION OF JULY
In 1830, while things were in this state of stagnation, oppression, and
ferment, the news of the Paris Revolution of July arrived, and acted
upon public feeling in Germany like an electric shock. All eyes were
turned towards Paris, and among thinking people real enthusiasm was
felt.
The effect was perhaps most plainly observable among the quite young
men.
Two months before the Revolution, Karl Gutzkow, then nineteen, had, as
he himself has told us, no understanding whatever of European politics.
He neither knew who Polignac was, nor what it meant to violate _la
Charte_ (the French constitution). He only knew that in spite of all
the persecution of the German student unions (Burschenschaften),
they were still alive, and that the object to be attained was the
unification of Germany. If he thought at all of upheavals which
might hasten the march of events, he looked for them rather from
the direction of Erlangen or Jena than from Paris; at the utmost he
conceived it possible that a troop of returning Philhellenes landing
armed at Stralsund, might take forcible possession of the town and
call the Pomeranian militia (Landwehr) to arms, and that the peasants,
driven to it perhaps by famine, might join in the revolt.
At this time the French author, Saint-Marc Girardin, had come to Berlin
to study the German language, the Prussian school system, and also the
University theology as represented by Schleiermacher and Neander, and
the Pietism emanating from Halle. As a contributor to the _Journal des
Débats_, he received his newspaper regularly from Paris, and with the
eager interest of the aspirant to office, followed the progress of the
Opposition in France. Gutzkow gave him a German lesson daily; they read
one of Kotzebue's comedies, which the Frenchman preferred as practice
to Goethe or Schiller, but they invariably drifted into political
discussions. Gutzkow made no attempt to conceal from Saint-Marc
Girardin the slight general significance he attached to the French
constitutional struggle, openly ascribing a greater influence on the
course of history to the student union in Jena than to the Chamber of
Deputies in Paris. Girardin smilingly gave a polite answer. From time
to time these conversations were interrupted by Eduard Gans, the famous
Prussian professor, Hegel's most renowned disciple in the faculty
of law, Varnhagen's and Heine's friend, who in fluent French joined
in the political argument, and made a great impression on Girardin
by his woolly black hair and his whiskers. Gutzkow, who had heard
the fashionably dressed, subtle and sarcastic professor ridicule the
student movement from his professorial chair, and laughingly confess
that he too once on a day, on the banks of the Saale, had deliberated
upon the best means of helping Germany to an imperial crown, entreated
the French politician not to believe that the youth of Germany thought
with Gans. "I am quite aware of it," answered Girardin, "you intend to
liberate the world with Sanscrit."
On the 3rd of August 1830, the king's birthday was celebrated with
song and speech in the great hall of the Berlin University. The
students stood crowded together in front of the barrier behind which
sat professors, officials, and officers of high rank. The famous
philologist Boekh was the orator, and from the gallery above his
head songs were sung by the University choir, under the leadership
of Music-Director Zelter, Goethe's correspondent. The Rector of the
University, Professor Schmalz, with queue and sword, went from chair to
chair, exchanging a few words with the most honoured guests. But Gans,
excited and impatient, passed round letters from Friedrich von Raumer,
who had just come from Paris. The Crown Prince, afterwards Frederick
William IV., sat and smiled; but all knew that a few days ago in France
a king had been dethroned. It was as if the thunder of the barricade
cannonade were booming through the festive hall. Boekh's speech on the
subject of the fine arts did not succeed in arousing attention, and
when Hegel read from the chair the names of the prizewinners of the
year, no one except the medallists listened. Gutzkow did hear with
one ear that he had taken the prize in the faculty of philosophy,
but with the other he heard of a people that had deposed a king, of
cannonades, of thousands fallen in the fight. He was oblivious to
the congratulations offered him; he did not even open the case which
contained the gold medal with the king's portrait; he had forgotten
the hope of a professorship which he had connected with the thought of
winning this medal; he stood dazed, thinking of Saint-Marc Girardin and
his prophecies, and of what he himself had prophesied of the German
Burschenschaft. Then he rushed off to a confectioner's shop in Unter
den Linden, and for the first time in his life read a newspaper with
avidity. He could hardly await the publication of the official gazette
that evening; not because he was impatient to see his name in the list
of medallists; all he wished was to know the state of matters in Paris,
whether or not the barricades were still standing, whether France
was to come forth from Lafayette's hands a republic or a monarchy.
"Science lay behind me," he writes, "history before me."[1]
And Gutzkow is a type of the youngest generation of the Germany of that
day--the young men of twenty.
Almost simultaneously with Karl Gutzkow's political awakening, there
occurred a memorable misunderstanding in the study of the octogenarian
Goethe. A visitor, greeted by the old man with exclamations of joy over
the great event in Paris, at first believed that he meant the Days of
July, and only gradually came to understand that he was talking of the
decision of the scientific dispute between Cuvier and Saint-Hilaire in
favour of the latter. This famous misunderstanding has long enough been
regarded as only a symptom of Goethe's limitation in matters political;
it is but fair to point out that the anecdote is also an indication of
the old sage's justifiable indifference to over-estimated political
events. The scientific dispute was, by reason of the idea involved, and
its transforming effect on the spiritual map of the world, a weightier
matter than the French Revolution of July. Does not Saint-Hilaire's
theory of the unity of "plan" herald _The Origin of Species!_ But the
picture of the overwhelming effect of the French political catastrophe
on the youngest generation stands out all the sharper against the
background of Goethe's impassibility.[2]
The impression made on eminent individuals belonging neither to the
youngest nor the oldest generation was very deep.
The most intellectual and open-minded woman of the day, the most
distinguished of Goethe's female admirers, Rahel, who by this time was
sixty, was in entire sympathy with the Revolution. To her, as a woman,
the social side was of more interest than the political. Saint-Simonism
takes strong hold upon her; her marvellously youthful mind perceives
its possibilities, and in the events of July she sees the beginning of
the triumph of its social theories.
To the reviving, inspiriting impression of the Revolution of July
was now added another, which gave a sharp edge to the passionate
political feeling of the younger generation--the impression, to
wit, made by the outbreak of the Polish revolt. It is most plainly
observable in the case of Platen, who in wild excitement addresses a
poetical adjuration to the Crown Prince of Prussia (said to be the
most favourably disposed) to take the part of unhappy Poland, and also
writes the _Polenlieder_, the only poems of his that rise to the height
of passion, proud songs of liberty, full of outspoken scorn of the
autocrat who was worshipped at the German courts as an almighty being,
and of those who allowed themselves to be bribed and bought with his
roubles.
On Ludwig Börne's mind the news of the Revolution of July acted with
the effect of a flash of lightning.
In the summer of 1830 he was at the watering-place of Soden, near
Frankfort-on-Main, recovering from a long bout of rheumatic fever and
repeated attacks of hemorrhage. His _Journal_ shows that his political
hopes were almost extinguished, his desires stifled. A soul like his,
whose aspiration after liberty was a passion, whose hunger and thirst
after righteousness consumed his vital force, was unable permanently to
bear the heavy weight of political reaction.