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REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION
Or
Germany in 1848
by
KARL MARX
Edited by Eleanor Marx Aveling
Chicago
Charles H. Kerr & Company
1912
NOTE BY THE EDITOR
The following articles are now, after forty-five years, for the first
time collected and printed in book form. They are an invaluable
pendant to Marx's work on the _coup d'etat_ of Napoleon III. ("Der
Achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte.") Both works belong to the
same period, and both are what Engels calls "excellent specimens of
that marvellous gift ... of Marx ... of apprehending clearly the
character, the significance, and the necessary consequences of great
historical events at a time when these events are actually in course
of taking place, or are only just completed."
These articles were written in 1851-1852, when Marx had been about
eighteen months in England. He was living with his wife, three young
children, and their life-long friend, Helene Demuth, in two rooms in
Dean Street, Soho, almost opposite the Royalty Theatre. For nearly ten
years they had been driven from pillar to post. When, in 1843, the
Prussian Government suppressed the _Rhenish Gazette_ which Marx had
edited, he went with his newly-married wife, Jenny von Westphalen, to
Paris. Not long after, his expulsion was demanded by the Prussian
Government--it is said that Alexander von Humboldt acted as the agent
of Prussia on this occasion--and M. Guizot was, of course, too polite
to refuse the request. Marx was expelled, and betook himself to
Brussels. Again the Prussian Government requested his expulsion, and
where the French Government had complied it was not likely the Belgian
would refuse. Marx received marching orders.
But at this same time the French Government that had expelled Marx had
gone the way of French Governments, and the new Provisional Government
through Ferdinand Flocon invited the "brave et loyal Marx" to return
to the country whence "tyranny had banished him, and where he, like
all fighting in the sacred cause, the cause of the fraternity of all
peoples," would be welcome. The invitation was accepted, and for some
months he lived in Paris. Then he returned to Germany in order to
start the _New Rhenish Gazette_ in Cologne. And the _Rhenish Gazette_
writers had very lively times. Marx was twice prosecuted, but as the
juries would not convict, the Prussian Government took the nearer way
and suppressed the paper.
Again Marx and his family returned to the country whose "doors" had
only a few short months before been "thrown open" to him. The sky had
changed--and the Government. "We remained in Paris," my mother says in
some biographical notes I have found, "a month. Here also there was to
be no resting-place for us. One fine morning the familiar figure of
the sergeant of police appeared with the announcement that Karl 'et sa
dame' must leave Paris within twenty-four hours. We were graciously
told we might be interned at Vannes in the Morbihan. Of course we
could not accept such an exile as that, and I again gathered together
my small belongings to seek a safe haven in London. Karl had hastened
thither before us." The "us" were my mother, Helene Demuth, and the
three little children, Jenny (Madame Longuet), Laura (Madame
Lafargue), and Edgar, who died at the age of eight.
The haven was safe indeed. But it was storm-tossed. Hundreds of
refugees--all more or less destitute--were now in London. There
followed years of horrible poverty, of bitter suffering--such
suffering as can only be known to the penniless stranger in a strange
land. The misery would have been unendurable but for the faith that
was in these men and women, and but for their invincible "Humor." I
use the German word because I know no English one that quite expresses
the same thing--such a combination of humor and good-humor, of
light-hearted courage, and high spirits.
That readers of these articles may have some idea of the conditions
under which Marx was working, under which he wrote them and the
"Achtzehnte Brumaire," and was preparing his first great economical
work, "Zur Kritik der Politischen Oeconomie" (published in 1859), I
again quote from my mother's notes. Soon after the arrival of the
family a second son was born. He died when about two years old. Then a
fifth child, a little girl, was born. When about a year old, she too
fell sick and died. "Three days," writes my mother, "the poor child
wrestled with death. She suffered so.... Her little dead body lay in
the small back room; we all of us" (i.e., my parents, Helene Demuth,
and the three elder children) "went into the front room, and when
night came we made us beds on the floor, the three living children
lying by us. And we wept for the little angel resting near us, cold
and dead. The death of the dear child came in the time of our
bitterest poverty. Our German friends could not help us; Engels, after
vainly trying to get literary work in London, had been obliged to go,
under very disadvantageous conditions, into his father's firm, as a
clerk, in Manchester; Ernest Jones, who often came to see us at this
time, and had promised help, could do nothing.... In the anguish of my
heart I went to a French refugee who lived near, and who had sometimes
visited us. I told him our sore need. At once with the friendliest
kindness he gave me L2. With that we paid for the little coffin in
which the poor child now sleeps peacefully. I had no cradle for her
when she was born, and even the last small resting-place was long
denied her." ... "It was a terrible time," Liebknecht writes to me
(the Editor), "but it was grand nevertheless."
In that "front room" in Dean Street, the children playing about him,
Marx worked. I have heard tell how the children would pile up chairs
behind him to represent a coach, to which he was harnessed as horse,
and would "whip him up" even as he sat at his desk writing.
Marx had been recommended to Mr. C. A. Dana,[1] the managing director
of the _New York Tribune_, by Ferdinand Freiligrath, and the first
contributions sent by him to America are the series of letters on
Germany here reprinted. They seem to have created such a sensation
that before the series had been completed Marx was engaged as regular
London correspondent. On the 12th of March, 1852, Mr. Dana wrote: "It
may perhaps give you pleasure to know that they" (i.e., the "Germany"
letters) "are read with satisfaction by a considerable number of
persons, and are widely reproduced." From this time on, with short
intervals, Marx not only sent letters regularly to the New York paper;
he wrote a large number of leading articles for it. "Mr. Marx," says
an editorial note in 1853, "has indeed opinions of his own, with some
of which we are far from agreeing; but those who do not read his
letters neglect one of the most instructive sources of information on
the great questions of European politics."
Not the least remarkable among these contributions were those dealing
with Lord Palmerston and the Russian Government. "Urquhart's writings
on Russia," says Marx, "had interested but not convinced me. In order
to arrive at a definite opinion, I made a minute analysis of Hansard's
Parliamentary Debates, and of the Diplomatic Blue Books from 1807 to
1850. The first fruits of these studies was a series of articles in
the _New York Tribune_, in which I proved Palmerston's relations with
the Russian Government.... Shortly after, these studies were reprinted
in the Chartist organ edited by Ernest Jones, _The People's Paper_....
Meantime the Glasgow _Sentinel_ had reproduced one of these articles,
and part of it was issued in pamphlet form by Mr. Tucker, London."[2]
And the Sheffield Foreign Affairs Committee thanked Marx for the
"great public service rendered by the admirable _expose_" in his "Kars
papers," published both in the _New York Tribune_ and the _People's
Paper_. A large number of articles on the subject were also printed in
the _Free Press_ by Marx's old friend, C. D. Collett. I hope to
republish these and other articles.
As to the _New York Tribune_, it was at this time an admirably edited
paper, with an immense staff of distinguished contributors,[3] both
American and European. It was a passionate anti-slavery organ, and
also recognized that there "was need for a true organization of
society," and that "our evils" were "social, not political." The
paper, and especially Marx's articles, were frequently referred to in
the House of Commons, notably by John Bright.
It may also interest readers to know what Marx was paid for his
articles--many of them considerably longer even than those here
collected. He received L1 for each contribution--not exactly brilliant
remuneration.
It will be noted that the twentieth chapter, promised in the
nineteenth, does not appear. It may have been written, but was
certainly not printed. It was probably crowded out. "I do not know,"
wrote Mr. Dana, "how long you intend to make the series, and under
ordinary circumstances I should desire to have it prolonged as much as
possible. But we have a presidential election at hand, which will
occupy our columns to a great extent.... Let me suggest to you if
possible to condense your survey ... into say half a dozen more
articles" (eleven had then been received by Mr. Dana). "Do not,
however, close it without an exposition of the forces now remaining at
work there (Germany) and active in the preparation of the future."
This "exposition" will be found in the article which I have added to
the "Germany" series, on the "Cologne Communist Trial." That trial
really gives a complete picture of the conditions of Germany under the
triumphant Counter-Revolution.
Marx himself nowhere says the series of letters is incomplete,
although he occasionally refers to them. Thus in the letter on the
Cologne trial he speaks of the articles, and in 1853 writes: "Those of
your readers who, having read my letters on the German Revolution and
Counter-Revolution written for the _Tribune_ some two years ago,
desire to have an immediate intuition of it, will do well to inspect
the picture by Mr. Hasenclever now being exhibited in ... New York ...
representing the presentation of a workingmen's petition to the
magistrates of Duesseldorf in 1848. What the writer could only analyze,
the eminent painter has reproduced in its dramatic vitality."
Finally, I would remind English readers that these articles were
written when Marx had only been some eighteen months in England, and
that he never had any opportunity of reading the proofs. Nevertheless,
it has not seemed to me that anything needed correction. I have
therefore only removed a few obvious printer's errors.
The date at the head of each chapter refers to the issue of the
_Tribune_ in which the article appeared, that at the end to the time
of writing. I am alone responsible for the headings of the letters as
published in this volume.
ELEANOR MARX AVELING.
_Sydenham, April, 1896._
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Mr. C. A. Dana was at this time still in sympathy with Socialism.
The effects of Brook Farm had not yet worn off.
[2] "Herr Vogt," pp. 59 and 185. London, 1860.
[3] Including Bruno Bauer, Bayard Taylor, Ripley, and many of the
Brook Farmers. The editor was Horace Greeley.
CONTENTS
Page
NOTE BY THE EDITOR 3
I. GERMANY AT THE OUTBREAK OF THE
REVOLUTION 13
II. THE PRUSSIAN STATE 28
III. THE OTHER GERMAN STATES 44
IV. AUSTRIA 52
V. THE VIENNA INSURRECTION 62
VI. THE BERLIN INSURRECTION 68
VII. THE FRANKFORT NATIONAL ASSEMBLY 76
VIII. POLES, TSCHECHS, AND GERMANS 84
IX. PANSLAVISM; THE SCHLESWIG WAR 91
X. THE PARIS RISING; THE FRANKFORT
ASSEMBLY 98
XI. THE VIENNA INSURRECTION 105
XII. THE STORMING OF VIENNA: THE
BETRAYAL OF VIENNA 114
XIII. THE PRUSSIAN ASSEMBLY: THE NATIONAL
ASSEMBLY 128
XIV. THE RESTORATION OF ORDER: DIET
AND CHAMBER 136
XV. THE TRIUMPH OF PRUSSIA 144
XVI. THE ASSEMBLY AND THE GOVERNMENTS 151
XVII. INSURRECTION 158
XVIII. PETTY TRADERS 166
XIX. THE CLOSE OF THE INSURRECTION 174
XX. THE LATE TRIAL AT COLOGNE 183
REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION
I.
GERMANY AT THE OUTBREAK OF THE REVOLUTION.
OCTOBER 25, 1851.
The first act of the revolutionary drama on the continent of Europe
has closed. The "powers that were" before the hurricane of 1848 are
again the "powers that be," and the more or less popular rulers of a
day, provisional governors, triumvirs, dictators, with their tail of
representatives, civil commissioners, military commissioners,
prefects, judges, generals, officers, and soldiers, are thrown upon
foreign shores, and "transported beyond the seas" to England or
America, there to form new governments _in partibus infidelium_,
European committees, central committees, national committees, and to
announce their advent with proclamations quite as solemn as those of
any less imaginary potentates.
A more signal defeat than that undergone by the continental
revolutionary party--or rather parties--upon all points of the line of
battle, cannot be imagined. But what of that? Has not the struggle of
the British middle classes for their social and political supremacy
embraced forty-eight, that of the French middle classes forty years of
unexampled struggles? And was their triumph ever nearer than at the
very moment when restored monarchy thought itself more firmly settled
than ever? The times of that superstition which attributed revolutions
to the ill-will of a few agitators have long passed away. Everyone
knows nowadays that wherever there is a revolutionary convulsion,
there must be some social want in the background, which is prevented,
by outworn institutions, from satisfying itself. The want may not yet
be felt as strongly, as generally, as might ensure immediate success;
but every attempt at forcible repression will only bring it forth
stronger and stronger, until it bursts its fetters. If, then, we have
been beaten, we have nothing else to do but to begin again from the
beginning. And, fortunately, the probably very short interval of rest
which is allowed us between the close of the first and the beginning
of the second act of the movement, gives us time for a very necessary
piece of work: the study of the causes that necessitated both the late
outbreak and its defeat; causes that are not to be sought for in the
accidental efforts, talents, faults, errors, or treacheries of some of
the leaders, but in the general social state and conditions of
existence of each of the convulsed nations. That the sudden movements
of February and March, 1848, were not the work of single individuals,
but spontaneous, irresistible manifestations of national wants and
necessities, more or less clearly understood, but very distinctly felt
by numerous classes in every country, is a fact recognized everywhere;
but when you inquire into the causes of the counter-revolutionary
successes, there you are met on every hand with the ready reply that
it was Mr. This or Citizen That who "betrayed" the people. Which reply
may be very true or not, according to circumstances, but under no
circumstances does it explain anything--not even show how it came to
pass that the "people" allowed themselves to be thus betrayed. And
what a poor chance stands a political party whose entire
stock-in-trade consists in a knowledge of the solitary fact that
Citizen So-and-so is not to be trusted.
The inquiry into, and the exposition of, the causes, both of the
revolutionary convulsion and its suppression, are, besides, of
paramount importance from a historical point of view. All these petty,
personal quarrels and recriminations--all these contradictory
assertions that it was Marrast, or Ledru Rollin, or Louis Blanc, or
any other member of the Provisional Government, or the whole of them,
that steered the Revolution amidst the rocks upon which it
foundered--of what interest can they be, what light can they afford,
to the American or Englishman who observed all these various movements
from a distance too great to allow of his distinguishing any of the
details of operations? No man in his senses will ever believe that
eleven men,[4] mostly of very indifferent capacity either for good or
evil, were able in three months to ruin a nation of thirty-six
millions, unless those thirty-six millions saw as little of their way
before them as the eleven did. But how it came to pass that thirty-six
millions were at once called upon to decide for themselves which way
to go, although partly groping in dim twilight, and how then they got
lost and their old leaders were for a moment allowed to return to
their leadership, that is just the question.
If, then, we try to lay before the readers of _The Tribune_ the causes
which, while they necessitated the German Revolution of 1848, led
quite as inevitably to its momentary repression in 1849 and 1850, we
shall not be expected to give a complete history of events as they
passed in that country. Later events, and the judgment of coming
generations, will decide what portion of that confused mass of
seemingly accidental, incoherent, and incongruous facts is to form a
part of the world's history. The time for such a task has not yet
arrived; we must confine ourselves to the limits of the possible, and
be satisfied, if we can find rational causes, based upon undeniable
facts, to explain the chief events, the principal vicissitudes of that
movement, and to give us a clue as to the direction which the next,
and perhaps not very distant, outbreak will impart to the German
people.
And firstly, what was the state of Germany at the outbreak of the
Revolution?
The composition of the different classes of the people which form the
groundwork of every political organization was, in Germany, more
complicated than in any other country. While in England and France
feudalism was entirely destroyed, or, at least, reduced, as in the
former country, to a few insignificant forms, by a powerful and
wealthy middle class, concentrated in large towns, and particularly in
the capital, the feudal nobility in Germany had retained a great
portion of their ancient privileges. The feudal system of tenure was
prevalent almost everywhere. The lords of the land had even retained
the jurisdiction over their tenants. Deprived of their political
privileges, of the right to control the princes, they had preserved
almost all their Mediaeval supremacy over the peasantry of their
demesnes, as well as their exemption from taxes. Feudalism was more
flourishing in some localities than in others, but nowhere except on
the left bank of the Rhine was it entirely destroyed. This feudal
nobility, then extremely numerous and partly very wealthy, was
considered, officially, the first "Order" in the country. It furnished
the higher Government officials, it almost exclusively officered the
army.
The bourgeoisie of Germany was by far not as wealthy and concentrated
as that of France or England. The ancient manufactures of Germany had
been destroyed by the introduction of steam, and the rapidly extending
supremacy of English manufactures; the more modern manufactures,
started under the Napoleonic continental system, established in other
parts of the country, did not compensate for the loss of the old ones,
nor suffice to create a manufacturing interest strong enough to force
its wants upon the notice of Governments jealous of every extension of
non-noble wealth and power. If France carried her silk manufactures
victorious through fifty years of revolutions and wars, Germany,
during the same time, all but lost her ancient linen trade. The
manufacturing districts, besides, were few and far between; situated
far inland, and using, mostly, foreign, Dutch, or Belgian ports for
their imports and exports, they had little or no interest in common
with the large seaport towns on the North Sea and the Baltic; they
were, above all, unable to create large manufacturing and trading
centres, such as Paris and Lyons, London and Manchester. The causes of
this backwardness of German manufactures were manifold, but two will
suffice to account for it: the unfavorable geographical situation of
the country, at a distance from the Atlantic, which had become the
great highway for the world's trade, and the continuous wars in which
Germany was involved, and which were fought on her soil, from the
sixteenth century to the present day. It was this want of numbers, and
particularly of anything like concentrated numbers, which prevented
the German middle classes from attaining that political supremacy
which the English bourgeoisie has enjoyed ever since 1688, and which
the French conquered in 1789. And yet, ever since 1815, the wealth,
and with the wealth the political importance of the middle class in
Germany, was continually growing. Governments were, although
reluctantly, compelled to bow, at least to its more immediate material
interests. It may even be truly said that from 1815 to 1830, and from
1832 to 1840, every particle of political influence, which, having
been allowed to the middle class in the constitutions of the smaller
States, was again wrested from them during the above two periods of
political reaction, that every such particle was compensated for by
some more practical advantage allowed to them. Every political defeat
of the middle class drew after it a victory on the field of commercial
legislation. And certainly, the Prussian Protective Tariff of 1818,
and the formation of the Zollverein,[5] were worth a good deal more to
the traders and manufacturers of Germany than the equivocal right of
expressing in the chambers of some diminutive dukedom their want of
confidence in ministers who laughed at their votes. Thus, with
growing wealth and extending trade, the bourgeoisie soon arrived at a
stage where it found the development of its most important interests
checked by the political constitution of the country; by its random
division among thirty-six princes with conflicting tendencies and
caprices; by the feudal fetters upon agriculture and the trade
connected with it; by the prying superintendence to which an ignorant
and presumptuous bureaucracy subjected all its transactions. At the
same time the extension and consolidation of the Zollverein, the
general introduction of steam communication, the growing competition
in the home trade, brought the commercial classes of the different
States and Provinces closer together, equalized their interests and
centralized their strength. The natural consequence was the passing of
the whole mass of them into the camp of the Liberal Opposition, and
the gaining of the first serious struggle of the German middle class
for political power. This change may be dated from 1840, from the
moment when the bourgeoisie of Prussia assumed the lead of the middle
class movement of Germany. We shall hereafter revert to this Liberal
Opposition movement of 1840-1847.
The great mass of the nation, which neither belonged to the nobility
nor to the bourgeoisie, consisted in the towns of the small trading
and shopkeeping class and the working people, and in the country of
the peasantry.
The small trading and shopkeeping class is exceedingly numerous in
Germany, in consequence of the stinted development which the large
capitalists and manufacturers as a class have had in that country. In
the larger towns it forms almost the majority of the inhabitants; in
the smaller ones it entirely predominates, from the absence of
wealthier competitors or influence. This class, a most important one
in every modern body politic, and in all modern revolutions, is still
more important in Germany, where, during the recent struggles, it
generally played the decisive part. Its intermediate position between
the class of larger capitalists, traders, and manufacturers, the
bourgeoisie properly so-called, and the proletarian or industrial
class, determines its character. Aspiring to the position of the
first, the least adverse turn of fortune hurls the individuals of this
class down into the ranks of the second. In monarchical and feudal
countries the custom of the court and aristocracy becomes necessary to
its existence; the loss of this custom might ruin a great part of it.
In the smaller towns a military garrison, a county government, a court
of law with its followers, form very often the base of its prosperity;
withdraw these, and down go the shopkeepers, the tailors, the
shoemakers, the joiners. Thus eternally tossed about between the hope
of entering the ranks of the wealthier class, and the fear of being
reduced to the state of proletarians or even paupers; between the hope
of promoting their interests by conquering a share in the direction of
public affairs, and the dread of rousing, by ill-timed opposition, the
ire of a Government which disposes of their very existence, because
it has the power of removing their best customers; possessed of small
means, the insecurity of the possession of which is in the inverse
ratio of the amount,--this class is extremely vacillating in its
views. Humble and crouchingly submissive under a powerful feudal or
monarchical Government, it turns to the side of Liberalism when the
middle class is in the ascendant; it becomes seized with violent
democratic fits as soon as the middle class has secured its own
supremacy, but falls back into the abject despondency of fear as soon
as the class below itself, the proletarians, attempts an independent
movement. We shall by and by see this class, in Germany, pass
alternately from one of these stages to the other.
The working class in Germany is, in its social and political
development, as far behind that of England and France as the German
bourgeoisie is behind the bourgeoisie of those countries. Like master,
like man. The evolution of the conditions of existence for a numerous,
strong, concentrated, and intelligent proletarian class goes hand in
hand with the development of the conditions of existence for a
numerous, wealthy, concentrated, and powerful middle class. The
working class movement itself never is independent, never is of an
exclusively proletarian character until all the different factions of
the middle class, and particularly its most progressive faction, the
large manufacturers, have conquered political power, and remodelled
the State according to their wants. It is then that the inevitable
conflict between the employer and the employed becomes imminent, and
cannot be adjourned any longer; that the working class can no longer
be put off with delusive hopes and promises never to be realized; that
the great problem of the nineteenth century, the abolition of the
proletariat, is at last brought forward fairly and in its proper
light. Now, in Germany the mass of the working class were employed,
not by those modern manufacturing lords of which Great Britain
furnishes such splendid specimens, but by small tradesmen, whose
entire manufacturing system is a mere relic of the Middle Ages. And as
there is an enormous difference between the great cotton lord and the
petty cobbler or master tailor, so there is a corresponding distance
from the wide-awake factory operative of modern manufacturing Babylons
to the bashful journeyman tailor or cabinetmaker of a small country
town, who lives in circumstances and works after a plan very little
different from those of the like sort of men some five hundred years
ago. This general absence of modern conditions of life, of modern
modes of industrial production, of course was accompanied by a
pretty equally general absence of modern ideas, and it is, therefore,
not to be wondered at if, at the outbreak of the Revolution, a large
part of the working classes should cry out for the immediate
re-establishment of guilds and Mediaeval privileged trades' corporations.
Yet from the manufacturing districts, where the modern system of
production predominated, and in consequence of the facilities of
inter-communication and mental development afforded by the migratory
life of a large number of the working men, a strong nucleus formed
itself, whose ideas about the emancipation of their class were far
clearer and more in accordance with existing facts and historical
necessities; but they were a mere minority. If the active movement of
the middle class may be dated from 1840, that of the working class
commences its advent by the insurrections of the Silesian and Bohemian
factory operatives in 1844, and we shall soon have occasion to pass in
review the different stages through which this movement passed.
Lastly, there was the great class of the small farmers, the peasantry,
which with its appendix of farm laborers, constitutes a considerable
majority of the entire nation. But this class again sub-divided itself
into different fractions. There were, firstly, the more wealthy
farmers, what is called in Germany _Gross_ and _Mittel-Bauern_,
proprietors of more or less extensive farms, and each of them
commanding the services of several agricultural laborers. This class,
placed between the large untaxed feudal landowners, and the smaller
peasantry and farm laborers, for obvious reasons found in an alliance
with the anti-feudal middle class of the towns its most natural
political course. Then there were, secondly, the small freeholders,
predominating in the Rhine country, where feudalism had succumbed
before the mighty strokes of the great French Revolution. Similar
independent small freeholders also existed here and there in other
provinces, where they had succeeded in buying off the feudal charges
formerly due upon their lands. This class, however, was a class of
freeholders by name only, their property being generally mortgaged to
such an extent, and under such onerous conditions, that not the
peasant, but the usurer who had advanced the money, was the real
landowner. Thirdly, the feudal tenants, who could not be easily turned
out of their holdings, but who had to pay a perpetual rent, or to
perform in perpetuity a certain amount of labor in favor of the lord
of the manor. Lastly, the agricultural laborers, whose condition, in
many large farming concerns, was exactly that of the same class in
England, and who in all cases lived and died poor, ill-fed, and the
slaves of their employers. These three latter classes of the
agricultural population, the small freeholders, the feudal tenants,
and the agricultural laborers, never troubled their heads much about
politics before the Revolution, but it is evident that this event must
have opened to them a new career, full of brilliant prospects. To
every one of them the Revolution offered advantages, and the movement
once fairly engaged in, it was to be expected that each, in their
turn, would join it. But at the same time it is quite as evident, and
equally borne out by the history of all modern countries, that the
agricultural population, in consequence of its dispersion over a great
space, and of the difficulty of bringing about an agreement among any
considerable portion of it, never can attempt a successful
independent movement; they require the initiatory impulse of the more
concentrated, more enlightened, more easily moved people of the towns.
The preceding short sketch of the most important of the classes, which
in their aggregate formed the German nation at the outbreak of the
recent movements, will already be sufficient to explain a great part
of the incoherence, incongruence, and apparent contradiction which
prevailed in that movement. When interests so varied, so conflicting,
so strangely crossing each other, are brought into violent collision;
when these contending interests in every district, every province, are
mixed in different proportions; when, above all, there is no great
centre in the country, no London, no Paris, the decisions of which, by
their weight, may supersede the necessity of fighting out the same
quarrel over and over again in every single locality; what else is to
be expected but that the contest will dissolve itself into a mass of
unconnected struggles, in which an enormous quantity of blood, energy,
and capital is spent, but which for all that remain without any
decisive results?
The political dismemberment of Germany into three dozen of more or
less important principalities is equally explained by this confusion
and multiplicity of the elements which compose the nation, and which
again vary in every locality. Where there are no common interests
there can be no unity of purpose, much less of action. The German
Confederation, it is true, was declared everlastingly indissoluble;
yet the Confederation, and its organ, the Diet, never represented
German unity. The very highest pitch to which centralization was ever
carried in Germany was the establishment of the Zollverein; by this
the States on the North Sea were also forced into a Customs Union of
their own, Austria remaining wrapped up in her separate prohibitive
tariff. Germany had the satisfaction to be, for all practical purposes
divided between three independent powers only, instead of between
thirty-six. Of course the paramount supremacy of the Russian Czar, as
established in 1814, underwent no change on this account.
Having drawn these preliminary conclusions from our premises, we shall
see, in our next, how the aforesaid various classes of the German
people were set into movement one after the other, and what character
the movement assumed on the outbreak of the French Revolution of 1848.
LONDON, September, 1851.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] The "eleven men" were: Dupont de l'Eure, Lamartine, Cremieux,
Aarago, Ledru Rollin, Garnier-Pages, Marrast, Clocon, Louis Blanc, and
Albert.
[5] The "Zollverein" was the German Customs Union. It was originally
founded in 1827, and largely extended after the war of 1866. Since the
unification of Germany as an "Empire" in 1871, the States belonging to
the Zollverein have been included in the German Empire. The object of
the Zollverein was to obtain a uniform rate of customs duties all over
Germany.
II.
THE PRUSSIAN STATE.
OCTOBER 28th, 1851.
The political movement of the middle class or bourgeoisie, in Germany,
may be dated from 1840. It had been preceded by symptoms showing that
the moneyed and industrial class of that country was ripening into a
state which would no longer allow it to continue apathetic and passive
under the pressure of a half-feudal, half-bureaucratic Monarchism. The
smaller princes of Germany, partly to insure to themselves a greater
independence against the supremacy of Austria and Prussia, or against
the influence of the nobility of their own States, partly in order to
consolidate into a whole the disconnected provinces united under their
rule by the Congress of Vienna, one after the other granted
constitutions of a more or less liberal character. They could do so
without any danger to themselves; for if the Diet of the
Confederation, this mere puppet of Austria and Prussia, was to
encroach upon their independence as sovereigns, they knew that in
resisting its dictates they would be backed by public opinion and the
Chambers; and if, on the contrary, these Chambers grew too strong,
they could readily command the power of the Diet to break down all
opposition. The Bavarian, Wuertemberg, Baden or Hanoverian
Constitutional institutions could not, under such circumstances, give
rise to any serious struggle for political power, and, therefore, the
great bulk of the German middle class kept very generally aloof from
the petty squabbles raised in the Legislatures of the small States,
well knowing that without a fundamental change in the policy and
constitution of the two great powers of Germany, no secondary efforts
and victories would be of any avail. But, at the same time, a race of
Liberal lawyers, professional oppositionists, sprung up in these small
assemblies: the Rottecks, the Welckers, the Roemers, the Jordans, the
Stueves, the Eisenmanns, those great "popular men" (_Volksmaenner_) who,
after a more or less noisy, but always unsuccessful, opposition of
twenty years, were carried to the summit of power by the revolutionary
springtide of 1848, and who, after having there shown their utter
impotency and insignificance, were hurled down again in a moment.
These first specimen upon German soil of the trader in politics and
opposition, by their speeches and writings made familiar to the German
ear the language of Constitutionalism, and by their very existence
foreboded the approach of a time when the middle class would seize
upon and restore to their proper meaning political phrases which these
talkative attorneys and professors were in the habit of using without
knowing much about the sense originally attached to them.
German literature, too, labored under the influence of the political
excitement into which all Europe had been thrown by the events of
1830. A crude Constitutionalism, or a still cruder Republicanism, were
preached by almost all writers of the time. It became more and more
the habit, particularly of the inferior sorts of literati, to make up
for the want of cleverness in their productions, by political
allusions which were sure to attract attention. Poetry, novels,
reviews, the drama, every literary production teemed with what was
called "tendency," that is with more or less timid exhibitions of an
anti-governmental spirit. In order to complete the confusion of ideas
reigning after 1830 in Germany, with these elements of political
opposition there were mixed up ill-digested university-recollections
of German philosophy, and misunderstood gleanings from French
Socialism, particularly Saint-Simonism; and the clique of writers who
expatiated upon this heterogeneous conglomerate of ideas,
presumptuously called themselves "Young Germany," or "the Modern
School." They have since repented their youthful sins, but not
improved their style of writing.
Lastly, German philosophy, that most complicated, but at the same time
most sure thermometer of the development of the German mind, had
declared for the middle class, when Hegel in his "Philosophy of Law"
pronounced Constitutional Monarchy to be the final and most perfect
form of government. In other words, he proclaimed the approaching
advent of the middle classes of the country to political power. His
school, after his death, did not stop here. While the more advanced
section of his followers, on one hand, subjected every religious
belief to the ordeal of a rigorous criticism, and shook to its
foundation the ancient fabric of Christianity, they at the same time
brought forward bolder political principles than hitherto it had been
the fate of German ears to hear expounded, and attempted to restore to
glory the memory of the heroes of the first French Revolution. The
abstruse philosophical language in which these ideas were clothed, if
it obscured the mind of both the writer and the reader, equally
blinded the eyes of the censor, and thus it was that the "young
Hegelian" writers enjoyed a liberty of the Press unknown in every
other branch of literature.
Thus it was evident that public opinion was undergoing a great change
in Germany. By degrees the vast majority of those classes whose
education or position in life enabled them, under an Absolute
Monarchy, to gain some political information, and to form anything
like an independent political opinion, united into one mighty phalanx
of opposition against the existing system. And in passing judgment
upon the slowness of political development in Germany no one ought to
omit taking into account the difficulty of obtaining correct
information upon any subject in a country where all sources of
information were under the control of the Government, where from the
Ragged School and the Sunday School to the Newspaper and University
nothing was said, taught, printed, or published but what had
previously obtained its approbation. Look at Vienna, for instance. The
people of Vienna, in industry and manufactures, second to none perhaps
in Germany; in spirit, courage, and revolutionary energy, proving
themselves far superior to all, were yet more ignorant as to their
real interests, and committed more blunders during the Revolution than
any others, and this was due in a very great measure to the almost
absolute ignorance with regard to the very commonest political
subjects in which Metternich's Government had succeeded in keeping
them.
It needs no further explanation why, under such a system, political
information was an almost exclusive monopoly of such classes of
society as could afford to pay for its being smuggled into the
country, and more particularly of those whose interests were most
seriously attacked by the existing state of things, namely, the
manufacturing and commercial classes. They, therefore, were the first
to unite in a mass against the continuance of a more or less disguised
Absolutism, and from their passing into the ranks of the opposition
must be dated the beginning of the real revolutionary movement in
Germany.
The oppositional pronunciamento of the German bourgeoisie may be dated
from 1840, from the death of the late King of Prussia, the last
surviving founder of the Holy Alliance of 1815. The new King was known
to be no supporter of the predominantly bureaucratic and military
monarchy of his father. What the French middle class had expected
from the advent of Louis XVI., the German bourgeoisie hoped, in some
measure, from Frederick William IV. of Prussia. It was agreed upon all
hands that the old system was exploded, worn-out, and must be given
up; and what had been borne in silence under the old King now was
loudly proclaimed to be intolerable.
But if Louis XVI., "Louis le Desire," had been a plain, unpretending
simpleton, half conscious of his own nullity, without any fixed
opinions, ruled principally by the habits contracted during his
education, "Frederick William le Desire" was something quite
different. While he certainly surpassed his French original in
weakness of character, he was neither without pretensions nor without
opinions. He had made himself acquainted, in an amateur sort of way,
with the rudiments of most sciences, and thought himself, therefore,
learned enough to consider final his judgment upon every subject. He
made sure he was a first-rate orator, and there was certainly no
commercial traveller in Berlin who could beat him either in prolixity
of pretended wit, or in fluency of elocution. And, above all, he had
his opinions. He hated and despised the bureaucratic element of the
Prussian Monarchy, but only because all his sympathies were with the
feudal element. Himself one of the founders of, and chief contributors
to, the _Berlin Political Weekly Paper_, the so-called Historical
School (a school living upon the ideas of Bonald, De Maistre, and
other writers of the first generation of French Legitimists), he
aimed at a restoration, as complete as possible, of the predominant
social position of the nobility. The King, first nobleman of his
realm, surrounded in the first instance by a splendid court of mighty
vassals, princes, dukes, and counts; in the second instance, by a
numerous and wealthy lower nobility; ruling according to his
discretion over his loyal burgesses and peasants, and thus being
himself the chief of a complete hierarchy of social ranks or castes,
each of which was to enjoy its particular privileges, and to be
separated from the others by the almost insurmountable barrier of
birth, or of a fixed, inalterable social position; the whole of these
castes, or "estates of the realm" balancing each other at the same
time so nicely in power and influence that a complete independence of
action should remain to the King--such was the _beau ideal_ which
Frederick William IV. undertook to realize, and which he is again
trying to realize at the present moment.
It took some time before the Prussian bourgeoisie, not very well
versed in theoretical questions, found out the real purport of their
King's tendency. But what they very soon found out was the fact that
he was bent upon things quite the reverse of what they wanted. Hardly
did the new King find his "gift of the gab" unfettered by his father's
death than he set about proclaiming his intentions in speeches without
number; and every speech, every act of his, went far to estrange from
him the sympathies of the middle class. He would not have cared much
for that, if it had not been for some stern and startling realities
which interrupted his poetic dreams. Alas, that romanticism is not
very quick at accounts, and that feudalism, ever since Don Quixote,
reckons without its host! Frederick William IV. partook too much of
that contempt of ready cash which ever has been the noblest
inheritance of the sons of the Crusaders. He found at his accession a
costly, although parsimoniously arranged system of government, and a
moderately filled State Treasury. In two years every trace of a
surplus was spent in court festivals, royal progresses, largesses,
subventions to needy, seedy, and greedy noblemen, etc., and the
regular taxes were no longer sufficient for the exigencies of either
Court or Government. And thus His Majesty found himself very soon
placed between a glaring deficit on one side, and a law of 1820 on the
other, by which any new loan, or any increase of the then existing
taxation was made illegal without the assent of "the future
Representation of the People." This representation did not exist; the
new King was less inclined than even his father to create it; and if
he had been, he knew that public opinion had wonderfully changed since
his accession.
Indeed, the middle classes, who had partly expected that the new King
would at once grant a Constitution, proclaim the Liberty of the Press,
Trial by Jury, etc., etc.--in short, himself take the lead of that
peaceful revolution which they wanted in order to obtain political
supremacy--the middle classes had found out their error, and had
turned ferociously against the King. In the Rhine Provinces, and more
or less generally all over Prussia, they were so exasperated that
they, being short themselves of men able to represent them in the
Press, went to the length of an alliance with the extreme
philosophical party, of which we have spoken above. The fruit of this
alliance was the _Rhenish Gazette_ of Cologne,[6] a paper which was
suppressed after fifteen months' existence, but from which may be
dated the existence of the Newspaper Press in Germany. This was in
1842.