Chapter 1
NATIONALISM AND LIBERALISM
If one were to select a single historical force which moulded the history of Europe in the nineteenth century, without question it would be the French Revolution. This cataclysmic upheaval in the premier state in Europe released a ferment of ideas and fathered political movements which made a lasting impact on the face of the old continent. Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, the watchwords of that revolution, were carried on the bayonets of the French armies to most parts of Western Europe. The old order was shaken to the foundations, thrones tumbled, many ancient feudal privileges were abolished, the structure of government was at least partially rationalized and the accumulated lumber of centuries sometimes discarded virtually overnight.
In the storm and stress of these years two new ideological concepts emerged: liberalism and nationalism. Defining them is no easy task. The historical antecedents of liberalism reach back in time to the English Revolution and the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. Broadly speaking, liberals believed that man was not destined to remain for ever the helpless prisoner of century-old traditions, stifled in his development by the arbitrary actions of all-powerful monarchs. A fundamental tenet of the liberal ideology was the conviction – first proclaimed in the American Declaration of Independence – that all men possessed inalienable rights which preceded the establishment of civil government and which it was the duty of rulers to respect. Indeed, the whole purpose of government was to provide a minimum framework of law and order within which man would enjoy equality before the law, freedom of movement and association, and be able to develop his talents to the full. Secondly, liberals believed that sovereignty resided in the people – a concept Jean-Jacques Rousseau first expressed in imperishable prose in the Contrat Social – and that civil government should be conducted in its interests. Generally speaking, liberalism went hand in hand with nationalism.
Historians and political scientists cannot agree on a catch-all definition of this complex and multifaceted phenomenon. Tentatively it may be described as a system of values and beliefs which lead a group of people to become conscious of belonging together because of characteristics such as a common language, common culture or subjection to the same ruler and which are capable of mobilizing the group politically. It is the element of popular participation which differentiates modern nationalism from what is sometimes termed ‘proto-nationalism’, stretching back over the centuries in many lands. There has been much debate but little agreement in recent years about the earlier forms of nationalism. One can summarize the position by saying that consciousness of the separate identity of a nation preceded the French Revolution but was confined to the ruling élite – the nobility supported by the clergy – and in the late medieval period by the rising bourgeoisie. The mass of the population was, however, scarcely touched by proto-nationalism. In addition, early consciousness of nationality was thickly overlaid by the bonds of universal religion.
The French Revolution marks the turning-point in the growth of modern nationalism. It contributed two new concepts to political philosophy: the secular state recognizing no higher authority than itself and no longer seeking legitimization from the Church; and, secondly, the nation of equal citizens. The latter concept was a mixed blessing. While the state guaranteed to the citizen the enjoyment of certain rights, he was simultaneously placed under certain obligations to serve the community and, if need be, give his life in its defence. Out of this obligatory element grew the power of the modern state, demanding supreme loyalty from its citizens to its institutions. Taken to extremes it produced the totalitarian regimes of the mid – twentieth century which, in theory at least, were not prepared to leave any sphere of life to individual choice.
Why did nationalism emerge as the dominant ideology in Germany and, for that matter, in other parts of Europe in the nineteenth century? For decades Friedrich Meinecke’s classic study Weltbürgertum und Nationalstaat, written at the beginning of the twentieth century, was regarded as the definitive work on the growth of German nationalism. Nowadays scholars doubt whether the nationalist phenomenon can be explained satisfactorily solely in terms of a marriage between folkish values, the writings of certain poets and philosophers and the material power of Prussia. The missing ingredient which recent studies of nationalism emphasize is the complex process of modernization which was changing the structure of Europe from the middle of the eighteenth century onwards.
The argument runs as follows: the old basis on which the authority of rulers had rested for centuries was undermined by a number of interconnected factors. In an age of declining religious faith and unprecedented social change the ‘divinity that hedges round a king’ was losing its potency to legitimize monarchical rule. Europe was changing rapidly, most notably in terms of population. In 1750 130 million people lived in Europe; by 1800 the figure rose to 187 million and by 1900 had reached 401 million. In the area which became the Reich of 1871 17 million people were living in 1750; by 1800 this figure had risen to 25 million, by 1850 to 35.4 million and by 1900 to 56.4 million.
Such an enormous increase – for which improved hygiene standards, falling mortality rates and better diet were mainly responsible – presented rulers with massive control problems. This was especially true in rapidly growing urban areas where the inadequacy of the bureaucratic apparatus to deal with problems of employment and social misery, together with the failure of the Church to evangelize the newcomers, had the most disturbing implications for monarchical stability.
Secondly, the advantage which illiteracy had given ruling élites over the masses was waning rapidly. One estimate suggests that whereas only 15 per cent of German adults were literate in 1770, this had risen to 40 per cent by 1830. In Prussia, for example, the numbers at elementary and middle schools increased by 50 per cent between 1830 and 1850. Reading societies were widespread in small towns throughout Germany in the early nineteenth century. Growing literacy made possible a veritable revolution in publishing; the publication of books and periodicals doubled in the first half of the nineteenth century. And as more and more ordinary people learned to read they could enter at last into a kingdom where competing ideologies wrestled for their allegiance, a development which might well undermine traditional loyalties to church and state.
Thirdly, a communications revolution transformed the lives of most people in the nineteenth century. Poor roads had for centuries isolated people from each other, restricted their mobility and tied them to one location for life. Improvements in road building and the introduction of steamships and railways had dramatic effects. For the first time a market economy emerged in which price discrepancies were ironed out as produce moved more quickly across Germany. Better communications enabled people to move out of closed environments, and most of all facilitated the dissemination of ideas and discussion of issues at national level for the first time. As a prominent German radical, Jakob Venedy, remarked in 1835: ‘In ten years when all great towns and capital cities are connected by rail, Germany will be another country and the prejudices which have divided the German people so much up to now and which have given our oppressors such easy mastery will cease to exist.’1 Important, too, was the invention of the telegraph which dramatically reduced the time-lag between events and their reporting. For the first time news of events in Berlin and Vienna could be transmitted within minutes to all parts of Germany.
The pace of change was enormously accelerated by the impact of the Industrial Revolution which affected Germany in the mid nineteenth century. The exploitation of new productive forces dramatically altered the socio-economic landscape. Large urban centres became a feature of the new Europe as country-dwellers moved into towns. New productive relationships developed: a factory proletariat (very small in numbers outside Berlin) and a new industrial middle class (Besitzbürgertum) appeared on the scene. In the towns at any rate where dynastic loyalties were crumbling and religious beliefs were fading fast, nationalism – so it is argued – supplied a brand-new social cement to hold society together. Discontented people uprooted from their moorings and plunged into new surroundings where parish-pump loyalties were irrelevant and where their lives were dependent on the activities of thousands of strangers discovered a new sense of community in and through nationalism. Many people, especially lower-middle-class artisans overwhelmed by the social and economic problems of the mid nineteenth century, looked to a new national Reich to redress the grievances which individual rulers had singularly failed to do. Some writers go further and maintain that nationalism in its more extreme forms represented a substitute for organized religion, although the cases of Irish and Polish nationalism suggest that new and old values could co-exist side by side. More will be said later about the ritualism of nationalism. Suffice to say here that flags and songs and the boisterous hurrah patriotism of the mid nineteenth century gave tangible proof to the disoriented and socially deprived of their new place in society and a vision of the Reich to come. Nationalism, incidentally, was a two-edged sword. It was capable not only of comforting the lowly; rulers discovered in it a new legitimization enabling them to assert their authority over this new society and contain within tolerable limits the pressures for political and social change. In this sense nationalism, far from being a democratizing force, supplied rulers with a means of preserving with minimum dislocation the old order, a theme which will figure prominently in this book.
An alternative explanation is offered by Marxists who argue that the creation of nation states is essentially the characteristic expression of capitalist development. The new rising middle class sought national unification primarily to create a unified market in which to dispose of their manufactured goods. However, this interpretation applies much more to the mid nineteenth century when industrialization reached the ‘take-off’ stage than to the first half of the century when such demands played a relatively minor role in the origins of nationalism. Social discontent rather than buoyant capitalism seems to have given a greater impetus to the growth of a nationalist movement in the 1840s; the Bildungsbürgertum, the intelligentsia and government officials – not the captains of industry – were the pacemakers until the 1860s.
How useful have modernization theories been in shedding light on the origins of nationalism? It would be unfair to expect precise answers at this early stage before a great deal more work of a comparative nature has been done on nationalist movements.2 What does emerge pretty clearly is that it is more than a coincidence that the nationalist phenomenon emerged at a time of intense social, economic and political change which could not be accommodated within existing power structures. The frustrations this engendered were certainly a factor explaining the growing demand for a nation state – a strong Reich – to give expression to popular aspirations whether for constitutional freedom, the relief of social misery or economic unification. Beyond this there are more questions than answers. How far was the emergence of nationalism bound up with class structures? Were nationalist leaders invariably middle class? Not necessarily, it would seem – the Polish aristocracy and Irish tenant farmers at once spring to mind as exceptions. How far was nationalism dependent on social tension? How important are the attitudes of foreign powers in moulding the course of nationalist movements? How exactly was the new ideology transmitted to the mass of the population? Did it exert much influence on the countryside until later in the century? How far did the modernization process assist or impede the spread of nationalism? In the German case arguably the partial modernization of some of the larger states discouraged the growth of a national movement in the initial stages, though industrialization altered the balance later. The absence of answers to such questions does not detract from the importance of modernization and communications theories. These are working models which open up new avenues of approach to the problem and are likely to confirm the view that modern nationalism is closely related to social, economic and political changes. This does not in any way detract from the influence of the Fichtes and Jahns and the Bismarcks. It merely broadens the picture by locating nationalism in a more meaningful sociological framework.
Liberalism and nationalism were associated concepts for most of those who sought political change in mid-nineteenth-century Europe. One of the main reasons why liberals demanded national unification was their conviction that only in a united state could individual rights be effectively protected against arbitrary interference from petty princes. Yet it was already apparent to a few perceptive observers of the political scene that liberalism and nationalism were not necessarily complementary concepts and that the desire for national unification could be exploited in the advancement of illiberal policies. To understand this point properly we must examine a third ideological force which emerged in the early nineteenth century: conservatism.
The origins of conservatism as a political philosophy preceded the French Revolution. Charles de Montesquieu in France and Justus Möser in Germany were already defending the status quo against enlightened princes who were seeking to modernize and centralize their dominions by reducing the power of the local nobility and of privileged communities. What the revolution did was to confer a new philosophical validity on the defence of vested interests. Writers such as Edmund Burke, Vicomte René de Chateaubriand and Comte Joseph de Maistre denounced the universal panacea of the revolutionaries and enthused about the hierarchical structure of ancien régime society where the aristocracy enjoyed a privileged position, authority was universally respected, privileges were preserved, law and order prevailed and religion acted as the social cement holding society together. This philosophy had a natural attraction for the landed nobility, a powerful force in post-revolutionary Europe. But it should be remembered that conservatives enjoyed at all times support from other social groups. Even during the Revolution peasants in some parts of Europe – for example in the Vendée – supported their lords. In the course of the nineteenth century other groups were attracted to conservatism. In the 1850s and 1860s master craftsmen (Handwerkermeister) turned to the conservatives because they were ready to preserve the ailing guild system which laissez-faire liberals wished to destroy. Later in the century as lower-middle-class groups grew in importance with the development of the industrial system, white-collar workers, perturbed by the growth of working-class organizations, allied with small businessmen and civil servants in supporting the conservatives.
This was not the only reason why conservatism flourished in the nineteenth century. Despite the significant conflict of principle between liberalism and conservatism, in practice conservatives had much less to fear from their liberal opponents. At the beginning of the chapter liberalism was defined as the belief that the object of government should be the protection of individual rights and that affairs of state should be conducted in the interests of the whole people, not of entrenched vested interests. In practice liberals had no desire to shift the balance of power towards the mass of the people. Nor did they seek a monopoly of power for the upper middle class but merely a share in the conduct of affairs, and that by agreement with the sovereign whose powers would be circumscribed in a written constitution. Shocked by the excesses of the French Revolution when rich and poor heads alike had rolled under Madame Guillotine, liberals shared the conservative belief that universal male suffrage – like absolute monarchy – would lead inevitably to tyranny. Only under pressure from below did the liberals agree in 1848 to extend the franchise for the Frankfurt Parliament. And they never lost their taste for aristocratic politics.
The rapprochement between moderate liberalism and conservatism in the first half of the nineteenth century was greatly accelerated by the growth of radicalism. Most liberals abhorred violence and confidently expected to change the structure of politics by agreement with the old order. Radicals with a firmer purchase on political reality knew in their bones that monarchs were unlikely to surrender even part of their power voluntarily and would have to be compelled to accept the type of constitutional arrangements favoured by radicals which would vest effective power in a legislature elected by universal male suffrage, and in a fully accountable executive. More extreme radicals advocated the abolition of monarchy and the establishment of a Jacobin-style republic. Nor were radicals content with mere legal equality. Was not the existence of privilege in the form of great wealth a denial of the principle of equality? Consequently radicals were prepared to take steps to correct this imbalance at the expense of vested interests. That posed a direct threat to upper-middle-class liberals totally committed to the defence of property rights.
All over Europe a new ‘alliance’ of conservative interests was in the making embracing moderate liberals, the new entrepreneurial classes and the old landed nobility. In this ‘alliance’ the landed interests remained dominant. True, agriculture was a declining sector of the economy throughout the century. That was, however, a slow process so that down to 1914 landed property remained the main source of personal wealth. Aristocrats remained in command of armies, occupied key administrative posts and in general functioned as a public service nobility in many countries. Internal tensions inside the ‘alliance’ were overshadowed by the joint resolve of aristocracy and middle classes to defend themselves against the ‘dark forces’ whose power manifested itself fitfully during the June Days of 1848 and again during the Commune of 1870–1.
What connection was there between conservatism and nationalism? It would be far too simplistic to suppose that conservatives were concerned only to exploit nationalism in their narrow class interests; they were, after all, as exposed to nationalist propaganda as any other group in society. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that one of the consequences of nationalism might well have been that it deflected the attention of the people away from the power of privilege. For nationalism emphasized what people had in common – or, more accurately, what they were alleged to have in common – not what divided them. A common tongue and shared cultural or historical traditions could unite people – if only at a superficial level – and transcend class interests which in the early industrial age might well tear the fabric of society asunder. In one sense what Bismarck and Cavour succeeded in doing was to square the political circle. Unification was brought about by force of arms primarily to serve the interests of Prussia and Piedmont. But by satisfying the demand of the upper classes for unification Bismarck and Cavour effectively cocooned conservative interests in the new states against the threat of political radicalism and conferred on their conquests a new legitimacy which had not been available to rulers such as Frederick the Great.
THE IMPACT OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ON GERMANY
The physical impact of the French Revolution on Germany was enormous. Tension soon developed between the new revolutionary government and the Holy Roman Empire. The revolutionaries were suspicious of the counter-revolutionary activities of émigré noblemen in the Rhineland, while West German princes were embittered by the abolition of feudalism in their Alsace estates. With the Girondins in power in 1792 and the new Emperor Francis II eager to do battle with the enemies of monarchy, war was inevitable. In April France declared war on Austria and Prussia, though not until 1793 did the Holy Roman Empire declare war on France. The clash of arms soon revealed the pitiful inadequacy of imperial defences and the moral bankruptcy of the old order. By 1794 France was in control of the Rhineland where she stayed for the next twenty years. The German princes soon abandoned their half-hearted resistance and came to terms with the conquerors. And in the ante-rooms of Talleyrand’s office in Paris the princes dispossessed on the left bank of the Rhine joined in an undignified scramble for compensation at the expense of the ecclesiastical principalities.
The territorial settlement of 1803 ratified at the Congress of Regensburg deprived the Empire of its raison d’être. On the right bank of the Rhine all but three of eighty-one ecclesiastical principalities were secularized. Only six of fifty-one imperial cities survived; and the imperial knights were mediatized, i.e. their territories – often not more than a few square miles in extent – were placed under the jurisdiction of larger neighbours. Overnight, 112 states disappeared in this gigantic rationalization exercise. The principal beneficiaries were Baden, Bavaria, Württemberg and Hesse-Darmstadt, states favoured by the French who hoped to use them as a counterpoise to Austrian and Prussian influence in Central Europe.
In 1805 Austria once again joined forces with the enemies of France. She was speedily and decisively defeated. This time she had to surrender her Italian possessions to France, the Tyrol and Varneburg to Bavaria, and her remaining German territories were divided between Baden and Württemberg. In 1806 Napoleon simplified the map still further. The remaining imperial cities and smaller territories were mediatized. The Confederation of the Rhine, a loose association of sixteen states excluding Austria and Prussia, was created under Napoleon’s protection and pledged to fight for him. On 1 August 1806 Napoleon ordered Francis II to relinquish the imperial crown. On 6 August he agreed and became Francis 1, emperor of Austria. Thus the Holy Roman Empire ended ignominiously after nine centuries. ‘There was a time,’ commented the historian of the Empire, ‘when this event would have been thought a sign that the last days of the world were at hand. But in the whirl of change that had bewildered men since 1789 it passed almost unnoticed.’3 Nor was its demise mourned by the Germans.
Prussia had stood silently by while Austria was defeated. Shortly afterwards, galvanized into action by the growing arrogance of the French, Prussia decided to fight rather than remain a French vassal. At the battle of Jena Prussia suffered a crushing defeat. French troops marched through Berlin while her king sued for peace. Prussia was saved from complete destruction only through the intervention of the tsar, anxious to preserve a buffer state between Russia and France. Even so, Prussia lost all her territory west of the Elbe; this became the kingdom of Westphalia, ruled over by Napoleon’s brother Jerome. Most of the Polish territories were incorporated in the grand duchy of Warsaw and handed over to the king of Saxony, one of Napoleon’s most devoted allies. Danzig became a free city guarded by a French garrison. In all, Prussia forfeited half her territory; she was saddled with a war indemnity of unknown dimensions and the size of her army was strictly controlled.
Napoleon was now complete master of Germany. When Austria challenged the French in 1809, she fought alone. After the battle of Wagram she was reduced to the status of a second-class power. Her army was reduced in size; she, too, was saddled with a huge indemnity; she was forced to support the continental blockade; and she lost Salzburg and the Innviertel to Bavaria. By this time Napoleon did not respect his own creations. To render the blockade more effective, he annexed Oldenburg in 1810 and the Hansa towns in 1811. No German state dared resist him. When he held glittering court in Dresden on the eve of the Russian campaign, the rulers of Austria and Prussia waited in attendance on the little Corsican. Although Napoleon was soon to retreat through Germany with the remnants of the Grand Army and deserted by his German allies, his major work was not disturbed. By destroying the fabric of medieval Germany he earned his place as the first maker of Modern Germany.
No less profound was the impact made by revolutionary ideas on the antiquated and semi-feudal structure lingering on in many German states. There were significant regional variations. The most immediate impact was felt in the Rhineland – an integral part of France from 1795 to 1814 – the kingdom of Westphalia and the grand duchy of Berg. In Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg, Hesse-Darmstadt and Nassau the ruling dynasties made extensive use of the new administrative techniques pioneered by the French, whereas Saxony and the Mecklenburgs were little affected. Prussia, outside the Rhine Confederation, was caught up in the modernization process – though for different reasons – whilst the Habsburg dominions were virtually unaffected.
In the more enlightened states the apparatus of government was transformed. The old bumbling bureaucracies were replaced by new administrative structures. The chaotic jumble of local jurisdictions was replaced by more rational divisions, concentrating power in the hands of the central government. The era of ostentatious spending characteristic of eighteenth-century courts was at an end. Princes began to think of themselves as the first servants of the state. Bridges, roads and canals became the first call on the exchequer. The special privileges and immunities of the aristocracy and the corporations were abolished. Uniform taxation systems were introduced. Serfdom ended in the countryside. Trial by jury and a uniform legal system divorced from the administration assured justice for all. The power of the Church was drastically curtailed; church lands were secularized; monasteries were dissolved; and religious toleration, civil marriage and secular education became the norm. Princely armies were remodelled on French lines with conscription and long periods of service with the colours as the distinctive features. The net result of these reforms was that several states, especially in South Germany, attained in the short space of a few years a degree of order and stability which it had taken generations to achieve in Prussia.
However, only in the small area ruled over directly by the French, i.e. the Rhineland, Westphalia and the grand duchy of Berg, was the power of vested interest really broken. For example, only in the Rhineland were the peasants completely released from feudal bondage. Elsewhere reform was carried out by nominally independent princes who, whilst eager enough to centralize their dominions, were not over – anxious to antagonize vested interests too much. Certainly the aristocracy lost some (but not all) of its tax exemptions and its monopoly of high office was broken. But the abolition of serfdom did not undermine its position in the countryside; little progress was made towards the commutation of feudal dues and services, because landowners withheld their consent and peasants lacked the necessary capital. Nor was any attempt made to divest landowners of their very considerable judicial and police powers over their tenants. And in a pre-industrial society the establishment of the principle of legal equality, the career open to the talents and the removal of restrictions on trade and industry did not significantly alter the relationship between a landed aristocracy and a small bourgeoisie composed largely of administrators and lawyers. What the reforms did succeed in doing – and this was their raison d’être – was to enable rulers to weld together newly acquired territories into homogeneous and viable entities tightly controlled by the central government.
Turning now to the largest German states: Austria and Prussia. Austria was virtually unaffected apart from Count Joseph von Stadion’s reform of the finance ministry and the unification of the chancellery. In Prussia much more significant change took place after the myth of Prussian invincibility died on the battlefields of Jena and Auerstedt. Between 1806 and 1814 a small group of high officials – mostly born outside Prussia – attempted to modernize Prussia. Their immediate objective was to prepare for a war of revenge against France. Their intellectual inspiration came neither from the practice of Revolutionary France nor from the tradition of enlightened absolutism, but from the Kantian model of the independent individual. The Reformers believed that much more could be achieved by relying on the enterprise of free citizens and their active involvement in public life than through the stifling paternalism of the eighteenth-century mercantilist state. To ensure that a reforming bureaucracy would exert decisive influence on the running of the state, the Reformers persuaded the king to establish a ministerial system to assist him in policy-making, an innovation which remained a permanent feature of the Prussian system. At the same time the entire administrative structure of the state was reshaped. To ensure middle-class involvement in local government, Baron Karl vom Stein freed the towns from state control in 1808 and handed over responsibility for municipal affairs (including taxation and police) to elected authorities. Already in 1807 he had abolished personal serfdom, turning peasants hitherto bound to the soil into free men entitled to buy and sell land. His aim was the creation of an independent peasantry capable of standing on its own feet and hopefully applying modern techniques to increase agrarian productivity. Meanwhile, to create free citizens Baron Wilhelm von Humboldt totally overhauled the Prussian educational system. Grammar schools (Gymnasien) were founded in which heavy emphasis was laid on the teaching of languages and history, subjects considered ideal for developing a balanced personality. Elementary schools were thoroughly reorganized and training colleges set up to provide a supply of competent teachers. Rowdy students and idle dons brought universities into disrepute throughout the eighteenth century. The situation changed with the founding of Berlin University in 1810 which soon acquired a reputation as an institution where research flourished and students were eager to learn. As war with France was the overriding objective army reform had a high priority. Generals Gerhard von Scharnhorst, August von Gneisenau, Hermann von Boyen and Karl von Clausewitz tried to infuse a new spirit of self-reliance into the ranks: brutal punishments were abolished and able men were at last promoted regardless of social status. In 1814 Boyen introduced a system of conscription which obliged Prussians to serve three years with a line regiment and two years in the reserves followed by several years in the Landwehr, a territorial army commanded by middle-class officers and intended to be an antidote to the feudal spirit prevailing in line regiments.
In fact the power of the landed aristocracy was not seriously weakened by these reforms. Aristocrats still remained in control of the army and had the best prospects of advancement in the administration. After 1820 the number of noblemen in high administrative office, especially as presidents of provincial governments and as Landräte, actually increased. In the countryside the emancipation of the peasantry was trimmed back in the interests of the landowners. In return for surrendering their feudal privileges they gained much land. And, once freed of obligations towards former serfs, some landowners transformed their estates into flourishing oases by adopting capitalist techniques. As in Russia, the population explosion created a class of landless labourers and small farmers unable to eke a living out of the soil. Consequently there was much misery and combustible material in rural areas throughout the nineteenth century. Not until industrialization got under way in the 1850s and 1860s did emigration to the towns ease the pressure on the soil.
The last vestiges of the spirit of ‘national regeneration’ which had fired the Reformers during the War of Liberation disappeared during the reaction of 1819–20 following the murder of August von Kotzebue, the playwright and Russian police spy. But it is important to remember that although reactionaries were in control in Berlin, in the provinces, thanks to a liberal-minded bureaucracy, the reforms already introduced remained more or less intact. The social progress being made in Prussia was obscured by two factors: the failure of the king to give his subjects a constitution, and the often quite arbitrary exercise of their powers by the police, whose duties were wide-ranging and included the monitoring of statutory law.
THE GERMAN ROOTS OF NATIONALISM AND LIBERALISM
The changes wrought by the French Revolution east of the Rhine were so momentous that it is easy to exaggerate French influence upon Germany between 1795 and 1814 and underestimate the indigenous roots of much that was happening in Germany.
Initially many – but by no means all – middle-class writers in Germany were fired with enthusiasm by the news from Paris in the summer of 1789. The creation of the National Assembly and the abolition of feudalism seemed to usher in a new age of reforming monarchy when men would reconstruct civil government in accordance with the principles of pure reason. In Cologne, Mainz, Brunswick and Hamburg popular festivals were held and trees of liberty planted. Friedrich Klopstock’s odes on the stirring events in France and the poems of his Göttingen Bund admirers – Gottfried Burger, Johann Voss and Heinrich Boie – reflected their naive idealism. This period was short-lived. After the execution of Louis XVI and the onset of the Reign of Terror these writers ceased to be Francophile: ‘order had come to outweigh liberty’, as one authority has remarked.4
The ideas which crossed the Rhine were unlikely to be accepted without considerable reservations by that small minority of German people interested in the things of the mind. Conditions east of the Rhine differed substantially from those in France. On the whole there was probably less combustible material awaiting the spark of revolution. Though feudalism was an irksome and often tyrannous system, it does not seem to have borne down on the German peasantry quite so heavily as on the French, possibly because the patriarchal relationship between serf and lord still counted for something. There were angry outbursts in Saxony and in the Rhineland in 1789 but nothing comparable to the Grande Peur. And though many territories in the Holy Roman Empire were scandalously and often most tyrannically governed – as a general rule the smaller the territory the worse the abuse of power – several factors combined to protect the Germans from the worst excesses of absolutism: religious diversity, the colourful and chaotic mosaic of conflicting jurisdictions, lingering medieval survivals and the juxtaposition of large, medium and minuscule territories. It was no accident that German writers reverenced historical tradition and were sceptical of the French precisely because of their confidence that the world could be set to rights by drafting the perfect constitution and sweeping away overnight complex and centuries-old relationships. Nor were German writers bitterly anti-clerical like their French counterparts, another factor tempering their attitude.
An extremely important factor explaining the limited attraction of French ideas was the changing attitude of certain German princes towards the practice of civil government. In the first half of the eighteenth century German absolutism was particularly odious and oppressive. Rulers vied with each other in copying the practices of the Sun King. They spent lavishly on ostentatious palaces, theatres and art collections. They ran massively into debt to keep up appearances, their delusions of grandeur in inverse proportion to the size of their dominions. Princes cared little for economic expansion – Prussia was exceptional in this respect – and regarded their subjects as little more than sources of revenue for the maintenance of inflated armies, bureaucracies and courts.
In the second half of the century German absolutism, spurred on by economic development and tempered by the spirit of the Enlightenment, changed in character. Between 1750 and 1800 the population of Europe increased from 140 to 187 million. The consequential increase in demand for food and raw materials stimulated economic growth. Changes in agricultural methods in the Low Countries and in parts of Britain and France increased productivity; substantial food surpluses appeared for the first time; agrarian prices rose steadily; trade expanded; and domestic industry flourished. Germany had a limited share in this economic growth. Merchants, bankers and entrepreneurs in the small towns in West Germany emerged at last from medieval hibernation and basked in the glow of a little unaccustomed prosperity.
On its own this would have been insufficient to undermine the political status quo. In France the bourgeoisie was already a powerful economic force; bourgeois credit sustained successive spendthrift governments; and growing consciousness of the dichotomy between its financial muscle and its political and social impotence created psychological tensions soon to erupt into revolution. East of the Rhine the great age of the German Bürgertum had ended abruptly in the sixteenth century when the trading routes moved to the Atlantic seaboard. The recovery which had occurred by the late eighteenth century was marginal, leaving the German Bürgertum far behind the French bourgeoisie economically.
What the Germans possessed and the French conspicuously lacked were a few rulers who were prepared to try to put their houses in order. Pre-eminent in this small and select band were King Frederick the Great of Prussia, Grand Duke Karl Friedrich of Baden, Duke Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand of Brunswick, the rulers of the small states of Saxe-Weimar, Anhalt-Dessau and Schaumburg-Lippe, and in the Austrian dominions Empress Maria Theresa and – most illustrious of all of them – Emperor Joseph II. There were many reasons for their new-found solicitude for their subjects. Some were seeking to establish their authority over their subjects after the mid-century wars; others – especially in North Germany – were influenced by the pietistic revival which reminded rulers of their Christian duty to subjects; and all were under the spell of the Enlightenment which called on rulers to rule in accordance with the dictates of reason and promote the material and moral well-being of their subjects. Without doubt Napoleon greatly accelerated the modernization process in Germany. But it is equally true to say that it began not with Napoleon but with these enlightened princes.
The fashion was set by Frederick the Great, a child of the Enlightenment, the first ruler to declare that his governing principle was service to the state and not the selfish pursuit of dynastic self-interest – though in some ways he was the least enlightened of rulers, much more a prisoner of the old order than Joseph II. Enlightened princes tried to introduce a note of order into chaotic and overburdened administrative and financial machines. They removed some of the more stifling and irksome feudal jurisdictions, encouraged the growth of commerce and industry, modified the irksome press censorship, built schools, limited the power of the churches, introduced a measure of religious toleration and curbed the extravagant expenditure of their predecessors. Of course, the reforms were frequently half-hearted and limited in effect because these rulers had no wish to compromise their own position by curtailing too drastically the power of those vested interests on which the maintenance of the existing social order depended. Significantly, serfdom in one form or another remained a characteristic feature in most states. Only in the Habsburg dominions was it slightly modified and only in Baden was it abolished.
Nevertheless, monarchy as an institution was stronger on the eve of the French Revolution than ever before. Though there was criticism of the scandalous behaviour of some German rulers, the efforts of the few to respond to the Zeitgeist encouraged Germans to believe that in time others would follow the enlightened example.5
This attitude is understandable when one examines the origins of the Bildungsbürgertum (professional classes). Enlightened monarchs needed trained men to service the burgeoning state apparatus they were creating. Many states, including Austria, Prussia, Saxony and Württemberg, established higher educational institutes to produce the required personnel. The officials, teachers, doctors and pastors appearing in growing numbers in the late eighteenth century owed their position to their own academic ability and enjoyed a privileged status, being exempt from military service and often from taxation. Having grown up in dependency on state and monarch, this new social group did not share the bitter sense of underprivilege and social deprivation felt by their French counterparts. Though politically opponents of old-style absolutism, they mostly remained respectful of princely authority and were content to be excluded from a share in affairs of state. Newspapers and periodicals flourished in German states in the 1780s as abundantly as elsewhere in Europe, but the tone of political debate was muted compared with Britain, France and the Low Countries. The new Bildungsbürgertum preferred to find a national identity in the realms of philosophy and literature rather than in politics.
This choice was of crucial importance for it raised Germany out of the intellectual doldrums in which it had lingered since the seventeenth century. Hitherto culture in Europe had been ‘locally confined or internationally extended’.6 Either it was rooted in the rich customs and traditions of thousands of village communities stretching from the Shannon to the Volga and living in comparative isolation from each other, or else it was an exclusive commodity, the preserve of aristocrats and higher clergy able to move easily from capital city to capital city. What the Bildungsbürgertum created was a potentially wider cultural heritage which could be enjoyed by people of all classes who were German and literate in an area stretching from Flensburg to Vienna and from Aachen to Königsberg.
The cultural renaissance which blossomed in Germany after the Seven Years’ War was the second reason why French ideas, though influential, were unlikely to be accepted uncritically. Between 1770 and 1830 the genius of the German people poured forth in philosophy, drama, poetry and music. The names of Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, Kant and Mozart made the German-speaking world the cultural cradle of Europe for half a century, ending the long dominance of French cultural values.
The German cultural revival was no isolated phenomenon but an integral part of a much broader movement of artistic protest in Western Europe against the rigidity and artificiality of classical values. Young German writers were, however, ahead of their European contemporaries in rebelling against the slavish imitation of French styles by their own rulers. Increasingly dissatisfied with the values of a century which equated culture with the acquisition of knowledge, and virtue with civic pride, they searched for a more profound definition of humanity.
It was in Greek man – rediscovered by German archaeologists – that the classical humanists found their ideal. This was the ‘man of independent mind’ embodying the values of the Bildungsbürgertum to which most of them belonged: confident, self-reliant, sceptical of established beliefs and itching to widen the frontiers of human experience. The philosophy and literature of the period is permeated with the belief that man must rid himself of all cant and prejudice and strive for true independence of mind through the harmonious cultivation of his mental gifts. In this process of self-revelation, passion, sentiment, and imagination played as significant a role as reason. Intellectual self-fulfilment, not the reduction of life to mere conformity with a series of rational formulae, was the true destiny of every educated man and woman. In some ways this was an intensely introspective philosophy, inviting man to attain intellectual satisfaction by averting his gaze from the real world. Not surprisingly very few of these writers were interested in contemporary politics. Those who were, such as the Romantics, had precious little purchase on reality. But in this philosophy of the free individual realizing his manifest destiny lay the seeds of profound political and social change.
Although liberalism and nationalism were manifestly part of a broader movement owing much to American and French experience, both ideologies assumed a specifically German colouration at the fin de siècle because of the German cultural renaissance and the reverential attitude of the Bildungsbürgertum towards princely houses.
German liberalism owed much more to Immanuel Kant than to the French Revolution. The Königsberg professor of philosophy has been rightly called the founder of nineteenth-century liberal thinking in Germany.7 In a series of essays in the 1780s Kant outlined his views on the human condition. He was deeply influenced by the writings of the Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who broke decisively with eighteenth-century thought patterns when he propounded the revolutionary notion that laws did not derive their validity from principles of abstract reason but were an expression of the general will of the people. It was, however, the philosophical not the political implications of Rousseau which preoccupied Kant. His philosophy was rooted basically in the original idea that the antagonistic nature of man contained the key to human progress. Man could develop his full potential only by engaging in a constant struggle against the anti-social instincts of his nature and the external forces ranged against him. Out of the clash between social and anti-social instincts the highest form of social organization – the state – had emerged. The Kantian ideal was a society of free individuals living under the rule of law. The object of law was not, however, the passage of welfare legislation designed to promote material happiness. All that was necessary to enable men to live in freedom was the establishment of certain minimum requirements including those rights essential for the development of the bourgeoisie: equality before the law, the right to own and acquire property and the right of better-off citizens to share in the making of laws. Here in embryonic form was the prototype of the liberal Rechtsstaat in which state intervention was kept to a minimum and the major preoccupation of the citizens would be the conquest of self by regulating their relations with their fellows in accordance with ethical norms.
Kant set his face firmly against the revolutionary implications of this doctrine. Although welcoming the French Revolution, he rejected the Jacobin idea that Rousseau’s ‘people’ should both make laws and exercise executive power: that was the road to a despotism as odious as the tyranny of a prince. The best safeguard against tyranny was monarchy standing aloof above the law and presiding from Olympian heights over man’s constant struggle to live up to ethical norms. For the individual the categorical imperative was to struggle for perfection by observing the simple maxim: do unto others what you would have them do unto you. But a people had no right to rise up in rebellion to overthrow a tyrannical ruler; to do so was nothing less than a sin against the Holy Ghost. The only redress subjects had against arbitrary rule was the free expression of opinion which, hopefully, would persuade princes that the critics were right.
German liberals did advance well beyond Kant’s non-political stance and in the pre-March period formulated specific programmes designed to curtail the power of monarchs. Nevertheless his highly ethical and individualistic philosophy, with its heavy emphasis on duty and reliance on monarchy as an essential safeguard of bourgeois freedom, continued to exert a profound influence on the German Bürgertum throughout the nineteenth century.
Similarly, the roots of German nationalism were unmistakably indigenous. Whereas the French conceived of self-determination as an abstract right which was activated by a conscious decision on the part of the inhabitants of an area to set up house on their own, those Germans who were nationally conscious were motivated much more by growing awareness of Germany’s past history.
Among those writers who contributed to the growth of German national consciousness, Johann Herder has pride of place. For he has rightly been described as the ‘intellectual father of the national movement’ not only in Germany but in the Slav lands as well.8 Born to poor parents in East Prussia, Herder initially hailed the French Revolution with enthusiasm. Eventually he turned against it, largely because he disagreed with contemporaries who saw in it positive confirmation of the prevalent belief that history was the record of human progress. History for Herder was a more complex and continuous process in which each epoch had some contribution to make to posterity, including even the Middle Ages, hitherto derided by historians as an age of barbarism. Furthermore, he distanced himself from eighteenth-century writers who regarded the existence of nationalities as tiresome differences and a distraction from the goal of a common humanity embracing the educated classes in all lands. Herder stood this belief on its head, arguing that, on the contrary, nationalities were part and parcel of this common humanity. Every people possessed distinctive and permanent characteristics and each made a special contribution to humanity. As Herder believed that the character of a people (Volksgeist) was expressed in language and literature, the preservation of the ancient poetry of each nation was one of his most passionate concerns. But although there were occasionally hints in Herder’s writings that he thought German a superior language, nevertheless he remained in many ways a man of the eighteenth century. His concept of nationalism was basically ethical and cultural in nature and his hope was that nations would compete peacefully for the highest crowns of humanity. Modern nationalism with its political and social connotations was an alien concept to Herder.
Around the turn of the century belief in the Kulturnation as a symbol of nationhood was very widespread. This is true to a great extent of Ernst Moritz Arndt, Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Schleiermacher, members of a group of writers resident in Prussia who figure prominently in nationalist hagiography. Fichte, whose public lectures (Addresses to the German Nation), delivered in Berlin in 1812, were said by the nationalist historian Heinrich von Treitschke to have electrified Germany and earned for him the title of the first German nationalist, was no nationalist in the modern sense. Of course, there were proleptic hints in his demand that the state should be the Sergeant-Major of Germanism (Zwingherr zur Deutschheit) responsible for mobilizing the energies of the nation. But the appeal to his fellow citizens was not for a nation state based on the political and social emancipation of the people. ‘Cosmopolitanism is the will to attain the purpose of life and of man in all mankind,’ he wrote revealingly; ‘… patriotism is the will to attain this purpose first of all in the nation of which we are members and the wish that this light may radiate from this nation to all mankind’.9 It was to achieve this transcendental goal – not to create a nation state – that Fichte advocated a national education system for German boys and girls. The same is true of Arndt. While he wrote passionately of the need for the nation to rise up in arms to throw out the French, on the subject of how this national spirit was to be encapsulated in a nation state he was silent.
Friedrich Jahn is the exception. His book Deutsches Volkstum published in 1810 went much further in proposing concrete political and social reform as the basis for a nation state: the ending of serfdom, the creation of a national army and a popular representative body. True, he accepted monarchy, estates and a hereditary nobility as part of the natural order of things. But for all that, he takes his place as the one writer in this period whose concept of a politically united nation with popular participation (albeit limited) had the essentials of modern nationalism buried in it.
He was also a doer of the word and is remembered as the founder of the gymnastic society (Turngesellschaft) in Berlin in 1811. This, the first organized nationalist body, by 1818 had 150 branches, some in South Germany but most in the north. Jahn shared the widespread belief in the late eighteenth century that physical exercise should be part of a national education system. He gave his gymnastic society a nationalist twist by inculcating into young pupils and students something of his own enthusiasm for a united Germany under one prince – he did, in fact, favour the Hohenzollerns. The gymnastic societies were suppressed in 1819 in the reaction following Kotzebue’s murder.
German nationalism owed much to the Romantic writers. To explain the philosophy of this, the first literary school so called, would be both difficult and unnecessary. The essential point is that because emotion and imagination moved them more than abstract reason, they were particularly sensitive to the first stirrings of popular nationalism at the turn of the century. Disoriented in a rapidly changing world, young writers such as Adam Muller, Friedrich von Hardenberg (known as Novalis) and Friedrich Schlegel turned to history for consolation. Although Arndt and Fichte occasionally referred in their writings to the medieval Reich, the Romantics can really be credited with the rediscovery of the Middle Ages, dismissed as barbaric by eighteenth-century writers. Whereas Herder remained cool and sceptical about medieval values, the Romantics positively enthused about them. They saw Germany by candlelight; in the shadow of ruined Rhineland castles they conjured up a grotesquely unreal and thoroughly unhistorical picture of an unspoilt society where knights, merchants, clergy and peasants were inspired by a truly national spirit and where the Holy Roman Empire had been the focal point of a Christian-German Europe. At a time when few Germans mourned the demise of that crumbling edifice, Romantic writers ensured that the corpse would live on in an idealized form and become the prototype of the united Germany liberals were seeking to create in the nineteenth century. When the Frankfurt Parliament debated unification the preferred frontiers of the new Reich were roughly those of the Holy Roman Empire in its declining years, not those of a modern national state. This outcome was due at least in part to the lasting influence of the Romantics.
Of lasting importance, too, was their doctrine of the state. Whilst Romantics, like classical humanists, believed passionately in the right of the individual to develop his talents to the full, they differed sharply in their attitude to the state. Eighteenth-century men eyed the state with suspicion as a necessary evil to protect individual rights. Some writers, anticipating Karl Marx half a century later, believed the state would wither away in the fulness of time. The Romantics, however, developed a more positive concept of the state. It arose out of their belief that medieval society formed an organic whole ethically superior to the atomized communities of the eighteenth century. Needless to say, the reality of medieval society, fissured by bitter conflict between church and state, princes and towns and peasants and feudal lords, bore little resemblance to this idealized reconstruction.
Nevertheless, the organic theory offered a promising framework for the creation of a nation state harnessing the energies of the people in a common cause. If the state was indeed an organism bringing the people together in a symbiotic union, then the life of the individual was intimately associated with the growth of the community. So the state was not an imposition from above, an external device allowing princes to interfere in the everyday life of subjects, but, as Friedrich Schlegel put it: ‘… a coexisting and successive continuity of men, the totality of those whose relation to one another is determined by the same physical influence’.10 It was only a short step to the realization that factors such as language and historical conditions were not anachronistic impedimenta standing in the way of a world republic but part of the Divine scheme of things designed to allow communities to develop their own identities. There was a much darker side to all this. Once the cult of the irrational had entered political philosophy it was perhaps only a matter of time before it degenerated in the case of Germany into the Blut und Boden mythology of the Nazis.
THE GERMAN REACTION TO FRENCH DOMINATION
The point has been made earlier that the role of literary figures in the growth of German national consciousness should not be exaggerated. Their appeal was restricted to a reading public. Many Germans became nationally conscious, if only in a rudimentary form, as a result of French occupation of German territory. Initially there was much support for the French, especially in the Rhineland. Some of the Bürgertum had a high regard for Napoleon, the harbinger of much-needed political and social change, while others more to the right politically respected him as the bulwark of law and order holding Jacobinism at bay. Illustrious literati such as Goethe and Hegel felt no inhibition in basking in the sunlight beating on the French emperor, the man of destiny and the Weltgeist zu Pferde. On the other hand, though pro-French feeling remained strong in the Rhineland after 1812, even there it was diluted by growing resentment of French rule, for several reasons.
Firstly, Napoleon’s Continental System. Initially, the exclusion of English imports had favoured the growth of some industries, notably textiles, in the Rhineland and Saxony. But North Germany was adversely affected by the loss of English markets for grain, wood and linen. To prevent widespread smuggling of English goods into Germany, the French were obliged to intervene increasingly in German affairs. To seal off the coastline, French troops occupied parts of Prussia and Hanover as well as the ports of Hamburg, Bremen, Lübeck and Danzig with disastrous consequences for many merchants. Nor were the Germans allowed to trade on equal terms with the rest of Napoleon’s Europe. Tariff walls excluded German goods from France, Italy and Holland, while the French ruthlessly exploited German markets. A second cause of discontent were Napoleon’s incessant demands for men to fight in interminable campaigns – one-third of the Grand Army invading Russia was composed of German soldiers. Thirdly, the heavy tax burdens, an inevitable consequence of Napoleon’s wars, aroused growing resentment. Finally, the arrogant and tyrannical behaviour of French officials alienated many Germans hitherto well disposed towards Napoleon. The French chargé d’affaires had always exercised a virtual veto over the actions of state governments. As Napoleon’s difficulties increased after the Spanish Uprising, French officials became even more tyrannical, muzzling the local press and stifling all signs of opposition. The dismissal of Stein from the king of Prussia’s service was only one notable example of the iron grip the French emperor had over Germany.
This accumulated discontent led to an outburst of patriotic feeling in 1813. The story told by Little German historians in the late nineteenth century is a familiar one. As Napoleon retreated from Moscow in December 1812 and the tsar announced his intention of liberating Europe, Prussia roused herself. At first King Frederick III hesitated to break with Napoleon and dismissed General Hans Count von Yorck, commander of the auxiliary army, when he signed an agreement with the Russian commander promising not to resist the Russian advance. Public opinion expressed in the form of anti-French demonstrations changed the king’s mind. In February 1813 Prussia signed a war alliance with Russia.
Symptomatic of the new mood of confidence gripping the educated classes was the removal of all exemptions, making universal conscription a reality at last, and the creation of a new award for bravery: the Iron Cross. Volunteer units, the Free Corps, were established and quickly attracted several thousand citizens. The most famous was the Lützow Corps whose members – over one-third were students, many from other German states – swore an oath of allegiance not to the king but to the fatherland. Incidentally, the Corps’ black uniform with red stripes and yellow piping may have been the origin of the German national colours. Enthusiastic townsfolk also contributed a staggering six and a half million talers for the war effort. Carried forward on this patriotic wave – so the story goes – Prussia declared war on France in March 1813. The next day the king called on the people to sacrifice themselves in the struggle for independence in the name of king, fatherland and honour.
Though the ‘spirit of 1813’ became an important ingredient in the mythology of German nationalism, modern research has shown that it was greatly exaggerated. For one thing, the ‘spirit’ was confined to Prussia and Westphalia. In the rest of Germany, despite resentment at heavy taxation and the arrogance of French officials, there was still much residual sympathy for Napoleon. The Saxons fought side by side with the French against the Prussians in 1813. General Yorck, the hero of nationalist accounts, was in fact forced into his ‘self-sacrificing’ deed by pressure from his own officers who were ready to join with the Russians. Prussian enthusiasm for the war was strictly limited. Rural communities, forming 75 per cent of the total population, were virtually untouched. Basically support for the war was an urban phenomenon; 12 per cent of the volunteers who flocked to the colours were students and officials and 41 per cent craftsmen – this may perhaps have been due to the introduction of freedom of entry into trades (Gewerbefreiheit) in 1810 which had permitted journeymen apprentices to set up in business on their own and gave them a positive incentive to fight. As for the much-publicized Lützow Free Corps, it was kept away from the front line – whether because the king was suspicious of its social composition or, more likely, because it could not in the nature of things be an effective fighting force is an open question. It operated as a flying column – brigands noirs as the French called it – harrying the enemy, and was finally disbanded allegedly for breaking the armistice.
What is of particular interest about the War of Liberation in terms of the development of nationalism are the pseudo-religious overtones creeping into nationalist writing. In practice, far from being a secular ideology, nationalism has invariably employed the imagery and language of religion. Thus Theodor Körner spoke of the coming battle as ‘not war as crowns know it, it is a crusade, it is a holy war’.11 In other words, this was not to be an old-style campaign waged by professional armies but a total war waged by a people in arms inspired by a love of fatherland of quasi-religious intensity. Arndt and Jahn in a fit of xenophobic nationalism claimed that the Germans were superior to all other peoples – because of the alleged purity of their language – and destined to play a leading role in European affairs. The patriotic mood of 1813 was bitterly anti-French. In the most famous of all patriotic songs, ‘Was ist des deutschen Vaterland’, Arndt appealed to Germans to create a fatherland out of all the territories where German was spoken and where ‘every Frenchman would be an enemy’.12 ‘Unity of hearts be your church, hate against Frenchmen your religion. Freedom and fatherland be the saints you pray to’ was another piece of advice he offered his readers.13
The fact that the poems and songs circulating during this war ran into hundreds of thousands of copies indicates a wide readership. But at this stage, before socio-economic changes had begun to alter the material base of society, nationalistic outbursts, however intense, simply could not survive into peace-time.
It was the professional army, reformed by Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and not Free Corps which helped turn Napoleon out of Germany. Even so, Prussian military efforts alone would not have sufficed. In May 1813, with a hastily recruited French and Rhine Confederation army, Napoleon defeated the Russians and Prussians at Grossgörschen and Bautzen. Then he blundered; instead of driving home his advantage he played for time, offering his enemies an armistice. His attempts to detach Russia from Prussia and to prevent Austria joining them were, however, frustrated by the brilliance of the Austrian chancellor’s diplomacy. Prince Klemens von Metternich delayed a decision until Austria was ready to fight. During the negotiations with Prussia he persuaded the king to abandon the revolutionary programme contained in the Proclamation of Kalisch. In this statement of allied war aims the Russian commander, under the influence of Stein, agreed to press for the restoration of the rights and independence of the princes and peoples of Germany and Europe, the dissolution of the Rhine Confederation and the creation of a new united German Reich. Princes who hesitated to abandon the Confederation were bluntly threatened with the loss of their thrones. But by August 1813 when Austria allied with Russia and Prussia, the Kalisch programme had been superseded by a commitment to restore a balance of power in Europe and guarantee the independence of the German princes. All hope of a united Reich was thus effectively sabotaged. This time Napoleon was defeated at the battle of Leipzig and forced to retreat across the Rhine. In May 1814 Paris was occupied and Napoleon was forced to make peace.
When the Congress of Vienna met, scant attention was paid to the agitation of a handful of Prussian patriots for a united Reich led by Prussia, or to the pleas of others such as Stein for the restoration of the Holy Roman Empire. Power-political considerations and wartime commitments to the German princes, coupled with an overwhelming desire for peace and stability, were decisive. If Central Europe was to become a bulwark against renewed French aggression in the west and Russian expansionism in the east – and such were the aims of Metternich and the British foreign secretary Viscount Stewart Castlereagh – the principle of legitimacy had to go out of the window and the petty princelings could not be restored. To that extent the clock could not be put back. On the other hand, the peace-makers had no desire to create a powerful united German Reich likely to upset the balance of power too much. In the end, as Austria and Prussia could not agree on any intermediate solution, the Congress settled for the creation of the German Confederation (Deutscher Bund), a loose grouping of thirty-nine states presided over by Austria.
The Confederation was reviled by Prussian patriots at the time and denounced by later Prussian historians as an obstacle to the creation of Little Germany. Given the power configurations of 1815 and the weakness of national feeling, this was the only possible solution. More recently revisionist historians, lamenting the post-war division of Germany into three states, have looked back nostalgically to the Confederation. It did at least enable the Germans to remain at peace for half a century, a better record than the German Empire’s forty-three years and certainly better than the twenty years’ peace Germany had between the two world wars. Given time, so these historians argue, the German Confederation might even have developed into a nation state – a contention we will return to later in this book.
NATIONALISM AND LIBERALISM 1815–60
The growth of liberalism and nationalism in the first half of the nineteenth century has been described many times. To repeat it here would be superfluous. However, to understand the origins of the wars of 1864, 1866 and 1870 it is necessary to explain the changing relationship between these new ideologies and the old power structures in Germany.
Before 1840 liberalism and nationalism remained relatively weak ideological concepts supported by a small minority of educated people: a handful of writers, a few merchants in the Rhineland, some state officials and a few (but by no means all) university professors. Given the regionalism of the German-speaking parts of Europe and the obvious difficulties of determining ‘national’ frontiers in Central Europe, it is hardly surprising that German nationalism remained an open-ended concept in these years, shrouded in a cosmopolitan haze. Early nineteenth-century nationalists wanted a strong Reich not because they wanted to dominate Europe by force or to demonstrate a mystical sense of folkish solidarity, but only as a vehicle for expressing humanistic values. Germany’s mission, so they argued, was to draw the peoples of Europe to her to share in her great cultural heritage. Those who harped on specifically ‘German’ characteristics, as did members of the student societies (Burschenschaften) with their long beards, way-out clothes and preference for long German rather than short French words, were dismissed as ‘unGerman’ by all right-thinking nationalists.
Typical of the cosmopolitan attitude of most nationalists was the argument of Friedrich Dahlmann, then professor of history at Kiel University and later a prominent figure during the 1848 Revolution, that if Denmark were given German territory to compensate her for the loss of Norway, this would be positively beneficial for the Confederation; the presence of Danish troops on German soil, far from being a symbol of subservience to a foreign power, would be welcome proof that Germany was free of the xenophobic nationalism characteristic of the hated French invader. And when the Frankfurt Parliament debated the national issue in 1848 it favoured frontiers for the new Reich which were not ‘national’ by modern standards, i.e. the frontiers of the Confederation extended to include Prussia’s eastern possessions plus the duchy of Schleswig. The ready acceptance by nationalists that Poles, Czechs and Danes could be part of a German Reich indicates that nationalism was still largely a cultural concept rather than a political one, even in the late 1840s.
The appeal of nationalism was limited for another reason: the overwhelmingly agrarian nature of German society from the Rhine to the Oder. All over Europe peoples were solidly rooted in their localities. Parish-pump loyalty (Kirchenturmpatriotismus) was the dominant sentiment. This was coupled in many cases with a sense of loyalty and even affection for the ruling dynasty, largely because the reforms carried out by some princes had enabled them to weld their territories into homogeneous states. Regional patriotism, especially in Bavaria and Württemberg, was acquiring deep roots in the rural population, a point we will return to presently.
Liberalism, too, was very much a minority ideology appealing to much the same people as those who wanted a ‘national’ Reich. The fact that German princes reacted violently to isolated incidents such as the murder of Kotzebue in 1819, the Hambach Festival in 1832 and the abortive attack on the Frankfurt arsenal in 1833 was much more an indication of the psychological insecurity of princes than a measure of the popular support enjoyed by ‘revolutionaries’.
As a movement pre-March liberalism was weak and divided. Liberals worked in isolation, concentrating their efforts on trying to secure constitutions in their own states. Only very occasionally did a liberal cause arouse wider interest, as in 1837 when seven Göttingen professors were dismissed for refusing to swear the oath of allegiance to the new king of Hanover who had abrogated the 1833 constitution. It is frankly impossible to generalize about the nature of German liberalism, so wide were regional variations. At one end of the spectrum were liberals who had more in common with conservatives in their attempts to revive the remnants of medieval estates lingering on in some places, while at the other end, notably in South and West Germany, liberals were much more attracted by foreign models, especially the French constitution of 1830. In some states, especially in Baden, Württemberg and Hesse-Darmstadt, local liberals enjoyed some popular support largely because they were able to voice the grievances of, for example, lower-middle-class artisans in the consultative assemblies set up by South German princes. But despite occasional angry clashes with sovereigns, the administrative officials who represented the liberal cause in these states were content to remedy local grievances and had no desire to alter the political status quo.
There were admittedly signs in 1830–2 that the desire for a united Germany could arouse interest outside a small élite. The Hambach Festival of 1832, organized by the newly formed Press and Fatherland Society, was a case in point. It attracted at least 25,000 people ranging from middle-class elements, students and merchants to artisans and even some farmers. Significantly most came from the Rhineland Palatinate, for the centre of the national movement had shifted after 1819 from Prussia to South and South-West Germany where some (limited) constitutional progress was being made in the local estates. Even so, Hambach was very much a flash in the pan. Not until the 1840s did liberalism and nationalism begin to win wider support in Germany.
The new decade opened with the Rhineland Crisis of 1840. This crisis was marked by an upsurge of national feeling which for the first time, if only temporarily, seems to have gripped all classes. Attention was again focused on Prussia because her geographical proximity to France made her the natural guardian of the Rhineland against French aggression. Consequently Prussia was seen increasingly in the 1840s as the power most likely to take the lead in creating a strong Reich. This feeling was strengthened by the accession in 1840 of King Frederick William IV, widely acclaimed as an idealist sympathetic to the national cause as well as an opponent of reactionary domestic policies. Once it was apparent that hopes of significant reform were misplaced, interest in the creation of a strong Reich to solve the political and social problems which individual states were manifestly incapable of doing increased still further.
Consequently national consciousness did not evaporate after the 1840 Crisis as it did fairly soon after the War of Liberation. Sustained by the discontents in society, the National Liberals, as they were called in the 1840s, were able to establish organizations which gave institutional form to the new ideology. These were principally the gymnastic societies (Turnvereine) and glee clubs (Sängervereine). Once the ban had been removed in 1842 gymnastic societies sprang up all over Germany, principally in Saxony and the south-west; on the eve of the 1848 Revolution 300 societies with over 90,000 members were in existence. Perhaps more important still were the glee clubs; 1100 with 100,000 members had been established by 1847. Both societies actively promoted nationalism, principally through regional festivals and in the case of the glee clubs through national festivals. Three such festivals were held, the first at Würzburg in 1845, attended by contingents from glee clubs chiefly in Bavaria, Württemberg and Baden, the second at Cologne in 1846 and the third at Lübeck in 1847. These festivals, which were attended by thousands of Germans, certainly played an important role in disseminating nationalist propaganda on a regional basis. The gymnastic displays or glee sessions were preceded by solemn ceremonies and interspersed with entertainments, fireworks and political speeches delivered by prominent National Liberals awakening at last to the need for contact with the mass of the population. The flags, the emblems, the songs and the political speeches helped to imbue those Germans coming together from different areas with a new sense of solidarity. But attendance was restricted in the main to middle-class citizens. However, as the decade moved to a close the lower middle class was increasingly involved: clerks, shop assistants, elementary school teachers and artisans. With the exception of Baden and the Palatinate the rural population was little affected.
The modernization of Germany facilitated the spread of nationalism in this decade. For example, the improvement in communications clearly assisted in the staging of festivals whilst the growth of the press and the proliferation of newspapers and periodicals stimulated the emergence of political groupings. There were already signs of a significant bifurcation of liberal opinion during the 1830 Revolution which was marked by uprisings in Brunswick, Saxony, Hanover and Electoral Hesse. Upper middle-class liberals, supported by the new manufacturing élite and by higher officials in states such as Prussia and Bavaria, were seeking orderly constitutional change within a monarchical framework. Lower middle-class elements such as artisans and students, who had manned the barricades in 1830 and attended the Hambach Festival in great numbers, were demanding a national state with democratic and republican features. This process of political differentiation was accelerated on the eve of the 1848 Revolution. In October moderate liberals met at Heppenheim to draw up a programme for political change, having been galvanized into action by the meeting of radicals in September in Oppenheim which formulated demands for a democratic constitution.
During the initial stages of the 1848–9 Revolution liberalism seemed to have triumphed over princely power. This was all illusion. The liberal victory was due not to the persuasive power of their ideology but to revolutionary pressures in town and countryside over which liberals had no control. Accumulated social discontent erupted into violence, forcing the princes to retreat temporarily and allowing the liberals to occupy the centre of the stage by default. The illusion of power was fostered for some time by the moral authority enjoyed by the Frankfurt Parliament. By the autumn the princes had recovered their nerve and regained their old authority. The liberals were unable to resist the restoration partly because they lacked material force but also because, fearing the spread of radicalism as much as the excesses of princely power, they sided with rulers against the radicals after the June Days.
Whilst the Revolution did not lead to any permanent alteration in the balance between the new ideology and the old power structures, two significant changes had occurred. Firstly, a much wider section of the middle class had become politically conscious. In political clubs (Bürgervereine) all over Germany constitutional issues and the problem of national unification had been regularly debated in 1848–9.This new political awareness remained a permanent feature, so that at least in middle-class circles a groundswell of opinion favourable to political change came into being in the course of the 1850s. This was a phenomenon to which Austria and Prussia paid some attention, for the contest between them was not simply a military and economic struggle but had a significant public-relations dimension as well.
Secondly, the Revolution administered a profound psychological shock to ruling élites all over Europe. What the ruling classes remembered about 1848–9 was not the studied moderation of Ludolf Camphausen and Heinrich von Gagern but the radicalism of Friedrich Hecker and Gustav von Struve, whose naïve attempt to overthrow the princes by force had failed at the outset of the Revolution. Although radicalism suffered a decisive defeat in 1848–9, when liberalism revived in the 1860s princes – for whom radicalism and liberalism were synonymous terms – supposed that their thrones were once more in danger. Objectively speaking, there was little threat of social revolution at a time when the industrial proletariat was still in its infancy. All the same, the conviction of ruling élites that the danger existed is a factor of considerable importance in understanding the attitude of the Prussian government and court circles during that decade.
Finally, the 1860s, a decade which was deeply coloured by the upsurge of German national feeling in 1859 during the French attack on Austria. This was deeply anti-French in nature because many Germans feared that if France won in Northern Italy she would then seize the Rhineland. The failure of Austria and Prussia to combine against this threat exposed very clearly the military weakness of the Confederation and strengthened the growing feeling that a strong Reich was a categorical imperative to enable Germany to resist the hereditary foe. This anti-French mood was reinforced in 1860 by Napoleon’s acquisition of Savoy and Nice. In this age of Realpolitik, liberalism was changing in nature. The events of 1859–60 confirmed the conviction that satisfactory constitutional arrangements were secondary to the achievement of national unification, which was increasingly seen as Prussia’s task by many Germans. The creation of the kingdom of Italy in 1860–1 was an additional spur; what the Italians had achieved must be achieved by the Germans without further delay.
This decade was marked by a significant proliferation of organizations working for the creation of a united Little Germany under Prussian auspices. Basically this arose out of the industrial and commercial expansion of Germany in the mid nineteenth century. Businessmen and professional people, increasingly irritated by restrictions on economic activity and convinced of the benefits which would flow from unification, set out to create a groundswell of opinion favourable to the creation of a strong Reich. In 1858 the Congress of German Economists (Congress deutscher Volkswirte) was founded, a body which met annually and attracted support from civil servants, journalists and academics as well as merchants, financiers and industrialists. The aim of the Congress was to promote tariff reform and the removal of restrictive legislation, which could be achieved – so it was argued – only in a united Germany. In 1860 the German Jurists Congress (Congress deutscher Juristen) was founded to promote reform of the legal system. In 1861 the chambers of commerce springing up all over Germany founded the German Commercial Association (Deutscher Handelstag) to agitate for a reformed commercial code. Out of the inaugural meeting at Heidelberg came initiatives which led to the creation of the National Society (Nationalverein). This body – taking its name significantly from the Italian society which harnessed middle-class opinion behind Cavour – was established to coordinate liberal political activity. It was a sign of the times that radicals joined with moderate liberals in the National Society, so strong was the desire for a powerful Reich able to stand up to the French. Although it had only 25,000 members at its height, the Society played a significant role in creating, especially in North Germany, a steamhead of opinion favourable to the creation of Little Germany. Through local branches the National Society even enjoyed some lower middle-class support. But the upper-class leadership never sought to build up a mass membership, partly because of a fear of the lower orders but also, in fairness to the National Liberals, because they supposed governments would in the end be persuaded by the power of superior (middle-class) arguments alone.14
Commencing with the celebrations of the centenary of Schiller’s birth in November 1859, popular festivals blossomed in the next decade. In 1861 the German Sharpshooters’ League (Deutscher Schützenbund) was founded and in 1862 the German Glee Singers’ League (Deutscher Sangerbund). Both were highly nationalistic organizations actively encouraged by the National Society. Thousands were attracted to the annual meeting of these bodies; for example, 16,000 singers attended the German Glee Festival at Dresden in 1864 and 20,000 gymnasts appeared at the Leipzig Gymnasts’ Festival in 1863. But membership was still fairly limited; there were only 11,000 members of the Sharpshooters’ League in 1862 and these were largely from the middle class. Only among the gymnasts was a lower-class element present, especially in South and West Germany. And as in the 1840s, rural areas were still largely unaffected.
Yet in their totality all these organizations, from the Congress of German Economists to the Sharpshooters’ League, contributed to the creation of an opinion favourable to unification. Furthermore, they had interlocking directorates and overlapping memberships. ‘The same liberals,’ says one authority, ‘who supported the Progressive Party joined the Nationalverein, attended the sessions of the Congress of German Economists, and addressed the meetings of gymnasts and sharpshooters’.15 Whilst it would be most misleading to suggest that national liberalism modified in any fundamental sense the policies of Austria and Prussia in the 1860s, nevertheless the existence of a steamhead of middle-class opinion favouring unification was an objective factor of considerable psychological importance which both powers tried to exploit. To this extent power structures in Germany had become more responsive to ideological forces.
Reference was made earlier to the contrast between the weakness of nationalism in the first half of the nineteenth century and the strength of local feeling. In many states, such as Bavaria, Württemberg and Baden, rulers had successfully welded their territories together on the basis of administrative measures and had brought into being a very genuine state patriotism. It is well known that the Little German historians dismissed regional patriotism with contempt as narrow-minded ‘particularism’ which served no purpose other than to oppose the realization by Prussia of her ‘historic’ mission to create Little Germany and oust Austria from Germany. More will be said later about present-day reactions to this sweeping condemnation of regional patriotism. But it is important to understand that regional patriotism had its philosophical defenders. For example, writing in 1833 the editor of the Politisches Wochenblatt commented that:
… the German fatherland has its very own principle of existence precisely in that legitimate variety which is to be sacrificed to the deceptive picture of a false patriotism …. Do not let us chase after castles in the air, let us allow the French their levelling-down concept of equality, their departments, their centralization and their vanity and let us preserve the true knowledge that on the contrary Germany’s unity consists precisely [in the fact] that in each part of the German fatherland, even in the smallest part, special life impulses are beating which give nourishment to the heart’.16
Behind these remarks lay a conservative philosophy of nationalism which differed profoundly from liberal theory. The starting-point was not the will of a people to assert its independence but the belief that the deep-rooted customs and traditions of the Germans in what was an intensely regional land were all equally valid manifestations of a common Volksgeist. There was, therefore, not one German nation as the liberals maintained but several, each with a right to an independent political existence. In practice only the larger states – Austria, Prussia, Bavaria Württemberg, Saxony, Hanover and perhaps Baden – were strong enough politically to think of themselves as separate German nations within the larger political entity of the German Confederation. But should one of these states expand at the expense of the others and disrupt the existing status quo, then the conservative philosophy – unlike the liberal theory of nationalism – opened up the possibility that the aggressor would not forfeit its German character. That is what Bismarck had in mind when he observed four years before he came to power that ‘there is nothing more German than Prussian particularism properly understood’.17 The way was opened up for a marriage of convenience between this form of nationalism and the creation by force of arms of Great Prussia.
NOTES AND REFERENCES
1. Quoted in Dietrich Eichholtz, Junker und Bourgeoisie vor 1848 in der preussischen Eisenbahngeschichte (Berlin, 1962), pp. 7–8.
2. E. G. O. Dann (ed.), Nationalismus und sozialer Wandel (Hamburg, 1978).
3. J. R. Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire (London, 1941), p. 410.
4. G. P. Gooch, Germany and the French Revolution (London, 1965), p. 52.
5. The Swiss historian Johannes Muller, then in the service of the elector of Mainz, while writing enthusiastically in August 1789 about events in France went on to say ‘… what is occurring in France does not inspire a desire for imitation; and people would rather retain the good or the tolerable than buy the better too dearly’. Quoted in G. P. Gooch, op. cit. p. 48. Cf. Schlözer of Hanover, another supporter of revolution in 1789: ‘… no such revolution is in store for Germany. Abuses will be abolished by reasonable inquiries, not by gunpowder’: ibid. p. 75.
6. James J. Sheehan, ‘What is German History? Reflections on the Role of the Nation in German History and Historiography’, JMH 53 (1981), p. 7.
7. A. Ramm, Germany 1789–1919: A Political History (London, 1967), p. 113.
8. R. Aris, History of Political Thought in Germany from 1789 to 1815 (London, 1965), p. 235.
9. Quoted in R. Aris, op.cit. p. 353.
10. Ibid. p. 284.
11. Quoted in D. Düding, Organisierter gesellschaftlicher Nationalismus in Deutschland (1808–1847) (München, 1984), p. 107.
12. Quoted in J. S. Nollen, German Poems 1800–1850 (Boston, USA, 1912), p. 33.
13. E. M. Arndt, Geist der Zeit, Teil 3 (Altona, London, Berlin, 1814), p. 430.
14. A. L. Rochau, editor of the Woehenschrift, the organ of the National Society, rejected a proposal for the production of a cheap paper to reach the lower classes as ‘nonsense … these are not the classes which make politics and history in Germany’. Quoted in Lenore O’Boyle, ‘The German Nationalverein’ J. Central European Affairs, 16, 1956/7, p. 337.
15. Theodore S. Hamerow, The Social Foundations of German Unification 1858–1871: Ideas and Institutions (Princeton, 1969) p. 358.
16. Quoted in Peter Alter, ‘Nationalbewusstsein und Nationalstaat der Deutschen’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B 1/86, 4 January 1986.
17. GW 2 no. 343, March 1858, Einige Bemerkungen über Preussens Stellung im Bunde, p. 317.