A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4

W >> Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks >> Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4




Alsace and Lorraine, Switzerland and the new kingdom of the
Netherlands, the provinces of Luxemburg excepted, were no longer
regarded as forming part of Germany. Austria received Milan and Venice
under the title of a Lombardo-Venetian kingdom, the Illyrian provinces
also as a kingdom, Venetian Dalmatia, the Tyrol,[3] Vorarlberg,
Salzburg, the Inn, and Hausruckviertel, and the part of Galicia ceded
by her at an earlier period. The grandduchy of Tuscany and the duchies
of Modena, Parma, and Placentia were, moreover, restored to the
collateral branches of the house of Habsburg.[4]--Prussia received
half of Saxony, the grand-duchy of Posen, Swedish-Pomerania,[5] a
great portion of Westphalia, and almost the whole of the Lower Rhine
from Mayence as far as Aix-la-Chapelle.[6] Since this period Prussia
is that one which, among all the states of Germany, possesses the
greatest number of German subjects, Austria, although more
considerable in extent, containing a population of which by far the
greater proportion is not German. Bavaria, in exchange for the
provinces again ceded by her to Austria, received the province of
Wurzburg together with Aschaffenburg and the Upper Rhenish Pfalz under
the title of Rhenish-Bavaria. Hanover received East Friesland, which
had hitherto been dependent upon Prussia. Out of this important
province, which opened the North Sea to Prussia, was Hardenberg
cajoled by the wily English. The electorates of Hesse, Brunswick, and
Oldenburg were restored. Everything else was allowed to subsist as at
the time of the Rhenish confederation. All the petty princes and
counts, then mediatized, continued to be so.

The ancient empire, instead of being re-established, was, on the 8th
of June, 1815, replaced by a German confederation, composed of the
thirty-nine German states that had escaped the general ruin; Austria,
Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover, Wurtemberg, Baden, electoral Hesse,
Darmstadt, Denmark on account of Holstein,[7] the Netherlands on
account of Luxemburg, Brunswick, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Nassau,
Saxe-Weimar, Saxe-Gotha (where the reigning dynasty became extinct,
and the duchy was partitioned among the other Saxon houses of the
Ernestine line), Saxe-Coburg, Saxe-Meiningen, Saxe-Hildburghausen,
Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Holstein-Oldenburg, Anhalt-Dessau, Anhalt-
Bernburg, Anhalt-Kothen, Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, Schwarzburg-
Rudolstadt, Hohenzollern-Hechingen, Lichtenstein, Hohenzollern-
Sigmaringen, Waldeck, Reuss the elder, and Reuss the younger
branch,[8] Schaumburg-Lippe, Lippe-Detmold, Hesse-Homburg: finally,
the free towns, Lubeck, Frankfort on the Maine, Bremen, and
Hamburg.[9] At Frankfort on the Maine a permanent diet, consisting of
plenipotentiaries from the thirty-nine states, was to hold its
session. The votes were, however, so regulated that the eleven states
of first rank alone held a full vote, the secondary states merely
holding a half or a fourth part of a vote, as, for instance, all the
Saxon duchies collectively, one vote; Brunswick and Nassau, one; the
two Mecklenburgs, one; Oldenburg, Anhalt, and Schwarzburg, one; the
petty princes of Hohenzollern, Lichtenstein, Reuss, Lippe, and
Waldeck, one; all the free towns, one; forming altogether in the diet
seventeen votes. In constitutional questions relating to regulations
of the confederation the _plenum_ was to be allowed, that is, the six
states of the highest rank were to have each four votes, the next five
states each three, Brunswick, Schwerin, and Nassau, each two, and all
the remaining princes without distinction, each one vote.[10]--Austria
held the permanent presidency. In all resolutions relating to the
fundamental laws, the organic regulations of the confederation, the
_jura singulorum_ and matters of religion, unanimity was required. All
the members of the confederation bound themselves neither to enter
into war nor into any foreign alliance against the confederation or
any of its members. The thirteenth article declared, "Each of the
confederated states will grant a constitution to the people." The
sixteenth placed all Christian sects throughout the German
confederation on an equality. The eighteenth granted freedom of
settlement within the limits of the confederation, and promised
"uniformity of regulation concerning the liberty of the press." The
fortresses of Luxemburg, Mayence, and Landau were declared the common
property of the confederation and occupied in common by their troops.
A fourth fortress was to have been raised on the Upper Rhine with
twenty millions of the French contribution money. It has not yet been
erected.

This was the new constitution given to Germany. According to the
treaty of Paris it could not be otherwise modelled, and it is
explained by the foreign influence that then prevailed. The diet
assembled at Frankfort on the Maine, and was opened by Count
Buol-Schauenstein with a solemn address, which excited no enthusiasm.
An orator in the American assembly at that time observed, "The
non-development of the seed contained in Germany appears to be the
common aim of a resolute policy."

All now united for the complete suppression of the German patriotic
party. In the former Rhenish confederated states, it had been treated
with open contempt[11] ever since Gentz had given the signal for
persecution in Austria. Prussia, however, also drove all those who had
most faithfully served her in her hour of need from her bosom. Stein
was compelled to withdraw to Kappenberg, his country estate. Gruner
was removed from office and sent as ambassador to Switzerland, where
he died. The Rhenish Mercury, that had performed such great services
to Prussia, was prohibited, and Gorres was threatened with the house
of correction.[12] All other papers of a patriotic tendency were also
suppressed. In Jena, Oken and Luden, in Weimar, Wieland the younger,
alone ventured for some time to give utterance to their liberal
opinions, which were finally also reduced to silence.

Patriotic enthusiasm was, however, not so speedily suppressed amid the
youthful students in the academies and universities. Jahn's gymnastic
schools (_Turnschulen_), the members of which were distinguished by
the German costume, a short black frock coat, a black cap, linen
trousers, a bare neck with turned-over shirt-collar, extended far and
wide and were in close connection with the _Burschenschaften_ of the
universities. The prescribed object of these _Turnschulen_ was the
promotion of Christian, moral, German manners, the universal
fraternization of all German students, the complete eradication of the
provincialism and license inherent in the various associations formed
at the universities. They wore Jahn's German costume and always acted
publicly, until their suppression, when the remaining members formed
secret associations. On the 18th of October, 1817, the students of
Jena, Halle, and Leipzig, and those of some of the more distant
universities, assembled in order to solemnize the jubilee on the three
hundredth anniversary of the Reformation, on the Wartburg, where, in
imitation of Luther, they committed a number of servile works,
inimical to the German cause, to the flames, as Görres at that time
said, "filled with anger that the same reformation required of the
church by Luther should be sanctioned, but at the same time refused,
by the state." The black, red, and yellow tricolor was hoisted for the
first time on this occasion. These were in reality the ancient colors
of the empire and were regarded as such by the patriotic students, but
were purposely looked upon by the French and their adherents in
Germany as an imitation of the tricolored flag of the French republic.
The festival solemnized on the Wartburg was speedily succeeded by
others. The _Turner_, more particularly at Berlin and Breslau,
rendered themselves conspicuous not only by their dress but by their
insolence, boys even of the tenderest years putting themselves forward
as reformers of the government and of society, and singing the most
bloodthirsty songs of liberty. The Prussian government interfered, and
the gymnastic exercises, so well suited to the subjects of a warlike
state, were once more prohibited.

At the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, Stourdza, the Russian councillor
of state, a Wallachian by birth, presented a memorial in which the
spirit of the German universities was described as revolutionary. The
_Burschenschaft_ of Jena sent him a challenge. Kotzebue, the Russian
councillor of state and celebrated dramatist, at length published a
weekly paper in which he turned every indication of German patriotism
to ridicule, and exercised his wit upon the individual eccentricities
of the students affecting the old German costume, of precocious boys
and doting professors. The rage of the galled universities rose to a
still higher pitch on the discovery, made and incontestably proved by
Luden, that Kotzebue sent secret bulletins, filled with invective and
suspicion, to St. Petersburg. To execrate Kotzebue had become so
habitual at the universities that a young man, Sand from Wunsiedel, a
theological student of Jena, noted for piety and industry, took the
fanatical resolution to free, or at least to wipe off a blot from his
country, by the assassination of an enemy whose importance he, in the
delusion of hatred, vastly overrated; and he accordingly went, in
1819, to Mannheim, plunged his dagger into Kotzebue's heart, and then
attempted his own life, but only succeeded in inflicting a slight
wound. He was beheaded in the ensuing year. Loning, the apothecary,
probably excited by Sand's example, also attempted the life of the
president of Nassau, Ibell, who, however, seized him, and he committed
suicide in prison. These events occasioned a congress at Carlsbad in
1819, which took the state of Germany into deliberation, placed each
of the universities under the supervision of a government officer,
suppressed the _Burschenschaft_, prohibited their colors, and fixed a
central board of scrutiny at Mayence,[13] which acted on the
presupposition of the existence of a secret and general conspiracy for
the purposes of assassination and revolution, and of Sand's having
acted not from personal fanaticism and religious aberration, but as
the agent of some unknown superiors in some new and mysterious
tribunal. This inquisition was carried on for years and a crowd of
students peopled the prisons; conspiracies perilous to the state were,
however, nowhere discovered, but simply a great deal of ideal
enthusiasm. The elder men in the universities, who, either in their
capacity as tutors or authors, had fed the enthusiasm of the youthful
students, were also removed from their situations. Jahn was arrested,
Arndt was suspended at Bonn and Fries at Jena; Gorres, who had
perseveringly published the most violent pamphlets, was compelled to
take refuge in Switzerland, which also offered an asylum to Dewette,
the Berlin professor of theology, who had been deprived of his chair
on account of a letter addressed by him to Sand's mother. Oken, the
great naturalist, who refused to give up "Isis," a periodical
publication, also withdrew to Switzerland. Numbers of the younger
professors went to America.[14] The solemnization of the October
festival was also prohibited, and the triumphal monument on the field
of Leipzig was demolished.


[Footnote 1: William V., the expelled hereditary stadtholder, died in
obscurity at Brunswick in 1806. His son, William, had, in 1802,
received Fulda in compensation, but afterward served Prussia, was, in
1806, taken prisoner with Möllendorf at Erfurt and afterward set at
liberty, served again, in 1809, under Austria, and then retired to
England, whence he returned on the expulsion of the French to receive
a crown, which he accepted with a good deal of assurance, complaining,
at the same time, of the loss of his former possession, Fulda, a
circumstance strongly commented upon by Stein in his letters to
Gagern. William, in return for his elevation to a throne by the arms
of Germany, closed the mouths of the Rhine against her.]

[Footnote 2: Zurich, Berne, Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Glarus,
Zug, Freiburg, Solothurn, Basel, Schaffhausen, Appenzell, St. Gall,
the Grisons, Aargau, Constance, Tessin, the Vaud, Valais, Neuenburg
(Neufchatel), Geneva. The nineteen cantons of 1805 remained _in statu
quo_, only those of Valais, Neufchatel, and Geneva were confederated
with them, and Pruntrut with the ancient bishopric of Basel were
restored to Berne.]

[Footnote 3: The deed of possession of the 26th June, 1814, runs as
follows: "Not by an arbitrary, despotic encroachment upon the order of
things, but by the hands of the Providence that blessed the arms of
your emperor and of the allied princes and by a holy alliance are you
restored to the house of Austria."]

[Footnote 4: Tuscany fell to Ferdinand, the former grandduke of
Wurzburg; Modena to Francis, son of the deceased duke, Ferdinand;
Parms and Placantia to Maria Louisa, the wife and widow of Napoleon.]

[Footnote 5: Not long before, in the treaty of Kiel, there had been
question of bestowing Swedish-Pomerania upon Denmark; to this Prussia
refused to accede and Denmark agreed to take 2,600,000 dollars in
compensation. Prussia was also compelled to pay 3,500,500 dollars to
Sweden.]

[Footnote 6: Rehfues, the director of the circle, a Wurtemberg
Protestant, published a circular at Bonn, in which he promised full
religious security to the Catholic inhabitants, whom he reminded of
Prussia's having been "the last supporter of the order of
Jesus."--_Allgemeine Zeitung of 1814, No. 234._]

[Footnote 7: Holstein alone, not Schleswig, was enumerated as
belonging to the German confederation, although both duchies were long
ago closely united by the _nexus socialis_, more particularly in the
representation at the diet.]

[Footnote 8: The Reusses, formerly imperial governors of Plauen,
diverged into so many branches that, as early as 1664, they agreed to
distinguish themselves by numbers, which at first amounted to thirty,
but at a later period to a hundred, afterward recommencing at number
one. The family took the name of Reuss from the Russian wife of its
founder, in the beginning of the fourteenth century.]

[Footnote 9: Hamburg had vainly petitioned for the restitution of her
bank, of which she had been deprived by Davoust. She received merely a
small portion of the general war tax levied upon France.]

[Footnote 10: Austria and Prussia contain forty-two million
inhabitants; the rest of Germany merely twelve million; the power of
the two former stands consequently in proportion to that of the rest
of Germany as forty-two to twelve or seven to two, while their votes
in the diet stood not contrariwise, as two to seven, but as two to
seventeen in the plenary assembly, and as two to fifteen in the lesser
one.]

[Footnote 11: Aretin, who, at the time of the Rhenish confederation,
insolently mocked and had denounced every indication of German
patriotism, ventured to say in his "Alemannia," in the beginning of
1817, "'The patriotic colors,' 'the voice of the people,'
'nationality,' 'the extirpation of foreign influence,' are words now
forgotten, magic sounds that have lost their power."]

[Footnote 12: By Sack, the government commissary, who even confiscated
the Rhenish Mercury, an earlier and unprohibited paper, and arrested
the printer, against which Görres violently protested in a letter
addressed to Sack. Görres made a triumphant defence before the
tribunal at Treves, and observed, "Strange that the most violent enemy
to France should seek the protection of French courts!"]

[Footnote 13: The names of these inquisitors were Schwarz, Grano,
Hörmann, Bar, Pfister, Preusschen, Moussel.]

[Footnote 14: Charles Follen, brother to the poet Louis Adolphus
Follen, private teacher of law at Jena, a young man of great spirit
and talent, who at that period exercised great influence over the
youth of Germany, was wrecked, in 1840, in a steamer in North America
and drowned.]



CCLXV. The New Constitutions


Germany had, notwithstanding her triumph, regained neither her ancient
unity nor her former power, but still continued to be merely a
confederation of states, bound together by no firm tie and regarded
with contempt by their more powerful neighbors. The German
confederation did not even include the whole of the provinces whose
population was distinguished as German by the use of the German
language. Several of the provinces of Germany were still beneath a
foreign sceptre; Switzerland and the Netherlands had declared
themselves distinct from the rest of Germany, which, hitherto
submissive to France, was in danger of falling beneath the influence
of Russia, who ceaselessly sought to entangle her by diplomatic wiles.

There were still, however, men existing in Germany who hoped to
compensate the loss of the external power of their country by the
internal freedom that had been so lavishly promised to the people on
the general summons to the field. The proclamation of Calisch and the
German federative act guaranteed the grant of constitutions. The
former Rhenish confederated princes, nevertheless, alone found it to
their interest to carry this promise into effect, and, in a manner,
formed a second alliance with France by their imitation of the newly
introduced French code and by the establishment, in their own
territories, of two chambers, one of peers, the other of deputies,
similar to those of France; measures by which, at that period of
popular excitement, they also regained the popularity deservedly lost
by them at an earlier period throughout the rest of Germany, the more
so, the less the inclination manifested by Austria and Prussia to
grant the promised constitutions. Enslaved Illuminatism characterizes
this new zeal in favor of internal liberty and constitutional
governments, to denote which the novel term of Liberalism was borrowed
from France. Liberty was ever on the tongues--of the most devoted
servants of the state. The ancient church and the nobility were
attacked with incredible mettle--in order to suit the purposes of
ministerial caprice. Prussia and Austria were loudly blamed for not
keeping pace with the times--with the intent of favorably contrasting
the ancient policy of the Rhenish confederation. None, at that period,
surpassed the ministers belonging to the old school of Illuminatism
and Napoleonism in liberalism, but no sooner did the deputies of the
people attempt to realize their liberal ideas than they started back
in dismay.

The first example of this kind was given by Frederick Augustus, duke
of Nassau, as early as the September of 1814. Ibell, the president,
who reigned with unlimited power over Nassau, drew up a constitution
which has been termed a model of "despotism under a constitutional
form." The whole of the property of the state still continuing to be
the private property of the duke, and his right arbitrarily to
increase the number of members belonging to the first chamber, and by
their votes to annul every resolution passed by the second chamber,
rendered the whole constitution illusory. Trombetta, one of the
deputies, voluntarily renounced his seat, an example that was followed
by several others.--The second constitution granted was that bestowed
upon the Netherlands in 1815, by King William, who established such an
unequal representation in the chambers between the Belgians and Dutch
as to create great dissatisfaction among the former, who, in revenge,
again affected the French party. This was succeeded, in 1816, by the
petty constitutions of Waldeck, Weimar, and Frankfort on the Maine.--
Maximilian, king of Bavaria, seemed, in 1817, to announce another
system by the dismissal of his minister, Montgelas, and, in 1818,
bestowed a new constitution upon Bavaria; but the old abuses in the
administration remained uneradicated; a civil and military state
unproportioned to the revenue, the petty despotism of government
officers and heavy imposts, still weighed upon the people, and the
constitution itself was quickly proved illusory, the veto of the first
chamber annulling the first resolution passed by the second chamber.
Professor Behr of Wurzburg, upon this, energetically protested against
the first chamber, and, on the refusal of the second chamber to vote
for the maintenance of the army on so high a footing, unless the
soldiery were obliged to take the oath on the constitution, it was
speedily dissolved.--In Baden, the Grandduke Charles expired, in 1818,
after having caused a constitution to be drawn up, which Louis, his
uncle and successor, carried into effect. Louis having, however,
previously, and without the consent of the people, entered into a
stipulation with the nobility, to whom he had granted an edict
extremely favorable to their interests, Winter, the Heidelberg
bookseller, a member of the second chamber, demanded its abrogation.
The answer was, the dissolution of the chamber, personal inquisition
and intimidation, and the publication of an extremely severe edict of
censure, against which, in 1820, Professor von Rotteck of Freiburg,
supported by the poet Hebel and by the Freiherr von Wessenberg,
administrator of the bishopric of Constance, protested, but in
vain.--At the same time, that is, in 1818, Hildburghausen, and even
the petty principality of Lichtenstein, which merely contains two
square miles and a population amounting to five thousand souls, also
received a constitution, which not a little contributed to turn the
whole affair into ridicule.--To these succeeded, in 1819, the
constitutions of Hanover and Lippe-Detmold, the former as aristocratic
as possible, completely in the spirit of olden times, solely dictated
and carried into effect by the nobility and government officers. The
sittings of the chambers, consequently, continued to be held in
secret.--The dukes of Mecklenburg abolished feudal servitude, which
existed in no other part of Germany, in 1820.--In Darmstadt, the
constitution was granted by the good-natured, venerable Grandduke
Louis (whose attention was chiefly devoted to the opera), after the
impatient advocates, who had collected subscriptions in the Odenwald
to petitions praying for the speedy bestowal of the promised
constitution, had been arrested, and an insurrection that consequently
ensued among the peasantry had been quelled by force.--Petty
constitutions were, moreover, granted, in 1821, to Coburg, and, in
1829, to Meiningen. The Gotha-Altenburg branch of the ducal house of
Saxony became extinct in 1825 in the person of Frederick, the last
duke, the brother of Duke Augustus Emilius, a great patron of the arts
and sciences, deceased 1822. Gotha, consequently, lapsed to Coburg,
Altenburg to Hildburghausen, and Hildburghausen to Meiningen.

In Wurtemberg, the dissatisfaction produced by the ancient despotism
of the government was also to be speedily appeased by the grant of a
constitutional charter. The king, Frederick, convoked the Estates, to
whom he, on the 15th of March, 1815, solemnly delivered the newly
enacted constitution. But here, as elsewhere, was the government
inclined to grant a mere illusory boon. The Estates rejected the
constitution, without reference to its contents, simply owing to the
formal reason of its being bestowed by the prince and being
consequently binding on one side alone, instead of being a stipulation
between the prince and the people, and moreover because the ancient
constitution of Wurtemberg, which had been abrogated by force and in
direct opposition to the will of the Estates, was still in legal
force. The old Wurtemberg party alone could naturally take their
footing upon their ancient rights, but the new Wurtemberg party, the
mediatized princes of the empire, the counts and barons of the empire,
and the imperial free towns, nay, even the Agnati of the reigning
house,[1] all of whom had suffered more or less under Napoleon's iron
rule, ranged themselves on their side. The deputy, Zahn of Calw, drew
a masterly picture of the state of affairs at that period, in which he
pitilessly disclosed every reigning abuse. The king, thus vigorously
and unanimously opposed, was constrained to yield, and the most prolix
negotiations, in which the citizen deputies, headed by the advocate,
Weisshaar, were supported by the nobility against the government,
commenced.

The affair was, it may be designedly, dragged on _ad infinitum_ until
the death of the king in 1816, when his son and successor, William,
who had gained a high reputation as a military commander and had
rendered himself extremely popular, zealously began the work of
conciliation. He not only instantly abolished the abuses of the former
government, as, for instance, in the game law,[2] but, in 1817,
delivered a new constitution to the Estates. Article 337 was somewhat
artfully drawn up, but in every point the constitution was as liberal
as a constitutional charter could possibly be. But the Estates refused
to accept of liberty as a boon, and rejected this constitution on the
same formal grounds upon which they had rejected the preceding one.
The Estates were again upheld by a grateful public, and the few
deputies, more particularly Cotta and Griesinger, who had defended the
new constitution on account of its liberality and who regarded form as
immaterial, became the objects of public animadversion. The populace
broke the windows of the house inhabited by the liberal-minded
minister, von Wangenheim. The poet Uhland greatly distinguished
himself as a warm upholder of the ancient rights of the people.[3] The
king instantly dissolved the Estates, but at the same time declared
his intention to guarantee to the people, without a constitution, the
rights he had intended constitutionally to confer upon them; to
establish an equal system of taxation, and "to eradicate bureaucracy,
that curse upon the country." The good-will displayed on both sides
led to fresh negotiations, and a third constitution was at length
drawn up by a committee, composed partly of members of the government,
partly of members belonging to the Estates, and, in 1819, was taken
into deliberation and passed by the reassembled Estates. This
constitution, nevertheless, fell far below the mark to which it had
been raised by public expectation, partly on account of the retention,
owing to ancient prejudice, of the permanent committee and its
oligarchical influence, party on account of the too great and
permanent concessions made to the nobility in return for their
momentary aid,[4] partly on account of the extreme haste that marked
the concluding deliberations of the Estates, occasioned by their
partly unfounded dread of interference on the part of the congress
then assembled at Carlsbad.

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