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




In respect to the popular representation guaranteed by the federal
act, Prussia announced, on the 22d of May, 1815, her intention to form
provincial diets, from among whose members the general representation
or imperial diet, which was to be held at Berlin, was to be elected.
When the Rhenish provinces urged the fulfilment of this promise in the
Coblentz address of 1817, the reply was, "Those who admonish the king
are guilty of doubting the inviolability of his word." Prussia
afterward declared that the new regulations would be in readiness by
the February of 1819. On the 20th of January, 1820, an edict was
published by the government, the first paragraph of which fixed the
public debt at $180,091,720,[1] and the second one rendered the
contraction of every fresh debt dependent upon the will of the future
imperial diet.[2] The definitive regulations in respect to the
provincial Estates were finally published on the 5th of June, 1823,
but the convocation of a general diet was passed over in silence.

The prosperity of the nations of Germany, wrecked by the great wars of
the Reformation, must and will gradually return. Prussia has inherited
all the claims upon, and consequently all the duties owing to Germany.
Still the general position of Germany is not sufficiently favorable to
render the renovation of her ancient Hanseatic commerce possible.[3]
It is to be deplored that the attachment of the Prussian cabinet to
Russian policy has not at all events modified the commercial
restrictions along the whole of the eastern frontier of Prussia,[4]
and that Prussia has not been able to effect more with Holland in
regard to the question concerning the free navigation of the Rhine.[5]
Prussia has, on the other hand, deserved the gratitude of Germany for
the zeal with which she promoted the settlement of the Customs' Union,
which has, at least in the interior of Germany, removed the greater
part of the restrictions upon commercial intercourse, and has a
tendency to spread still further. Throughout the last transactions,
partly of the Customs' Union, partly of Prussia alone, with England
and Holland, a vain struggle against those maritime powers is
perceptible. England trades with Germany from every harbor and in
every kind of commodity, while German vessels are restricted to home
produce and are only free to trade with England from their own ports.
Holland finds a market for her colonial wares in Germany, and, instead
of taking German manufactured goods in exchange, provides herself from
England, throws English goods into Germany, and, in lieu of being, as
she ought to be, the great emporium of Germany, is content to remain a
mere huge English factory. The Hanse towns have also been converted
into mercantile depots for English goods on German soil.

The misery consequent on the great wars, and the powerful reaction
against Gallicism throughout Germany, once more caused despised
religion to be reverenced in the age of philosophy. Prussia deemed
herself called upon, as the inheritor of the Reformation brought about
by Luther, as the principal Protestant power of Germany, to assume a
prominent position in the religious movement of the time. Frederick
William III., a sovereign distinguished for piety, appears,
immediately after the great wars, to have deemed the conciliation of
the various sects of Christians within his kingdom feasible. He,
nevertheless, merely succeeded in effecting a union between the
Lutherans and Calvinists. He also bestowed a new liturgy upon this
united church, which was censured as partial, as proceeding too
directly from the cabinet without being sanctioned by the concurrence
of the assembled clergy and of the people. Some Lutherans, who refused
compliance, were treated with extreme severity and compelled to
emigrate; the utility of a union which, two centuries earlier, would
have saved Germany from ruin, was, however, generally acknowledged. It
nevertheless was not productive of unity in the Protestant world. In
the universities and among the clergy, two parties, the Rationalists
and the Supernaturalists, stood opposed to one another. The former,
the disciples of the old Neologians, still followed the philosophy of
Kant, merely regarded Christianity as a code of moral philosophy,
denominated Christ a wise teacher, and explained away his miracles by
means of physics. The latter, the followers of the old orthodox
Lutherans, sought to confirm the truths of the gospel also by
philosophical means, and were denominated Supernaturalists, as
believers in a mystery surpassing the reasoning powers of man. The
celebrated Schleiermacher of Berlin mediated for some time between
both parties. But it was in Prussia more particularly that both
parties stood more rigidly opposed to one another and fell into the
greatest extremes.

The Rationalists were supplanted by the Pantheists, the disciples of
Hegel, the Berlin philosopher, who at length formally declared war
against Christianity; the Supernaturalists were here and there outdone
by the Pietists, whose enthusiasm degenerated into licentiousness.[6]
The king had, notwithstanding his piety, been led to believe that
Hegel merely taught the students unconditional obedience to the state,
and that Pantheist was consequently permitted to spread, under the
protection of Prussia, his senseless doctrine of deified humanity, the
same formerly proclaimed by Anacharsis Cloote in the French
Convention. When too late, the gross deception practiced by this
sophist was perceived: his disciples threw off their troublesome mask,
with Dr. Strauss, who had been implicated in the Zurich disturbances,
at their head, openly renounced Christianity, and, at Halle, led by
Ruge, the journalist, embraced the social revolutionary ideas of
"Young France," to which almost the whole of the younger journalists
of literary "Young Germany" acceded; nor was this Gallic reaction,
this retrogression toward the philosophical ideas of the foregoing
century, without its cause, German patriotism, which, from 1815 to
1819, had predominated in every university throughout Prussia, having
been forcibly suppressed. Hegel, on his appearance in Berlin, was
generally regarded as the man on whom the task of diverting the
enthusiasm of the rising generation for Germany into another channel
devolved.[7] Everything German had been treated with ridicule.[8]
French fashions and French ideas had once more come into vogue.

While Protestant Germany was thus torn, weakened, and degraded by
schism, the religious movement throughout Catholic Germany insensibly
increased in strength and unity. The adverse fate of the pope had, on
his deliverance from the hands of Napoleon, excited a feeling of
sympathy and reverence so universal as to be participated in by even
the Protestant powers of Europe. He had, as early as 1814, reinstated
the Jesuits without a remonstrance on the part of the sovereigns by
whom they had formerly been condemned. The ancient spirit of the
Romish church had revived. A new edifice was to be raised on the
thick-strewn ruins of the past. In 1817, Bavaria concluded a concordat
with the pope for the foundation of the archbishopric of Munich with
the three bishoprics of Augsburg, Passau, and Ratisbon, and of the
archbishopric of Bamberg with the three bishoprics of Wurzburg,
Eichstadt, and Spires. The king retained the right of presentation. In
1821, Prussia concluded a treaty by which the archbishopric of Cologne
with the three bishoprics of Treves, Munster, and Paderborn, the
archbishopric of Posen with Culm, and two independent bishoprics in
Breslau and Ermeland were established. The bishoprics of Hildesheim
and Osnabruck were re-established in 1824 by the concordat with
Hanover. In southwestern Germany, the archbishopric of Freiburg in the
Breisgau with the bishoprics of Rotenburg on the Neckar, Limburg on
the Lahn, Mayence, and Fulda arose. In Switzerland there remained four
bishoprics, Freiburg in the Uechtland, Solothurn, Coire, and St. Gall;
in Alsace, Strasburg and Colmar. In the Netherlands, the archbishopric
of Malines with the bishoprics of Ghent, Liege, and Namur. In Holland,
three Jansenist bishoprics, Utrecht, Deventer, and Haarlem, are
remarkable for having retained their independence of Rome.

The renovated body of the church was inspired with fresh energy. On
the fall of the Jesuits, the other extreme, Illuminatism, had raised
its head, but had been compelled to yield before a higher power and
before the moral force of Germany. The majority of the German
Catholics now clung to the idea that the regeneration of the abused
and despised church was best to be attained by the practice of
evangelical simplicity and morality, that Jesuitism and Illuminatism
were, consequently, to be equally avoided, and the better disposed
among the Protestants to be imitated. Sailer, the great teacher of the
German clergy, and Wessenberg, whom Rome on this account refused to
raise to the bishopric of Constance, acted upon this idea. In Silesia,
a number of youthful priests, headed by Theimer, impatient for the
realization of the union, apparently approaching, of this moderate
party with the equally moderately disposed party among the Protestants
into one great German church, took, in 1825, the bold step of
renouncing celibacy. This party was however instantly suppressed by
force by the king of Prussia. Theimer, in revenge, turned Jesuit and
wrote against Prussia. Professors inclined to Ultramontanism were,
meanwhile, installed in the universities, more particularly at Bonn,
Munster and Tubingen, by the Protestant as well as the Catholic
governments; by them the clerical students were industriously taught
that they were not Germans but subjects of Rome, and were flattered
with the hope of one day participating in the supremacy about to be
regained by the pontiff. Every priest inspired with patriotic
sentiments, or evincing any degree of tolerance toward his Protestant
fellow citizens, was regarded as guilty of betraying the interests of
the church to the state and the tenets of the only true church to
heretics. Gorres, once Germany's most spirited champion against
France, now appeared as the champion of Rome in Germany. The
scandalous schisms in the Protestant church and the no less scandalous
controversies carried on in the Protestant literary world rendered
both contemptible, and, as in the commencement of the seventeenth
century, appeared to offer a favorable opportunity for an attack on
the part of the Catholics.

A long-forgotten point in dispute was suddenly revived. Marriages
between Catholics and Protestants had hitherto been unhesitatingly
sanctioned by the Catholic priesthood. The Prussian ordinance of 1803,
by which the father was empowered to decide the faith in which the
children were to be brought up, had, on account of its conformity with
nature and reason, never been disputed. Numberless mixed marriages had
taken place among all classes from the highest to the lowest without
the slightest suspicion of wrong attaching thereto. A papal brief of
1830 now called to mind that the church tolerated, it was true,
although she disapproved of mixed marriages, which she permitted to
take place solely on condition of the children being brought up in the
Catholic faith. Prussia had acted with little foresight. Instead of,
in 1814, on taking possession of the Rhenish provinces and of
Westphalia, concluding a treaty with the then newly-restored pope,
Hardenberg had, as late as 1820, during a visit to Borne, merely
entered upon a transient agreement, by which Rome was bound to no
concessions. The war openly declared by Rome was now attempted to be
turned aside by means of petty and secret artifices. Several bishops,
in imitation of the precedent given by Count von Spiegel, the
peace-loving archbishop of Cologne, secretly bound themselves to
interpret the brief in the sense of the government and to adhere to
the ordinance of 1803. On Spiegel's decease in 1835, his successor,
the Baron Clement Augustus Droste, promised at Vischering, prior to
his presentation, strictly to adhere to this secret compact; but,
scarcely had he mounted the archiepiscopal seat, than his conscience
forbade the fulfilment of his oath; God was to be obeyed rather than
man! He prohibited the solemnization of mixed marriages within his
diocese without the primary assurance of the education of the children
in the Catholic faith, compelled his clergy strictly to obey the
commands of Rome in points under dispute, and suppressed the Hermesian
doctrine in the university of Bonn. The warnings secretly given by the
government proved unavailing, and he was, in consequence, unexpectedly
deprived of his office in the November of 1837, arrested, and
imprisoned in the fortress of Minden. This arbitrary measure caused
great excitement among the Catholic population; and the ancient
dislike of the Rhenish provinces to the rule of Prussia, and the
discontent of the Westphalian nobility on account of the emancipation
of the peasantry, again broke forth on this occasion. Gorres, in
Munich, industriously fed the flame by means of his pamphlet,
"Athanasius." Dunin, archbishop of Gnesen and bishop of Thorn,
followed the example of his brother of Cologne, was openly upheld by
Prussian Poland, was cited to Berlin, fled thence, was recaptured and
detained for some time within the fortress of Colberg, in 1839.--The
pope, Gregory XVI., solemnly declared his approbation of the conduct
of these archbishops and rejected every offer of negotiation until
their reinstallation in their dioceses. A crowd of hastily established
journals, more especially in Bavaria, maintained their cause, and were
opposed by numberless Protestant publications, which generally proved
injurious to the cause they strove to uphold, being chiefly remarkable
for base servility, frivolity, and infidelity.

On the demise of Frederick William III., on the 7th of June, 1840, and
the succession of his son, Frederick William IV., the church question
was momentarily cast into the shade by that relating to the
constitution. Constitutional Germany demanded from the new sovereign
the convocation of the imperial diet promised by his father. The
Catholic party, however, conscious that it would merely form the
minority in the diet, did not participate in the demand.[9] The
constitution was solely demanded by Protestant Eastern Prussia; but
the king declared, during the ceremony of fealty at Koenigsberg, that
"he would never do homage to the idea of a general popular
representation and would pursue a course based upon historical
progression, suitable to German nationality." The provincial Estates
were shortly afterward instituted, and separate diets were opened in
each of the provinces. This attracted little attention, and the
dispute with the church once more became the sole subject of interest.
It terminated in the complete triumph of the Catholic party. In
consequence of an agreement with the pope, the brief of 1820 remained
in force, Dunin was reinstated, Droste received personal satisfaction
by a public royal letter and a representative in Cologne in von
Geissel, hitherto bishop of Spires. The disputed election of the
bishop of Treves was also decided in favor of Arnoldi, the
ultramontane candidate.

Late in the autumn of 1842, the king of Prussia for the first time
convoked the deputies selected from the provincial diets to Berlin. He
had, but a short time before, laid the foundation-stone to the
completion of the Cologne cathedral, and on that occasion, moreover,
spoken words of deep import to the people, admonitory of unity to the
whole of Germany.


[Footnote 1: £26,263,375 16s. 8d.]

[Footnote 2: The Maritime Commercial Company, meanwhile, entered into
a contract.]

[Footnote 3: "We have long since lost all our maritime power. The only
guns now fired by us at sea are as signals of distress. Who now
remembers that it was the German Hansa that first made use of cannons
at sea, that it was from Germans that the English learned to build
men-of-war?"--_John's Nationality_.]

[Footnote 4: Prussia, of late, greatly contributed toward the
aggrandizement of the power of Russia by solemnly declaring in 1828,
when Russia extended her influence over Turkey, that she would not on
that account prevent Russia from asserting her "just claims," a
declaration that elicited bitter complaints from the British
government; and again in 1831, by countenancing the entry of the
Russians into Poland, at that time in a state of insurrection.]

[Footnote 5: The reason of the backwardness displayed from the
commencement by Prussia to act as the bulwark of Germany on the Lower
Rhine is explained by Stein in his letters: "Hanoverian jealousy, by
which the narrow-minded Castlereagh was guided, and, generally
speaking, jealousy of the German ministerial clauses, as if the
existence of a Mecklenburg were of greater importance to Germany than
that of a powerful warlike population, alike famous in time of peace
or war, presided over the settlement of the relation in which Belgium
was to stand to Prussia."]

[Footnote 6: At Königsberg, in Prussia, a secret society was
discovered which was partly composed of people of rank, who, under
pretence of meeting for the exercise of religious duties, gave way to
the most wanton license.]

[Footnote 7: The police, while attempting to lead science, was
unwittingly led by it. The students were driven in crowds into Hegel's
colleges, his pupils were preferred to all appointments, etc., and
every measure was taken to render that otherwise almost unnoted
sophist as dangerous as possible.]

[Footnote 8: In this the Jews essentially aided: Borne more in an
anti-German, Heine more in an anti-Christian, spirit, and were highly
applauded by the simple and infatuated German youth.]

[Footnote 9: Görres even advised against it, although, in 1817, he had
acted the principal part on the presentation of the Cologne address.]



CCLXXIII. The Progress of Science, Art, and Practical Knowledge in
Germany


In the midst of the misery entailed by war and amid the passions
roused by party strife the sciences had attained to a height hitherto
unknown. The schools had never been neglected, and immense
improvements, equally affecting the lowest of the popular schools and
the colleges, had been constantly introduced. Pestalozzi chiefly
encouraged the proper education of the lower classes and improved the
method of instruction. The humanism of the learned academies (the
study of the dead languages) went hand in hand with the realism of the
professional institutions. The universities, although often subjected
to an overrigid system of surveillance and compelled to adopt a
partial, servile bias, were, nevertheless, generally free from a
political tendency and incredibly promoted the study of all the
sciences. The mass of celebrated savants and of their works is too
great to permit of more than a sketch of the principal features of
modern German science.

The study of the classics, predominant since the time of the
Reformation, has been cast into the shade by the German studies, by
the deeper investigation of the language, the law, the history of our
forefathers and of the romantic Middle Age, by the great Catholic
reaction, and, at the same time, by the immense advance made in
natural history, geography, and universal history. The human mind,
hitherto enclosed within a narrow sphere, has burst its trammels to
revel in immeasurable space. The philosophy and empty speculations of
the foregoing century have also disappeared before the mass of
practical knowledge, and arrogant man, convinced by science, once more
bends his reasoning faculties in humble adoration of their Creator.

The aristocracy of talent and learned professional pride have been
overbalanced by a democratic press. The whole nation writes, and the
individual writer is either swallowed up in the mass or gains but
ephemeral fame. Every writer, almost without exception, affects a
popular style. But, in this rich literary field, all springs up freely
without connection or guidance. No party is concentrated or
represented by any reigning journal, but each individual writes for
himself, and the immense number of journals published destroy each
other's efficiency. Many questions of paramount importance are
consequently lost in heaps of paper, and the interest they at first
excited speedily becomes weakened by endless recurrence.

Theology shared in the movement above mentioned in the church. The
Rationalists were most profuse in their publications, Paulus at
Heidelberg, and, more particularly, the Saxon authors, Tschirner,
Bretschneider, etc. Ancient Lutheran vigor degenerated to shallow
subtleties and a sort of coquettish tattling upon morality, in which
Zschokke's "Hours of Devotion" carried away the palm. Neander,
Gieseler, Gfrörer and others greatly promoted the study of the history
of the church. The propounders of the Gospels, however, snatched them,
after a lamentable fashion, out of each other's hands, now doubting
the authenticity of the whole, now that of most or of some of the
chapters, and were unable to agree upon the number that ought to be
retained. They, at the same time, outvied one another in political
servility, while the Lutherans who, true to their ancient faith,
protested against the Prussian liturgy, were too few in number for
remark. This frivolous class of theologians at length entirely
rejected the Gospels, embraced the doctrine of Hegel and Judaism, and
renounced Christianity. Still, although the Supernaturalists, the
orthodox party, and the Pietists triumphantly repelled these attacks,
and the majority of the elder Rationalists timidly seceded from the
anti-christian party, the Protestant literary world was reduced to a
state of enervation and confusion, affording but too good occasion for
an energetic demonstration on the part of the Catholics.

Philosophy also assumed the character of the age. Fichte of Berlin
still upheld, in 1814, the passion for liberty and right in their
nobler sense that had been roused by the French Revolution, but, as he
went yet further than Kant in setting limits to the sources of
perception and denied the existence of conscience, his system proved
merely of short duration. To him succeeded Schelling, with whom the
return of philosophy to religion and that of abstract studies to
nature and history commenced, and in whom the renovated spirit of the
nineteenth century became manifest. His pupils were partly natural
philosophers, who, like Oken, sought to comprehend all nature, her
breathing unity, her hidden mysteries, in religion; partly mystics,
who, like Eschenmaier, Schubert, Steffens, in a Protestant spirit, or,
like Gorres and Baader, in a Catholic one, sought also to comprehend
everything bearing reference to both nature and history in religion.
It was a revival of the ancient mysticism of Hugo de St. Victoire, of
Honorius, and of Rupert in another and a scientific age; nor was it
unopposed: in the place of the foreign scholasticism formerly so
repugnant to its doctrines, those of Schelling were opposed by a
reaction of the superficial mock-enlightenment and sophistical
scepticism predominant in the foregoing century, more particularly of
the sympathy with France, which had been rendered more than ever
powerful in Germany by the forcible suppression of patriotism.
Abstract philosophy, despising nature and history, mocking
Christianity, once more revived and set itself up as an absolute
principle in Hegel. None of the other philosophers attained the
notoriety gained by Schelling and Hegel, the representatives of the
antitheses of the age.

An incredible advance, of which we shall merely record the most
important facts, took place in the study of the physical sciences.
Three new planets were discovered, Pallas, in 1802, and Vesta, in
1807, by Gibers; Juno, in 1824, by Harding. Enke and Biela first fixed
the regular return and brief revolution of the two comets named after
them. Schröter and Mädler minutely examined the moon and planets;
Struve, the fixed stars. Fraunhofer improved the telescope. Chladni
first investigated the nature of fiery meteors and brought the study
of acoustics to perfection. Alexander von Humboldt immensely promoted
the observation of the changes of the atmosphere and the general
knowledge of the nature of the earth. Werner and Leopold von Buch also
distinguished themselves among the investigators of the construction
of the earth and mountains. Scheele, Gmelin, Liebig, etc., were noted
chemists. Oken, upon the whole, chiefly promoted the study of natural
history, and numberless researches were made separately in mineralogy,
the study of fossils, botany, and zoology by the most celebrated
scientific men of the day. While travellers visited every quarter of
the globe in search of plants and animals as yet unknown and regulated
them by classes, other men of science were engaged at home in the
investigation of their internal construction, their uses and habits,
in which they were greatly assisted by the improved microscope, by
means of which Ehrenberg discovered a completely new class of
animalculae. The discoveries of science were also zealously applied
for practical uses. Agriculture, cattle-breeding, manufactures
received a fresh impulse and immense improvements as knowledge
advanced. Commerce by water and by land experienced a thorough
revolution on the discovery of the properties of steam, by the use of
steamers and railroads. Medical science also progressed,
notwithstanding the number of contradictory and extravagant theories.
The medical practitioners of Germany took precedence throughout
Europe. Animal magnetism was practiced by Eschenmaier, Kieser, and
Justin Kerner, by means of whose female seer, von Prevorst, the seeing
of visions and the belief in ghosts were once more brought forward.
Hahnemann excited the greatest opposition by his system of
homoeopathy, which cured diseases by the administration of homogeneous
substances in the minutest doses. He was superseded by the cold-water
cure. During the last twenty years the naturalists and medical men of
Germany have held an annual meeting in one or other of their native
cities.

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