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Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4

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




The philologists and savants have for some years past also been in the
habit of holding a similar meeting. The classics no longer form the
predominant study among philologists. Even literati, whose tastes,
like that of Creuzer, are decidedly classic, have acknowledged that
the knowledge of the Oriental tongues is requisite for the attainment
of a thorough acquaintance with classic antiquity. A great school for
the study of the Eastern languages has been especially established
under the precedence of the brothers Schlegel, Bopp, and others. The
study of the ancient language of Germany and of her venerable
monuments has, finally, been promoted by Jacob Grimm and by his widely
diffused school.

The study of history became more profound and was extended over a
wider field. A mass of archives hitherto secret were rendered public
and spread new light on many of the remarkable characters and events
in the history of Germany. Historians also learned to compile with
less party spirit and on more solid grounds. History, at first
compiled in a Protestant spirit, afterward inclined as partially to
Catholicism, and the majority of the higher order of historical
writers were consequently rendered the more careful in their search
after truth. Among the universal historians, Rotteck gained the
greatest popularity on account of the extreme liberality of his
opinions, and Heeren and Schlosser acquired great note for depth of
learning. Von Hammer, who rendered us acquainted with the history of
the Mahometan East, takes precedence among the historical writers upon
foreign nations. Niebuhr's Roman History, Wilken's History of the
Crusades, Leo's History of Italy, Ranke's History of the Popes, etc.,
have attained well-merited fame.--The history of Germany as a whole,
which Germany neither was nor is, was little studied, but an immense
mass of facts connected with or referring to Germany was furnished by
the numberless and excellent single histories and biographies that
poured through the press. All the more ancient collections of _script.
rerum_ were, according to the plan of Stein, the celebrated Prussian
minister, to be surpassed by a critical work on the sources of German
history, conducted by Pertz, which could, however, be but slowly
carried out. Grimm, Mone, and Barth threw immense light upon German
heathen antiquity, Zeusz upon the genealogy of nations. The best
account of the Ostrogoths was written by Manso, of the Visigoths by
Aschbach, of the Anglo-Saxons by Lappenberg, of the more ancient
Franks by Mannert, Pertz, and Löbell, of Charlemagne by Diebold and
Ideler, of Louis the Pious by Funk, of the Saxon emperors by Ranke and
his friends, Wachter and Leutsch, of the Salic emperors by Stenzel, of
the German popes of those times by Höfler, of the Hohenstaufen by
Raumer, Kortum, and Hurter, of the emperor Richard by Gebauer, of
Henry VII. of Luxemburg by Barthold, of King John by Lenz, of Charles
IV. by Pelzel and Schottky, of Wenzel by Pelzel, of Sigismund by
Aschbach, of the Habsburgs by Kurz, Prince Lichnowsky, and Hormayr, of
Louis the Bavarian by Mannert, of Ferdinand I. by Buchholz, of the
Reformation by C. A. Menzel and Ranke, of the Peasant War by
Sartorius, Oechsle, and Bensen, of the Thirty Years' War by Barthold,
of Gustavus Adolphus by Gfrörer, of Wallenstein by Förster, of
Bernhard of Weimar by Röse, of George of Lüneburg by von der Decken.
Of the ensuing period by Förster and Guhrauer, of the Eighteenth
Century by Schlosser, of the Wars with France by Clausewitz, of Modern
Times by Hormayr.

Coxe, Schneller, Mailàth, Chmel, and Gervay also wrote histories of
Austria, Schottky and Palacky of Bohemia, Beda, Weber, and Hormayr of
the Tyrol, Voigt of the Teutonic Order, Manso, Stenzel, Förster,
Dolum, Massenbach, Cölln, Preusz, etc., of the Kingdom of Prussia,
Stenzel of Anhalt, Kobbe of Lauenburg, Lützow of Mecklenburg, Barthold
of Pomerania, Kobbe of Holstein, Wimpfen of Schleswig, Sartorius and
Lappenberg of the Hansa, Hanssen of the Ditmarses, Spittler, Havemann,
and Strombeck of Brunswick and Hanover, van Kampen of Holland,
Warnkönig of Flanders, Rommel of Hesse, Lang of Eastern Franconia,
Wachter and Langenn of Thuringia and Saxony, Lang, Wolf, Mannert,
Zschokke, Völderndorf of Bavaria, Pfister, Pfaff, and Stälin of
Swabia, Glutz-Blotzheim, Hottinger, Meyer von Knonau, Zschokke,
Haller, Schuler, etc., of Switzerland. The most remarkable among the
histories of celebrated cities are those of St. Gall by Arx, of Vienna
by Mailath, of Frankfort on the Maine by Kirchner, of Ulm and
Heilbronn by Jæger, of Rotenburg on the Tauber by Bensen, etc.

Ritter, and, next to him, Berghaus, greatly extended the knowledge of
geography. Maps were drawn out on a greatly improved scale. Alexander
von Humboldt, who ruled the world with his scientific as Napoleon with
his eagle glance, attained the highest repute among travellers of
every nation. Krusenstern, Langsdorf, and Kotzebue, Germans in the
service of Russia, circumnavigated the globe. Meyen, the noted
botanist, did the same in a Prussian ship. Baron von Hügel explored
India. Gützlaff acted as a missionary in China. Ermann and Ledebur
explored Siberia; Klaproth, Kupfer, Parrot, and Eichwald, the
Caucasian provinces; Burckhardt, Rüppell, Ehrenberg, and Russegger,
Syria and Egypt; the Prince von Neuwied and Paul William, duke of
Würtemberg, North America; Becher, Mexico; Schomburg, Guiana; the
Prince von Neuwied and Martius, the Brazils; Pöppig, the banks of the
Amazon; Rengger, Paraguay. The Missionary Society for the conversion
of the heathen in distant parts and that for the propagation of the
gospel, founded at Basel, 1816, have gained well-merited repute.

At the commencement of the present century, amid the storms of war,
German taste took a fresh bias. French frivolity had increased
immorality to a degree hitherto unknown. Licentiousness reigned
unrestrained on the stage and pervaded the lighter productions of the
day. If Iffland had, not unsuccessfully, represented the honest
citizens and peasantry of Germany struggling against the unnatural
customs of modern public life, Augustus von Kotzebue, who, after him,
ruled the German stage, sought, on the contrary, to render honor
despicable and to encourage the license of the day. In the numerous
romances, a tone of lewd sentimentality took the place of the strict
propriety for which they had formerly been remarkable, and the general
diffusion of these immoral productions, among which the romances of
Lafontaine may be more particularly mentioned, contributed in no
slight degree to the moral perversion of the age.

Jean Paul Friedrich Richter stands completely alone. He shared the
weaknesses of his times, which, like Goethe and Kotzebue, he both
admired and ridiculed, passing with extraordinary versatility, almost
in the same breath, from the most moving pathos to the bitterest
satire. His clever but too deeply metaphysical romances are not only
full of domestic sentimentality and domestic scenes, but they also
imitate the over-refinement and effeminacy of Goethe, and yet his
sound understanding and warm patriotic feelings led him to condemn all
the artificial follies of fashion, all that was unnatural as well as
all that was unjust.

Modern philosophy had no sooner triumphed over ancient religion and
France over Germany than an extraordinary reaction, inaptly termed the
romantic, took place in poetry. Although Ultramontanism might be
traced even in Friedrich Schlegel, this school of poetry nevertheless
solely owes its immense importance to its resuscitation of the older
poetry of Germany, and to the success with which it opposed Germanism
to Gallicism. Ludwig Tieck exclusively devoted himself to the German
and romantic Middle Ages, to the Minnesingers, to Shakespeare,
Cervantes, and Calderon, and modelled his own on their immortal works.
The eyes of his contemporaries were by him first completely opened to
the long-misunderstood beauties of the Middle Ages. His kindred
spirit, Novalis (Hardenberg), destined to a too brief career, gave
proofs of signal talent. Heinrich von Kleist, who committed suicide,
left the finest-spirited and most delightful dramas. Ludwig Achim von
Arnim, like Tieck, cultivated the older German Saga; his only fault
was that, led away by the richness of his imagination, he overcolored
his descriptions. Aided by Brentano, he collected the finest of the
popular ballads of Germany in "des Enaben Wunderhorn." At Berlin,
Fouque, with true old German taste, revived the romances of chivalry
and, shortly before 1813, met the military spirit once more rising in
Prussia with a number of romances in which figured battle-steeds and
coats of mail, German faith and bravery, valiant knights and chaste
dames, intermixed, it must be confessed, with a good deal of
affectation. On the discovery being made that many of the ancient
German ballads were still preserved among the lower classes, chiefly
among the mountaineers, they were also sought for, and some poets
tuned their lyres on the naive popular tone, etc., first, Hebel, in
the partly extremely natural, partly extremely affected, Alemannic
songs, which have found frequent imitators. Zacharia Werner and
Hoffiman, on the other hand, exclusively devoted themselves to the
darker side of days of yore, to their magic and superstition, and
filled the world, already terror-stricken by the war, with
supernatural stories. Still, throughout one and all of these
productions, curiously as they contrasted, the same inclination to
return to and to revive a purely German style was evident. At that
moment the great crisis suddenly took place. Before even the poets
could predict the event, Germany cast off the yoke of Napoleon, and
the German "Sturm and Freiheitslieder" of Theodor Körner, Arndt,
Schenkendorf, etc., chimed in like a fearfully beautiful Allegro with
the Adagio of their predecessors.

This was in a manner also the finale of the German notes that so
strangely resounded in that Gallic time; the restoration suppressed
every further outburst of patriotism, and the patriotic spirit that
had begun to breathe forth in verse once more gave place to
cosmopolitism and Gallicism. The lyric school, founded by Ludwig
Uhland, alone preserved a German spirit and a connection with the
ancient _Minnelieder_ of Swabia.

The new cosmopolitic tendency of the poetry of these times is chiefly
due to the influence exercised by Goethe. The quick comprehension and
ready adoption of every novelty is a faculty of, not a fault in, the
German character, and alone becomes reprehensible when the German,
forgetful of himself and of his own peculiar characteristics, adopts a
medley of foreign incongruities and falsifies whatever ought to be
preserved special and true. Goethe and his school, however, not
content with imitating singly the style of every nation and of every
period, have interwoven the most diverse strains, antique and
romantic, old German and modern French, Grecian and Chinese, in one
and the same poem. This unnatural style, itself destructive of the
very peculiarity at which it aims, has infected both modern poetry and
modern art; the architect intermixes the Grecian and the Gothic in his
creations, while the painter seeks to unite the styles of the Flemish
and Italian schools in his productions, and the poet those of Persia,
Scandinavia, and Spain, in his strains.--Those are indeed deserving of
gratitude who have comprehended and preserved the character peculiar
to the productions of foreign art, in which the brothers Friedrich and
August Wilhelm Schlegel have been so eminently successful. Hammer and,
after him, Ruckert have also opened the Eastern world to our view.
Count Platen, on the other hand, hung fluctuating between the antique
Persian and German.--Cosmopolitism was greatly strengthened by the
historical romances in vogue in England, descriptive of olden time,
and which found innumerable imitators in Germany. They were, at all
events, thus far beneficial; they led us from the parlor into the
world.

But no sooner was genuine German taste neglected for that of foreign
nations than Gallomania revived; all were compelled to pay homage to
the spirit and the tone prevalent throughout Europe. The witty
aristocratic _médisance_ and grim spirit of rebellion emulating each
other in France, were, in Germany, represented by Prince Piichler, the
most _spirituel_ drawing-room satirist, and by the Jew, Börne, the
most spirited Jacobin of the day. The open infidelity again
demonstrated in France, also led to its introduction into Germany by
the Jew, Heine, while the immoral romances with which that country was
deluged speedily became known to us through the medium of the
translations and imitations of "Young Germany," and were incredibly
increased by our literary industry; all the lying memoirs, in which
the French falsify history, view Napoleon as a demigod, and treat the
enthusiasm with which the Germans were animated in 1813 with derision,
were also diligently translated. This tendency to view everything
German with French eyes and to ridicule German honor and German
manners was especially promoted by the light literature, and numerous
journals of the day, and was, in the universities, in close connection
with the anti-christian tendency of the school of Hegel.--The late
Catholic reaction, too exclusively political, has as yet exercised no
influence over the literary world, and would scarcely succeed in
gaining any, being less German than Roman.

While German poetry follows so false a course, it naturally follows
that art also must be deprived of its natural character. Architecture
has, it is true, abandoned the periwig style of France, but the purer
antique or Byzantine taste to which it has returned is generally
insipidly simple, while the attempts at Gothic and Moorish are truly
miserable. A more elevated feeling than the present generation (which,
in Goethe's manner, delights in trifling alternately with every style,
or is completely enslaved by the modes imposed by France) is fitted to
comprehend, is requisite for the revival of German or Gothic
architecture. Still it may be, as is hoped, that the intention to
complete the building of the Cologne cathedral will not be entirely
without a beneficial influence.

The art of painting aspires far more energetically toward national
emancipation. In the present century, the modern French style
affecting the antique presented a complete contrast with the German
romantic school, which, in harmony with the simultaneous romantic
reaction in the poetical world, returned to the sacred simplicity of
the ancient German and Italian masters. Overbeck was in this our
greatest master. Since this period, the two great schools at Munich
and Dusseldorf, founded by Peter Cornelius, and whose greatest masters
are Peter Hesz, Bendemann, Lessing, Kaulbach, etc., have sought a
middle path, and with earnest zeal well and skilfully opposed the too
narrow imitation of, and the medley of style produced by the study of,
the numerous old masters on the one hand, and, on the other, the
search for effect, that Gallic innovation so generally in vogue. Were
the church again to require pictures, or the state to employ the
pencil of the patriot artist in recording the great deeds of past or
present times or in the adornment of public edifices, painting would
be elevated to its proper sphere.--Germany has also produced many
celebrated engravers, among whom Muller holds precedence. Lithography,
now an art of so much importance, was invented by the Bavarian,
Senefelder. The art of painting on glass has also been revived.

In music, the Germans have retained their ancient fame. After Mozart,
Beethoven, Weber, etc., have gained immense celebrity as composers.
Still, much that is unnatural, affected, _bizarre_ and licentious has
crept into the compositions of the German masters, more particularly
in the operas, owing to the imitation of the modern Italian and French
composers. A popular reaction has, however, again taken place, and, as
before, in choral music, by means of the "singing clubs," which become
more and more general among the people.

The stage has most deeply degenerated. At the commencement of the
present century, its mimic scenes afforded a species of consolation
for the sad realities of life, and formed the Lethe in whose waters
oblivion was gladly sought. The public afterward became so practical
in its tastes, so sober in its desires, that neither the spirit of the
actor nor the coquetry of the actress had power to attract an
audience. The taste and love for art were superseded by criticism and
low intrigues, the theatre became a mere political engine, intended to
divert the thoughts of the population, of the great cities from the
discussion of topics dangerous to the state by the all-engrossing
charms of actresses and ballet-dancers.

The Germans, although much more practical in the present than in the
past century, are still far from having freed themselves from the
unjust, unfitting, and inconvenient situation into which they have
fallen as time and events rolled on.

A mutual understanding in regard to the external position of the
German in reference to the Slavonian nation has scarcely begun to dawn
upon us. Scarcely have we become sensible to the ignominious
restrictions imposed upon German commerce by the prohibitory
regulations of Russia, by the customs levied in the Sound, on the
Elbe, and Rhine. Scarcely has the policy that made such immense
concessions to Russian diplomacy, and scarcely has the party spirit
that looked for salvation for Germany from France, yielded to a more
elevated feeling of self-respect. And yet, whoever should say to the
people of Alsace, Switzerland, and Holland, "Ye are Germans," would
reap but derision and insult. Germany is on the point of being once
more divided into Catholic and Protestant Germany, and no one can
explain how the German Customs' Union is to extend to the German
Ocean, on account of the restrictions mutually imposed by the Germans.
Could we but view ourselves as the great nation we in reality are,
attain to a consciousness of the immeasurable strength we in reality
possess, and make use of it in order to satisfy our wants, the Germans
would be thoroughly a practical nation, instead of lying like a dead
lion among the nations of Europe, and unresistingly suffering them to
mock, tread underfoot, nay, deprive him of his limbs, as though he
were a miserable, helpless worm.

More, far more has been done for the better regulation of the internal
economy of Germany than for her external protection and power. The
reforms suited to the age, commenced by the philosophical princes and
ministers of the past century, have been carried on by Prussia in her
hour of need, by constitutional Germany by constitutional means.
Everywhere have the public administration been better regulated,
despotism been restrained by laws, financial affairs been settled even
under the heavy pressure of the national debts. Commerce, manufactural
industry, and agriculture have been greatly promoted by the Customs'
Union, by government aid and model institutions, by the improvements in
the post-offices, by the laying of roads and railways. The public
burdens and public debts, nevertheless, still remain disproportionately
heavy on account of the enormous military force which the great states
are compelled to maintain for the preservation of their authority, and
on account of the polyarchical state of Germany, which renders the
maintenance of an enormous number of courts, governments, general staffs
and chambers necessary.

The popular sense of justice and legality, never entirely suppressed
throughout Germany, also gave fresh proof of its existence under the
new state of affairs, partly in the endlessly drawn-out proceedings in
the chambers, partly in the incredible number of new laws and
regulations in the different states. Still, industriously as these
laws have been compiled, no real, essential, German law, neither
public nor private, has been discovered. The Roman and French codes
battled with each other and left no room for the establishment of a
code fundamentally and thoroughly German. The most distinguished
champions of the common rights of the people against cabinet-justice,
the tyranny of the police and of the censor, were principally
advocates and savants. The Estates, as corporations, were scarcely any
longer represented. The majority of governments, ruled by the
principle of absolute monarchy and the chambers, ruled by that of
democracy, had, since the age of philosophy, been unanimous in setting
the ancient Estates aside. The nobility alone preserved certain
privileges, and the Catholic clergy alone regained some of those they
had formerly enjoyed; all the Estates were, in every other respect,
placed on a level. The ancient and national legal rights of the people
were consequently widely trenched upon.

The emancipation of the peasant from the oppressive feudal dues, and
the abolition of the restraint imposed by the laws of the city
corporations, which had so flagrantly been abused, were indubitably
well intended, but, instead of stopping there, good old customs, that
ought only to have been freed from the weeds with which they had been
overgrown, were totally eradicated. The peasant received a freehold,
but was, by means of his enfranchisement, generally laden with debts,
and, while pride whispered in his ear that he was now a lord of the
soil and might assume the costume of his superiors, the land, whence
he had to derive his sustenance, was gradually diminished in extent by
the systematic division of property. His pretensions increased exactly
in the ratio in which the means for satisfying them decreased; and the
necessity of raising money placed him in the hands of Jews. The
smaller the property by reason of subdivision, the more frequently is
land put up for sale, the deeper is the misery of the homeless
outcast. The restoration of the inalienable, indivisible allod and of
the federal rights of the peasant, as in olden times, would have been
far more to the purpose.--Professional liberty and the introduction of
mechanism and manufactural industry have annihilated every warrant
formerly afforded by the artificer as master and member of a city
corporation, and, at the same time, every warrant afforded to him by
the community of his being able to subsist by means of his industry.
Manufactures on an extensive scale that export their produce must at
all events be left unrestricted, but the small trades carried on
within a petty community, their only market, excite, when free, a
degree of competition which is necessarily productive both of bad
workmanship and poverty, and the superfluous artificers, unaided by
their professional freedom, fall bankrupt and become slaves in the
establishments of their wealthier[1] competitors. The restoration of
the city guilds under restrictions suitable to the times would have
been far more judicious.

The maintenance of a healthy, contented class of citizens and peasants
ought to be one of the principal aims of every German statesman. The
fusion of these ancient and powerful classes into one common mass
whence but a few wealthy individuals rise to eminence would be fatal
to progression in Germany. By far the greater part of the people have
already lost the means of subsistence formerly secured to all, nay,
even to the serf, by the privileges of his class. The insecure
possession, the endless division and alienation of property, an
anxious dread of loss, and a rapacious love of gain, have become
universal. Care for the means of daily existence, like creeping
poison, unnerves the population. The anxious solicitude to which this
gives rise has a deeply demoralizing effect. Even offices under
government are less sought for from motives of ambition than as a
means of subsistence; the arts and sciences have been degraded to mere
sources of profit, envious trade decides questions of the highest
importance, the torch of Hymen is lit by Plutus, not at the shrine of
Love; and in the bosom of the careworn father of a family, whose
scanty subsistence depends upon a patron's smile, the words
"fatherland" and "glory" find no responsive echo.

Among the educated classes this state of poverty is allied with the
most inconsistent luxury. Each and all, however poor, are anxious to
preserve an appearance of wealth or to raise credit by that means.
All, however needy, must be fashionable. The petty tradesman and the
peasant ape their superiors in rank, and the old-fashioned but
comfortable and picturesque national costume is being gradually thrown
aside for the ever-varying modes prescribed by Paris to the world. The
inordinate love of amusements in which the lower classes and the
proletariat, ever increasing in number, seek more particularly to
drown the sense of misery, is another and a still greater source of
public demoralization. The general habit of indulging in the use of
spirituous liquors has been rightfully designated the brandy pest,
owing to its lamentable moral and physical effect upon the population.
This pest was encouraged not alone by private individuals, who gain
their livelihood by disseminating it among the people, but also by
governments, which raised a large revenue by its means; and the
temperance societies, lately founded, but slightly stem the evil.

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