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




The public authorities throughout Germany have, it must be confessed,
displayed extraordinary solicitude for the poor by the foundation of
charitable institutions of every description, but they have contented
themselves with merely alleviating misery instead of removing its
causes; and the benevolence that raised houses of correction,
poor-houses, and hospitals, is rendered null by the laxity of the
legislation. No measures are taken by the governments to provide means
for emigration, to secure to the peasant his freehold, to the
artificer the guarantee he ought to receive and to give, and the
maintenance of the public morals. The punishment awarded for
immorality and theft is so mild as to deprive them of the character of
crime, pamphlets and works of the most immoral description are
dispersed by means of the circulating libraries among all classes, and
the bold infidelity preached even from the universities is left
unchecked. But--is not the thief taught morality in the house of
correction? and are not diseases, the result of license, cured in the
hospitals with unheard-of humanity?

Private morality, so long preserved free from contamination, although
all has for so long conspired against the liberty and unity of
Germany, is greatly endangered. Much may, however, be hoped for from
the sound national sense. The memory of the strength displayed by
Germany in 1813 has been eradicated neither by the contempt of France
or Russia, by any reactionary measure within Germany herself, by
social and literary corruption, nor by the late contest between church
and state. The Customs' Union has, notwithstanding the difference in
political principle, brought despotic Prussia and constitutional
Germany one step nearer. The influence of Russia on the one hand, of
that of France on the other, has sensibly decreased. The irreligious
and immoral tendencies now visible will, as has ever been the case in
Germany, produce a reaction, and, when the necessity is more urgently
felt, fitting measures will be adopted for the prevention of
pauperism. The dangers with which Germany is externally threatened
will also compel governments, however egotistical and indifferent, to
seek their safety in unity, and even should the long neglect of this
truth be productive of fresh calamity and draw upon Germany a fresh
attack from abroad, that very circumstance will but strengthen our
union and accelerate the regeneration of our great fatherland, already
anticipated by the people on the fall of the Hohenstaufen.


[Footnote 1: Because more skilful.--_Trans_.]



CCLXXIV. German Emigrants


The overplus population of Germany has ever emigrated; in ancient
times, for the purpose of conquering foreign powers; in modern times,
for that of serving under them. In the days of German heroism, our
conquering hordes spread toward the west and south, over Italy, Gaul,
Spain, Africa, England, and Iceland; during the Middle Ages, our
mail-clad warriors took an easterly direction and overran the
Slavonian countries, besides Prussia, Transylvania, and Palestine; in
modern times, our religious and political refugees have emigrated in
scarcely less considerable numbers to countries far more distant, but
in the humble garb of artificers and beggars, the Pariahs of the
world. Our ancient warriors gained undying fame and long maintained
the influence and the rule of Germany in foreign lands. Our modern
emigrants have, unnoted, quitted their native country, and, as early
as the second generation, intermixed with the people among whom they
settled. Hundreds of thousands of Germans have in this manner aided to
aggrandize the British colonies, and Germany has derived no benefit
from the emigration of her sons.

The first great mass of religious refugees threw itself into Holland
and into the Dutch colonies, the greater part of which have since
passed into the hands of the British. The illiberality of the Dutch
caused the second great mass to bend its steps to British North
America, within whose wilds every sect found an asylum. William Penn,
the celebrated Quaker, visited Germany, and, in 1683, gave permission
to some Germans to settle in the province named, after him,
Pennsylvania, where they founded the city of German town.[1] These
fortunate emigrants were annually followed by thousands of exiled
Protestants, principally from Alsace and the Palatinate. The industry
and honesty for which the German workmen were remarkable caused some
Englishmen to enter into a speculation to procure their services as
white slaves. The greatest encouragement was accordingly given by them
to emigration from Germany, but the promises so richly lavished were
withdrawn on the unexpected emigration of thirty-three thousand of the
inhabitants of the Palatinate, comprising entire communes headed by
their preachers, evidently an unlooked and unwished for multitude.
These emigrants reached London abandoned by their patrons and
disavowed by the government. A fearful fate awaited them. After losing
considerable numbers from starvation in England, the greater part of
the survivors were compelled to work like slaves in the mines and in
the cultivation of uninhabited islands; three thousand six hundred of
them were sent over to Ireland, where they swelled the number of
beggars; numbers were lost at sea, and seven thousand of them returned
in despair, in a state of utter destitution, to their native country.
A small number of them, however, actually sailed for New York, where
they were allotted portions of the primitive forests, which they
cleared and cultivated; but they had no sooner raised flourishing
villages in the midst of rich cornfields and gardens, than they were
informed that the ground belonged to the state and were driven from
the home they had so lately found. Pennsylvania opened a place of
refuge to the wanderers.[2]

The religious persecution and the increasing despotism of the
governments in Germany meanwhile incessantly drove fresh emigrants to
America, where, as they were generally sent to the extreme verge of
the provinces in order to clear the ground and drive away the
aborigines, numbers of them were murdered by the Indians. Switzerland
also sent forth many emigrants, who settled principally in North
Carolina. The people of Salzburg, whose expulsion has been detailed
above, colonized Georgia in 1732. In 1742, there were no fewer than a
hundred thousand Germans in North America, and, since that period,
their number has been continually on the increase. Thousands annually
arrived; for instance, in the years 1749 and 1750, seven thousand; in
1754, as many as twenty-two thousand; in 1797, six thousand Swabians.
The famine of 1770, the participation of German mercenaries in the
wars of the British in North America, at first against the French
colonies, afterward against the English colonists (the German
prisoners generally settled in the country), induced the Germans to
emigrate in such great numbers that, from 1770 to 1791, twenty-four
emigrant ships on an average arrived annually at Philadelphia, without
reckoning those that landed in the other harbors.[3]

The passage by sea to the west being continually closed during the
great wars with France, the stream of emigration took an easterly
direction overland. Russia had extended her conquests toward Persia
and Turkey. The necessity of fixing colonies in the broad steppes as
in the primitive forests of America, to serve as a barrier against the
wild frontier tribes, was plainly perceived by the Russian government,
and Germans were once more made use of for this purpose. Extensive
colonies, which at the present date contain hundreds of thousands of
German inhabitants, but whose history is as yet unknown, were
accordingly formed northward of the Black and Caspian Seas. Swabian
villages were also built on the most southern frontier of Russia
toward Persia, and in 1826 suffered severely from an inroad of the
Persians.

The fall of Napoleon had no sooner reopened the passage by sea than
the tide of emigration again turned toward North America. These
emigrants, the majority of whom consisted of political malcontents,
preferred the land of liberty to the steppes of Russia, whither
sectarians and those whom the demoralization and irreligion of the
Gallomanic period had filled with disgust had chiefly resorted. The
Russo-Teuto colonies are proverbial for purity and strictness of
morals. One Wurtemberg sectarian alone, the celebrated Rapp, succeeded
during the period of the triumph of France in emigrating to
Pennsylvania, where he founded the Harmony, a petty religious
community. An inconsiderable number of Swiss, dissatisfied with
Napoleon's supremacy, also emigrated in 1805 and built New Vevay. But
it was not until after the wars, more particularly during the famine
in 1816 and 1817, that emigration across the sea was again carried on
to a considerable extent. In 1817, thirty thousand Swiss,
Wurtembergers, Hessians, and inhabitants of the Palatinate emigrated,
and about an equal number were compelled to retrace their steps from
the seacoast in a state of extreme destitution on account of their
inability to pay their passage and of the complete want of interest in
their behalf displayed by the governments. Political discontent
increased in 1818 and 1819, and each succeeding spring thirty thousand
Germans sailed down the Rhine to the land of liberty in the far west.
In 1820, a society was set on foot at Berne for the protection of the
Swiss emigrants from the frauds practiced upon the unwary. The union
of the Archduchess Leopoldine, daughter to the emperor Francis, with
Dom Pedro, the emperor of the Brazils, had, since 1817, attracted
public attention to South America. Dom Pedro took German mercenaries
into his service for the purpose of keeping his wild subjects within
bounds, and the fruitful land offered infinite advantages to the
German agriculturist; but colonization was rendered impracticable by
the revolutionary disorders and by the ill-will of the natives toward
the settlers, and the Germans who had been induced to emigrate either
enlisted as soldiers or perished. Several among them, who have
published their adventures in the Brazils, bitterly complained of the
conduct of Major Schäfer, who had been engaged in collecting recruits
at Hamburg for the Brazils. They even accused him of having allowed
numbers of their fellow-countrymen to starve to death from motives of
gain, so much a head being paid to him on his arrival in the Brazils
for the men shipped from Europe whether they arrived dead or alive.
The publication of these circumstances completely checked the
emigration to the Brazils, and North America was again annually,
particularly in 1827 and after the July revolution, overrun with
Germans, and they have even begun to take part in the polity of the
United States. The peasants, who have been settled for a considerable
period, and who have insensibly acquired great wealth and have
retained the language and customs of their native country, form the
flower of the German colonists in the West.[4]

In the Cape colonies, the Dutch peasants, the boors, feeling
themselves oppressed by the English government, emigrated _en masse_,
in 1837, to the north, where they settled with the Caffres, and, under
their captain, Prætorius, founded an independent society, in 1839, at
Port Natal, where they again suffered a violent aggression on the part
of the British.

Thus are Germans fruitlessly scattered far and wide over the face of
the globe, while on the very frontiers of Germany nature has
designated the Danube as the near and broad path for emigration and
colonization to her overplus population, which, by settling in her
vicinity, would at once increase her external strength and extend her
influence.


[Footnote 1: The abolition of negro slavery was first mooted by
Germans in 1688, at the great Quaker meeting in North America.]

[Footnote 2: Account of the United States by Eggerling.]

[Footnote 3: One of the most distinguished Germans in America was a
person named John Jacob Astor, the son of a bailiff at Walldorf near
Heidelberg, who was brought up as a furrier, emigrated to America,
where he gradually became the wealthiest of all furriers, founded at
his own expense the colony of Astoria, on the northwestern coast of
North America, so interestingly described by Washington Irving, and
the Astor fund, intended as a protection to German emigrants to
America from the frauds practiced on the unwary. He resided at New
York. He possessed an immense fortune and was highly and deservedly
esteemed for his extraordinary philanthropy.]

[Footnote 4: The Allgemeine Zeitung of September, 1837, reports that
there were at that time one hundred and fifty-seven thousand Germans
in North America who were still unnaturalized, consequently had
emigrated thither within the last two or three years. In Philadelphia
alone there were seventy-five thousand Germans. Grund says in his
work, "The Americans in 1837," "The peaceable disposition of the
Germans prevents their interfering with politics, although their
number is already considerable enough for the formation of a powerful
party. They possess, notwithstanding, great weight in the government
of Pennsylvania, in which State the governors have since the
revolution always been Germans. This is in fact so well understood on
all sides that even during the last election, when two democrats and a
Whig candidate contended for the dignity of governor, they were all
three Germans by birth and no other would have had the slightest
chance of success. In the State of Ohio there are at the present date,
although that province was first colonized by New-English, no fewer
than forty-five thousand Germans possessed of the right of voting. The
State of New York, although originally colonized by Dutch, contains a
numerous German population in several of its provinces, particularly
in that of Columbia, the birthplace of Martin Van Buren, the present
Vice-President and future President of the republic. The State of
Maryland numbers twenty-five thousand Germans possessed of votes;
almost one-third of the population of Illinois is German, and
thousands of fresh emigrants are settling in the valley of the
Mississippi. I believe that the number of German voters or of voters
of German descent may, without exaggeration, be reckoned on an average
annually at four hundred thousand, and certainly in less than twenty
years hence at a million. In the city of New York, the Germans greatly
influence the election of the burgomaster and other city authorities
by holding no fewer than three thousand five hundred votes. These
circumstances naturally render the German vote an object of zealous
contention for politicians of every party, and there is accordingly no
dearth of German newspapers in any of the German settlements. In
Pennsylvania, upward of thirty German (principally weekly) papers are
in circulation, and about an equal number are printed and published in
the State of Ohio. A scarcely lower number are also in circulation in
Maryland."]



Supplementary Chapter

From The Fall of Napoleon to the Present Day


The Confederation of the Rhine, wounded to the death by the campaign
of 1812, was killed by the fall of Napoleon. From that event to the
present time the accompanying pages must be restricted to a
consideration of those matters which have been of capital importance
to the German people. These matters may be summarized as consisting in
the formation of the German Confederation, the Danish war, the
Austro-Prussian war, the Franco-Prussian war, and the refounding of
the empire.

As the fall of Sennacherib was sung by the Hebrews, so was the fall of
Napoleon sung by the Germans. They had been at his mercy. He had
deposed their sovereigns, dismembered their states, crippled their
trade, and exhausted their resources. Yet in 1814, by the Peace of
Paris, they had restored to them all they had possessed in 1792, but
as a reconstruction of the former empire was impracticable, those
states which still maintained their sovereignty coalesced.

This was in 1815. At the time there remained of the three hundred
states into which the empire had originally been divided but
thirty-nine, a number afterward reduced, through the extinction of
four minor dynasties, to thirty-five. A diet, recognized as the
legislative and executive organ of the Confederation, was instituted
at Frankfort. Instead, however, of satisfying the expectations of the
nation, it degenerated into a political tool, which princes
manipulated, which they made subservient to their inherent
conservatism, and with which they oppressed their subjects. The French
revolution of 1830 influenced to a certain extent their attitude, and
a few of them were induced to accord constitutions to their people,
but the effect was transient. Reforms which had been stipulated they
managed to ignore. It took the insurrectionary movements of 1848 to
shake them on their thrones. Forced then to admit the inefficiency of
the diet, and attempting by hasty concessions to check the progress of
republican principles, they consented to the convocation of a national
assembly. Over this body the Archduke John of Austria was elected to
preside. The choice was not happy. Measures which he failed to
facilitate he succeeded in frustrating. As a consequence, matters went
from bad to worse, until, after the refusal of the king of Prussia to
accept the imperial crown which was offered to him in 1849 and the
election of a provisional regency which ensued, the assembly lapsed
into a condition of impotence which terminated in its dissolution.

Meanwhile republican demonstrations having been forcibly suppressed,
there arose between Prussia and Austria a feeling of jealousy, if not
of ill-will, which more than once indicated war, and which, though
resulting in the restoration of the diet and temporarily diverted by a
joint attack on Denmark, culminated in the battle of Sadowa.

Into the details of this attack it is unnecessary to enter. The casus
belli was apparently an entirely virtuous endeavor to settle the
respective claims of the king of Denmark and the duke of Augustenburg
to the sovereignty of Schleswig-Holstein. The fashion in which the
claims were settled consisted in wiping them out. The direction not
merely of Schleswig-Holstein but of Lauenberg was assumed by Austria
and Prussia, who, by virtue of a treaty signed October 30, 1864, took
upon themselves their civil and military administration.

The administration which then ensued was announced as being but a
temporary trusteeship, and throughout Europe was generally so
regarded. But Prussia had other views. In the chambers Bismarck
declared that the crown had no intention of resigning the booty, that,
come what might, never would it give up Kiel. Bismarck was seldom
wrong. In this instance he was right. In the month of August following
the treaty the Emperor Francis of Austria and King William of Prussia
met at Gastein and concluded a convention by which it was agreed that
Schleswig should belong to Prussia, Holstein to Austria, with Kiel as
a free port under Prussian rule.

These proceedings, as might have been expected, created the greatest
indignation in England, France, and among the minor states. Earl
Russell declared that all rights, old and new, had been trodden under
by the Gastein Convention, and that violence and force had been the
only bases on which this convention had been established, while utter
disregard of all public laws had been shown throughout all these
transactions. On the part of France, her minister said that the
Austrian and Prussian governments were guilty in the eyes of Europe of
dividing between themselves territories they were bound to give up to
the claimants who seemed to have the best title, and that modern
Europe was not accustomed to deeds fit only for the dark ages; such
principles, he added, can only overthrow the past without building up
anything new. The Frankfort Diet declared the two powers to have
violated all principles of right, especially that of the duchies to
direct their own affairs as they pleased, provided they did not
interfere with the general interests of the German nation.
Nevertheless, a Prussian governor was appointed over Schleswig, and an
Austrian over Holstein, both assuming these duchies to be parts of
their respective empires.

Early in 1866, it was evident that no real friendship could long
continue between Prussia and Austria, and that these two great robbers
would surely fall out over the division of the plunder; making it the
ostensible cause for dispute, which was in reality their rivalry for
the leadership in Germany. In June, the Prussians crossed the Eyder,
and took possession of Holstein, appointed a supreme president over
the two duchies which passed under Prussian rule, and settled, after a
summary fashion, the vexed question. There were also other causes
which tended to war. The weak side of Austria, weaker far than
Hungary, was her Italian province of Venetia, one, indeed, that few
can say she had any real or natural right to hold, beyond having
acquired it by the treaty of 1813. To recover this from German rule
had been the incessant desire of Italy, and grievous was her
disappointment when the emperor of the French thought fit to stop
immediately after the battle of Magenta and Solferino, instead of
pushing on, as it was hoped he would have done, to the conquest of
Venetia.

In the spring of 1866, Italy was making active preparations for war,
and Austria, on the other hand, increased largely the number of her
troops, Prussia choosing, in defiance of all fair dealing, to assume
that all these armaments were directed against herself; and, on this
supposition, sent a circular to the minor states to tell them they
must decide which side to take in the impending struggle. A secret
treaty was made between Prussia and Italy: that Italy should be ready
to take up arms the moment Prussia gave the signal, and that Prussia
should go on with the war until Venetia was ceded to Italy. Angry
discussions took place in the diet between Austria and Prussia, which
ended in Prussia declaring the Germanic Confederation to be broken up,
and both sides preparing for war.

Austria began early to arm, for she required longer time to mobilize
her army. Prussia, on the contrary, was in readiness for action. Every
Prussian who is twenty years old, without distinction of rank, has to
serve in the army, three years with the colors, five more in the
reserve, after which he is placed for eleven years in the Landwehr,
and liable to be called out when occasion requires. In peace
everything is kept ready for the mobilization of its army. In a
wonderfully short time the organization was complete, and 260,000 men
brought into the field in Bohemia. In arms, they had the advantage of
the needle-gun. The Prussian forces were in three divisions, the
"First Army" under the command of Prince Frederick Charles; the
"Second Army" under that of the crown prince; and the "Army of the
Elbe," under General Herwarth. The supreme command of the Austrian
army of the north was given to Feldzeugmeister von Benedek, that of
the south to the Archduke Albert.

On June 14, Prussia sent a telegraphic summons to Hanover,
Hesse-Cassel, and Saxony, demanding them to reduce their armies to the
peace establishment, and to concur with Prussia respecting the
Germanic confederation; and that if they did not send their consent
within twelve hours, war would be declared. The states did not reply,
Prussia declared war, and on the 16th invaded their territories. The
occupation and disarmament of Hanover and Hesse were necessary to
Prussia for a free communication with her Rhenish provinces, and she
effected her purpose by means of well-planned combinations, so that in
the course of a few days these states were overrun by Prussian troops,
and their sovereigns expelled.

The rapid progress of events, and the Prussian declaration of war, had
taken Hanover by surprise. Her army was not yet mobilized; Austria had
evacuated Holstein, or she could have looked to her for support. To
attempt to defend the capital was hopeless; so King George, suffering
from blindness, moved with his army to Gottingen, with a view of
joining the Bavarians. Prussia entered by the north, and, assisted by
her navy on the Elbe, was by the 22d in possession of the whole of
Hanover. Closed round on all sides by the Prussians, unassisted by
Prince Charles of Bavaria, Gotha having declared for Prussia, the king
of Hanover, with his little army, crossed the frontier of his kingdom,
and at Langensalza, fifteen miles north of Gotha, encountered the
Prussians, and remained master of the battlefield. But victory was of
little avail; surrounded by 40,000 Prussians, the king was forced to
capitulate. The arms and military stores were handed over to the
enemy, and the king and his soldiers allowed to depart. Thus, through
the supineness of Prince Charles of Bavaria, a whole army was made
captive, and Hanover erased from the roll of independent states.

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.