The great measures were commenced in Prussia immediately after the disaster of 1806: first, the reorganization of the army and the abolition of the privileges of the aristocracy in respect to appointments and the possession of landed property; these were, in 1808, succeeded by the celebrated civic regulation which placed the civic administration in the hands of the city deputies freely elected by the citizens; in 1810, by freedom of trade and by the foundation of the new universities of Berlin (instead of Halle), of Breslau (instead of Frankfort on the Oder), and, in 1819, of Bonn, by which means the libraries, museums, and scientific institutions of every description were centralized; in 1814, by the common duty imposed upon every individual of every class, without exception, to bear arms and to do service in the Landwehr up to his thirty-ninth year; in 1821, by the regulation for the division of communes; and, in 1822, by the extra post.
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 inGermany
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.
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 ofscript. rerumwere, 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 ancientMinneliederof 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 aristocraticmédisanceand grim spirit of rebellion emulating each other in France, were, in Germany, represented by Prince Piichler, the mostspiritueldrawing-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,bizarreand 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.
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, emigrateden 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 byGermans 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.