German Culture Past and Present
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Ernest Belfort Bax >> German Culture Past and Present
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GERMAN CULTURE
PAST AND PRESENT
BY
ERNEST BELFORT BAX
AUTHOR OF "JEAN PAUL MARAT," "THE RELIGION
OF SOCIALISM," "THE ETHICS OF SOCIALISM,"
"THE ROOTS OF REALITY," ETC., ETC.
LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN, LTD.
RUSKIN HOUSE 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C.
_First published in 1915_
[_All rights reserved_]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
INTRODUCTORY:--SITUATION IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 7
I. THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 65
II. POPULAR LITERATURE OF THE TIME 85
III. THE FOLKLORE OF REFORMATION GERMANY 99
IV. THE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY GERMAN TOWN 114
V. COUNTRY AND TOWN AT THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES 122
VI. THE REVOLT OF THE KNIGHTHOOD 154
VII. GENERAL SIGNS OF RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL REVOLT 174
VIII. THE GREAT RISING OF THE PEASANTS AND THE
ANABAPTIST MOVEMENT 183
IX. POST-MEDIAEVAL GERMANY 229
X. MODERN GERMAN CULTURE 263
PREFACE
The following pages aim at giving a general view of the social and
intellectual life of Germany from the end of the mediaeval period to
modern times. In the earlier portion of the book, the first half of
the sixteenth century in Germany is dealt with at much greater length
and in greater detail than the later period, a sketch of which forms
the subject of the last two chapters. The reason for this is to be
found in the fact that while the roots of the later German character
and culture are to be sought for in the life of this period, it is
comparatively little known to the average educated English reader. In
the early fifteenth century, during the Reformation era, German life
and culture in its widest sense began to consolidate themselves, and
at the same time to take on an originality which differentiated them
from the general life and culture of Western Europe as it was during
the Middle Ages.
To those who would fully appreciate the later developments, therefore,
it is essential thoroughly to understand the details of the social and
intellectual history of the time in question. For the later period
there are many more works of a generally popular character available
for the student and general reader. The chief aim of the sketch given
in Chapters IX and X is to bring into sharp relief those events which,
in the Author's view, represent more or less crucial stages in the
development of modern Germany.
For the earlier portion of the present volume an older work of the
Author's, now out of print, entitled _German Society at the Close of
the Middle Ages_, has been largely drawn upon. Reference, as will be
seen, has also been made in the course of the present work to two
other writings from the same pen which are still to be had for those
desirous of fuller information on their respective subjects, viz. _The
Peasants' War_ and _The Rise and Fall of the Anabaptists_ (Messrs.
George Allen & Unwin).
German Culture Past and Present
INTRODUCTORY
The close of the fifteenth century had left the whole structure of
mediaeval Europe to all appearance intact. Statesmen and writers like
Philip de Commines had apparently as little suspicion that the state
of things they saw around them, in which they had grown up and of
which they were representatives, was ever destined to pass away, as
others in their turn have since had. Society was organized on the
feudal hierarchy of status. In the first place, a noble class,
spiritual and temporal, was opposed to a peasantry either wholly
servile or but nominally free. In addition to this opposition of noble
and peasant there was that of the township, which, in its corporate
capacity, stood in the relation of lord to the surrounding peasantry.
The township in Germany was of two kinds--first of all, there was the
township that was "free of the Empire," that is, that held nominally
from the Emperor himself (_Reichstadt_), and secondly, there was the
township that was under the domination of an intermediate lord. The
economic basis of the whole was still land; the status of a man or of
a corporation was determined by the mode in which they held their
land. "No land without a lord" was the principle of mediaeval polity;
just as "money has no master" is the basis of the modern world with
its self-made men. Every distinction of rank in the feudal system was
still denoted for the most part by a special costume. It was a world
of knights in armour, of ecclesiastics in vestments and stoles, of
lawyers in robes, of princes in silk and velvet and cloth of gold, and
of peasants in laced shoe, brown cloak, and cloth hat.
But although the whole feudal organization was outwardly intact, the
thinker who was watching the signs of the times would not have been
long in arriving at the conclusion that feudalism was "played out,"
that the whole fabric of mediaeval civilization was becoming dry and
withered, and had either already begun to disintegrate or was on the
eve of doing so. Causes of change had within the past half-century
been working underneath the surface of social life, and were rapidly
undermining the whole structure. The growing use of firearms in war;
the rapid multiplication of printed books; the spread of the new
learning after the taking of Constantinople in 1453, and the
subsequent diffusion of Greek teachers throughout Europe; the surely
and steadily increasing communication with the new world, and the
consequent increase of the precious metals; and, last but not least,
Vasco da Gama's discovery of the new trade route from the East by way
of the Cape--all these were indications of the fact that the
death-knell of the old order of things had struck.
Notwithstanding the apparent outward integrity of the system based on
land tenures, land was ceasing to be the only form of productive
wealth. Hence it was losing the exclusive importance attaching to it
in the earlier period of the Middle Ages. The first form of modern
capitalism had already arisen. Large aggregations of capital in the
hands of trading companies were becoming common. The Roman law was
establishing itself in the place of the old customary tribal law which
had hitherto prevailed in the manorial courts, serving in some sort as
a bulwark against the caprice of the territorial lord; and this change
facilitated the development of the bourgeois principle of private, as
opposed to communal, property. In intellectual matters, though
theology still maintained its supremacy as the chief subject of human
interest, other interests were rapidly growing up alongside of it, the
most prominent being the study of classical literature.
Besides these things, there was the dawning interest in nature, which
took on, as a matter of course, a magical form in accordance with
traditional and contemporary modes of thought. In fact, like the
flicker of a dying candle in its socket, the Middle Ages seemed at the
beginning of the sixteenth century to exhibit all their own salient
characteristics in an exaggerated and distorted form. The old feudal
relations had degenerated into a blood-sucking oppression; the old
rough brutality, into excogitated and elaborated cruelty (aptly
illustrated in the collection of ingenious instruments preserved in
the Torture-tower at Nuernberg); the old crude superstition, into a
systematized magical theory of natural causes and effects; the old
love of pageantry, into a lavish luxury and magnificence of which we
have in the "field of the cloth of gold" the stock historical example;
the old chivalry, into the mercenary bravery of the soldier, whose
trade it was to fight, and who recognized only one virtue--to wit,
animal courage. Again, all these exaggerated characteristics were
mixed with new elements, which distorted them further, and which
foreshadowed a coming change, the ultimate issue of which would be
their extinction and that of the life of which they were the signs.
The growing tendency towards centralization and the consequent
suppression or curtailment of the local autonomies of the Middle Ages
in the interests of some kind of national government, of which the
political careers of Louis XI in France, of Edward IV in England, and
of Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain were such conspicuous instances,
did not fail to affect in a lesser degree that loosely connected
political system of German States known as the Holy Roman Empire.
Maximilian's first Reichstag in 1495 caused to be issued an Imperial
edict suppressing the right of private warfare claimed and exercised
by the whole noble class from the princes of the empire down to the
meanest knight. In the same year the Imperial Chamber (_Reichskammer_)
was established, and in 1501 the Imperial Aulic Council. Maximilian
also organized a standing army of mercenary troops, called
_Landesknechte_. Shortly afterwards Germany was divided into Imperial
districts called circles (_Kreise_), ultimately ten in number, all of
which were under an imperial government (_Reichsregiment_), which had
at its disposal a military force for the punishment of disturbers of
the peace. But the public opinion of the age, conjoined with the
particular circumstances, political and economic, of Central Europe,
robbed the enactment in a great measure of its immediate effect.
Highway plundering and even private war were still going on, to a
considerable extent, far into the sixteenth century. Charles V pursued
the same line of policy as his predecessor; but it was not until after
the suppression of the lower nobility in 1523, and finally of the
peasants in 1526, that any material change took place; and then the
centralization, such as it was, was in favour of the princes, rather
than of the Imperial power, which, after Charles V's time, grew weaker
and weaker. The speciality about the history of Germany is, that it
has not known till our own day centralization on a national or racial
scale like England or France.
At the opening of the sixteenth century public opinion not merely
sanctioned open plunder by the wearer of spurs and by the possessor of
a stronghold, but regarded it as his special prerogative, the exercise
of which was honourable rather than disgraceful. The cities certainly
resented their burghers being waylaid and robbed, and hanged the
knights wherever they could; and something like a perpetual feud
always existed between the wealthier cities and the knights who
infested the trade routes leading to and from them. Still, these
belligerent relations were taken as a matter of course; and no
disgrace, in the modern sense, attached to the occupation of highway
robbery.
In consequence of the impoverishment of the knights at this period,
owing to causes with which we shall deal later, the trade or
profession had recently received an accession of vigour, and at the
same time was carried on more brutally and mercilessly than ever
before. We will give some instances of the sort of occurrence which
was by no means unusual. In the immediate neighbourhood of Nuernberg,
which was _bien entendu_ one of the chief seats of the Imperial power,
a robber-knight leader, named Hans Thomas von Absberg, was a standing
menace. It was the custom of this ruffian, who had a large following,
to plunder even the poorest who came from the city, and, not content
with this, to mutilate his victims. In June 1522 he fell upon a
wretched craftsman, and with his own sword hacked off the poor
fellow's right hand, notwithstanding that the man begged him upon his
knees to take the left, and not destroy his means of earning his
livelihood. The following August he, with his band, attacked a
Nuernberg tanner, whose hand was similarly treated, one of his
associates remarking that he was glad to set to work again, as it was
"a long time since they had done any business in hands." On the same
occasion a cutler was dealt with after a similar fashion. The hands in
these cases were collected and sent to the Buergermeister of Nuernberg,
with some such phrase as that the sender (Hans Thomas) would treat all
so who came from the city.
The princes themselves, when it suited their purpose, did not hesitate
to offer an asylum to these knightly robbers. With Absberg were
associated Georg von Giech and Hans Georg von Aufsess. Among other
notable robber-knights of the time may be mentioned the Lord of
Brandenstein and the Lord of Rosenberg. As illustrating the strictly
professional character of the pursuit, and the brutally callous nature
of the society practising it, we may narrate that Margaretha von
Brandenstein was accustomed, it is recorded, to give the advice to the
choice guests round her board that when a merchant failed to keep his
promise to them, they should never hesitate to cut off _both_ his
hands. Even Franz von Sickingen, known sometimes as the "last flower
of German chivalry," boasted of having among the intimate associates
of his enterprise for the rehabilitation of the knighthood many
gentlemen who had been accustomed to "let their horses on the high
road bite off the purses of wayfarers." So strong was the public
opinion of the noble class as to the inviolability of the privilege of
highway plunder that a monk, preaching one day in a cathedral and
happening to attack it as unjustifiable, narrowly escaped death at the
hands of some knights present amongst his congregation, who asserted
that he had insulted the prerogatives of their order. Whenever this
form of knight-errantry was criticized, there were never wanting
scholarly pens to defend it as a legitimate means of aristocratic
livelihood; since a knight must live in suitable style, and this was
often his only resource for obtaining the means thereto.
The free cities, which were subject only to Imperial jurisdiction,
were practically independent republics. Their organization was a
microcosm of that of the entire empire. At the apex of the municipal
society was the Buergermeister and the so-called "Honorability"
(_Ehrbarkeit_), which consisted of the patrician clans or _gentes_ (in
most cases), those families which were supposed to be descended from
the original chartered freemen of the town, the old Mark-brethren.
They comprised generally the richest families, and had monopolized the
entire government of the city, together with the right to administer
its various sources of income and to consume its revenue at their
pleasure. By the time, however, of which we are writing, the
trade-guilds had also attained to a separate power of their own, and
were in some cases ousting the burgher-aristocracy, though they were
very generally susceptible of being manipulated by the members of the
patrician class, who, as a rule, could alone sit in the Council
(_Rath_). The latter body stood, in fact, as regards the town, much in
the relation of the feudal lord to his manor. Strong in their wealth
and in their aristocratic privileges, the patricians lorded it alike
over the townspeople and over the neighbouring peasantry, who were
subject to the municipality. They forestalled and regrated with
impunity. They assumed the chief rights in the municipal lands, in
many cases imposed duties at their own caprice, and turned guild
privileges and rights of citizenship into a source of profit for
themselves. Their bailiffs in the country districts forming part of
their territory were often more voracious in their treatment of the
peasants than even the nobles themselves. The accounts of income and
expenditure were kept in the loosest manner, and embezzlement clumsily
concealed was the rule rather than the exception.
The opposition of the non-privileged citizens, usually led by the
wealthier guildsmen not belonging to the aristocratic class, operated
through the guilds and through the open assembly of the citizens. It
had already frequently succeeded in establishing a representation of
the general body of the guildsmen in a so-called Great Council
(_Grosser Rath_), and in addition, as already said, in ousting the
"honorables" from some of the public functions. Altogether the
patrician party, though still powerful enough, was at the opening of
the sixteenth century already on the decline, the wealthy and
unprivileged opposition beginning in its turn to constitute itself
into a quasi-aristocratic body as against the mass of the poorer
citizens and those outside the pale of municipal rights. The latter
class was now becoming an important and turbulent factor in the life
of the larger cities. The craft-guilds, consisting of the body of
non-patrician citizens, were naturally in general dominated by their
most wealthy section.
We may here observe that the development of the mediaeval township from
its earliest beginnings up to the period of its decay in the sixteenth
century was almost uniformly as follows:[1] At first the township, or
rather what later became the township, was represented entirely by
the circle of _gentes_ or group-families originally settled within the
mark or district on which the town subsequently stood. These
constituted the original aristocracy from which the tradition of the
_Ehrbarkeit_ dated. In those towns founded by the Romans, such as
Trier, Aachen, and others, the case was of course a little different.
There the origin of the _Ehrbarkeit_ may possibly be sought for in the
leading families of the Roman provincials who were in occupation of
the town at the coming of the barbarians in the fifth century. Round
the original nucleus there gradually accreted from the earliest period
of the Middle Ages the freed men of the surrounding districts,
fugitive serfs, and others who sought that protection and means of
livelihood in a community under the immediate domination of a powerful
lord, which they could not otherwise obtain when their native
village-community had perchance been raided by some marauding noble
and his retainers. Circumstances, amongst others the fact that the
community to which they attached themselves had already adopted
commerce and thus become a guild of merchants, led to the
differentiation of industrial functions amongst the new-comers, and
thus to the establishment of craft-guilds.
Another origin of the townsfolk, which must not be overlooked, is to
be found in the attendants on the palace-fortress of some great
overlord. In the early Middle Ages all such magnates kept up an
extensive establishment, the greater ecclesiastical lords no less than
the secular often having several castles. In Germany this origin of
the township was furthered by Charles the Great, who established
schools and other civil institutions, with a magistrate at their head,
round many of the palace-castles that he founded. "A new epoch," says
Von Maurer, "begins with the villa-foundations of Charles the Great
and his ordinances respecting them, for that his celebrated
capitularies in this connection were intended for his newly
established villas is self-evident. In that proceeding he obviously
had the Roman villa in his mind, and on the model of this he rather
further developed the previously existing court and villa constitution
than completely reorganized it. Hence one finds even in his new
creations the old foundation again, albeit on a far more extended
plan, the economical side of such villa-colonies being especially more
completely and effectively ordered."[2] The expression "Palatine," as
applied to certain districts, bears testimony to the fact here
referred to. As above said, the development of the township was
everywhere on the same lines. The aim of the civic community was
always to remove as far as possible the power which controlled them.
Their worst condition was when they were immediately overshadowed by a
territorial magnate. When their immediate lord was a prince, the area
of whose feudal jurisdiction was more extensive, his rule was less
oppressively felt, and their condition was therefore considerably
improved. It was only, however, when cities were "free of the empire"
(_Reichsfrei_) that they attained the ideal of mediaeval civic freedom.
It follows naturally from the conditions described that there was, in
the first place, a conflict between the primitive inhabitants as
embodied in their corporate society and the territorial lord, whoever
he might be. No sooner had the township acquired a charter of freedom
or certain immunities than a new antagonism showed itself between the
ancient corporation of the city and the trade-guilds, these
representing the later accretions. The territorial lord (if any) now
sided, usually though not always, with the patrician party. But the
guilds, nevertheless, succeeded in ultimately wresting many of the
leading public offices from the exclusive possession of the patrician
families. Meanwhile the leading men of the guilds had become _hommes
arrives_. They had acquired wealth, and influence which was in many
cases hereditary in their family, and by the beginning of the
sixteenth century they were confronted with the more or less veiled
and more or less open opposition of the smaller guildsmen and of the
newest comers into the city, the shiftless proletariat of serfs and
free peasants, whom economic pressure was fast driving within the
walls, owing to the changed conditions of the times.
The peasant of the period was of three kinds: the _leibeigener_ or
serf, who was little better than a slave, who cultivated his lord's
domain, upon whom unlimited burdens might be fixed, and who was in all
respects amenable to the will of his lord; the _hoeriger_ or villein,
whose services were limited alike in kind and amount; and the _freier_
or free peasant, who merely paid what was virtually a quit-rent in
kind or in money for being allowed to retain his holding or status in
the rural community under the protection of the manorial lord. The
last was practically the counterpart of the mediaeval English
copyholder. The Germans had undergone essentially the same
transformations in social organization as the other populations of
Europe.
The barbarian nations at the time of their great migration in the
fifth century were organized on a tribal and village basis. The head
man was simply _primus inter pares_. In the course of their wanderings
the successful military leader acquired powers and assumed a position
that was unknown to the previous times, when war, such as it was, was
merely inter-tribal and inter-clannish, and did not involve the
movements of peoples and federations of tribes, and when, in
consequence, the need of permanent military leaders or for the
semblance of a military hierarchy had not arisen. The military leader
now placed himself at the head of the older social organization, and
associated with his immediate followers on terms approaching equality.
A well-known illustration of this is the incident of the vase taken
from the Cathedral of Rheims, and of Chlodowig's efforts to rescue it
from his independent comrade-in-arms.
The process of the development of the feudal polity of the Middle Ages
is, of course, a very complicated one, owing to the various strands
that go to compose it. In addition to the German tribes themselves,
who moved _en masse_, carrying with them their tribal and village
organization, under the overlordship of the various military leaders,
were the indigenous inhabitants amongst whom they settled. The latter
in the country districts, even in many of the territories within the
Roman Empire, still largely retained the primitive communal
organization. The new-comers, therefore, found in the rural
communities a social system already in existence into which they
naturally fitted, but as an aristocratic body over against the
conquered inhabitants. The latter, though not all reduced to a servile
condition, nevertheless held their land from the conquering body under
conditions which constituted them an order of freemen inferior to the
new-comers.
To put the matter briefly, the military leaders developed into barons
and princes, and in some cases the nominal centralization culminated,
as in France and England, in the kingly office; while, in Germany and
Italy, it took the form of the revived Imperial office, the spiritual
overlord of the whole of Christendom being the Pope, who had his
vassals in the prince-prelates and subordinate ecclesiastical holders.
In addition to the princes sprung originally from the military leaders
of the migratory nations, there were their free followers, who
developed ultimately into the knighthood or inferior nobility; the
inhabitants of the conquered districts forming a distinct class of
inferior freemen or of serfs. But the essentially personal relation
with which the whole process started soon degenerated into one based
on property. The most primitive form of property--land--was at the
outset what was termed _allodial_, at least among the conquering
race, from every social group having the possession, under the
trusteeship of his head man, of the land on which it settled. Now,
owing to the necessities of the time, owing to the need of protection,
to violence, and to religious motives, it passed into the hands of the
overlord, temporal or spiritual, as his possession; and the
inhabitants, even in the case of populations which had not been
actually conquered, became his vassals, villeins, or serfs, as the
case might be. The process by means of which this was accomplished was
more or less gradual; indeed, the entire extinction of communal
rights, whereby the notion of private ownership is fully realized, was
not universally effected even in the West of Europe till within a
measurable distance of our own time.[3]
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