German Culture Past and Present

E >> Ernest Belfort Bax >> German Culture Past and Present

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After the close of the sixteenth century Anabaptism lost all political
importance on the continent of Europe. It had, however, a certain
afterglow in this country during the following century, which lasted
over the times of the Civil War and the Commonwealth, and may be
traced in the movements of the "Levellers," the "Fifth Monarchy men,"
and even among the earlier Quakers.

FOOTNOTES:

[23] Those interested will find the events briefly sketched in the
present chapter exhaustively treated, with full elaboration of detail,
in the two previous volumes of mine, _The Peasant's War in Germany_ and
_The Rise and Fall of the Anabaptists_ (Messrs. George Allen & Unwin).

[24] Amongst the curiosities of literature may be included the
translation of the title of this manifesto by Prof. T.M. Lindsay, D.D.,
in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, 9th edition (Article, "Luther"). The
German title is "Wider die morderischen und rauberischen Rotten der
Bauern." Prof. Lindsay's translation is "_Against the murdering, robbing
Rats [sic] of Peasants_"!

CHAPTER IX

POST-MEDIAEVAL GERMANY

We have in the preceding chapters sought to give a general view of the
social life, together with the inner political and economic movements,
of Germany during that closing period of the Middle Ages which is
generally known as the era of the Reformation. With the definite
establishment of the Reformation and of the new political and economic
conditions that came with it in many of the rising States of Germany,
the Middle Ages may be considered as definitely coming to an end,
notwithstanding that, of course, a considerable body of mediaeval
conditions of social, political, and economic life continued to
survive all over Europe, and certainly not least in Germany.

We have now to take a general and, so to say, panoramic view embracing
three centuries and a half, dating from approximately the middle of
the sixteenth century to the present time. Our presentation, owing to
exigencies of space, will necessarily take the form of a mere sketch
of events and general tendencies, but a sketch that will, we hope, be
sufficient to connect periods and to enable the reader to understand
better than before the forces that have built up modern Germany and
have moulded the national character. In this long period of more than
three centuries there are two world-historic events, or rather series
of events, which stand out in bold relief as the causes which have
moulded Germany directly, and the whole of Europe indirectly, up to
the present day. These two epoch-making historical factors are (1) the
Thirty Years' War and (2) the Rise of the Prussian Monarchy.

Owing to the success of Protestantism, with its two forms of
Lutheranism and Calvinism in various German territories, the friction
became chronic between Catholic and Protestant interests throughout
the length and breadth of Central Europe. The Emperor himself was
chosen, as we know, by three ecclesiastical electors, the Archbishops
of Koeln, Trier, and Mainz, and by four princes, the Pfalzgraf, called
in English the Elector Palatine, the Markgraves of Saxony and
Brandenburg, and the King of Bohemia. The princes and other
potentates, owing immediate allegiance to the empire alone, were
practically independent sovereigns. The Reichstag, instituted in the
fifteenth century, attendance at which was strictly limited to these
immediate vassals of the empire, had proved of little effect. This was
shown when in the middle of the sixteenth century Protestantism had
established itself in the favour of the mass of the German peoples. It
was vetoed by the Reichstag, with its powerful contingent of
ecclesiastical members. Of course here the economic side of the
question played a great part. The ecclesiastical potentates and those
favourable to them dreaded the spread of Protestantism in view of the
secularization of religious domains and fiefs. This, notwithstanding
that there were not wanting bishops and abbots themselves who were not
indisposed, as princes of the empire, to appropriate the Church lands,
of which they were the trustees, for their own personal possessions.
After a short civil war an arrangement was come to at the Treaty of
Passau in 1552, which was in the main ratified by the Reichstag held
at Augsburg in 1555 (the so-called Peace of Augsburg); but the
arrangement was artificial and proved itself untenable as a permanent
instrument of peace.

During the latter part of the sixteenth century two magnates of the
empire, the Duke of Bavaria on the Catholic side and the Calvinist,
Christian of Anhalt, on the Protestant, played the chief role, the
Lutheran Markgrave of Saxony taking up a moderate position as
mediator. Of the Reichstag of Augsburg it should be said that it had
ignored the Calvinist section of the Protestant party altogether, only
recognizing the Lutheran. In 1608 the Protestant Union, which embraced
Lutherans and Calvinists alike, was founded under the leadership of
Christian of Anhalt. It was most powerful in Southern Germany. This
was countered immediately by the foundation under Maximilian, Duke of
Bavaria, of a Catholic League. The friction, which was now becoming
acute, went on increasing till the actual outbreak of the Thirty
Years' War in 1618. The signal for the latter was given by the
Bohemian revolution in the spring of that year.

The Thirty Years' War, as it is termed, which was really a series of
wars, naturally falls into five distinct periods, each representing in
many respects a separate war in itself. The first two years of the war
(1618-20) is occupied with the Bohemian revolt against the attempt of
the Emperor to force Catholicism upon the Bohemian people and with its
immediate consequences. It was accentuated by the attempt of the
Emperor Matthias to compel them to accept the Archduke Ferdinand as
King. This attempt was countered through the election by the Bohemians
of the Pfalzgraf, Friedrich V (the son-in-law of James I of England),
who was called the Winter King from the fact that his reign lasted
only during the winter months; for though the Protestant Union, led by
Count Thurn, had won several victories in 1618 and even threatened
Vienna, the Austrian power was saved by Tilly and the Catholic League
which came to its rescue. Many of the Protestant States, moreover,
were averse to the Palatine Friedrich's acceptance of the Bohemian
crown. The Bohemian movement was ultimately crushed by a force sent
from Spain, under the Spanish general Spinola. The final defeat took
place at the battle of the White Hill, near Prague, November 8, 1620.

The second period of the war was concerned with the attempt of the
Catholic Powers to deprive Friedrich of his Palatine dominions. Here
Count Mansfeld, with his mercenary army of free-lances, aided by
Christian of Brunswick and others on the side of Friedrich and the
Protestants, defeated Tilly in 1622. But later on Tilly and the
Imperialists by a series of victories conquered the Palatinate, which
was bestowed upon Maximilian of Bavaria. Mansfeld, notwithstanding
that he had some successes later in the year 1622, could not
effectually redeem the situation, Brunswick's army being entirely
routed by Tilly in the following year at the battle of Stadtlohn,
which virtually ended this particular campaign.

The third period of the war, from 1624 to 1629, is characterized by
the intervention of the Powers outside the immediate sphere of German
or Imperial interests. France, under Richelieu, became concerned at
the growing power of the Hapsburgs, while James I of England began to
show anxiety at his son-in-law's adverse fortunes, though without
achieving any successful intervention. The chief feature of this
campaign was the entry into the field of Christian IV of Denmark with
a powerful army to join Mansfeld and Christian of Brunswick in
invading the Imperial and Austrian territories. But the savageries and
excesses of Mansfeld's troops had disgusted and alienated all sides.
It was at this time that Wallenstein, Duke of Friedland, was appointed
general of the Imperial troops, and soon after succeeded in completely
routing Mansfeld at the battle of Dessau Bridge in 1626. Four months
later Tilly completely defeated Christian IV and his Danes at Lutter.
Wallenstein, on his side, followed up his success, driving Mansfeld
into Hungary. Mansfeld, in spite of some fugitive successes in the
Austrian dominions in the course of his retreat, was compelled by
Wallenstein to evacuate Hungary, shortly after which he died. The
campaign ended with the Peace of Lubeck in 1629.

The action of the Emperor Ferdinand in attempting to enforce the
restitution of Church lands in North Germany was the proximate cause
of the next great campaign, which constitutes the fourth period of the
Thirty Years' War (1630-36). The immediate occasion was, however,
Wallenstein's seizure of certain towns in Mecklenburg, over which he
claimed rights by Imperial grant two years before. This, which may be
regarded as the greatest period of the Thirty Years' War, was
characterized by the appearance on the scene of Gustavus Adolphus, the
Swedish King. He was not in time, however, to prevent the sacking of
Magdeburg by the troops of Tilly and Poppenheim. The former,
nevertheless, was defeated by the Swedes at the important battle of
Breitenfeld in 1631. The following year the Imperial army was again
defeated on the Lach. Thereupon Gustavus occupied Muenchen, though he
was subsequently compelled by Wallenstein to evacuate the city. The
last great victory of Gustavus was at Luetzen in 1632, at which battle
the great leader met his death. Wallenstein, who was now in favour of
a policy of peace and political reconstruction, was assassinated in
1634 with the connivance of the Emperor. On September 6th of the same
year the Protestant army, under Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, sustained an
overwhelming defeat at Noerdlingen, and the Peace of Prague the
following year ended the campaign.

The fifth period, from 1636 to 1648, has, as its central interest, the
active intervention of France in the Central European struggle. The
Swedes, notwithstanding the death of their King, continued to have
some notable successes, and even approached to within striking
distance of Vienna. But Richelieu now became the chief arbiter of
events. The French generals Conde and Turenne invaded Germany and the
Netherlands. Victories were won by the new armies at Rocroi,
Thionville, and at Noerdlingen, but Vienna was not captured. The
Imperial troops were, however, again defeated at Zumarshauen by Conde,
who also repelled an attempted diversion in the shape of a Spanish
invasion of France at the battle of Lens in the spring of 1648. The
Thirty Years' War was finally ended in October of the same year at
Muenster, by the celebrated Treaty of Westphalia.

The above is a skeleton sketch in a few words of the chief features of
that long and complicated series of diplomatic and military events
known to history as the Thirty Years' War.[25]

The Thirty Years' War had far-reaching and untold consequences on
Germany itself and indirectly on the course of modern civilization
generally. For close upon a generation Central Europe had been ravaged
from end to end by hostile and plundering armies. Rapine and
destruction were, for near upon a third of the century, the common lot
of the Germanic peoples from north to south and from east to west.
Populations were as helpless as sheep before the brutal, criminal
soldiery, recruited in many cases from the worst elements of every
European country. The excesses of Mansfeld's mercenary army in the
earlier stages of the war created widespread horror. But the defeat
and death of Mansfeld brought no alleviation. The troops of
Wallenstein proved no better in this respect than those of Mansfeld.
On the contrary, with every year the war went on its horrors
increased, while every trace of principle in the struggle fell more
and more into the background. Everywhere was ruin.

The population became by the time the war had ended a mere fraction of
what it was at the opening of the seventeenth century. Some idea of
the state of things may be gathered from the instance of Augsburg,
which during its siege by the Imperialists was reduced from 70,000 to
10,000 inhabitants. What happened to the great commercial city of the
Fuggers was taking place on a scale greater or less, according to the
district, all over German territory. We read of towns and villages
that were pillaged more than a dozen times in a year. This terrific
depopulation of the country, the reader may well understand, had vast
results on its civilization. The whole great structure of Mediaeval and
Renaissance Germany--its literature, art, and social life--was in
ruins. At the close of the seventeenth century the old German culture
had gone and the new had not yet arisen. But of this we shall have
more to say in the next chapter. For the present we are chiefly
concerned to give a brief sketch of the second great epoch-making
event, or rather train of events, which conditioned the foundation and
development of modern Germany. We refer, of course, to the rise of the
Prussian monarchy.

We should premise that the Prussians are the least German of all the
populations of what constitutes modern Germany. They are more than
half Slavs. In the early Middle Ages the Mark of Brandenburg, the
centre and chief province of the modern Prussian State, was an
outlying offshoot of the mediaeval Holy Roman Empire of the German
nation, surrounded by barbaric tribes, Slav and Teuton. The chief Slav
people were the Borussians, from which the name "Prussian" was a
corruption. The first outstanding historic fact concerning these
Baltic lands is that a certain Adalbert, Bishop of Prague, at the end
of the tenth century went north on a mission of enterprise for
converting the Prussian heathen. The neighbouring Christian prince,
the Duke of Poland, who had presumably suffered much from incursions
of these pagan Slavs, offered him every encouragement. The adventure
ended, however, before long in the death of Adalbert at the hands of
these same pagan Slavs.

The first indication of the existence of a Mark of Brandenburg with
its Markgraves is in the eleventh century. There is, however, little
definite historical information concerning them. The first of these
Markgraves to attract attention was Albrecht the Bear, one of the
so-called Ascanian line, the family hailing from the Harz Mountains.
Albrecht was a remarkable man for his time in every way. Under him the
Markgravate of Brandenburg was raised to be an electorate of the
empire. The Markgrave thus became a prince of the empire. It was
Albrecht the Bear who first introduced a limited measure of peace and
order into the hitherto anarchic condition of the Mark and its
adjacent territories. The Ascanian line continued till 1319, and was
followed by a period of political anarchy and disturbance, until
finally Friedrich, Count of Hohenzollern, acquired the electorate, and
became known as the Elector Friedrich I. Meanwhile the Order of the
Teutonic Knights, who earlier began their famous crusade against the
Borussian heathens, had established themselves on the territories now
known as East and West Prussia. In spite of this fact and of the for
long time dominant power of their Polish neighbours, the Hohenzollern
rulers continued to acquire increased power and fresh territories.

At the Reformation Albrecht, a scion of the Hohenzollern family, who
had been elected Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, adopted
Protestantism and assumed the title of Duke of Prussia. Finally, in
1609, the then Elector of Brandenburg, John Sigismund, through his
marriage with Ann, daughter and heiress of Albrecht Friedrich, Duke of
Prussia, came into possession of the whole of Prussia proper, together
with other adjacent territories. The Prussian lands suffered much
through the Thirty Years' War during the reign of John Sigismund's
successor, George Wilhelm. But the latter's son, Friedrich Wilhelm,
the so-called Great Elector, succeeded by his ability in repairing the
ravages the war had made and raising the electorate immensely in
political importance. He left at his death, in 1688, the financial
condition of the country in a sound state, with an effective army of
38,000 men. Friedrich I, who followed him, held matters together and
got Prussia promoted to the rank of a kingdom in 1701. His son,
Friedrich Wilhelm I, by rigid economies succeeded in raising the
financial condition of the kingdom to a still higher level. The
military power of the monarchy he also developed considerably, and is
famous in history for his mania for tall soldiers.

We now come to the real founder of the Prussian monarchy as a great
European Power, Friedrich Wilhelm I's son, who succeeded his father in
1740 as Friedrich II, and who is known to history as Friedrich the
Great.

Friedrich no sooner came to the throne than he started on an
aggressive expansionist policy for Prussia. The opportunity presented
itself a few months after his accession by the dispute as to the
Pragmatic Sanction and Maria Theresa's right to the throne of Austria.
In the two wars which immediately followed, the Prussian army overran
the whole of Silesia, and the peace of 1745 left the Prussian King in
possession of the entire country. East Friesland had already been
absorbed the year before on the death of the last Duke without issue.
In spite of the exhaustion of men and money in the two Silesian wars,
Friedrich found himself ready with both men and money eleven years
later, in 1756, to embark upon what is known as the Seven Years' War.
Though without acquiring fresh territory by this war, the gain in
prestige was so great that the Prussian monarchy virtually assumed the
hegemony of North Germany, becoming the rival of Austria for the
domination of Central Europe, the position in which it remained for
more than a century afterwards. Nevertheless, after this succession of
wars the condition of the country was deplorable. It was obvious that
the first thing to do was the work of internal resuscitation. The
extraordinary ability and energy of the King saved the internal
situation. Agriculture, industry, and commerce were re-established and
reorganized. It was now that the cast-iron system of bureaucratic
administration, where not actually created, was placed on a firm
foundation. But in external affairs Prussia continued to earn its
character as the robber State of Europe _par excellence_.

In 1772 Friedrich joined with Austria in the first partition of
Poland, acquiring the whole of West Prussia as his share. A few years
later Friedrich formed an anti-Austrian league of German princes,
under Prussian leadership, which was the first overt sign of the
conflict for supremacy in Germany between Prussia and Austria, which
lasted for wellnigh a century. By the time of his death--August 7,
1786--Friedrich had increased Prussian territory to nearly 75,000
square miles and between five and six millions of population.

Under Friedrich's nephew, Friedrich Wilhelm II, while the rigour of
bureaucratic administration, controlled by a monarchical absolutism,
continued and was even accentuated, the absence of the able hand of
Friedrich the Great soon made itself apparent. As regards external
policy, however, Prussia, while allowing territories on the left bank
of the Rhine to go to France, eagerly saw to the increase of her own
dominions in the east to the extent of nearly doubling her superficial
area by her participation in the second and third partitions of
Poland, which took place in 1783 and 1795 respectively. These external
successes, or rather acts of spoliation, were, notwithstanding,
counter-balanced at home by a degeneracy alike of the civil
bureaucracy and of the army. The country internally, both as regards
morale and effectiveness, had sunk far below its level under Friedrich
the Great. This showed itself during the great Napoleonic wars, when
Prussia had to undergo more than one humiliation at the hands of
Buonaparte, culminating in October 1806 with the collapse of the
Prussian armies at Jena and Auerstaedt. The entry of Napoleon in
triumph into Berlin followed. At the Peace of Tilsit, in 1807,
Friedrich-Wilhelm had to sign away half his kingdom and to consent to
the payment of a heavy war indemnity, pending which the French troops
occupied the most important fortresses in the country.

Following upon this moment of deepest national humiliation comes the
period of the Ministers Stein and Hardenberg, of the enthusiastic
adjurations to patriotism of Fischer and others, and of the activity
of the "League of Virtue" (_Tugendbund_). It is difficult to
understand the enthusiasm that could be aroused for the rehabilitation
of an absolutist, bureaucratic, and militarist State, such as Prussia
was--a State in which civil and political liberty was conspicuous by
its absence. But the fact undoubtedly remains that the men in question
did succeed in pumping up a strong patriotic feeling and desire to
free the country from the yoke of the foreigner, even if that only
meant increased domestic tyranny. It must be admitted, however, that
as a matter of fact not inconsiderable internal reforms were owing to
the leading men of this time. Stein abolished serfdom, and in some
respects did away with the legal distinction of classes, thereby
paving the way for the rise of the middle class, which at that time
meant a progressive step. He also conferred rights of self-government
upon municipalities. Hardenberg inaugurated measures intended to
ameliorate the condition of the peasants, while Wilhelm von Humboldt
established the thorough if somewhat mechanical education system which
was subsequently extended throughout Germany. He also helped to found
the University of Berlin in 1809.

But at the same time the curse of Prussia--militarism--was riveted on
the people through the reorganization of the Prussian army by those
two able military bureaucrats, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. In 1813
Prussia concluded at Kalicsh an alliance with Russia, which Austria
joined. In the war which followed Prussia was severely strained by
losses in men and money. But at the Congress of Vienna the Prussian
kingdom received back nearly, but not quite, all it lost in 1807. The
acquirement, however, of new and valuable territories in Westphalia
and along the Rhine, besides Thuringia and the province of Saxony,
more than compensated for the loss of certain Slav districts in the
east, as thereby the way was prepared for the ultimate despotism of
the Prussian King over all Germany. The success of Prussian diplomacy
in enslaving these erstwhile independent German lands in 1815 was
crucial for the subsequent direction of Prussian policy.

It is time now to return once more to the internal conditions in the
Prussian State now dominant over a large part of Northern Germany. A
Constitution had been more than once talked of, but the despotism with
its bureaucratic machinery had remained. Now, after the conclusion of
the Napoleonic wars and the re-drawing of the Prussian frontier lines
by the peace of 1815, the matter assumed an urgency it had not had
before. Following upon proclamations and promises, a patent was
addressed to the new Saxon provinces granting a national _Landtag_, or
Diet, for the whole country. The drawing up of the Constitution thus
proclaimed in principle gave rise to heated conflicts. There was, as
yet, no proletariat proper in Prussia, and for that matter hardly any
in the rest of Germany. The handicraft system of production, and even
the mediaeval guild system, slightly modified, prevailed throughout the
country. The middle class proper was small and unimportant, and hence
Liberalism, the theoretical expression of that class, only found
articulate utterance through men of the professions.

The new Prussian territories in the west were largely tinctured with
progressive ideas originating in the French Revolution, while the east
was dominated by reactionary feudal landowners, the notorious Junker
class--a class special to East Prussian territories, including the
eastern portion of the Mark of Brandenburg--whom the moderate
Conservative Minister Stein himself characterized as "heartless,
wooden, half-educated people, only good to turn into corporals or
calculating-machines." This class then, as ever since, opposed an
increase of popular control and the progress of free institutions with
might and main. Friction arose between the Government and Liberal
gymnastic societies and students' clubs. This culminated in the
festival on the Wartburg in October 1818, when a bonfire was made of a
book of police laws and Uhlan stays and a corporal's stick. It was
followed the next year by the assassination of the dramatist and
political spy Kotzebue by the student Sand.

Panic seized the reactionists, and the Austrian Minister Metternich,
one of the chief pillars of absolutist principles in Europe, induced
the King to commit himself to the Austrian system of repression. In
1821 the Reactionary party succeeded in getting the projected
Constitution abandoned and the bureaucratic system of provincial
estates established by royal warrant two years later (1823). The
Prussian police with their spies then became omnipotent, and a
remorseless persecution of all holding Liberal or democratic views
ensued, the best-known writers on the popular side no less than the
rank and file being arbitrarily arrested and kept in prison on any or
no pretext. The amalgamation of the new districts into the Prussian
bureaucratic system was not accomplished without resistance. The Rhine
provinces especially, accustomed to easy-going government and light
taxation under the old ecclesiastical princes, kicked vigorously
against the Prussian jack-boot. The discontent was so widespread
indeed that some concessions had to be made, such as the retention of
the Code Napoleon. What created most resentment, however, was the
enactment of 1814, which enforced compulsory universal military
service throughout the monarchy. Friedrich Wilhelm also undertook to
dragoon his subjects in the matter of religion, amalgamating the
Lutherans with other reformed bodies, under the name of the
"Evangelical Church."

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