Part 15 (1/2)

The festival solemnized on the Wartburg was speedily succeeded by others. The _Turner_, more particularly at Berlin and Breslau, rendered themselves conspicuous not only by their dress but by their insolence, boys even of the tenderest years putting themselves forward as reformers of the government and of society, and singing the most bloodthirsty songs of liberty. The Prussian government interfered, and the gymnastic exercises, so well suited to the subjects of a warlike state, were once more prohibited.

At the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, Stourdza, the Russian councillor of state, a Wallachian by birth, presented a memorial in which the spirit of the German universities was described as revolutionary. The _Burschenschaft_ of Jena sent him a challenge. Kotzebue, the Russian councillor of state and celebrated dramatist, at length published a weekly paper in which he turned every indication of German patriotism to ridicule, and exercised his wit upon the individual eccentricities of the students affecting the old German costume, of precocious boys and doting professors. The rage of the galled universities rose to a still higher pitch on the discovery, made and incontestably proved by Luden, that Kotzebue sent secret bulletins, filled with invective and suspicion, to St. Petersburg. To execrate Kotzebue had become so habitual at the universities that a young man, Sand from Wunsiedel, a theological student of Jena, noted for piety and industry, took the fanatical resolution to free, or at least to wipe off a blot from his country, by the a.s.sa.s.sination of an enemy whose importance he, in the delusion of hatred, vastly overrated; and he accordingly went, in 1819, to Mannheim, plunged his dagger into Kotzebue's heart, and then attempted his own life, but only succeeded in inflicting a slight wound. He was beheaded in the ensuing year. Loning, the apothecary, probably excited by Sand's example, also attempted the life of the president of Na.s.sau, Ibell, who, however, seized him, and he committed suicide in prison. These events occasioned a congress at Carlsbad in 1819, which took the state of Germany into deliberation, placed each of the universities under the supervision of a government officer, suppressed the _Burschenschaft_, prohibited their colors, and fixed a central board of scrutiny at Mayence,[13] which acted on the presupposition of the existence of a secret and general conspiracy for the purposes of a.s.sa.s.sination and revolution, and of Sand's having acted not from personal fanaticism and religious aberration, but as the agent of some unknown superiors in some new and mysterious tribunal. This inquisition was carried on for years and a crowd of students peopled the prisons; conspiracies perilous to the state were, however, nowhere discovered, but simply a great deal of ideal enthusiasm. The elder men in the universities, who, either in their capacity as tutors or authors, had fed the enthusiasm of the youthful students, were also removed from their situations. Jahn was arrested, Arndt was suspended at Bonn and Fries at Jena; Gorres, who had perseveringly published the most violent pamphlets, was compelled to take refuge in Switzerland, which also offered an asylum to Dewette, the Berlin professor of theology, who had been deprived of his chair on account of a letter addressed by him to Sand's mother. Oken, the great naturalist, who refused to give up ”Isis,” a periodical publication, also withdrew to Switzerland. Numbers of the younger professors went to America.[14] The solemnization of the October festival was also prohibited, and the triumphal monument on the field of Leipzig was demolished.

[Footnote 1: William V., the expelled hereditary stadtholder, died in obscurity at Brunswick in 1806. His son, William, had, in 1802, received Fulda in compensation, but afterward served Prussia, was, in 1806, taken prisoner with Mollendorf at Erfurt and afterward set at liberty, served again, in 1809, under Austria, and then retired to England, whence he returned on the expulsion of the French to receive a crown, which he accepted with a good deal of a.s.surance, complaining, at the same time, of the loss of his former possession, Fulda, a circ.u.mstance strongly commented upon by Stein in his letters to Gagern. William, in return for his elevation to a throne by the arms of Germany, closed the mouths of the Rhine against her.]

[Footnote 2: Zurich, Berne, Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Glarus, Zug, Freiburg, Solothurn, Basel, Schaffhausen, Appenzell, St. Gall, the Grisons, Aargau, Constance, Tessin, the Vaud, Valais, Neuenburg (Neufchatel), Geneva. The nineteen cantons of 1805 remained _in statu quo_, only those of Valais, Neufchatel, and Geneva were confederated with them, and Pruntrut with the ancient bishopric of Basel were restored to Berne.]

[Footnote 3: The deed of possession of the 26th June, 1814, runs as follows: ”Not by an arbitrary, despotic encroachment upon the order of things, but by the hands of the Providence that blessed the arms of your emperor and of the allied princes and by a holy alliance are you restored to the house of Austria.”]

[Footnote 4: Tuscany fell to Ferdinand, the former grandduke of Wurzburg; Modena to Francis, son of the deceased duke, Ferdinand; Parms and Placantia to Maria Louisa, the wife and widow of Napoleon.]

[Footnote 5: Not long before, in the treaty of Kiel, there had been question of bestowing Swedish-Pomerania upon Denmark; to this Prussia refused to accede and Denmark agreed to take 2,600,000 dollars in compensation. Prussia was also compelled to pay 3,500,500 dollars to Sweden.]

[Footnote 6: Rehfues, the director of the circle, a Wurtemberg Protestant, published a circular at Bonn, in which he promised full religious security to the Catholic inhabitants, whom he reminded of Prussia's having been ”the last supporter of the order of Jesus.”--_Allgemeine Zeitung of 1814, No. 234._]

[Footnote 7: Holstein alone, not Schleswig, was enumerated as belonging to the German confederation, although both duchies were long ago closely united by the _nexus socialis_, more particularly in the representation at the diet.]

[Footnote 8: The Reusses, formerly imperial governors of Plauen, diverged into so many branches that, as early as 1664, they agreed to distinguish themselves by numbers, which at first amounted to thirty, but at a later period to a hundred, afterward recommencing at number one. The family took the name of Reuss from the Russian wife of its founder, in the beginning of the fourteenth century.]

[Footnote 9: Hamburg had vainly pet.i.tioned for the rest.i.tution of her bank, of which she had been deprived by Davoust. She received merely a small portion of the general war tax levied upon France.]

[Footnote 10: Austria and Prussia contain forty-two million inhabitants; the rest of Germany merely twelve million; the power of the two former stands consequently in proportion to that of the rest of Germany as forty-two to twelve or seven to two, while their votes in the diet stood not contrariwise, as two to seven, but as two to seventeen in the plenary a.s.sembly, and as two to fifteen in the lesser one.]

[Footnote 11: Aretin, who, at the time of the Rhenish confederation, insolently mocked and had denounced every indication of German patriotism, ventured to say in his ”Alemannia,” in the beginning of 1817, ”'The patriotic colors,' 'the voice of the people,'

'nationality,' 'the extirpation of foreign influence,' are words now forgotten, magic sounds that have lost their power.”]

[Footnote 12: By Sack, the government commissary, who even confiscated the Rhenish Mercury, an earlier and unprohibited paper, and arrested the printer, against which Gorres violently protested in a letter addressed to Sack. Gorres made a triumphant defence before the tribunal at Treves, and observed, ”Strange that the most violent enemy to France should seek the protection of French courts!”]

[Footnote 13: The names of these inquisitors were Schwarz, Grano, Hormann, Bar, Pfister, Preusschen, Moussel.]

[Footnote 14: Charles Follen, brother to the poet Louis Adolphus Follen, private teacher of law at Jena, a young man of great spirit and talent, who at that period exercised great influence over the youth of Germany, was wrecked, in 1840, in a steamer in North America and drowned.]

CCLXV. The New Const.i.tutions

Germany had, notwithstanding her triumph, regained neither her ancient unity nor her former power, but still continued to be merely a confederation of states, bound together by no firm tie and regarded with contempt by their more powerful neighbors. The German confederation did not even include the whole of the provinces whose population was distinguished as German by the use of the German language. Several of the provinces of Germany were still beneath a foreign sceptre; Switzerland and the Netherlands had declared themselves distinct from the rest of Germany, which, hitherto submissive to France, was in danger of falling beneath the influence of Russia, who ceaselessly sought to entangle her by diplomatic wiles.

There were still, however, men existing in Germany who hoped to compensate the loss of the external power of their country by the internal freedom that had been so lavishly promised to the people on the general summons to the field. The proclamation of Calisch and the German federative act guaranteed the grant of const.i.tutions. The former Rhenish confederated princes, nevertheless, alone found it to their interest to carry this promise into effect, and, in a manner, formed a second alliance with France by their imitation of the newly introduced French code and by the establishment, in their own territories, of two chambers, one of peers, the other of deputies, similar to those of France; measures by which, at that period of popular excitement, they also regained the popularity deservedly lost by them at an earlier period throughout the rest of Germany, the more so, the less the inclination manifested by Austria and Prussia to grant the promised const.i.tutions. Enslaved Illuminatism characterizes this new zeal in favor of internal liberty and const.i.tutional governments, to denote which the novel term of Liberalism was borrowed from France. Liberty was ever on the tongues--of the most devoted servants of the state. The ancient church and the n.o.bility were attacked with incredible mettle--in order to suit the purposes of ministerial caprice. Prussia and Austria were loudly blamed for not keeping pace with the times--with the intent of favorably contrasting the ancient policy of the Rhenish confederation. None, at that period, surpa.s.sed the ministers belonging to the old school of Illuminatism and Napoleonism in liberalism, but no sooner did the deputies of the people attempt to realize their liberal ideas than they started back in dismay.

The first example of this kind was given by Frederick Augustus, duke of Na.s.sau, as early as the September of 1814. Ibell, the president, who reigned with unlimited power over Na.s.sau, drew up a const.i.tution which has been termed a model of ”despotism under a const.i.tutional form.” The whole of the property of the state still continuing to be the private property of the duke, and his right arbitrarily to increase the number of members belonging to the first chamber, and by their votes to annul every resolution pa.s.sed by the second chamber, rendered the whole const.i.tution illusory. Trombetta, one of the deputies, voluntarily renounced his seat, an example that was followed by several others.--The second const.i.tution granted was that bestowed upon the Netherlands in 1815, by King William, who established such an unequal representation in the chambers between the Belgians and Dutch as to create great dissatisfaction among the former, who, in revenge, again affected the French party. This was succeeded, in 1816, by the petty const.i.tutions of Waldeck, Weimar, and Frankfort on the Maine.-- Maximilian, king of Bavaria, seemed, in 1817, to announce another system by the dismissal of his minister, Montgelas, and, in 1818, bestowed a new const.i.tution upon Bavaria; but the old abuses in the administration remained uneradicated; a civil and military state unproportioned to the revenue, the petty despotism of government officers and heavy imposts, still weighed upon the people, and the const.i.tution itself was quickly proved illusory, the veto of the first chamber annulling the first resolution pa.s.sed by the second chamber.

Professor Behr of Wurzburg, upon this, energetically protested against the first chamber, and, on the refusal of the second chamber to vote for the maintenance of the army on so high a footing, unless the soldiery were obliged to take the oath on the const.i.tution, it was speedily dissolved.--In Baden, the Grandduke Charles expired, in 1818, after having caused a const.i.tution to be drawn up, which Louis, his uncle and successor, carried into effect. Louis having, however, previously, and without the consent of the people, entered into a stipulation with the n.o.bility, to whom he had granted an edict extremely favorable to their interests, Winter, the Heidelberg bookseller, a member of the second chamber, demanded its abrogation.

The answer was, the dissolution of the chamber, personal inquisition and intimidation, and the publication of an extremely severe edict of censure, against which, in 1820, Professor von Rotteck of Freiburg, supported by the poet Hebel and by the Freiherr von Wessenberg, administrator of the bishopric of Constance, protested, but in vain.--At the same time, that is, in 1818, Hildburghausen, and even the petty princ.i.p.ality of Lichtenstein, which merely contains two square miles and a population amounting to five thousand souls, also received a const.i.tution, which not a little contributed to turn the whole affair into ridicule.--To these succeeded, in 1819, the const.i.tutions of Hanover and Lippe-Detmold, the former as aristocratic as possible, completely in the spirit of olden times, solely dictated and carried into effect by the n.o.bility and government officers. The sittings of the chambers, consequently, continued to be held in secret.--The dukes of Mecklenburg abolished feudal servitude, which existed in no other part of Germany, in 1820.--In Darmstadt, the const.i.tution was granted by the good-natured, venerable Grandduke Louis (whose attention was chiefly devoted to the opera), after the impatient advocates, who had collected subscriptions in the Odenwald to pet.i.tions praying for the speedy bestowal of the promised const.i.tution, had been arrested, and an insurrection that consequently ensued among the peasantry had been quelled by force.--Petty const.i.tutions were, moreover, granted, in 1821, to Coburg, and, in 1829, to Meiningen. The Gotha-Altenburg branch of the ducal house of Saxony became extinct in 1825 in the person of Frederick, the last duke, the brother of Duke Augustus Emilius, a great patron of the arts and sciences, deceased 1822. Gotha, consequently, lapsed to Coburg, Altenburg to Hildburghausen, and Hildburghausen to Meiningen.

In Wurtemberg, the dissatisfaction produced by the ancient despotism of the government was also to be speedily appeased by the grant of a const.i.tutional charter. The king, Frederick, convoked the Estates, to whom he, on the 15th of March, 1815, solemnly delivered the newly enacted const.i.tution. But here, as elsewhere, was the government inclined to grant a mere illusory boon. The Estates rejected the const.i.tution, without reference to its contents, simply owing to the formal reason of its being bestowed by the prince and being consequently binding on one side alone, instead of being a stipulation between the prince and the people, and moreover because the ancient const.i.tution of Wurtemberg, which had been abrogated by force and in direct opposition to the will of the Estates, was still in legal force. The old Wurtemberg party alone could naturally take their footing upon their ancient rights, but the new Wurtemberg party, the mediatized princes of the empire, the counts and barons of the empire, and the imperial free towns, nay, even the Agnati of the reigning house,[1] all of whom had suffered more or less under Napoleon's iron rule, ranged themselves on their side. The deputy, Zahn of Calw, drew a masterly picture of the state of affairs at that period, in which he pitilessly disclosed every reigning abuse. The king, thus vigorously and unanimously opposed, was constrained to yield, and the most prolix negotiations, in which the citizen deputies, headed by the advocate, Weisshaar, were supported by the n.o.bility against the government, commenced.

The affair was, it may be designedly, dragged on _ad infinitum_ until the death of the king in 1816, when his son and successor, William, who had gained a high reputation as a military commander and had rendered himself extremely popular, zealously began the work of conciliation. He not only instantly abolished the abuses of the former government, as, for instance, in the game law,[2] but, in 1817, delivered a new const.i.tution to the Estates. Article 337 was somewhat artfully drawn up, but in every point the const.i.tution was as liberal as a const.i.tutional charter could possibly be. But the Estates refused to accept of liberty as a boon, and rejected this const.i.tution on the same formal grounds upon which they had rejected the preceding one.

The Estates were again upheld by a grateful public, and the few deputies, more particularly Cotta and Griesinger, who had defended the new const.i.tution on account of its liberality and who regarded form as immaterial, became the objects of public animadversion. The populace broke the windows of the house inhabited by the liberal-minded minister, von w.a.n.genheim. The poet Uhland greatly distinguished himself as a warm upholder of the ancient rights of the people.[3] The king instantly dissolved the Estates, but at the same time declared his intention to guarantee to the people, without a const.i.tution, the rights he had intended const.i.tutionally to confer upon them; to establish an equal system of taxation, and ”to eradicate bureaucracy, that curse upon the country.” The good-will displayed on both sides led to fresh negotiations, and a third const.i.tution was at length drawn up by a committee, composed partly of members of the government, partly of members belonging to the Estates, and, in 1819, was taken into deliberation and pa.s.sed by the rea.s.sembled Estates. This const.i.tution, nevertheless, fell far below the mark to which it had been raised by public expectation, partly on account of the retention, owing to ancient prejudice, of the permanent committee and its oligarchical influence, party on account of the too great and permanent concessions made to the n.o.bility in return for their momentary aid,[4] partly on account of the extreme haste that marked the concluding deliberations of the Estates, occasioned by their partly unfounded dread of interference on the part of the congress then a.s.sembled at Carlsbad.

In Wurtemberg, however, as elsewhere, the policy of the government was deeply imbued with the general characteristics of the time.