Part 18 (1/2)

CCLXXII. Prussia and Rome

While Austria remains stationary, Prussia progresses. While Austria relies for support upon the aristocracy of the Estates, Prussia relies for hers upon the people, that is to say, upon the public officers taken from the ma.s.s of the population, upon the citizens emanc.i.p.ated by the city regulation, upon the peasantry emanc.i.p.ated by the abolition of servitude, of all the other agricultural imposts, and by the division of property, and upon the enrolment of both cla.s.ses in the Landwehr. While Austria, in fine, renders her German policy subordinate to her European diplomacy, the influence exercised by Prussia upon Europe depends, on the contrary, solely upon that possessed by her in Germany.

Prussia's leading principle appears to be, ”All for the people, nothing through the people!” Hence the greatest solicitude for the instruction of the people, whether in the meanest schools or the universities, but under strict political control, under the severest censors.h.i.+p; hence the emanc.i.p.ation of the peasantry, civic self- administration, freedom of trade, the general arming of the people, and, with all these, mere nameless provincial diets, the most complete popular liberty on the widest basis without a representation worthy of the name; hence, finally, the greatest solicitude for the promotion of trade on a grand scale, for the revival of the commerce of Germany, which has lain prostrate since the great wars of the Reformation, for the mercantile unity of Germany, while it is exactly in Prussia that political Unitarians are the most severely punished.

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 inst.i.tutions of every description were centralized; in 1814, by the common duty imposed upon every individual of every cla.s.s, 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 pa.s.sed 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 grat.i.tude 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 princ.i.p.al Protestant power of Germany, to a.s.sume 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 a.s.sembled 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 surpa.s.sing 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 fas.h.i.+ons 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 partic.i.p.ated 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, Pa.s.sau, 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 partic.i.p.ating 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 cla.s.ses 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; G.o.d was to be obeyed rather than man! He prohibited the solemnization of mixed marriages within his diocese without the primary a.s.surance 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 n.o.bility on account of the emanc.i.p.ation 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 const.i.tution. Const.i.tutional 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 partic.i.p.ate in the demand.[9] The const.i.tution 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 inst.i.tuted, 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 a.s.serting 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 Konigsberg, 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.]