Nationalism and Culture (38 page)

These were the ideas then current among the German patriots. Even Arndt, who surely cannot be accused of French sympathies, had to recognize that the great revolution was an event of European importance, and he reached the conclusion: "All states, even those which are not yet democracies, will from century to century become more democratic."

And Baron von Stein, a thoroughly conservative spirit and an outspoken opponent of all revolutionary movements, could not escape the conclusion that a rebirth of the state and liberation from the foreign yoke were possible only if one should decide to abolish serfdom and to institute a national assembly. Nevertheless Stein was careful to add in the essay entitled his "Political Testament" prepared for him by Schon: "The right and the power of the king were always sacred to me, and must remain so to us. But that this right and this unlimited power shall express the good inherent in it, it seems to me necessary to give to the highest power the means whereby it can learn the wishes of the people and give life to their intentions."

These were surely no revolutionary ideasj and yet Stein encountered the greatest difficulty in instituting even the most modest reforms. It is well known that it was just the "noblest of the nation" who continually assailed him from behind and did not even shrink from treason to their country in order to thwart his patriotic plans. The facts are that while the famous Edict of Liberation of October 1807 abolished serfdom in name, its authors did not dare to touch the junker landowners in the least. Thus the former serfs became wage slaves and could at any time be driven from the land by their masters if they did not submit unconditionally to their will.

Likewise the Edict of Regulation of 1811, evolved under Hardenberg, was principally designed to incite the rural population to resistance against the French. The prospect held out to the former serfs of a change in the law of ownership which would enable them to become owners of land, was an attempt to make them the more inclined to fight against the foreign rule. But after the French armies had evacuated the country, the government shamelessly broke all its promises and left the population of the rural districts to the misery and poverty imposed on them by the junkers.

It was the force of circumstances which had induced the German princes to make their subjects all kinds of fair promises, to let them expect a constitution, from which the awakened citizenry promised themselves wonderful things. They had come to realize that only a "people's war" could free Germany from the French domination, no matter how much Austria was opposed to this idea. The events in Spain had spoken too clearly. So the noble lords suddenly discovered how dearly they loved the people and recognized—following their need, not their inclination—that an uprising of the masses was the last desperate resort to support their shaking thrones.

In the appeal of Kalisch the Russian czar appeared as a sworn guarantor for the coming free and united Germany, and the king of Prussia promised his faithful subjects a constitution. On the great masses who merely vegetated in mental stupidity even these promises would not have made a special impress j but the bourgeoisie, and especially the youth, were seized with patriotic enthusiasm and dreamed of Barbarossa's resurrection and the reconstruction of the ancient empire in all its power and glory.

For all that, Friedrich Wilhelm still hesitated and sought to protect himself against both sides. Even when the Russian victory and the burning of Moscow had destroyed Napoleon's giant army and driven it in desperate flight to France, the king could still not reach a resolution; for the interests of the Prussian dynasty were nearer to his heart than a nebulous Germany for which neither he nor his East-Elbian junkers had understanding. Only under the steadily growing pressure of patriotic passion did he finally decide on the war—because, in fact, no other course was open to him.

What was the opinion of the patriots at this time is clearly apparent from a curious letter of Bliicher to Scharnhorst, dated January 5, 1813, where among other things he says (as nearly as its illiteracy can be imitated in English):

"Now is agen the time for what I advized allready in the yeer 9 (1809) ; naimly to call the hole nation to arms and, iff the princes are not willing, to chais them out of the country allong with Buonaparte: For not only Prussia allone but the hole German fatherland must be resurected and the nation reastablished." ^

But it came out quite otherwise than the patriotic advocates of German unity had imagined. All the promises of the great ones vanished in smoke as soon as Napoleon was defeated and the danger of a new invasion was removed. Instead of a constitution came the Holy Alliance, instead of the hoped-for civil liberty came the Carlsbad Resolutions and the persecution of the demagogues. That misshapen child, the Deutsche Bund ("German League")—Jahn called it Deutscher Bunt *—had to serve as a substitute for the desired unity of the realm. The idea of unification was outlawed by the government. Metternich even expressed the opinion that there was "no more damnable idea than to desire to unite the German people into a German empire," and the investigating officials in Mainz were especially severe against Jahn because he had first advocated the "most dangerous doctrine of German unification"} which, by the way, was not at all correct.

Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation were prohibited, and the great patriots delivered over to the henchmen of reaction. Arndt was disciplined and indicted; Schleiermacher could only preach under police supervision J Jahn was put in chains and sent to prison—even after his acquittal he was for years restricted in his freedom. Gorres, who in his Rhenish Mercury, called by Napoleon "the fifth great power," had contributed so greatly to the national revolt against the French, had to flee and seek protection in the land of the "hereditary enemy" from the police of the Prussian reaction. Gneisenau resigned. Boyen, Humboldt and others did the same. The Burschenschajten ("Students' Leagues") were dissolved and the universities put under the moral guardianship of the police.

Never has a people been so shamelessly and so thoroughly cheated of the fruits of its victory. It must, however, not be forgotten that it was only a small minority who had placed great hopes on the consequences of the overthrow of French dominion and really believed that the time had now arrived for German unification under the sign of civil liberty. The great masses were, as always, forced into the so-called "wars of liberation" and

' There were other field marshals who spelled as badly as Blucher.— Translator * Jahn's misspelling "Deutscher Biint^^ would mean something like "German patchwork," if anything— Translator.

simply followed their hereditary princes with dutiful obedience. Only thus can the unopposed subjugation of the population under the terrorism of the rising reaction be explained. Heine was quite right when in his articles about the "Romantic School" he wrote:

When God, snow, and the Cossacks destroyed Napoleon's best forces we Germans received the AU-Highest's command to shake off the foreign yoke, and we blazed up in manly wrath over the all-too-long-endured servitude, and we enthused ourselves with the good melodies and the bad verses of Korner, and we fought and achieved freedom; for we do everything that is commanded us by our princes.

Likewise Goethe, who had witnessed the wars of liberation and who went more deeply into things than did the mocker, Heine, held in this matter the same opinion. He said in a discussion with Luden soon after the bloody battle of the nations at Leipzig:

You speak of the awakening and arising of the German people and are of the opinion that this people will not again allow itself to be deprived of what it has achieved and so dearly paid for with its blood and treasure, namely, freedom. But is the people really awake? Does it know what it wants and what it can achieve? And is every movement an uprising? Does he arise who is forcibly stirred up? We are not speaking here of the thousands of educated youth and men; we are speaking here of the mass, of the millions. And what is it that has been achieved or won? You say freedom. Perhaps it would be better if you were to call it liberation—liberation, that is, not from the yoke of the stranger, but from a strange yoke. It is true that I now see no Frenchmen, no Italians; but instead I see Cossacks, Bashkirs, Croats, Magyars, Cassubes, Samlanders, brown and other colored hussars. We have been accustomed for a long time to turn our glance westward and to expect all danger from there, but the earth extends also far to the east.

Goethe was right. While from the east there came no revolution there came the Holy Alliance, which for decades rested like an incubus on the people of Europe and threatened to stifle all spiritual life. Never had Germany suffered anywhere near as much under the French foreign rule as it did later under the shameful tyranny of its princely "liberators."

CULTURE AND NATIONALISM. GERMAN ROMANTICISM. THE "VERLORENE HEIMAT." THE REDEMPTION IDEA. THE DOCTRINE OF THE "VRVOLK." THE SHADES OF THE PAST. ARNDT'S HATRED OF THE FRENCH. KLEIST'S GERMAN "CATECHISM." LUDWIG JAHN, A PIONEER OF HITLERISM. ARROGANT GERMANISM. GERMAN JUNGLE SPIRIT. THE BURSCHENSCHAFT. ROME'S INFLUENCE ON ROMANTICISM. AFTER DAMASCUS. FREDERICK OF GENTZ. ADAM MULLER AND THE ROMANTIC IDEA OF THE STATE. LUDWIG VON HALLER AND NEO-ABSOLUTISM. FRANZ VON BAADER; AN EXCURSION INTO GERMAN MYSTICISM. GERMAN UNITY AS DREAM AND REALITY.

ALL nationalism is reactionary in its nature, for it strives to enforce on the separate parts of the great human family a definite character according to a preconceived idea. In this respect, too, it shows the interrelationship of nationalistic ideology with the creed of every revealed religion. Nationalism creates artificial separations and partitions within that organic unity which finds its expression in the genus Man, while at the same time it strives for a fictitious unity sprung only from a wish-concept j and its advocates would like to tune all members of a definite human group to one note in order to distinguish it from other groups still more obviously. In this respect, so-called "cultural nationalism" does not differ at all from political nationalism, for whose political purposes as a rule it serves as a fig-leaf. The two cannot be spiritually separated j they merely represent two different aspects of the same endeavor.

Cultural nationalism appears in its purest form when people are subjected to a foreign rule, and for this reason cannot pursue their own plans for political power. In this event, "national thought" prefers to busy itself with the culture-building activities of the people and tries to keep the national consciousness alive by recollections of vanished glory and past greatness. Such comparisons between a past which has already become legend and a slavish present make the people doubly sensitive to the injustice suffered; for nothing affects the spirit of man more powerfully than tradition. But if such groups of people succeed sooner or later in shaking off the foreign yoke and themselves appear as a national power, then the cultural phase of their effort steps only too definitely into the

background, giving place to the sober reality of their political objectives. In the recent history of the various national organisms in Europe created after the war are found telling witnesses for this.

In Germany, also, the national strivings both before and after the "wars of liberation" were strongly influenced by romanticism, whose advocates tried to make the traditions of a vanished age live again among the people and to make the past appear to them in a glorified light. When, later, the last hopes which the German patriots had rested on liberation from the foreign yoke had burst like over-blown bubbles, their spirits sought refuge in the moonlit magic night and the fairy world of dreamy longing conjured up for them by romanticism, in order to forget the gray reality of life and its shameful disappointments.

In culture-nationalism, as a rule, two distinct sentiments merge, which really have nothing in common: for home sentiment is not patriotism, is not love of the state, not love which has its roots in the abstract idea of the nation. It needs no labored explanation to prove that the spot of land on which a man has spent the years of his youth is deeply intergrown with his profoundest feeling. The impressions of childhood and early youth which are the most permanent and have the most lasting effect upon his soul. Home is, so to speak, man's outer garment j he is most intimately acquainted with its every fold and seam. This home sentiment brings in later years some yearning after a past long buried under ruins j and it is this which enables the romantic to look so deeply within.

With so-called "national consciousness" this home sentiment has no relationship; although both are often thrown into the same pot and, after the manner of counterfeiters, given out as of the same value. In fact, true home sentiment is destroyed at its birth by "national consciousness," which always strives to regulate and force into a prescribed form every impression man receives from the inexhaustible variety of the homeland. This is the unavoidable result of those mechanical efforts at unification which are in reality only the aspirations of the nationalistic states.

The attempt to replace man's natural attachment to the home by a dutiful love of the state—a structure which owes its creation to all sorts of accidents and in which, with brutal force, elements have been welded together that have no necessary connection—is one of the most grotesque phenomena of our time. The so-called "national consciousness" is nothing but a belief propagated by considerations of political power which have replaced the religious fanaticism of past centuries and have today come to be the greatest obstacle to cultural development. The love of home has nothing in common with the veneration of an abstract patriotic concept. Love of home knows no "will to power"; it is free from that hollow and dangerous attitude of superiority to the neighbor which is one of the strongest characteristics of every kind of nationalism. Love of home does

not engage in practical politics nor does it seek in any way to support the state. It is purely an inner feeling as freely manifested as man's enjoyment of nature, of which home is a part. When thus viewed, the home feeling compares with the governmentally ordered love of the nation as does a natural growth with an artificial substitute.