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The Religious Underpinnings of Early Prussian Liberalism: The Case of Wilhelm Grävell

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2014

Kris Pangburn*
Affiliation:
The Colorado College

Extract

Writing in 1957, Leonard Krieger famously argued that Lutheranism was “not itself central” to what he called the “problem of political liberty” in the German lands during the nineteenth century. By downplaying the influence of Luther's teachings on German political thought, Krieger tacitly aimed to refute the controversial “from Luther to Hitler thesis” proposed by some historians in an effort to identify the ideological roots of National Socialism. Contrary to these scholars, Krieger blamed the emergence of Germany's “peculiar 19th century version of political freedom” not on religious doctrine, but on a complex of political and socioeconomic circumstances that, he argued, were unique to central Europe. Scholars have almost universally followed Krieger's line of interpretation. Recent debate focuses not on whether he was correct to argue that political and socioeconomic factors were primarily responsible for engendering a distinctively German species of liberalism, but rather on the question of which of these factors was paramount. As a consequence, religion's role in the making of early German liberalism seldom receives serious consideration today.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Central European History Society of the American Historical Association 2014 

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References

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23 Ibid., 140.

24 Wötzel, Meiner Gattin wirkliche Erscheinung nach ihrem Tode. The book was immensely popular, as evidenced by the fact that it was reprinted four times within the first year of its initial publication and inspired numerous parodies. See Sawicki, Leben mit den Toten, 128.

25 Mason, Udo C., “‘Wir Sehen Uns Wieder!’ Zu einem Leitmotiv des Dichtens und Denkens im 18. Jahrhundert,” Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch im Auftrage der Görres-Gesellschaft, Neue Folge 5 (1964): 79109Google Scholar. Philippe Ariès also examined the eroticization of death and the afterlife in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in chapters 8–10; see Ariès, Philippe, The Hour of Our Death, trans. Weaver, Helen (New York: Vintage, 1981)Google Scholar.

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35 Ibid., 108–9.

36 Ibid., preface, 1st ed., xxxv.

37 Ibid., preface, 1st ed., xxxiv.

38 For more on Grävell's vision of a united Germany, see his Kein Östreich und kein Preußen! Sondern ein einiges, starkes, herrliches Deutschland. Wie kann und muß es werden? (Potsdam: Otto Janke, 1849)Google Scholar, as well as Grävell, Maximilian Karl Friedrich Wilhelm, Schluss! schluss! schluss! Sechs Reden (Frankfurt am Main: J. D. Sauerländers Verlag, 1849), 141–67Google Scholar.

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65 This tradition seems to have peaked at the end of the nineteenth century with the publication of Paulsen, Friedrich, Kant, der Philosoph des Protestantismus (Berlin: Reuther & Reichard, 1899)Google Scholar; and Kaftan, Julius, Kant, der Philosoph des Protestantismus. Rede gehalten bei der vom Berliner Zweigverein des evangelischen Bundes veranstalteten Gedächtnisfeier am 12. Februar 1904 (Berlin: Reuther & Reichard, 1904)Google Scholar. In 1937, Theodor Horst Schülke published Kants und Luthers Ethik. Ein Vergleich unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Lehre vom Bösen (Ph.D. diss., University of Greifswald, 1937). For a more recent assessment, see Hildebrandt, Bernd, “Kant als Philosoph des Protestantismus,” in Was ist und was sein soll. Natur und Freiheit bei Immanuel Kant, ed. Kern, Udo (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2007), 477–94Google Scholar.

66 Hajo Halborn is one scholar who has expressed limited support for the view that idealist philosophy had its origins in religion. Although he refrained from taking sides in “the big historical controversy as to whether the worldview of German idealism ought to be regarded as a natural transformation of Protestantism or as its inversion in the form of a modern Grecian-style Gnostism,” he saw that philosophy as quite clearly the manifestation of a religious impulse, arguing that “when we inquire into the deeper spiritual yearnings of the educated German middle classes, then we must come to terms with the question of the religion of German idealism.” Halborn, Hajo, “Der deutsche Idealismus in sozialgeschichtlicher Beleuchtung,” Historische Zeitschrift 174 (1954): 359–84Google Scholar, here 369.

67 Wuthenow, R.-R., Die gebändigte Flamme. Zur Wiederentdeckung der Leidenschaften im Zeitalter der Vernunft (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 2000)Google Scholar, 136, 139; Gardiner, H. M., Metcalf, Ruth, and Beebe-Center, John G., Feeling and Emotion: A History of Theories (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1970)Google Scholar, 270.

68 Kant, Immanuel, Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels oder Versuch von der Verfassung und dem mechanischen Ursprunge des ganzen Weltgebäudes, nach Newton'schen Grundsätzen abgehandelt (Königsberg and Leipzig: Johann Freidrich Peterson, 1755)Google Scholar. The translation was taken from Kant, Immanuel, Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, trans. Jaki, Stanley L. (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1981), 187–8Google Scholar.

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70 Valentin, Veit, Geschichte der deutschen Revolution von 1848–49, 2 vols. (Berlin: Ullstein, 1930–31)Google Scholar, vol. 2, 465.

71 Further proof of Grävell's tendency to conceive of national unity in terms of a rational consensus between the king and the people can be seen in his frequent contributions to Die Feuerschirme, which appeared in six issues between 1807 and 1809. Conceived as a response to the attacks on the Prussian monarchy by the liberal jurist von Cölln's, Ludwig Friedrich AugustNeue Feuerbrände (1807–8)Google Scholar, Die Feuerschirme was geared toward what one contemporary called “the promotion of harmony, mutual trust, and commitment to fatherland and king”; Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, no. 375, Dec. 23, 1808, 961.

72 Teichmann, A., “Grävell, Maximilian Karl Friedrich Wilhelm,” in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, 54 vols. (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1879–1912)Google Scholar, vol. 9, 613.

73 Grävell, Maximilian Karl Friedrich Wilhelm, Schreiben an den Klub der Abgeordneten im Casino (Frankfurt am Main: H. L. Brönner, 1848)Google Scholar, 8, 11.

74 Ibid., 4.

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76 Laube, Heinrich, Das erste deutsche Parlament, 3 vols. (Leipzig: Mar Hesses, 1849; reprinted Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1978)Google Scholar, vol. 3, 427.

77 Grävell, Maximilian Karl Friedrich Wilhelm, Mein Glaubensbekenntniß, angehend den politischen Zustand Deutschlands (Frankfurt am Main, 1849), 67Google Scholar.

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79 Ibid., 8.

80 Grävell, Maximilian Karl Friedrich Wilhelm, Ueber hoehere-, geheime- u. Sicherheits-Polizei (Sondershausen and Nordhausen, 1820)Google Scholar.

81 Lüdtke, Alf, “Gemeinwohl,” Polizei und “Festungspraxis” (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982), 53–4Google Scholar.

82 Vick, Brian, Defining Germany: The 1848 Frankfurt Parliamentarians and National Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002)Google Scholar, 105; Wollstein, Gunter, Das “Großdeutschland” der Paulskirche. Nationale Ziele in der bürgerlichen Revolution 1848/49 (Düsseldorf: Drost, 1977)Google Scholar, 278; Eyck, Frank, The Frankfurt Parliament, 1848–1849 (London, Melbourne, Toronto: Macmillan, and New York: St. Martin's Press, 1968)Google Scholar, 385. Other writers who have categorized Grävell as a conservative include Laube, Das erste deutsche Parlament, vol. 3, 427; Ernst II (Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha), Aus meinem Leben und aus meiner Zeit, 3 vols. (Berlin: W. Herz, 1887–89), vol. 1, 331–4Google Scholar; Valentin, , Geschichte der deutschen Revolution, vol. 2, 465Google Scholar; and Hildebrandt, Gunther, Politik und Taktik der Gagern-Liberalen in der Frankfurter Nationalversammlung 1848/1849 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1989)Google Scholar, 249.

83 Scholars who regard bureaucratic liberalism as a modernizing species of conservatism include Rosenberg, Hans, Bureaucracy, Aristocracy, and Autocracy: The Prussian Experience, 1660–1815, Harvard Historical Monographs, vol. 34 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958)Google Scholar; Henning, H., Die deutsche Beamtenschaft im 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1984)Google Scholar; Vogel, Barbara, “Beamtenkonservatismus. Sozial- und verfassungsgeschichtliche Voraussetzungen der Parteien in Preußen im frühen 19. Jahrhundert,” in Deutscher Konservatismus im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Stegmann, Dirk, Wendt, Bernd-Jürgen, and Witt, Peter-Christian (Bonn: Verlag Neue Gesellschaft, 1983), 131Google Scholar; Dittmar, Lothar, Beamtenkonservatismus und Modernisierung. Untersuchungen zur Vorgeschichte der Konservativen Partei in Preußen, 1810–1848/49 (Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 1992)Google Scholar. Those who have taken issue with the characterization of bureaucratic liberalism as being a conservative continuation of enlightened absolutism include Koselleck, Preußen zwischen Reform und Revolution, and more recently Levinger, Matthew, Enlightened Nationalism: The Transformation of Prussian Political Culture, 1806–1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

84 In his Anti-Platonischer Staat, Grävell argued that “after careful consideration the Senate decides whether it means to support the proposed law or to recommend against it. In the report that is written for this purpose, all the reasons for the decision must be included. This report contains merely advice for the ruler, who is entirely free to follow it, or not follow it.” Grävell, , Anti-Platonischer Staat, 34Google Scholar.

85 Ibid., dedication page.

86 Grävell, , Mein Glaubensbekenntniß, 6Google Scholar.

87 Grävell complained that his contemporaries had gone too far in their attacks on the guilds, and he opposed the breaking-up of the Junkers' manorial estates. See Grävell, Maximilian Karl Friedrich Wilhelm, Der Baron und der Bauer, oder das Grundbesitzthum (Leipzig, 1840), 1516Google Scholar.

88 Scholars who situate Grävell in the bourgeois liberal camp include Koselleck, Preußen zwischen Reform und Revolution, 214, 397; Brandt, Hartwig, Landständische Repräsentation im deutschen Vormärz (Neuwied and Berlin: Luchterhand, 1968), 146–8Google Scholar; Obenaus, Herbert, Anfänge des Parlamentarismus in Preußen bis 1848 (Düsseldorf: Drost, 1984)Google Scholar, 91.

89 Hodenberg described the Prussian judiciary as the “domain of the established, self-confident and, above all, educated middle classes” in Hodenberg, Die Partei der Unparteiischen, 33. She argued that scholars have overlooked the political differences between the judiciary and the administrative bureaucracy due to a tendency to lump them together under the heading “bureaucratic liberalism”; 17–18 and 331–2.

90 In 1818, the Rhenish liberal Johann Friedrich Benzenberg praised Hardenberg in the journal Zeitgenossen. This article, which was published anonymously as Die Verwaltung des Staatskanzlers Fürsten von Hardenberg (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1819)Google Scholar, met with disapproval from some liberal readers, who felt that it painted Hardenberg's administration in too positive a light. Grävell wrote a critical response, which appeared anonymously in 1819 in the journal Hermes and was later published as Anti-B-z-b-g. Grävell eventually confessed his authorship to clear the name of another man who had come under suspicion as its author.

91 Koselleck, Preußen zwischen Reform und Revolution, 214. See also Obenaus, Anfänge des Parlamentarismus, 91.

92 Brandt, Landständische Repräsentation im deutschen Vormärz, 148.

93 Levinger, Enlightened Nationalism, 239.

94 Ibid., 229.

95 Ibid., 197; Krieger, The German Idea of Freedom, 305–9.

96 Levinger, Enlightened Nationalism, 231 and 232.

97 Hodenberg, Die Partei der Unparteiischen, 316 and 329. The judiciary's antidemocratic sympathies were reflected in the fact that almost two-thirds of the Prussian jurists elected to the Frankfurt Assembly gravitated toward its Center-Right or Right; 305–6.

98 Levinger, Enlightened Nationalism, 214–6.

99 Ibid., 231–2.

100 Hodenberg, Die Partei der Unparteiischen, 307.

101 Giesen, Bernhard, Die Intellektuellen und die Nation (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1993), 189–90Google Scholar.

102 Wagner, Wilhelm, Die Preussischen Reformer und die Zeitgenössische Philosophie (Cologne: Kölner Universitäts Verlag, 1956)Google Scholar noted that the statesmen and generals who comprised the vanguard of Prussia's liberal movement were all devotees of Kant, “even if only unconsciously”; 148. Hodenberg asserted that Kant was the only philosopher whose works found universal acclaim among Prussia's jurists; Hodenberg, Die Partei der Unparteiischen, 159. Levinger stated that “Kant exerted tremendous intellectual authority over both his contemporaries and over the generation of reformers that would lead Prussia after 1806. For example, Theodor von Schön and Johann Gottlieb Fichte both studied with Kant, and Stein expressed deep admiration for Kant's writings. Other leading reformers, such as Friedrich Leopold von Schrötter and Johann Gottfried Frey, were friends of Kant in Königsberg, as well as fellow Freemasons in Kant's lodge”; Levinger, Enlightened Nationalism, 32.

103 Krieger, The German Idea of Freedom, 86.

104 Beiser, Frederick C., Enlightenment, Revolution, and Romanticism: The Genesis of Modern German Political Thought, 1790–1800 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992)Google Scholar, 20.

105 Levinger noted that “many of the figures who became leading lights of the reform party after 1806 were Masons, among them Hardenberg, Theodor von Schön, and Johann Gottfried Frey”; Levinger, Enlightened Nationalism, 28. See also Koselleck, Reinhart, Kritik und Krise. Eine Studie zur Pathogenese der bürgerlichen Welt (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1973), 5581Google Scholar; and Reinalter, Helmut, ed., Freimaurer und Geheimbünde im 18. Jahrhundert in Mitteleuropa, 2nd ed. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986)Google Scholar.

106 Grävell joined the freemasonry while living in Saxony, where he sought refuge for several years in the immediate aftermath of the French invasion. He remained a dedicated Mason throughout his life, eventually attaining prominence in Masonic circles as a member of Frankfurt an der Oder's lodge.

107 Katz, Jacob, Jews and Freemasons in Europe 1723–1939, trans. Oschry, Leonard (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970)Google Scholar.

108 Hoffmann, Stefan-Ludwig, The Politics of Sociability: Freemasonry and German Civil Society, 1840–1918, trans. Lampert, Tom (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 2007)Google Scholar, 68. Hoffmann pointed out that “the civil religion of the lodges, the ‘religion of humanity,’ did not in fact stand above all religious confessions, as the Freemasons claimed, but was essentially Protestant. This fundamental bias was evident in the debates within the lodges about the admission of Jews, as well as in the lodges' anti-Catholicism and the rejection of Freemasonry by both Catholic and conservative Protestant organizations. . . . Freemasons assumed as a matter of course that liberal Protestantism was the ‘most moral’ form of religiosity”; 215–6.

109 Grävell, Maximilian Karl Friedrich Wilhelm, Was muss derjenige, der von der Freimaurerei nichts andres weiß, als was davon allgemein bekannt ist, nothwendigerweise davon halten? (Cottbus, 1809; Berlin: Friedrich Maurer, 1810)Google Scholar. Grävell was one of the four anonymous authors of another defense of freemasonry, entitled Gegen die Angriffe des Prof. Steffens auf die Freimaurerei. Von vier Maurern (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1821)Google Scholar. In addition, he wrote a commentary on Masonic symbols and rituals, Betrachtungen ueber die Symbolik der Freimaurerei (Cottbus: Tornow, 1843)Google Scholar.

110 Hoffmann, The Politics of Sociability, 68. The antidemocratic bias of the Prussian lodges is suggested by the fact that eight of the twelve known Prussian Freemasons who served as deputies to Frankfurt in 1848 sat on the assembly's Right or extreme Right. Hoffmann, The Politics of Sociability, 315 note 124.

111 “Grävell,” in Allgemeine deutsche Real-Encyklopädie für die gebildeten Stände, Zehnte vermehrte und verbesserte Auflage, vol. 7, no. 15 (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1852), 9697Google Scholar; cf. 96. Grävell discussed his relationship with the Lichtfreunde in his treatise Protestantismus und Kirchenglaube. Bedenken eines Laien an die protestantischen Freunde (Glogau: Flemming, 1843)Google Scholar.

112 For more on the Lichtfreunde's involvement in the liberal crusade for a united Germany, see Brederlow, Jörn, “Lichtfreunde” und “Freie Gemeinde.” Religiöser Protest und Freiheitsbewegung im Vormärz und in der Revolution von 1848/49 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1976)Google Scholar; and Graf, Friedrich Wilhelm, Die Politisierung des religiösen Bewusstseins. Die bürgerlichen Religionsparteien im deutschen Vormärz (Stuttgart and Bad Cannstadt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1978)Google Scholar.

113 Beiser, Enlightenment, Revolution, and Romanticism, 20.

114 Humboldt's humanism and its influence on his political outlook have been investigated by Vick, Brian, “Of Basques, Greeks, and Germans: Liberalism, Nationalism, and the Ancient Republican Tradition in the Thought of Wilhelm von Humboldt,” Central European History 40 (2007): 653–81Google Scholar, as well as by Beiser, Enlightenment, Revolution, and Romanticism, chap. five. For more on Humboldt's interest in vitalism in the life sciences, see Reill, Peter Hanns, “Science and the Construction of the Cultural Sciences in Late Enlightenment Germany: The Case of Wilhelm von Humboldt,” History and Theory 33, no. 3 (1994): 345–66Google Scholar.

115 A good discussion of Humboldt's humanist ideal of Bildung can be found in Sorkin, David, “Wilhelm von Humboldt: The Theory and Practice of Self-Formation (Bildung), 1791–1810,” Journal of the History of Ideas 44, no. 1 (1983): 5573Google Scholar, as well as in Seigel, Jerrold, The Idea of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 343–51Google Scholar. For more on Humboldt's praise of Sinnlichkeit, see Sauter, Christina M., Wilhelm von Humboldt und die deutsche Aufklärung (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1989), 345–6Google Scholar; Sweet, Paul R., Wilhelm von Humboldt: A Biography (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1978)Google Scholar, vol. 1, 2, 109.

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119 For a detailed discussion of the liberal tradition in Baden, see Nolte, Paul, Gemeindebürgertum und Liberalismus in Baden 1800–1850 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994)Google Scholar; and Dieter Hein, “Die bürgerlich-liberale Bewegung in Baden, 1800–1880,” in Historische Zeitschrift. Beihefte, New Series, vol. 19, Liberalismus und Region. Zur Geschichte des deutschen Liberalismus im 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1995), 1939Google Scholar.

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122 Grävell, Anti-B-z-b-g, 33. Research indicates that, generally speaking, liberals in Prussia—as in most other parts of Germany—rejected laissez-faire capitalism in favor of a cooperative economy that was patterned after the early modern town, with its many small producers working together on behalf of the urban community. See Koch, R., “‘Industriesystem’ oder ‘bürgerliche’ Gesellschaft. Der frühe deutsche Liberalismus und das Laissez-faire-Prinzip,” Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 29 (1978): 605628Google Scholar; Gall, Lothar, “Liberalismus und ‘bürgerliche Gesellschaft,’” in Liberalismus, ed. Gall, Lothar (Cologne: Kiepenheuer und Witsch, 1976), 163–86Google Scholar; Langewiesche, , Liberalismus in Deutschland, 2734Google Scholar.

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125 Applegate, Celia, Book Review, Journal of Modern History 74, no. 3 (2002): 666667Google Scholar; cf. 667.

126 Levinger, , Enlightened Nationalism, 123Google Scholar.

127 Hodenberg, , Die Partei der Unparteiischen, 82Google Scholar.

128 Ibid., 326.

129 Grävell, , Der Bürger, 279Google Scholar.