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Anti-Statism in German Literature, as Exemplified by the Work of John Henry Mackay
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Emerson's and Thoreau's individualistic, anti-government writings, it is said, developed out of an American background. Our land of liberty, out of fear that government might come to concern itself too familiarly with matters pertaining to the personal thinking and behavior of individuals, has nurtured from its beginning a lively suspicion for concentrations of political power. This suspicion is everywhere in American letters, which have been ever eager to slap government's fingers when it became over-forward. Each individual, as our thinkers and writers repeatedly tell us, should insist on solving his own problems without dictation from external forces, whether from the laws of a too aggressive legislature or from a next-door neighbor who considers himself an arbiter of behavior and taste. Of seekers for political office, Emerson predicted: “Wake them, and they shall quit the false good and leap to the true and leave government to clerks and desks.” A recent article on the American individualist maintained, “His political ideal will, of course, be Jefferson, his prophets will be Emerson and Thoreau; his poet, Whitman.”
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1947
References
1 “The American Scholar.”
2 James B. Conant, “Wanted: American Radicals,” The Atlantic Monthly, clxxi, no. 5 (1943), 41-45.
3 J. Baxa, Gesellschaft und Staat im Spiegel deutscher Romantik. Eine Auswahl aus romantischen Schriften. (Jena, 1924), p. 176.
4 “A Song for Occupations,” part 1.
5 Hermann Hummel, “Emerson and Nietzsche,” The New England Quarterly, xix, no. 1 (1946), 63-84.
6 Sturm, 2nd ed. (Zürich, 1890), p. 30.
7 Walther Linden, Naturalismus (Leipzig, 1936), p. 120. Taken from Sturm, 1st ed., (Zürich, 1888), p. 89.
8 “Wünsche.”
9 See Albert Soergel, Dichtung und Dichter der Zeit (Leipzig, 1928), pp. 238-242.
10 Abrechnung. Randbemerkungen zu Leben und Arbeit (Berlin, 1932), p. 63.
11 Ibid., p. 23.
12 Berlin: S. Fischer, 1893.
13 Berlin: S. Fischer, 1895.
14 Probably a tribute to the political poet, Georg Herwegh. Bergmann is a portrait of Max Stirner, whose biography Mackay was writing at just this time.
15 Gesammelte Werke (Berlin, 1911), v, 88.
16 Ibid., 107.
17 Ibid., 263.
18 Ibid., i, 261.
19 The story is obviously the prototype of Heinrich Mann's Professor Unrat (1905), on which was based “The Blue Angel” (Emil Jannings, Marlene Dietrich), the epoch-making film of the early 1930's.
20 Gesammelte Werke, v, 115.
21 Berlin: S. Fischer, 1901.
22 Leipzig, 1845.
23 For instance, the articles on Anarchism in the Encyclopaedia Britannica and on Max Stirner in the Encyclopedia of Social Sciences.
24 The group around Benjamin Tucker. See Thomas A. Riley, “New England Anarchism in Germany,” The New England Quarterly, xviii, no. 1 (1945), 25-38. Mackay first read Stirner in the late summer of 1888.
25 Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (Leipzig: Reclam, 1927), p. 23.
26 Ibid., 255.
27 Ibid., 263.
28 Ibid., 264.
29 Ibid., 294.
30 Ibid., 296.
31 Ibid., 248.
32 Ibid., 275.
33 Ibid., 274.
34 Ibid., 277.
35 Ibid., 366.
36 Mein Lebensgang (Dornach, Schweiz, 1925), p. 260.
37 Individualistic Anarchism believed in a competitive society. It was against violence of all kinds. Benjamin Tucker, the leader of the Individualistic Anarchists in the United States, called himself an “unterrified Jeffersonian Democrat.”
38 I know the book only in the second edition, Equitable Commerce (Utopia, Ohio, 1849).
39 Practical Applications of the Elementary Principles of “True Civilization” to the Minute Details of Everyday Life (Princeton, Mass., 1873). The words quoted are from the title page.
40 Equitable Commerce, a later edition, (New York, 1852). From the title page.
41 Der Einzige und sein Eigentum, 300 and 362.
42 Berlin, 1921.
43 Max Halbe, Jahrhundertwende, 1893-1914 (Danzig, 1935), pp. 44 fi.; Kurt Martens, Schonungslose Lebenschronik (Wien, Berlin, 1921), pp. 197 ff.; Stanislaw Przybyszewski, Moi Wspolczesni (Warsaw, 1926), p. 72; Gabriele Reuter, Vom Kinde zum Menschen (Berlin, 1921), many references; Rodolf Steiner, Mein Lebensgang (Dornach, Schweiz, 1925), 260. (For four of these references I am indebted to Professor Karl Viëtor.)
44 “Politics.” (1839-1840).
45 Berlin: Stirner-Verlag, 1928.
46 Werke in einem Band (Berlin, 1928), pp. 1048-53.
47 Gesammelte Werke (Berlin, 1911), iii, 203.