The Rise of German Nationalism From 1815 to 1848

1. The Rise of German Nationalism From 1815 to 1848 View of the Zeughaus (Prussian Castle) 1828

2. Europe in 1815

3. “Germany” in the 18th Century • During the 18th c. what we now think of as Germany was ruled by a bewildering conglomeration of some 700 separate political entities, united in name, but not in reality, within the Holy Roman Empire.  The Germans were generally regarded as a “land of poets and thinkers.” The small courts and free cities supported musicians like Bach and writers like Goethe, Schiller, and Lessing.  (Pace)

4. Napoleon’s Conquests • The occupation of the German provinces by Napoleon's armies, ironically, helped bring a new national unity to the German speaking peoples. Napoleon spread the French form of liberalism, which liberated the lower classes from aristocratic rule and instituted centralized forms of government . • During the decades after Napoleon’s defeat, the spread of commerce also gave the middle classes a strong economic motivation for supporting the creation of a unified German state. (Pace)

5. Early Nationalism in Prussia • Two Prussian noblemen, Stein and Gneisenau, admired the ideals of Napoleonic France: nationalism, authoritarianism and liberalism. • They hoped to return the Prussian military to the glory which it had once held under Frederick the Great. • Like the Decembrists in Russia, they attempted to liberalize Prussia: • make careers open to talent. • systematize the judiciary. • modernize the armed forces. Gneisenau

6. Early Nationalism in Prussia • Gorres, a journalist and pamphleteer, the author of Rheinische Merkur, a "bastion of German liberty." • He identified muscle and sweat and power as key aspects of the German character. Görres started the Romantic cult of the Rhine as the symbol of the German spirit.

7. Military Reform • Scharnhorst , a Prussian General, carried out the military organization that Stein had envisioned. • The Krimper Systemcreated a large reserve of 150,000 men which far exceeded the 42,000 man limit for the army set by Napoleon.

8. The Congress Of Vienna • In the aftermath of Napoleon’s defeat, the leaders of Austria, England, Russia and Prussia wanted to prevent any repeat of the Napoleonic conquest. • They agreed to meet at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to discuss the situation.

9. Klemens Von Metternich • Metternich was the Austrian Prince who dominated central Europe between 1815 and 1848, just as the Prussian Prince Otto von Bismarck dominated it during the second half of the 19th c. • His conservative philosophy and “Balance of Power”diplomacy helped preserve peace in Europe for nearly a century.

10. Metternich: The Carlsbad Decrees • Metternich believed that nationalism and liberalism had to be repressed everywhere to preserve European stability. Traditional institutions like the aristocracy, monarchy and church should preserve power over representative institutions. • Metternich held that men were equal only before God and the law. Socially, economically, and politically, there could be no equality. • In ‘The Carlsbad Decrees’ Metternich clamped tight control over liberal propaganda in Germany, particularly over students in the schools. • Metternich denounced popular sovereignty, the idea that people would have the right to vote to determine their form of government. • Instead, he favored of the principle of monarchy. He argued that democracy would lead ultimately to attack on all forms of property.

11. Metternich’s German Confederation • A new constitution for Germany: • 39 states and 4 cities; each with an independent assembly. • Feudal rights of nobility were maintained. • The Diet (Parliament of the Confederation). • Austria controlled a large percentage of the votes. • Austrian president could cast a deciding vote in case of a tie.

12. German Confederation 1815

13. Romanticism and German Nationalism • German Idealism provides one way of understanding why liberalism did not take root in Germany until after WWII. • In Hegel’s conception of world history, each period has a distinctive spirit (a zeitgeist) which distinguishes it from previous ages. Each period possesses an organic unity which coherently expresses itself in the art, philosophy, religion, politics and leading events of the time. • The goal of the German Idealists was to assert and protect their national identity. Hegel proposed a different definition of the term freedom: German freedom is the realization of a national identity, not the protection of an individual’s natural rights. • Human beings discover their essential character, their moral and spiritual potential, only as citizens of a cohesive political community.

14. Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (c.1818)

15. Romanticism and German Nationalism • German artists, musicians and philosophers reacted against the excessive rationalism of the Enlightenment’s French philosphes. • Sehnsucht- yearning for the lost, the unattainable, the irrevocable, for dreams. • They emphasized individuality and uniqueness. • Within Romanticism existed the idea that a nation state could be united by the imagination.

16. J.G. Herder (1744-1803) Pluralism • “The world is a great garden in which different flowers and plants grow, each in its own way, each with its own claims and rights, past and future.” • “Center of Gravity”: The truth is regional. Mankind is not one, but many: • “Every culture possesses its own "center of gravity”; each culture has its own points of reference; there is no reason why these cultures should fight each other-universal toleration must be possible-but unification was destructive. Nothing was worse than imperialism” (I. Berlin)

17. J.G. Herder: National Kultur Why Kultur and an emphasis on the community is so good? “Herder believed that the desire to belong to a culture, a set of beliefs and traditions that unite a group, province or nation, was a basic human need, as deep as the desire for food or drink or liberty; and that this need to belong to a community where you can understand what others say, where you can move freely, where you have emotional as well as economic, social, and political bonds, was the basis of developed, mature human life” (I. Berlin)

18. Caspar David Friedrich, Eldena Ruin (1825)

19. Johann Fichte • Johann Fichte called for spiritual regeneration of the German ‘volk.’ • He developed a concept of nationhood which thought of the nation as a living, expanding community--in other words an organism. (See Address to the German Nation) Fichte

21. Fichte: The Heart of German Nationalism • Fichte celebrated the historical significance of the struggle of the ancient German tribes against the Roman Empire that had been recorded by the Roman historian Tacitus’ in Germania. • “Freedom was their possession, that they might remain Germans, that they might continue to settle their own affairs independently and originally and in their own way, and at the same time to advance their culture and to plant the same independence in the hearts of their posterity. Slavery was what they called all the benefits which the Romans offered them, because through them they would become other than Germans, they would have to become semi-Romans.”(See Address to the German Nation (1806-07))

22. Hegel: The Volk and the German State • From Kant: the German mind can create its own reality. • The Volk: The state is a macroanthropos–. • one individual bound together organically by blood, language, tradition and history. • The state accords with the feelings and thoughts of the individual. • The state is a work of art, not a theory. • Hegel did not believe that freedom is a matter of securing abstract natural rights for the individual, as was the goal of the French Revolution. Rather, true freedom can be attained only within the social group. Human beings discover their essential character, their moral and spiritual potential, only as citizens of a cohesive political community.

23. Caspar David Friedrich, The Cross on the Mountain

24. Hegel: German Kultur • Absolute truth is expressed through the identity of each period in history. The identities change, but the absolute truth behind these cultures is the same. • “Each period in world history has a distinctive spirit or character that separates it from every preceding age. Each period possesses an organic unity which coherently expresses itself in the art, philosophy, religion, politics and leading events of the time.” • The Germans, through their struggles and wars, were drawing closer to the realization of their true nature.

25. Fichte: “Our Nation” • Fichte stresses that each citizen belongs to an entity larger and more powerful than any individual. • It is the duty of each citizen not to give into the powers that be, to remain German and, when necessary, to fight for the preservation of the German identity. • “That a true German could wish to live only to be and to remain a German.” (See Address to the German Nation (1806-07))

26. Industrial Revolution in Germany • In the new city of Berlin, economic crisis and widespread unemployment increased the revolutionary activity of workers. There had been an incipient worker movement in Germany since at least 1844. • Tables Illustrating the Spread of Industrialization.

27. Revolutions of 1848 • In the late 1840’s tension between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat grew as the middle class gained increasing wealth and power. • Then, in 1848, a series of democratic revolutions broke out throughout Europe.

29. Demands of the Liberal Revolutionaries The Unification of Germany under a Liberal Government: • freely elected parliaments. • universal suffrage. • freedom of the press, religion, conscience and religion. • abolition of all privileges. • trial by jury. • reduction of the voting age to twenty-four. • universal education paid for by the state. • free public libraries.

30. Demands of the Workers • a progressive income tax • the right to collective bargaining • the right to work • minimum wages and maximum hours of labor

31. The Frankfurt National Assembly (1848-49) • The Frankfurt National Assembly adopted a constitution for Germany on March 28, 1849. This document provided for. • universal suffrage, parliamentary government, and a hereditary emperor. • a unified monetary and customs system (the Zollverein) would draw the constituent German states together. • The central government collapsed because it could not raise taxes or equip an army. • The monarchs of Austria and Prussia ignored the assembly.

32. The Conservative Reaction • Terrified of socialism, the ruling classes violently put down the revolutions, reneging on many of the promises that they had made to the liberals. • In Prussia, although the structure of liberal government remained, no universal suffrage, no liberty of the press, and no freedom of assembly were permitted. • Austria re-asserted an absolute government and its dominance among the German states. • Autocratic governments, in alliance with the middle classes and the clergy, strengthened the police forces and repressed free speech in the the popular press and outlawed liberal and socialist political parties.

33. Works Cited • The Congress of Vienna (1815) • Prince Metternich and the New Social Order:  1815-1848 • Reform, Liberation and Romanticism in Prussia • "Revolution and Reaction:  1848"