Enlightened Nationalism:

The Transformation of
Prussian Political Culture
1806–1848

Matthew Levinger

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

enlightened nationalism
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 enlightened nationalism

T
The Transformation of Prussian Political Culture
1806–1848

Matthew Levinger

1
2000
 1
Oxford New York
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Copyright 䉷 2000 by Oxford University Press

Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
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Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Levinger, Matthew Bernard, 1960–
Enlightened nationalism : the transformation of Prussian
political culture, 1806–1848 / Matthew Levinger.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-513185-1
1. Political culture—Germany—Prussia—History—19th century.
2. Nationalism—Germany—Prussia—History—19th century.
3. Enlightenment—Germany—Prussia. 4. Prussia
(Germany)—Historiography. I. Title.
DD347 .L45 2000
943'.7—dc21 99-32583

Parts of chapter 2 appeared originally in ‘‘Kant and the Origins of Prussian Constitutionalism,’’ History of
Political Thought, vol. 19, no. 2 (Summer 1998). Parts of chapter 6 appeared originally in ‘‘Hardenberg,
Wittgenstein, and the Constitutional Question in Prussia, 1815–22,’’ German History, vol. 8, no. 3 (October
1990). Parts of chapters 3 and 8 appeared in ‘‘The Prussian Reform Movement and the Rise of Enlightened
Nationalism,’’ in Re-thinking Prussian History, ed. Philip Dwyer (London: Longman, 2000). The author
gratefully acknowledges the permission to reproduce each of these passages.

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
 For my parents
and in memory of Oma
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 preface

Like many works of German history composed over the past half century,
this book has its roots in the experience of exile. At the age of eight, in
1935, my father fled his birthplace, Berlin, with his family. My father’s
mother never set foot in Germany again, but she loved the literature of
the German romantics and played Beethoven almost daily on the piano
in her Manhattan apartment. My interest in history was sparked by the
urge to understand Germany’s disastrous turn to National Socialism be-
tween 1933 and 1945.
Perhaps because I have witnessed the effects of exile only at a dis-
tance, I approach this problem more obliquely than many historians. My
analysis centers on Prussia, the largest northern German state, during
the first half of the nineteenth century—an era in which Germany is
often said to have embarked on a Sonderweg, or ‘‘separate path’’ of his-
torical development from Western Europe. Some scholars have attributed
this historical distinctiveness to Germans’ rejection of modern Western
cultural values of equality and individual freedom. Others have con-
tended that the German states’ belated industrialization, vis-à-vis their
Western counterparts, allowed for the entrenchment of the authority of
premodern political elites. Thus, whether for cultural or socioeconomic
reasons, Prussia and the other German states are portrayed as having
failed to modernize their political institutions at a critical historical mo-
ment.
Through an analysis of discourse involving the concept ‘‘nation,’’ this
book demonstrates that nineteenth-century Prussian political culture
cannot be understood as fundamentally premodern. Rather than rejecting
Western values, many influential Prussians, from the Napoleonic era on-
ward, embraced the ideals of individual liberty and popular participation
viii preface

in government. Proponents of political reform in Prussia expressed a

hybrid vision that combined the theories of eighteenth-century Enlight-
enment philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant and Adam Smith, with the
new nationalist ideas of the French Revolution. By forging a rational and
harmonious civil society, they hoped to overcome the contradiction be-
tween popular and monarchical sovereignty. The mobilization of the na-
tion, they argued, would enhance rather than diminish the power of the
Prussian monarchy.
Although this ‘‘enlightened nationalism’’ was but one strand of nine-
teenth-century Prussian political culture, promoted primarily by reform-
minded civil servants and liberal activists, it profoundly influenced Prus-
sia’s political evolution. Ironically, by stressing the paramount impor-
tance of internal harmony, exponents of enlightened nationalism bol-
stered the legitimacy of the monarchical state and inhibited the
development of a pluralistic system of parliamentary rule. The very mo-
dernity of their political program, which aimed at the rationalization of
sovereign authority, contributed to the formation of a brittle regime that
was poorly suited to the productive management of social and political
conflict. In effect, the quest for an enlightened nation injected a powerful
utopian element into Prussian political culture, the counterpart of which
was an overexaggerated fear of the negative effects of domestic strife.
The inevitable disappointment of these utopian hopes for national har-
mony and unanimity may have been one factor that undermined the
stability of parliamentary institutions in Germany during the early twen-
tieth century.

My work on this book came to fruition through the generous help of

many gifted colleagues and friends. I am deeply indebted to my won-
derful teachers at the University of Chicago: above all, Michael Geyer,
who supervised my dissertation project from its inception, Keith Baker,
John Boyer, Michael Silverstein, and François Furet. Reinhart Koselleck
provided indispensable guidance during the early stages of my research,
and I have also benefited from the wise counsel of James Sheehan, Gor-
don Craig, Reinhard Rürup, Hagen Schulze, Dieter Langewiesche, Andrea
Hofmeister-Hunger, Hans Erich Bödeker, Günther Höpfner, Eva Bliem-
bach, and Jane Hunter. Three anonymous readers for Oxford University
Press, as well as Phil Stern, Eli Nathans, and Brendan Simms, offered
incisive critiques of the manuscript that allowed me to improve it greatly.
I am also grateful to Thomas LeBien and Susan Ferber of Oxford Uni-
versity Press for their faith in this project and for their inspired editing.
My research and writing was supported by fellowships from the Uni-
versity of Chicago and by a two-year grant from the Berlin Program for
 preface ix

Advanced German and European Studies of the Social Science Research

Council and the Free University of Berlin (jointly funded by the Volk-
swagen Stiftung and the German Marshall Fund). While revising the
manuscript, I received crucial support from Lewis and Clark College,
including a junior faculty sabbatical and a summer research stipend, and
a research grant from the German Academic Exchange Service. In Ger-
many, I benefited from the expert assistance of archivists at the Geheimes
Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin-Dahlem, the Zentrales
Staatsarchiv, Dienststelle Merseburg (since reincorporated into the Geh-
eimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz), the Brandenburgisches Lan-
deshauptarchiv, and the Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz. The maps
for the book were produced by Richard Wilkie, Sean FitzGerald, Donald
Sluter, and David Ritchay of the University of Massachusetts Carto-
graphic Laboratory.
A word of thanks to some others encountered along the way: John
Warthen, Bill Hohenstein, John Spielman, Susan Fisher, Dario Biocca,
Hartmut and Ulrike Püschel, and Heiner Legewie and Barbara Schervier-
Legewie, all of whom have provided friendship and inspiration. I have
been blessed by the love and companionship of my wife, Livia Nicolescu,
who has helped me keep my sense of humor and who has made this
work infinitely more rewarding. The company of our daughter,
Alexandra, has made every enterprise more joyful. Above all, I thank
my parents, George and Ann Levinger, for their love and unfailing sup-
port. I dedicate this book to them and to the memory of my grandmother
Charlotte Levinger.

January 2000 M. L.
Portland, Oregon
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 contents

A Note on Translation xiii

One Introduction 3

part i: genesis
Two The Politics of Harmony in Eighteenth-century Prussia 19
Three Invoking the Nation 41

part ii: the concept in play

Four A Nation of Aristocrats 71
Five A Nation of Romantics 97
Six A Nation of Revolutionaries 127

part iii: legacies

Seven Experiments in Conservatism 163
Eight Toward a Democratic Monarchy 191

Nine Conclusion 227

Notes 243

Works Cited 277

Index 299
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 a note on translation

In a study such as this, which explores subtle shifts in the meanings of

words, consistency in translation is essential. Generally, when there is
potential for ambiguity in an important phrase, I have indicated the
original German words in parentheses. In translating certain critical
terms, I have followed the rules indicated below (unless otherwise noted
in the text):
Nation, Volk, völkisch, Volkstümlichkeit. The German term Nation is
always translated here as ‘‘nation.’’ For purposes of clarity, the term Volk
is never translated as ‘‘nation.’’ I have also avoided translating völkisch
as ‘‘national,’’ instead choosing the term ‘‘popular.’’ The word Volkstüm-
lichkeit, which might be translated as ‘‘national character’’ or ‘‘national
essence,’’ appears here as ‘‘tribalism.’’ Translating the word Volk presents
particular difficulties. Some of the authors whose writings are quoted
here used this word in a relatively neutral sense, indicating the ‘‘popu-
lace’’ or ‘‘civil society.’’ In these cases, I have chosen to translate Volk
directly as ‘‘people.’’ For other authors, the term was charged with con-
notations of ethnic or national community. When I have judged this to
be the case, I have generally left the term Volk in the original German.
Stand, Stände, Landstände, Landschaft, Landtag, Rittergut, Ritterguts-
besitzer. Stand and Stände may be translated literally as ‘‘estate’’ and
‘‘estates.’’ The term Stände, however, may be employed in two very
different senses, first, to refer to the various legally distinct strata of the
population (e.g., the ‘‘noble estate’’ or the ‘‘estate of the peasantry’’), and
second, as a designation for the ‘‘assembly of the estates’’ in a diet. To
make clear the distinction between these two usages, I have generally
used the term ‘‘diet’’ when the term Stände is employed in the second

xiii
xiv a note on translation

sense. I have also sometimes used the term ‘‘diet’’ to translate the words
Landschaft, Landstände, and Landtag.
An additional wrinkle on this translation problem is posed by the
word Rittergut, which (until 1807) denoted a landed estate that belonged
to a member of the nobility. I have chosen to translate Rittergut as ‘‘noble
property’’ or as ‘‘landed estate.’’ The term Rittergutsbesitzer is translated
here as ‘‘owner of noble property’’ or as ‘‘owner of a landed estate.’’ A
complication here stems from the peculiarity of the reform period legis-
lation itself: after 1807, ownership of Rittergüter was opened to com-
moners. Thus, an ‘‘owner of noble property’’ was not necessarily a mem-
ber of the nobility.
Verfassung, ständische Verfassung, landständische Verfassung, Konsti-
tution. The words Verfassung and Konstitution are both translated here
as ‘‘constitution.’’ Of the two terms, Verfassung is by far the more com-
mon. The terms ständische Verfassung and landständische Verfassung re-
ferred to a constitution that would provide representation for each of the
various estates—the nobility, the burghers, and the peasants—and per-
haps also for corporate bodies such as the universities and the church. I
have generally translated these terms as ‘‘constitution based on estates.’’
Bildung, Erziehung. The word Bildung carries rich connotations that
are difficult to capture in English; it implies a process of organic matu-
ration through which both intellect and character become fully formed.
Bildung cannot be imposed entirely from above; instead, it involves spon-
taneous self-development, resulting in the capacity for ethical self-deter-
mination. To avoid overly cumbersome phrasing, I have translated Bil-
dung simply as ‘‘education,’’ but the reader should keep in mind that
this term serves as a shorthand expression for a much richer idea. The
word Erziehung may also be translated as ‘‘education,’’ but I have instead
employed the words ‘‘upbringing’’ or ‘‘schooling’’ to distinguish it from
the more pregnant and heavily laden concept of Bildung.
All emphases within direct quotes are from the original works.
Because of space limitations, it has not been possible to include the
original German quotations in the book along with the translations. (An
exception has been made for three important, previously unpublished
memoranda that explain the decision by King Frederick William III
against the establishment of a constitution. These documents are repro-
duced in the notes to chapter 6.) The German-language quotations may
be obtained by writing the author at the Department of History, Lewis
and Clark College, 0615 S.W. Palatine Hill Road, Portland, OR 97219 (e-
mail [email protected]), or care of Oxford University Press.
enlightened nationalism
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 One

introduction

The year 1806 marked a turning point in the history of Prussia

and the other German states. With the establishment of the Con-
federation of the Rhine in July 1806, Napoleon consolidated France’s
control over much of German-speaking Europe. The following month,
he forced the abolition of the Holy Roman Empire, which had been the
supreme political entity in Central Europe for more than 800 years.
Though the empire had long exercised only limited power, it had pro-
vided a legal and institutional framework that established a formal unity
among the various German territories, which was now lost entirely. Fi-
nally, on 14 October 1806, Prussia’s famed army collapsed in a single
day, routed by the French in the battles of Auerstädt and Jena. Napo-
leon’s military conquest left Prussia’s government intact but stripped the
country of nearly half its territory and imposed a humiliating punitive
treaty, which was signed at Tilsit in July 1807. The war and the sub-
sequent occupation ravaged all sectors of the population: food prices
soared while land values plunged, and both the countryside and the
cities were devastated by epidemics and famine.1
Prussia’s experience under Napoleonic domination was a unique one:
no other German state faced such humiliation while still preserving its
governing institutions.2 After the military devastation of 1806–1807,
Prussia’s leaders feared that their country had only two options: either
to reinvigorate its social and political institutions by adopting the in-
novations of the enemy or to cease to exist as an independent state.
Moreover, the abolition of the empire had created a constitutional vac-
uum in Central Europe, so that it was also necessary to redefine the
political relationships between Prussia and the other territories of
German-speaking Europe. Prussia’s response to the Napoleonic challenge

3
4 introduction

was led by a new cadre of officials, most of whom had held middle-level
administrative posts before 1806, but who assumed positions of leader-
ship after the old ruling elite was discredited by the military and dip-
lomatic catastrophe. Most notable among the officials who spearheaded
what came to be known as the Prussian reform movement were Freiherr
Karl vom und zum Stein (1757–1831), Prussia’s first minister in 1807–
1808, and Karl August von Hardenberg (1750–1822), who served as state
chancellor from 1810 until his death.
In analyzing Prussian history of the Stein-Hardenberg era, some his-
torians have spoken of a ‘‘revolution from above’’ instigated by the civil
service.3 According to Reinhart Koselleck’s classic analysis, the Prussian
reformers attempted to establish a free market economy and liberal po-
litical institutions. The Prussian bourgeoisie, however, was still too un-
developed to sustain a viable system of parliamentary rule. Thus, these
officials were forced to abandon their ambitions for political liberalization
in order to achieve the implementation of their socioeconomic reforms.4
Hans Rosenberg, while concurring with Koselleck about the immaturity
of the Prussian bourgeoisie during this era, interprets the motives of
Prussia’s leading civil servants in a less altruistic light. The early nine-
teenth century, Rosenberg argues, witnessed a ‘‘revolution from within’’
that resulted in a ‘‘modified pattern’’ of aristocratic privilege and a po-
litical system based on ‘‘bureaucratic absolutism.’’5
More recent scholarship analyzes Prussia’s political evolution in terms
of a process of ‘‘partial’’ modernization or ‘‘defensive’’ modernization.
Historians such as Herbert Obenaus, Barbara Vogel, and Hans-Ulrich
Wehler stress the combination of challenges with which Prussia’s leaders
contended during the Napoleonic era, including the country’s precarious
international standing, its dire fiscal condition, its lack of internal inte-
gration, and the ‘‘legitimation deficit’’ that confronted the Prussian gov-
ernment. These challenges motivated concerted efforts at social and po-
litical reform by leading civil servants. While many important social and
economic changes were successfully enacted, efforts at constitutional re-
form before 1848 proved largely abortive.6
The terms ‘‘revolution from above’’ and ‘‘partial modernization’’ both
imply that while significant socioeconomic changes occurred in Prussia
during the early nineteenth century, the authority of the monarchical
state remained largely unchallenged. Prussia’s political development, ac-
cording to this view, was stunted by the absence of a more thorough-
going ‘‘revolution from below,’’ such as the one that had occurred in
France. I demonstrate that this interpretation underestimates the political
consequences of the events of the Napoleonic era, even though it may
accurately describe the initial intentions of the Prussian reformers. These
 introduction 5

leaders were unable fully to control the consequences of their actions.

Ultimately, what began as a narrowly circumscribed ‘‘revolution from
above’’ escalated into a profound and irrevocable transformation of Prus-
sian political culture.
Humiliated by Napoleon and facing the potential annihilation of their
state, Prussian leaders sought to learn from their conqueror. Beginning
with the outbreak of the revolutionary wars in 1792, France had enjoyed
astonishing military success—in stark contrast with the many wars of
the preceding century, in which it had achieved little territorial expan-
sion despite fielding the largest army in Europe. Reformers such as Stein
and Hardenberg believed that France’s newfound military might
stemmed largely from the mobilization of nationalist sentiments within
the French populace. Yet the French example offered a far from perfect
political model for the Prussian reformers. Apart from the problematic
issue of whether Prussia itself constituted a nation, these leaders con-
fronted a thorny strategic dilemma. As noblemen in the employ of the
Prussian monarch, Stein, Hardenberg, and their compatriots were acutely
sensitive to the danger of revolution. They sought a means of harnessing
the power of the French Revolution while avoiding what they saw as
the revolution’s unfortunate side effects, such as the abolition of the
aristocracy and the execution of the king.
My phrase ‘‘enlightened nationalism’’ is intended to highlight the hy-
brid nature of the Prussian reformers’ political agenda. As was the case
for the so-called enlightened absolutists of the eighteenth century, such
as Frederick the Great, the reformers’ paramount objective was to mo-
bilize social resources on behalf of the state. Influenced by Enlightenment
theorists such as Kant, Smith, and Turgot, they argued that the estab-
lishment of a rational social and political order would liberate the ener-
gies of the populace and foster harmony between the government and
the citizenry. While this rationalizing impulse of the Prussian reform
movement had its roots in eighteenth-century governing traditions, Stein
and Hardenberg fused this prerevolutionary legacy with an effort to
forge a politically active ‘‘nation.’’ This aspect of their program was a
specific response to the cataclysmic events of the revolutionary and Na-
poleonic eras.
The Prussian reformers’ project contained powerful internal tensions:
they insisted that the nation be politically mobilized but held equally
fervently that the nation must express its will in harmony with the will
of the king. Moreover, while calling for the establishment of a more
egalitarian legal order, they also sought to preserve certain traditional
social hierarchies. The rhetoric of enlightened nationalism aimed to re-
solve these incipient tensions within the reformers’ legislative progam.
6 introduction

By educating the populace and by rationalizing Prussia’s political and

social institutions, they believed they could reconcile a politically active
nation with a sovereign monarch.
This book traces the evolution of the concept ‘‘nation’’ in Prussia from
the Napoleonic era up to the eve of the Revolution of 1848. Not sur-
prisingly, the reformers’ ideal of harmonious cooperation between the
citizenry and the monarchical state proved unattainable. Nonetheless,
their vision of national harmony and unanimity continued to shape Prus-
sian political debate long after Napoleon’s demise in 1815. Bourgeois lib-
eral activists, like the bureaucratic reformers, came to believe that a
constitutional order balancing monarchical and democratic elements
could be forged through the education of the nation and the rationali-
zation of the state. Other groups both on the right and the left of the
political spectrum, from conservative aristocrats to radical republicans,
also struggled to come to terms with the implications of enlightened
nationalism. These groups were more skeptical than the liberals and the
reform-minded civil servants about the feasibility of peacefully sharing
sovereignty between the nation and the king. Nonetheless, they found
it difficult to construct alternative political theories that would justify
limiting or abolishing the authority of the monarchical state.
While my investigation is confined to Prussian history during the first
half of the nineteenth century, it has broader implications both for the
study of comparative political modernization and for the analysis of the
role played by discourse in historical change. I present a new perspective
on the question of whether, and in what sense, nineteenth-century Prus-
sia may be said to have embarked on a distinctive path of political mod-
ernization. Moreover, by examining how competing political interest
groups invoked the concept ‘‘nation’’ in order to articulate and enforce
their claims, I seek to illuminate the interplay between the discursive
strategies and the material interests that shaped the evolution of Prussian
political culture during this era.

Revisiting the Sonderweg

The notion that modern Germany has followed a ‘‘special path’’ of his-
torical development possesses a long pedigree. In the aftermath of World
War II, scholars such as Hans Kohn maintained that Germans had long
engaged in a ‘‘war against the West,’’ rejecting Enlightenment ideals of
freedom and individual autonomy in favor of a collectivist political
creed.7 According to Leonard Krieger, Germans occupied a position ‘‘half
within and half without the western community.’’ The ‘‘liberal spirit did
affect German institutions,’’ Krieger declared, but ‘‘the process was in-
 introduction 7

complete and unintegrated.’’ The outcome of this partial transformation

was a ‘‘peculiar 19th century version of political freedom which made
the idea of liberty not the polar antithesis but the historical associate of
princely authority.’’8 Krieger’s arguments paralleled those of sociologists
such as Ralf Dahrendorf, who maintained that Germans showed evidence
of an ‘‘authoritarian personality’’ that had predisposed them to the appeal
of Nazism.9
In more recent decades, historians have expressed skepticism toward
such global claims about Germans’ cultural susceptibility to totalitarian
politics. Instead, many scholars writing since the late 1950s have em-
phasized socioeconomic factors that rendered nineteenth-century Ger-
many distinctive. In comparison to England and France, according to
this view, most of the German states remained economically underde-
veloped during the era of the French Revolution. The relative immaturity
of the German bourgeoisie ensured the continuing political dominance
of aristocrats and royal officials throughout the early nineteenth century.
Even with Germany’s rapid industrialization after 1850, the country ex-
perienced only uneven modernization: it developed an advanced capi-
talist economy, but the social and political elites remained ‘‘feudalized.’’
Rather than demanding a transition to parliamentary rule, the new cap-
italist class in Germany imitated the ostentation of the aristocracy and
acknowledged the political supremacy of the emperor.10
Yet this socioeconomic version of the Sonderweg, like the older cultural
Sonderweg theory, has encountered strong criticism in recent years. The
latest wave of revisionism has been motivated partly by new comparative
research on French and German social history. Scholars have discovered
that industrial capitalism in eighteenth-century France was less advanced
than they had previously presumed; conversely, they have increasingly
emphasized the dynamism and vibrancy of the nineteenth-century
German bourgeoisie. Thus, it appears difficult to account for differences
between the French and German political trajectories primarily on the
basis of different paths of socioeconomic development.11
Apart from these doubts about the degree of nineteenth-century Ger-
many’s socioeconomic distinctiveness, many historians have expressed
unease about several fallacies associated with the Sonderweg interpreta-
tion, which may be labeled the essentialist, the teleological, and the
normative.
The essentialist fallacy is found in works that make vast, undiffer-
entiated claims about the ‘‘German character’’—for example, that Ger-
mans possess an essentially authoritarian disposition or that virtually all
Germans are anti–Semitic.12 This type of argument is deeply problematic
for at least two reasons. First, it both caricatures and scapegoats the
8 introduction

German people, while whitewashing the sins of other national cultures.

Germans, for example, may be lambasted as fervent anti–Semites, while
the pervasive anti–Semitism in many other European countries is ig-
nored. Second, this type of argument provides little insight into the
historical mechanisms that contributed to the rise and fall of authoritar-
ianism or anti–Semitism in Germany. By stating one’s claims in such
global terms, one forecloses the possibility for nuanced historical inter-
pretation.
The teleological fallacy is closely related to the essentialist fallacy: it
is the argument that all paths of German history lead to National So-
cialism. Certain scholars have gone so far as to trace a straight line from
Luther to Hitler.13 More commonly, historians begin their story in the
eighteenth or the nineteenth century, identifying various pathological
features of German society that allegedly contributed to the breakdown
of democracy and the rise of Nazism in the 1930s. The problem with this
approach is that it fosters a kind of historical tunnel vision. Not only
does it make a single twelve-year period, 1933–1945, the logical culmi-
nation of all German history, but it leads scholars to overemphasize cer-
tain negative characteristics of German society and culture, while ne-
glecting other tendencies that cannot be linked to the Nazi phenomenon.
Finally, the normative fallacy involves the premise that Germany’s
historical development was pathologically aberrant because it followed
a different pattern than the so-called Western nations. As David Black-
bourn and Geoff Eley observe, this normative vision reflects ‘‘an ideal-
ized picture of what the ‘western’ pattern actually was, a picture which
historians of Britain, the USA, or France themselves would usually regard
as quasi-mythical.’’14 Indeed, American and British historians, like his-
torians of Germany, frequently make claims about the exceptional char-
acter of their own country’s historical trajectory. In a real sense, every
nation’s history is unique, so one must be careful not to read too much
into the fact of Germany’s distinctiveness.
For all of these qualifications, however, the notion that German history
is somehow distinctive has proved difficult to banish from scholarly de-
bate. Germany’s pattern of constitutional development during the nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries did indeed differ strikingly from
that of many Western nations. In most of the industrializing states of
Western Europe and the Americas during this era, monarchy was either
abolished or rendered largely symbolic. Germany, by contrast, retained
a strong monarchy until the end of World War I, with the Kaiser con-
tinuing to play a central role in vital affairs of state and with the civil
service enjoying exceptionally strong prestige.15 Even after the abolition
of the German monarchy in 1918, the parliamentary institutions of the
 introduction 9

Weimar Republic proved more vulnerable to challenge than those of most

Western European states.
Broadly speaking, most explanations of these distinctive aspects of
German political culture have gravitated toward one of two methodolog-
ical poles: idealism or materialism. The idealists include old-school
German scholars, such as Friedrich Meinecke,16 as well as postwar his-
torians, such as Krieger and Kohn. They emphasize cultural factors that
made Germany unique. The materialists, who have been in the majority
among German historians since the 1960s, focus primarily on the com-
petition among interest groups. They maintain that, in large part, po-
litical outcomes may be derived from the interplay of socioeconomic
forces.
This study seeks to forge a link between the idealist and materialist
traditions of German historiography. Anthropologist Clifford Geertz de-
picts politics as symbolic action, as activity undertaken in reference to
‘‘authoritative concepts that render it meaningful.’’17 My analysis focuses
on precisely this reciprocal link between symbols and action: I explore
the ways in which the language of nineteenth-century Prussian politics
was shaped by socioeconomic interests and, conversely, how patterns of
discourse defined the horizon of political possibilities.
Rather than explaining Prussia’s political evolution on the basis of
global social or cultural characteristics—such as the immaturity of the
bourgeoisie or an alleged predisposition to authoritarianism—I stress the
ways in which the conjunction of contingent, localized phenomena pro-
duced distinctive political results. Of signal importance for Prussia’s po-
litical evolution was that the reform movement was motivated by an
external threat. This fact led the bureaucratic reformers to place strong
emphasis on the need for the internal unanimity of the ‘‘nation’’ to repel
the Napoleonic challenge. Other interest groups, such as landed aristo-
crats concerned about the loss of their traditional privileges, and mar-
ginalized bourgeois intellectuals striving to enhance their own social
status, seized on this ideal of a unanimous ‘‘national spirit’’ for reasons
of their own. In effect, a new authoritative symbolic order of politics
arose out of the struggle among competing factions that were striving to
attain strategic advantage.

Method and Sources

A political culture consists, in part, of the ‘‘values, expectations, and
implicit rules that express and shape collective intentions and actions.’’18
It also comprises the habitual patterns of political activity within a given
society—whether dictated by law or by custom. The culture of enlight-
10 introduction

ened nationalism in Prussia manifested itself at both of these levels. In

discourse, it appeared in discussions about the need to create a rational,
educated, and harmonious national community. In practice, it displayed
itself through the creation of new political institutions, such as municipal
and provincial assemblies, as well as in popular activities, such as
petition-writing campaigns and nationalist festivals.
The transformation of political culture in early nineteenth-century
Prussia is best understood as the product of shifting strategies of per-
suasion. In seeking to articulate new political goals and to appeal to new
audiences, the Prussian reformers were forced to recast the underlying
symbolic order of the polity. Methodologically, my analysis is influenced
by the discipline of historical semantics, developed by scholars such as
Reinhart Koselleck, Rolf Reichardt, and Hans-Ulrich Gumbrecht.19 These
scholars seek to identify linguistic and cultural norms that ‘‘exercise com-
pulsion over an individual’s freedom of expression, narrowing the pos-
sibilities offered by the system within the frame of traditional realiza-
tions.’’20 Language, according to this conception, does not simply serve
to communicate ideas and interests; rather, it also shapes the ways in
which speakers articulate and perceive their own interests. In Koselleck’s
formulation, concepts ‘‘contain the structural possibilities . . . which are
not detectable in the historical flow of events.’’21
This work on historical semantics is part of a growing body of liter-
ature that has explored the role played by discourse in social and political
change. As Kathleen Canning observes, many historians have come to
see ‘‘language as constitutive, not merely reflective, of historical events
and human consciousness.’’22 This concern with language is reflected in
a wide-ranging theoretical debate over the virtues of the ‘‘linguistic
turn’’ in historical scholarship.23 Historians have also written case studies
that have sought to apply discourse analysis to various historical prob-
lems, for example, the origins of the French Revolution,24 the formation
of working-class and middle-class identities during the Industrial Rev-
olution,25 the transformation of gender roles and family structures in
nineteenth-century Europe,26 and the emergence and spread of nation-
alism.27
At the heart of all the debates over the linguistic turn lies one central
methodological question: to what extent does language reflect social re-
ality, and to what extent does it constitute it? Most historians are rightly
uneasy about the suggestion that discourse alone determines the course
of political and social events. Koselleck, for example, while asserting that
words possess an autonomous force in politics, elaborates on this claim
with greater nuance:
 introduction 11

Without common concepts there is no society, and above all, no political

field of action. Conversely, our concepts are founded in politicosocial sys-
tems that are far more complex than would be indicated by treating them
simply as linguistic communities organized around specific key concepts.
A ‘‘society’’ and its ‘‘concepts’’ exist in a relation of tension.28
Likewise, French revolutionary historians, such as Keith Michael Baker,
as well as British social historians, such as Dror Wahrman, emphasize the
dynamic tension between ideas and action. Baker observes that ‘‘meaning
is a dimension of all social action’’; he proposes a view of ‘‘politics as
constituted within a field of discourse, and of political language as elab-
orated in the course of political action.’’29 This analytical approach, in
other words, strikes a middle ground between two methodological ex-
tremes. It rejects the neo–Marxist assumption that political ideas and
events may be derived from allegedly more fundamental socioeconomic
phenomena. Conversely, it also rejects the premises of linguistic deter-
minism, which endows ‘‘language with the ultimate power to determine
the outcome of historical developments.’’30
While numerous historians have proclaimed the need for an analytical
method that combines social and linguistic history, fewer have provided
practical models for such work. For example, while Koselleck argues that
it is essential to explore the interactions between ‘‘society and its con-
cepts,’’ his magisterial seven-volume lexicon of ‘‘foundational historical
concepts’’ (Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe) displays a more traditional ap-
proach than one might anticipate from his theoretical writings. The ar-
ticles in this lexicon provide comprehensive descriptions of the shifting
nuances of key social and political concepts but little systematic analysis
of the relationship between social and linguistic change.31 Similarly,
Baker’s essays on the ideological origins of the French Revolution offer
elegant exegeses of various strands of political discourse at the end of
the Old Regime but do not elucidate the specific social and political forces
that served as catalysts for discursive change.32
Like the works cited above, this book is first and foremost a history
of political ideas. I explore the evolution of a single concept, the ‘‘na-
tion,’’ in a single German state during the early nineteenth century.
While this book contains little social history in a formal sense, it analyzes
political rhetoric as a point of intersection between the realm of ideology
and the realm of social action. My study presumes that participants in
political debate seek to manipulate ideological claims in order to advance
their own interests. Thus, at one level, political rhetoric reflects social
interests. Yet, conversely, rhetorical conventions play an important role
in defining how participants in political debate perceive their own in-
12 introduction

terests, as well as in delineating the political possibilities in a given era.

I seek to illuminate the reciprocal processes by which social interests
shape discursive forms and by which discourses shape interests.
In order to highlight the relationship between ideas and their con-
texts, I focus less on the realm of high theory (for example, the works
of political philosophers, such as Hegel and Fichte) than on the complex
‘‘middle ground . . . in which there is a consciousness of ideas at play in
social life.’’33 I concentrate primarily on documents whose authors and
political intent are clearly identifiable: memoranda and letters exchanged
among Prussia’s leading officials, petitions to the king composed by the
nobility and the urban elites, popular pamphlet literature, and so forth.
Many of the documents analyzed in this study represent arguments ei-
ther for or against the adoption of a constitution in Prussia. Throughout
the forty years beginning with the Napoleonic conquest, the question of
whether the king should grant his people a ‘‘national representation’’
was one of the most prominent and volatile issues in Prussian political
debate. King Frederick William III publicly promised to create a central
representative assembly several times between 1810 and 1820 before ul-
timately deciding against the idea. His son and successor, Frederick Wil-
liam IV, raised the issue again shortly after his accession to the throne
in 1840 and ultimately granted a constitution under the compulsion of
the revolutionary events of 1848. The ongoing debates between 1806
and 1848 over this issue, both within the Prussian government and in
the broader public sphere, revealed a great deal about competing con-
ceptions concerning the identity and social organization of the nation,
the nature of political representation, and the relationships binding the
nation with the king and the administrative authorities of the state.
Because I have chosen to rely primarily on written sources, my in-
quiry is necessarily restricted to the views of literate, politically active
Prussians. To identify as broad as possible a range of literate public
opinion, I examine sources that stem from a wide variety of social lo-
cations and that represent diverse political views. They include works
composed by state officials, nobles, artisans, bourgeois journalists, and
student activists, among others. Some of these figures were highly influ-
ential proponents or opponents of a constitution, others were relatively
unknown minor figures. Interestingly, those who expressed fringe opin-
ions—who were ridiculed, jailed, or denounced as insane—prove to be
particularly significant in developing a clearer sense of the boundaries
of legitimate discourse within a political culture. This analysis makes it
possible to map the shifting conceptual universe of Prussian politics dur-
ing the early nineteenth century—to observe which premises were
 introduction 13

widely shared across the political and social spectrum and which were
contested.
My analysis is informed by Michel Foucault’s concept of the ‘‘histor-
ical a priori,’’ which he introduces in The Archaeology of Knowledge. Fou-
cault argues that the history of thought may be visualized as a series of
archaeological strata, each of which represents a particular ‘‘discursive
formation,’’ or set of rules that define how one thinks and speaks about
the world. These strata are set off from each other by ‘‘ruptures,’’ which
mark sudden changes in the underlying assumptions of political and
social discourse.34 The historical a priori may be defined as a set of com-
mon premises shared by all participants in legitimate political discourse.
Thus, for example, the principle that the king ruled by divine right
constituted an a priori assumption of seventeenth- and eighteenth-
century French political discourse, whereas the notion that legitimate
government reflects the will of the people has become an a priori premise
of political discourse during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.35
To observe that the theory of divine-right monarchy was part of the
seventeenth-century French historical a priori does not necessarily imply
that everyone in seventeenth-century France truly believed that the
monarch was ordained by God. It does imply, however, that even the
most robust atheist of that day had to employ that premise in order to
participate in legitimate political discourse. A petitioner for tax relief,
for example, might rail at the short-sightedness and venality of the royal
ministers, but to question the king’s own wisdom and benevolence
would be to expose oneself to the charge of heresy. Likewise, in the
twentieth century, many observers doubt that most government deci-
sions stem from the ‘‘people’s will.’’ To participate effectively in the dem-
ocratic political process, however, one needs to claim that one’s views
reflect the voice of the people (rather than the voice of God). Concepts
such as ‘‘divine right’’ and the ‘‘will of the people,’’ in other words, are
necessary fictions that serve as organizing principles for political debate.
Though Foucault’s notion of the historical a priori provides a concep-
tual starting point for this study, the method of inquiry here differs
substantially from the one he proposes. Unlike Foucault, whose archae-
ological metaphor suggests a rigid and radical break between the suc-
cessive ‘‘strata’’ of political discourse, my analysis highlights the open-
ended and ambiguous character of much rhetorical usage. Fundamental
changes in political theory often occur not through a total rejection of
past arguments but through subtle shifts of emphasis and terminology
or through the articulation of old ideas in new contexts.36 Thus, rather
than employing the boldly categorical term ‘‘historical a priori,’’ I have
14 introduction

generally chosen to speak of ‘‘consensual features’’ of Prussian political

discourse, a phrase intended to capture the fluid and shifting nature of
rhetorical conventions. Alongside these elements of discursive consensus
were certain ‘‘contested features’’ that attracted heated debate. Through-
out the period analyzed in this study, the concept ‘‘nation’’ represented
an amalgam of consensual and contested features, which are identified
in the following chapters.
In discussing the periods of transition when one historical a priori
gives way to another, Foucault refused to speculate either about the
causes of these ruptures or about the mechanisms by which they occur.
This is precisely the problem that this study will address. I conclude
that the concept ‘‘nation’’ was shaped in Prussia both by cultural factors
and by the specific political constellations of the Napoleonic era. Part I
explores the origins of enlightened nationalism in Prussia. Chapter 2
focuses on the eighteenth-century intellectual antecedents of the Prussian
reform movement, which included the writings of the German cameral-
ists, the French physiocrats, and the authors of the Scottish Enlighten-
ment, along with the political theories of the French revolutionaries and
philosopher Immanuel Kant. Chapter 3 documents how, in the wake of
the devastating defeat by Napoleon in 1806–1807, Prussian leaders drew
on these varied traditions in seeking to forge a harmonious relationship
between a sovereign king and a politically mobilized nation.
The Prussian reformers envisioned the nation as a body of loyal citi-
zens who would gladly sacrifice their fortunes and their lives in the
service of the monarchical state. Yet, by invoking the concept of the
nation, they opened the gates of contention about the precise nature of
this new political community. The resulting controversies over the con-
cept ‘‘nation’’ are analyzed in part II of this book. Chapter 4 focuses on
the rhetoric of Prussia’s traditional social elites, who invoked this concept
in order to oppose many of the tax increases and social reforms proposed
by the Prussian ministry. These figures argued that the traditional legal
privileges of the aristocracy, the urban guilds, and other corporate bodies
must be preserved in the new nation. Chapter 5 analyzes the rhetoric of
another set of political actors: the (largely bourgeois) intellectuals, jour-
nalists, and popular activists, many of whom called for the abolition of
aristocratic privilege and the unification of all Germans into a single state.
In their view, the nation was an organic union based on a common
language, culture, and religion: they were critical of social and legal
privileges that divided Germans from one another.
In the face of the volatile and unpredictable character of the new
nationalist rhetoric, the Prussian king and his leading ministers struggled
to come to terms with the shifting political landscape. Chapter 6 docu-
 introduction 15

ments the crystallization of the concept ‘‘nation’’ during the decade after
the Vienna Settlement of 1815, a period commonly known as the Res-
toration. According to an increasingly vocal faction within the Prussian
administration and aristocracy, the nation represented a potential rival
center of sovereignty, which (if nourished) would ultimately subvert the
authority of the monarch. A politically active nation, this group argued,
was inevitably a revolutionary nation. Thus, the only way to preserve
the stability of the state was strenuously to oppose any movement toward
a constitution and to deny the very existence of a national political com-
munity. Because many conservative leaders rejected the ideal of nation-
hood during this period, liberals and radicals prevailed in the struggle
to define the nation as a pan–German community founded on the prin-
ciple of civil equality.
While parts I and II of this study analyze how the concept ‘‘nation’’
took shape in the heat of Prussian political debate during the early nin-
teenth century, part III examines how the concept itself came to influence
Prussia’s subsequent political evolution. The idea of nationhood remained
highly fluid during the first decades of the nineteenth century, and the
new definitions, like the old, were subject to rearticulation and renego-
tiation. Nonetheless, my analysis demonstrates strong continuities in cer-
tain features of this concept, which proved significant in structuring
political debate. In particular, the consensus over the ideally unitary and
harmonious character of the nation had important consequences for the
evolution of both conservative and liberal political theory in nineteenth-
century Prussia. Chapter 7 examines more closely the rhetoric and pro-
gram of the conservative faction that emerged in Prussia during the
1820s and 1830s. My account emphasizes the modern and experimental
character of Prussian conservatism during this period. Conservative lead-
ers sought to fuse older notions of a paternalistic social order with the
new principles of a free market economy and universal legal equality.
Some sought, with limited success, to deny the existence of the nation
altogether. Others, by embracing new notions of public politics, under-
mined traditional claims about the unique political status and rights of
the aristocracy. Once introduced during the Napoleonic era, the concept
of the politically active nation thus proved impossible to eradicate from
Prussian political discourse. Chapter 8 explores how Prussian liberals
articulated the relationship between the nation and the monarchy during
the period 1820–1848. Building on the Enlightenment legacy, liberals
emphasized the importance of education, political participation, and har-
mony between the citizenry and the state. In effect, by defining conflict
as illegitimate, liberals were inhibited from establishing an effective lan-
guage of opposition to state authority. Indeed, most Prussian liberals
16 introduction

remained staunch monarchists, rather than republicans, throughout the

nineteenth century.
Ultimately, the legacy of enlightened nationalism in Prussia was a
mixed one. The ideal of a unified and harmonious nation fostered a laud-
able commitment to public education and the rationalization of govern-
ment institutions. But this ideal also resulted in exaggerated fears of
political dissent, inhibiting the capacity of parliamentary institutions to
provide a forum for competing views. This book investigates how, dur-
ing the first half of the nineteenth century, new forms of intolerance
were born out of eighteenth-century ambitions for enlightened political
reform.
 I
genesis
This page intentionally left blank
 Two

the politics of harmony in

eighteenth-century prussia

‘‘Kings are . . . but human, and all humans are equal.’’1 This re-
mark, from a treatise by the youthful Frederick the Great, illus-
trates a deep tension that existed within the theory of Prussian
enlightened absolutism—a tension between egalitarian principles and
authoritarian practice. From the mid–seventeenth century onward, the
Hohenzollern kings had sought to consolidate their control over the
realm and to diminish the political power of the Prussian nobility. Fred-
erick’s predecessors had established a centralized bureaucracy and a large
standing army under their direct command. They had levied taxes with-
out consulting the Landstände, the traditional representative assemblies
of the Prussian provinces. Only in the local and county diets, many of
which still convened on a regular basis, did the Prussian nobility con-
tinue to play an active governing role.2
By the era of Frederick the Great (who ruled from 1740 to 1786),
Prussia’s Hohenzollern dynasty had succeeded in forging a highly cen-
tralized and tightly regimented administrative apparatus, as well as in
thwarting any serious internal challenges to royal authority. Yet even as
Prussian absolutism triumphed, a new philosophical movement was
emerging that undermined traditional arguments for the legitimacy of
royal authority. In medieval Europe, inequality of social rank—not uni-
versal equality—was considered the natural human condition. Each per-
son was said to hold a distinct position in the ‘‘chain of being,’’ a grand
ordering principle that established a hierarchy of all living things from
plants to angels. Kings, who occupied the highest rank in the human
world, were said to rule ‘‘by the grace of God.’’3 Frederick the Great
broke from this traditional logic. He rejected both the notion of the
divine right of kingship and the principle of natural social hierarchy,

19
20 genesis

justifying his right to rule simply by claiming to be the first—and best—

‘‘servant of the state.’’4
Reinhart Koselleck has termed the century between 1750 and 1850 a
critical ‘‘bridge period’’ (Sattelzeit) between the early modern and the
modern age.5 Throughout Europe, this period was marked by the emer-
gence of increasingly ambitious states that imposed ever-greater obliga-
tions on their subjects, as well as by growing popular demands for in-
volvement in the processes of government. It was also characterized by
the transition from the traditional hierarchical order, consisting of par-
ticular corporate bodies, each possessing its own specific legal rights and
privileges, to a social order founded on universal egalitarian and indi-
vidualistic principles. In French, this traditional form of social organi-
zation was termed the société d’ordres; in German, it was called the Stände-
gesellschaft. Both of these translate roughly as ‘‘society of orders’’ or
‘‘society of estates,’’ though there is no precise English equivalent for
these terms.6
This chapter explores the political and intellectual framework out of
which the Prussian reform movement emerged. While Prussia must be
understood as an integral part of Europe, rather than as following a
deviant path of historical development, Prussian political and social
thought of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was dis-
tinctive in certain critical respects. Put simply, this era was marked by
two fundamental struggles: politically, the struggle between monarchy
and democracy, and socially, the struggle between the principles of legal
hierarchy and legal equality. In Prussia, partly because of the continuing
vitality of traditional social institutions and partly because of particular-
ities of the Prussian legal and philosophical heritage, intellectuals and
political leaders strove mightily to reconcile old and new governing prin-
ciples. Politically, they sought to create a government that combined
monarchical and democratic elements. Socially, they sought to create a
new order that would make room both for the preservation of traditional
hierarchies and for the new principle of universal equality before the
law. To achieve these unlikely goals, these leaders placed particular em-
phasis on the doctrine of the common good, as articulated by political
philosophers from Aristotle to Kant. The Prussian reformers argued that
rulers and their subjects could be reconciled if only they recognized the
true unity of their interests. The creation of ‘‘public spirit,’’ the reformers
claimed, would forge an organic solidarity among all Prussians regardless
of their social status. The ‘‘politics of harmony’’ thus evolved as a valiant
effort to resolve the contradictions that lay at the heart of the project of
enlightened monarchy.7
 t h e p o l i t i c s o f h a r m o n y i n e i g h t e e n t h- c e n t u r y p r u s s i a 21

Prussia and the European Setting

Eighteenth-century Brandenburg-Prussia was the newest and most rap-
idly expanding European great power. Beginning in the reign of Fred-
erick William, the Great Elector (who ruled from 1640 to 1688), the
Hohenzollern monarchs had embarked on a series of ambitious conquests
and annexations, and within a century they had transformed a small
barren northern realm into the largest and most powerful German state
after the Austrian Habsburg Empire. By the time of the French Revolu-
tion, Prussia’s territory extended in a wide band across east central Eu-
rope south of the Baltic Sea, from Lithuania and parts of Poland in the
east to the territories of Brandenburg, along the Elbe River, in the west.
Through dynastic alliances, the Hohenzollern kings had also become the
rulers of other territories to the south and west, including Ansbach-
Bayreuth, sections of Westphalia and the Rhineland, and the Swiss can-
ton of Neuchâtel.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Prussia remained sparsely
populated compared to its western neighbors. The population density of
France was about fifty people per square kilometer, in England it was
fifty-eight; in Prussia’s eastern provinces, the population density was
only thirty-seven per square kilometer.8 Prussia still lacked any cities as
large as Paris or London. Berlin, which had been a town of only 12,000
residents in 1650, had grown rapidly over the subsequent century and
a half. By 1800, it numbered 173,000 inhabitants. (Paris, in comparison,
had 581,000 residents in 1800, while greater London had a population
of more than 1.1 million.) Only two other Prussian cities had more than
50,000 inhabitants at the beginning of the nineteenth century: Königs-
berg in East Prussia and Breslau in Silesia. About three-quarters of the
Prussian population still lived in communities with fewer than 2,000
inhabitants. Indeed, in all of German-speaking Europe, there were only
sixty-four cities with a population of more than 10,000.9
From the mid–eighteenth century onward, however, Prussia partici-
pated in a massive European-wide population expansion, which some
scholars have termed the demographic revolution. Between 1750 and
1800, the population of Prussia’s old territories expanded almost 40 per-
cent. Between 1816 and 1864, Prussia’s total population grew by an ad-
ditional 86 percent, from 10.4 to 19.3 million inhabitants. By 1850, the
population of Berlin had more than doubled from fifty years earlier, to
419,000.10
These demographic characteristics of Prussia and the other German
states had important consequences for the evolution of political culture
22 genesis

in Central Europe. The absence of a metropolis like Paris meant that

German cultural life remained highly decentralized and rooted within
traditional local institutions. The German Enlightenment, notes one
scholar, ‘‘lacked the extremes’’ of the Enlightenment in France. Rather
than displaying the ardent anticlericalism of Voltaire or the radical re-
publicanism of Rousseau, German intellectuals presented more modest
critiques of existing institutions, advocating either ‘‘limited reform
within the corporate structures of the Estates or legal emancipation
within absolute monarchy.’’11 The rapid population expansion in Central
Europe after 1750, however, undermined the stability of the traditional
order by creating a more mobile populace that could not be adequately
absorbed into the old institutions of rural and village life.
Economically, the German states lagged somewhat behind their west-
ern neighbors in the development of urban industry, though not to the
extent that has sometimes been depicted in historical accounts. England
underwent the first wave of industrialization in the latter half of the
eighteenth century; France and Belgium entered the industrial age during
the first half of the nineteenth century. In the German states, the period
of ‘‘industrial takeoff ’’ began only in the 1830s and 1840s, accelerating
rapidly after 1850.12 Over the course of the eighteenth century, however,
a gradual ‘‘protoindustrialization’’ had occurred in much of Central Eu-
rope, with the expansion of commerce and rural manufacturing. The new
rural industries, generally employing traditional artisanal methods of
production, emerged in part as a challenge to the urban guilds, which
continued to exercise monopolies over economic life in the towns. Along
with this expansion of rural manufacturing, Prussian agriculture was
becoming increasingly driven by market forces. By the beginning of the
nineteenth century, Prussia’s East Elbian farms supplied 50 percent of
British grain imports. The modernization of farming methods, which led
to larger harvests, together with significant increases in grain prices after
1750, resulted in a wave of land speculation as the prices of landed
estates skyrocketed at the end of the eighteenth century.13
Socially and economically, Prussia thus stood on the threshold be-
tween two worlds during the era of the French Revolution. In the towns,
the guilds remained economically dominant, but they were beginning to
be challenged by unregulated rural manufacturers. In the countryside,
large landowners were increasingly transforming themselves into agrar-
ian capitalists. At the same time, however, the landed nobles fiercely
clung to their traditional legal privileges, ranging from special tax ex-
emptions to hunting rights and monopolies over milling and brewing,
to patrimonial police and justice powers over their serfs. In most of
Western Europe, the legal condition of hereditary serfdom had largely
 t h e p o l i t i c s o f h a r m o n y i n e i g h t e e n t h- c e n t u r y p r u s s i a 23

disappeared by the eighteenth century. In Prussia, however, two types

of serfdom remained in existence until the Napoleonic era: Erbuntertän-
igkeit, or ‘‘hereditary subjection,’’ and the even more onerous Leibeigen-
schaft, whereby the lord was literally the ‘‘owner of the body’’ of the
peasant.
If the eighteenth century marked a transformation of Prussian social
and economic life, it also witnessed changes in the political relations of
the Hohenzollern monarchs both with the Prussian nobility and with the
Holy Roman Empire. Since the late thirteenth century, the nobles of
various German territories had periodically convened in diets (Land-
stände), which were intended both to apportion taxes and to represent
the common interests of the land. In practice, the Landstände functioned
more as a negative than as a positive political force, exerting their en-
ergies to uphold the rights and privileges of the nobility and to restrict
the ambitions of the territorial princes. At the local level, rural territories
were administered through county diets (Kreistage), which were domi-
nated by the leading nobles of the area; and on the individual estates,
lords enjoyed virtually unrestricted police and judicial powers over their
peasants.14
With the rising power of the dynastic states in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, political rulers throughout Europe came to inter-
vene more and more intensively in the lives of their subjects. The army
of Louis XIV, comprising 400,000 soldiers, was several times as large as
the grandest European military force of the previous century, the Spanish
Host. Frederick the Great’s Prussian army of the mid–eighteenth century,
as a proportion of the overall population, was four to five times as large
as the army of France.15 To support these growing military machines,
European states developed larger bureaucratic structures with the mis-
sion both of extracting resources from the population and of encouraging
the growth of wealth through the regulation of commerce and industry.16
In Prussia, the Hohenzollern princes intervened with increasing vigor
in the life of the municipalities from the mid–seventeenth century on-
ward. In the countryside, however, they left the social and legal privi-
leges of the nobility largely untouched. The strategy of Prussian abso-
lutism was to achieve the ‘‘depoliticization and privatization of the
estates’’ by eliminating, for example, the authority of the Landstände
over taxation and by requiring the sons of nobles to attend royal military
academies and subsequently to serve as officers in the army of the king.
Once in the army, the lives of nobles were regimented to an extreme
degree: officers were forbidden to marry without the king’s consent
(which was frequently withheld), and they were not allowed to travel
abroad without permission. These policies were intended not to destroy
24 genesis

the authority of the aristocracy but to neutralize its capacity to organize

political dissent. Viewing a vigorous nobility as a key source of support
for the throne, Prussia’s monarchs supported the preservation of aristo-
crats’ ruling powers on their own estates. Unlike the French absolute
monarchs, who regularly sold offices and titles as a source of revenue for
the crown, the Hohenzollern kings sought to preserve the integrity of
the nobility by limiting the ennoblement of members of the bourgeoisie.17
The struggle for supremacy between monarchs and nobles was a com-
mon feature of political life throughout Europe in the early modern era.
One feature of German politics that differentiated it from the rest of
Europe, however, was the institution of the Holy Roman Empire of the
German Nation, which remained intact until 1806. The empire was a
federative structure of more than 1,800 semiautonomous political entities,
including independently governed church lands, the imperial cities, and
the lands of the so-called imperial (reichsunmittelbare) nobility, who owed
allegiance to the emperor alone. All of these entities, along with the
larger German states, were subordinated at least in theory to the emperor
and the imperial diet (Reichstag). The rulers of these political territories,
because they were subjected to the feudal legal and political order of the
empire, did not exercise full sovereign authority either over their own
subjects or in their dealings with other states. Nor could the emperor
himself be considered to be sovereign, because he depended on the sup-
port of the imperial diet and the imperial princes, and he exercised little
de facto military or diplomatic power.18
By the end of the eighteenth century, German political writers, ex-
pecting sovereign authority to be ‘‘united, compact, and uniform,’’ were
becoming increasingly exasperated by the empire’s weakness and its lack
of centralized authority. Already in the mid–seventeenth century, Samuel
Pufendorf had called the empire ‘‘an irregular, monster-like hybrid’’
doomed to remain in a ‘‘situation of permanent conflict.’’19 In 1801, the
young Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel began a treatise on ‘‘The Consti-
tution of the German Empire’’ with the claim that ‘‘Germany is no longer
a state. What can no longer be comprehended [begriffen] no longer ex-
ists.’’20
These criticisms of the old Reich, however, were not entirely just, for
the empire was never intended to be a unified nation-state in the modern
sense of the word. Rather, the empire was primarily a symbolic com-
munity, as well as a ‘‘community of justice’’ whose courts resolved dis-
putes within its territories, often serving to protect independent towns
and small principalities from the designs of their ambitious neighbors.21
As one scholar observes, the constitution of the empire must be under-
 t h e p o l i t i c s o f h a r m o n y i n e i g h t e e n t h- c e n t u r y p r u s s i a 25

stood in terms of the premises of the older ‘‘universalist tradition in

European public life’’ out of which it evolved:
The Reich came from a historical world in which nationality had no po-
litical meaning and states did not command total sovereignty. Unlike
nations and states, the Reich did not insist upon preeminent political au-
thority and unquestioning allegiance. Its goal was not to clarify and dom-
inate but rather to order and balance fragmented institutions and multiple
loyalties.22

Though the institutions of the Holy Roman Empire were formally

abolished in 1806, this mission of establishing order and harmony among
the various constituent parts of the realm would continue to motivate
political leaders in Prussia and other German states well into the nine-
teenth century. During the Napoleonic era, influenced by writers such
as Edmund Burke, Justus Möser, and August Wilhelm Rehberg, many
leading Prussian political figures expressed reverence for traditional in-
stitutions. Stein, for example, hoped to revitalize the nobility so that it
would serve as the bulwark of the throne. Stein’s Municipal Ordinance
of 1808 sought to strengthen local traditions of self-government. Even
the most rationalistic of the Prussian reformers, such as Hardenberg,
called for the modification rather than the outright abolition of the tra-
ditional estates. Hardenberg wanted to establish a ‘‘rational order of
ranks,’’23 in which individuals’ status would correspond to the social and
economic functions they performed, to replace what he viewed as an
outmoded and baroque system of privileges. In attempting to create bal-
ance and unity within diversity, rather than to renovate the social order
from the ground up, the Prussian reformers owed much to the governing
spirit of the old Reich.

The Problem of Cohesion: Recasting Civil Society

This emphasis on the importance of attaining domestic harmony was a
central feature of Prussian political and social discourse of the late eigh-
teenth century. According to the dominant science of government of the
age, cameralism (Cameralwissenschaft), one essential function of the ruler
was to carry out the function of ‘‘police’’ (Polizei). The term ‘‘police’’
had a much broader meaning than its modern sense: Johann Justi (1705?–
1771), one of the most influential cameralist theorists, defined it as ‘‘that
science whose aim it is to keep the well-being of the individual families
constantly in precise harmonious relation with what is best for the
whole.’’24 For Justi, the common good depended upon ‘‘cohesion’’ (Zu-
26 genesis

sammenhang), which, in turn, made possible both prosperity and the

‘‘perfection of our moral condition.’’ Lack of cohesion, on the other hand,
caused stagnation and poverty. Thus, the good of the state was synon-
ymous with the good of the people: harmony was to be maintained
through judicious regulation, as well as through the creation of a limited
degree of individual economic freedom.25
Justi’s arguments about cohesion exhibited an internal tension that
would become far more prominent in the writings of social and political
theorists of subsequent decades. On the one hand, Justi maintained that
government had both the right and the obligation to intervene so as to
preserve the proper relations among the various elements of the social
order. On the other hand, he held that the establishment of economic
freedom and the recognition of certain universal natural rights might be
the best ways to attain cohesion ‘‘among the productive estates of the
whole country.’’26 This tension between traditional prerogatives and uni-
versal principles was seen, for example, in the provisions of the Prussian
General Code (Allgemeines Landrecht) of 1794, which was written under
the direction of jurist Carl Gottlieb Svarez. Alexis de Tocqueville mocked
this law code as a ‘‘monstrous . . . compromise between two creations.’’27
The code’s statement of principles, Tocqueville noted, resembled the Dec-
laration of the Rights of Man in the French constitution of 1791; but
rather than abolishing antiquated institutions, such as serfdom, the code
preserved intact virtually the entire fabric of legal privileges undergird-
ing the traditional social order.
Tocqueville’s judgment, though a harsh one, effectively captures the
spirit of many of the efforts at social and political reform in Prussia prior
to 1806. During this period, Prussian statesmen and jurists sought not
so much to revolutionize the traditional order as to reconcile it with
modern political principles, such as universal freedom and the rule of
law. According to the traditional notion of the Ständegesellschaft, the
society of estates consisted of a hierarchy of legally defined orders that
were kept in balance by the authority of the monarch.28 The new civil
society, on the other hand, was held to be a sphere separate and at least
partially autonomous from the state, consisting of free and legally equal
individuals. The General Code attempted to establish a middle ground:
it redefined the traditional estates (the nobility, the bourgeoisie, the cler-
ical orders, and the peasantry) as Staatsstände—literally, ‘‘estates of the
state’’—thus maintaining their particularistic character but only in sub-
ordination to a unified set of laws enacted by the central state.29
In seeking to balance the principles of state interventionism and in-
dividual freedom, Prussian scholars of the late eighteenth century drew
on the economic theories of both the Scottish and the French Enlight-
 t h e p o l i t i c s o f h a r m o n y i n e i g h t e e n t h- c e n t u r y p r u s s i a 27

enment. Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776) represented one attempt

to define principles by which social order and harmony could be pre-
served in an autonomous civil society: the ‘‘invisible hand’’ of the market
served as a Newtonian ‘‘law of motion’’ by which society regulated itself.
In France, the physiocratic school founded by François Quesnay, which
favored free trade and investment in agriculture, was a continental an-
alogue.30
Though Adam Smith’s writings initially attracted little attention in the
German states, by the 1790s they had gained prominent supporters
among the faculties of the Universities of Göttingen and Königsberg,
where many of the leading Prussian reformers studied. In Königsberg,
the lectures of Smith’s main exponent, Christian Jakob Kraus, were at-
tended by many aristocrats and by military officers stationed in the city;
and by 1806, these doctrines had been disseminated throughout Prussia’s
ruling elite.31 One of Stein’s collaborators, Friedrich Ludwig von Vincke,
referred to the Scottish economist as ‘‘the divine Smith.’’32 For Vincke,
as for many other German statesmen and intellectuals, free market eco-
nomics provided a model for understanding how harmony could be
maintained within a free and autonomous civil society.
Smith’s theories provided one source of inspiration for the new dis-
cipline of ‘‘national economy’’ (Nationalökonomie), which emerged during
the first decade of the nineteenth century. One economist, writing in
1805, defined the purpose of Nationalökonomie to be ‘‘the highest per-
fection of the physical condition of sociable mankind.’’ He continued:
But the study of Nazional-Oekonomie cannot be in any respects empirical.
It is a purely intellectual abstraction, resting upon unchanging, certain
and considered principles, which identifies the general regulator in human
relationships and passions, arranges the mechanism in accordance with this
(just like the omnipotent genius which created the world), but then quietly
allows it to proceed, watching over its calm but steady progress.33

Like the eighteenth-century deists, the national economists believed in

a ‘‘watchmaker God,’’ who ordered the universe according to rational
laws. By discovering these true governing principles, it might become
possible to create an entirely self-regulating social order. This ambition
was shared by the physiocrats in France, as attested to by the following
apocryphal conversation between François Quesnay and the heir to the
French throne:
‘‘What,’’ the Dauphin asked, ‘‘would you do if you were king?’’
Quesnay: ‘‘Nothing.’’
The Dauphin: ‘‘Then who would govern?’’
Quesnay: ‘‘The law.’’34
28 genesis

Like the French physiocrats, the national economists held out hope
that the law might become king, that a rational government might rec-
oncile new notions of freedom and equality with the preservation of
social harmony. For many Prussian intellectuals of this era, however,
cultural reform was equally as important as rational administration. In
1791, for example, the youthful Wilhelm von Humboldt denounced the
paternalistic state in a treatise entitled The Limits of State Action. Unlike
John Stuart Mill and other subsequent liberal theorists (many of whom
were influenced by this treatise), Humboldt grounded his political theory
not on the principle of utility but on an ethical foundation. The ‘‘true
end of Man,’’ Humboldt declared, was ‘‘the highest and most harmonious
development of his powers to a complete and consistent whole.’’ But the
paternalistic state, by treating its subjects as immature, denied them the
freedom that was the ‘‘indispensable condition’’ for the full development
of human capabilities. Rational governance, in other words, was an es-
sential precondition for popular education (Bildung).35
These ideals of education and harmony permeated many new
eighteenth-century associations, from elite groups such as the Berlin
Mittwochsgesellschaft, whose members included writers Moses Mendels-
sohn and Christian Wilhelm Dohm, and the distinguished jurist Carl
Gottlieb Svarez,36 to the burgeoning numbers of local reading societies
in German towns, a large proportion of which bore the names Harmony
Society or Concordia.37 Likewise, the late eighteenth century marked the
beginning of what Suzanne Marchand terms a German ‘‘cultural obses-
sion’’ with the world of the ancient Greeks, who were idealized for their
aesthetic sensibility and their devotion to individual cultivation.38
In a more mystical and arcane sense, the ideal of harmony was central
to the society of the Freemasons. Founded in its modern form in England
in 1723, Freemasonry spread to numerous German cities, including Ham-
burg, Königsberg, Göttingen, and Berlin, by the mid–eighteenth century.
Though the initial Freemasons were drawn from the ranks of the bour-
geoisie, the lodges came to attract numerous aristocrats as members as
well. At the end of the eighteenth century, the Freemasons counted as
members some of the most eminent literary and philosophical figures in
the German states, including Kant, Herder, Fichte, Lessing, and Goethe.
In Prussia, Frederick the Great dabbled in Freemasonic ideas as a youth,
and 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.39
The ideology of Freemasonry combined a mystical regard for the se-
crets of the ancients with a rationalistic and egalitarian social philosophy.
 t h e p o l i t i c s o f h a r m o n y i n e i g h t e e n t h- c e n t u r y p r u s s i a 29

The society was organized according to a democratic form that recog-

nized no differences among its members based upon their occupation or
social rank. The lodges were intended, in part, as a model for a new
social order based on universal freedom and equal rights for all citizens.
During the late eighteenth century, German Masons founded a secret
order known as the Illuminati, which was intended to advance a pro-
gressive political agenda by placing its adherents in high government
posts. This plan met with at least partial success: Hardenberg, as well as
the Bavarian reformer Maximilian von Montgelas, were both at one time
members of the Illuminati.40
During the late eighteenth century, Prussian intellectuals faced the
challenge of identifying new principles of cohesion within a social order
that consisted of free and equal individuals, rather than of hierarchies
of legally defined orders whose mutual relations were determined by
royal decree. In their view, rational administration and the Bildung of
the populace offered two potential, mutually reinforcing solutions to this
challenge. Governing according to the true principles of natural law, the
monarch would have no need to resort to arbitrary and divisive acts of
will, rather, he could allow society to function according to its own
innate logic. The formation of an educated citizenry would facilitate this
transition to a self-regulating social order by enhancing the rationality
of human behavior. Both of these recipes for social reform—rationaliza-
tion from above and education from below—would be developed much
more explicitly in the aftermath of Prussia’s military catastrophe of 1806–
1807.

The Problem of Sovereignty: Immanuel Kant and

Other Revolutionaries
When Louis XVI ascended to the French throne in 1774, he chose as his
controller general of finance an adherent of the physiocratic doctrines,
Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot (1727–1781). One of Turgot’s abortive pro-
posals for governmental reform illustrates particularly clearly the effort
to reconcile monarchical rule with new rational and egalitarian principles
of social organization. In 1775, Turgot prepared a proposal for a system
of municipal and provincial representative assemblies in France. The
memorandum declared:

The cause of the evil, sire, goes back to the fact that your nation has no
constitution. It is a society composed of different orders, badly united,
and of a people in which there are but very few social ties among the
30 genesis

members. . . . You are forced to decree on everything, in most cases, by

particular acts of will, whereas you could govern like God, by general
laws, if the various parts composing your realm had a regular organization
and a clear understanding of their relations.41

For Turgot, a ‘‘constitution’’ meant an orderly social and political struc-

ture. Rather than glorifying the traditional hierarchical order, in the man-
ner of Montesquieu and other authors, Turgot saw the existence of le-
gally mandated inequalities as a fatal defect that prevented the
establishment of true unity among the people. Any viable constitution,
Turgot argued, must begin from the principle of ‘‘the rights of men
united in society, [which] are founded not on their history but on their
nature.’’ Thus, for example, all property owners must be taxed on an
equal basis, and all individual subjects must be treated as equals under
the law. To prepare the way for these reforms, Turgot called for the
creation of two new types of institutions. First, he favored instituting a
national educational system to encourage the formation of public spirit.
Second, he proposed establishing a hierarchy of representative assemblies
throughout France to determine taxes and to vote on public works pro-
jects. Initially, he wanted to create these assemblies at the local and
provincial levels; ultimately, when the rational discourse in these assem-
blies had reached a sufficiently elevated level, he believed it would be
possible to establish a national assembly as well. The combination of all
of these reforms, Turgot argued, would have spectacular success in re-
vitalizing the French nation. If these plans were adopted, he declared
that in ten years [His Majesty’s] nation would no longer be recognizable;
and that, by its knowledge, by its good customs, by its enlightened zeal
for His service and for service to the fatherland, it would be infinitely
above all other peoples.42

Turgot’s proposals envisioned two complementary movements for na-

tional renewal, one occurring from the top down and the other from the
bottom up. From above, he sought to rationalize France’s governing in-
stitutions. He declared that, ideally, the king should rule not by partic-
ular and arbitrary ‘‘acts of will’’ but rather ‘‘like God, by general laws.’’
The new representative assemblies would assist in this process of ration-
alization by providing an accurate portrayal of the condition and desires
of the nation, which would help ensure informed decision making. For
the reforms imposed from above to be successful, however, it was essen-
tial that the nation reconstitute itself from below, transforming itself from
a ‘‘society composed of different orders, badly united’’ into an enlight-
ened and patriotic community. The people of France must therefore be
linked together more closely, both through the establishment of condi-
 t h e p o l i t i c s o f h a r m o n y i n e i g h t e e n t h- c e n t u r y p r u s s i a 31

tions of legal equality and through educational and political reforms.

Turgot’s entire enterprise rested on one basic assumption: that the inter-
ests of the nation were in harmony with those of the king. An educated
and properly constituted nation, he declared, would zealously serve both
king and fatherland, so that politics could be reduced to a purely rational
process, free of the contest of will between competing factions.43
Turgot fared poorly in his two-year tenure as France’s controller gen-
eral. After seeking unsuccessfully to abolish the guild system, to liber-
alize the grain trade, and to reform the tax system, he was ultimately
driven from office by the outraged protests of France’s privileged elites.
His memorandum on municipal government was apparently never even
sent to the king and was made public only in 1787, six years after his
death. The fall of Turgot has long provided inspiration for thought ex-
periments by French historians, who have speculated whether the rev-
olution and much of the turbulence of subsequent French history might
have been averted if Turgot had prevailed over his opponents.44
As the present study will show, one can gain insight into this question
about the French Revolution by studying the Prussian reform movement.
In a real sense, Turgot did prevail in Prussia. In April 1806, six months
before the military catastrophes at Auerstädt and Jena, Karl vom Stein
sent a memorandum to King Frederick William III, arguing for admin-
istrative reform:
The Prussian state has no state constitution: supreme power is not divided
between the head [Oberhaupt] and delegates [Stellvertretern] of the nation.
It is a very new aggregation of many individual provinces brought to-
gether through inheritance, purchase, and conquest.

The fractured nature of the Prussian state, argued Stein, was exacerbated
by the ‘‘mistaken organization’’ of its uppermost administrative author-
ities. The Prussian king ruled ‘‘under the influence of his cabinet’’ (a
council that existed independently from the rest of the Prussian admin-
istration), and he remained ‘‘in complete seclusion from his ministers.’’
As a consequence, Stein claimed, Prussian administrators had ‘‘sunk
quite low in public opinion’’; and, in the absence of administrative re-
forms, ‘‘it is to be expected that the state will either disintegrate or lose
its independence, and the love and respect of its subjects will completely
disappear.’’45 The leaders of the Prussian reform movement, both in their
rhetoric and in their legislative proposals, articulated many of the same
notions about enlightened monarchy that were central to Turgot’s pro-
ject. The nation, they argued, must be linked together by organic social
ties based on civic equality, and the citizenry must be educated and
permitted to participate in the political process. The rationalization of
32 genesis

the state administration from above and the formation of national spirit
from below would forge a harmonious and vibrant bond between the
monarch and his people.46

If French theories of enlightened monarchy served as one source of in-

spiration for the Prussian reformers, there were also important indige-
nous influences. Foremost among these were the writings of Immanuel
Kant (1724–1804), who was a professor at the University of Königsberg
and the most eminent Prussian philosopher of his age. Kant exerted tre-
mendous intellectual authority both over his contemporaries and over
the generation of reformers that would lead Prussia after 1806.47 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. Humboldt spent many months im-
mersed in an exegesis of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.48
As a political philosopher, Kant has often been depicted as the arche-
typal ‘‘apolitical German,’’ an apologist for Prussian absolutism, who in-
sisted on the freedom of the ‘‘public use of one’s reason’’ but denied the
public any practical political power. ‘‘Argue as much as you like and
about whatever you like, but obey,’’49 declared Kant in his famous essay
of 1784, ‘‘What Is Enlightenment?’’ In the view of historians such as
Leonard Krieger, Kant offered an emasculated vision of political liberty
that ‘‘moralized the traditional organs of state power.’’50
Reconstructing Kant’s political theory is a challenging enterprise. Un-
like predecessors such as Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau, who de-
voted treatises to the subject, Kant scattered fragments of his political
theory among a series of occasional essays he published between the
ages of sixty and seventy-five.51 To argue that Kant’s political theory
legitimated authoritarian government, however, is to underestimate the
significance of his project. Consider another passage from Kant’s political
writings, this one from The Contest of the Faculties of 1798:
[I]t is . . . the duty of monarchs, even if they rule autocratically, to govern
in a republican manner [republikanisch] . . . —that is, to treat the people
in a manner consistent with the spirit of the laws of freedom (as a people
with fully developed reason would direct itself).52

To grasp the meaning of this perplexing passage, it is essential to

explore the distinction Kant draws between the ‘‘form of sovereignty’’
(forma imperii) and the ‘‘form of government’’ (forma regimnis). Following
Aristotle, Kant held that the forms of sovereignty in a state may be
 t h e p o l i t i c s o f h a r m o n y i n e i g h t e e n t h- c e n t u r y p r u s s i a 33

divided into ‘‘autocracy, aristocracy, and democracy—the power of a

prince, the power of a nobility, and the power of the people.’’ Yet an
even more important classification was the form of government, which
‘‘relates to the way in which the state, setting out from its constitution,
. . . makes use of its plenary power.’’ The form of government may be
either ‘‘republican’’ or ‘‘despotic’’:
Republicanism is that political principle whereby the executive power (the
government) is separated from the legislative power. Despotism prevails
in a state if the laws are made and arbitrarily executed by one and the
same power, and it reflects the will of the people only in so far as the
ruler treats the will of the people as his own private will.53
At first blush, it might appear that Kant was offering a fairly conven-
tional defense of the ‘‘mixed constitution,’’ such as is found in the works
of Aristotle or Montesquieu. As both of these earlier authors argued, a
polity is more likely to remain stable if various elements of civil society
check each other’s power. The best way to distill an expression of the
public good, according to this logic, is through continual compromises
among competing factions: thus, the best government is one that allows
the public good to emerge out of the competition among private interests.
Yet, for Kant, the matter was not so simple. Republicanism, he argued,
lay less in the form of a state’s constitution than in the principles that
any rightful government must uphold:
1. The freedom of every member of society, as a person.
2. The equality of the same with everyone else, as a subject.
3. The autonomy of every member of a commonwealth, as a citizen.54
Thus, any government that always acts to uphold the freedom and equal-
ity of the citizenry is a republican one (at least in spirit); while any
government in which the ruler ‘‘treats the will of the people as his own
private will’’ is a despotic one.
By this measure, Kant argued, a direct democracy
is necessarily a despotism, because it establishes an executive power
through which all the citizens may make decisions about (and indeed
against) the single individual without his consent . . . ; and this means
that the general will is in contradiction with itself, and thus also with
freedom.55
But a limited monarchy such as the one that existed in Britain could also
be despotic. The British monarchy, according to Kant, possessed the form
but not the spirit of a representative system: though the ‘‘illusion’’ of
representation existed there, the representatives, ‘‘won over by bribery,
secretly subject [the people] to an absolute monarch.’’56
34 genesis

Paradoxically, Kant maintained, the government that was the most

republican in spirit might be the one that was the least republican in
form. Under a democratic constitution, ‘‘everyone . . . wants to be a
ruler’’; but an absolute monarch, such as Frederick the Great, who con-
siders himself ‘‘the highest servant of the state,’’ may function as the
protector of the rights of man and the truest representative of the people.
In general, ‘‘the smaller the number of ruling persons in a state and the
greater their powers of representation, the more the constitution will
approximate to its republican potentiality, which it may hope to realize
eventually by gradual reforms.’’ Thus, while an aristocracy is more likely
to function in a republican manner than a direct democracy, a monarchy
is most likely of all to attain ‘‘this one and only perfectly lawful kind of
constitution.’’57
Added to this paradox concerning the relationship between monarchy
and republicanism was a further one. On the one hand, Kant was a
devotee of Rousseau and such an enthusiast of the French Revolution
that some of his contemporaries labeled him a ‘‘Jacobin.’’58 On the other
hand, he denied that the people possessed the right of physical resistance
against their ruler. Kant declared:
A revolution may bring about the end of a personal despotism or of av-
aricious and tyrannical oppression, but never a true reform of modes of
thought. New prejudices will serve, in place of the old, as guidelines for
the unthinking multitude.59

In attempting to explain the deep internal tensions in Kant’s political

writings, a few historians have rightly pointed to Kant’s delicate position
in Prussia during the era of the French Revolution.60 As a professor in
Königsberg, Kant was both a Prussian civil servant and the country’s
most famous philosopher. Following Frederick the Great’s death in 1786,
press censorship had tightened considerably in Prussia, and Kant faced
pressure to avoid inflammatory statements in order to preserve his right
to publish freely.
Yet some critics have overstated the degree of internal contradiction
in Kant’s political writings. Kant derived his principles of republicanism
from the ‘‘original contract’’ or ‘‘civil constitution,’’ which he said pro-
vided the foundation for any government and which, he argued, could
arise ‘‘solely from the general (united) will of the people.’’ According to
the terms of the civil constitution, he wrote, the people surrendered the
right of political decision making to the ‘‘head of state’’ (Staatsoberhaupt).
In the event of a dispute between the people and their ruler, he noted,
neither party could arbitrate the matter without acting ‘‘as a judge in
 t h e p o l i t i c s o f h a r m o n y i n e i g h t e e n t h- c e n t u r y p r u s s i a 35

his own case.’’ To adjudicate the issue properly, ‘‘there would need to
be a supreme head [Oberhaupt] above the supreme head, who would
decide between him and the people—and this is a contradiction.’’ Given
the impossibility of impartially mediating such a dispute, Kant con-
cluded, subjects must always obey their ruler’s commands.61
The fact of obedience, however, did not guarantee that a ruler’s de-
crees were legitimate. Kant criticized as ‘‘appalling’’ Hobbes’s tenet that
‘‘the head of state has no contractual obligations to the people, and can-
not do an injustice to the citizen.’’ Kant proposed a simple test of the
legitimacy of any law: ‘‘Whatever a people cannot resolve concerning
itself, neither can the lawgiver resolve concerning the people.’’ Under
the civil constitution, every legislator is obliged ‘‘to make his laws as if
they could have arisen out of the united will of an entire people.’’ Thus,
for example, a law that granted ‘‘a certain class of subjects the hereditary
preference of the ruling estate’’ would be unjust, because it would be
‘‘impossible that an entire people could give its agreement’’ to such a
measure.62 In other words, since one part of the people would never
agree to subordinate itself hereditarily to another part of the people, such
a law would violate the civil constitution.
As these passages illustrate, Kant cared less about who ruled a state
than about how they ruled. Rather than being an apologist for abso-
lutism, Kant was an advocate of the tutelary state: he believed that the
government had a duty to educate its people for citizenship. He con-
sidered monarchy to be an imperfect form of government but one that
would serve to represent the interests of the people until such time as
the people had shed the shackles of irrationality and subservience.63 In
Kant’s view, governments should nurture the process of enlightenment
by allowing their subjects freely to develop their faculty of reason. The
ultimate objective, he argued, should be a society of free, equal, and
self-determining citizens.64 Given Kant’s conviction that human nature
possessed elements of radical evil, even a fully cultivated citizenry
might always need to be constrained by governing institutions—and
his acute awareness of evil may have tempered his enthusiasm for rev-
olution. Other figures influenced by Kant, however, who were more
sanguine about the character of humanity, expressed more unambigu-
ously optimistic conclusions about the potential of this educational pro-
cess. In an essay written in 1794, Kant’s one-time disciple Fichte ex-
pressed the logical conclusion of his teacher’s political philosophy: ‘‘The
state, like all human institutions that are mere instruments, seeks its
own annihilation: the goal of all government is to make government
superfluous.’’65
36 genesis

The political writings of Turgot and Kant present a remarkable study

in parallels and contrasts. Both authors portrayed civic equality as the
bedrock foundation of any just and viable social order. Both also held
that a monarchical form of sovereignty, if combined with a rational gov-
erning spirit, could be optimal for attaining the public good. Indeed,
Kant’s paradoxical notion of a republican monarchy may have inspired
Hardenberg’s famous remark in the Riga Memorandum of 1807 that the
Prussian state should establish ‘‘democratic principles in a monarchical
government.’’66 Finally, Kant and Turgot concurred that the citizenry
must be educated to achieve political maturity before it would become
capable of governing itself.
Along with these similarities, however, were important differences
between the two theorists’ claims. Turgot employed the rhetoric of ef-
ficiency. In his view, the primary objective of political and social ration-
alization was to maximize the productivity of the French populace, as
well as the government’s ability to extract resources from the population.
Kant’s writings, on the other hand, were steeped in more traditional
Aristotelian categories. Kant viewed the republic as a vehicle for achiev-
ing the common good; he was less interested in mobilizing resources for
the benefit of the government than in the moral improvement of indi-
vidual citizens. The writings of the Prussian reformers exhibited concern
with both of these goals: first, mobilizing social resources, and second,
fostering the ‘‘maturity’’ of the Prussian citizenry.

Well before the Napoleonic conquest, the rhetoric of political rationali-

zation had gained wide currency among Prussia’s ruling elite. In 1791–
1792, jurist Carl Gottlieb Svarez presented a series of lectures on political
theory and public law to the Prussian crown prince, who would reign
as King Frederick William III from 1797 until 1840. Like Frederick the
Great, who had declared that ‘‘the ruler represents the state,’’67 Svarez
argued that ‘‘unrestricted monarchy’’ was the best form of government
in Prussia. Svarez declared in his lectures to the crown prince: ‘‘The
regent can never, provided he has correct conceptions, possess an interest
different from or hostile to the people.’’68 Thus, in order to achieve a
harmonious political order, it was simply necessary to ensure that both
the ruler and the ruled properly understood their own true interests. For
example, Svarez warned that unrestricted monarchy could degenerate
into despotism as a result of the ruler’s ‘‘lack of insight or weakness of
character.’’ To guard against this tendency, he wrote, Prussia’s kings
should periodically convene assemblies of the estates, which would bring
‘‘the voice of truth before the throne.’’ The estates would thus cooperate
with the monarch without limiting his sovereignty.69 His pupil, the crown
 t h e p o l i t i c s o f h a r m o n y i n e i g h t e e n t h- c e n t u r y p r u s s i a 37

prince, adopted this notion of sovereignty in an essay composed shortly

before he ascended to the throne in 1797. The future Frederick William
III declared that princes must rule for the ‘‘good of their land’’ and the
‘‘true best of the state [besten des Staats].’’ Any monarch who failed to
heed this principle, he warned, risked plunging his country into revo-
lution as, he argued, the recent events in France had shown.70
Though Svarez considered the interest of the monarch to be compat-
ible with that of the people, he argued that both parties required assis-
tance in order correctly to perceive their own true interests. The monarch
needed the guidance of the laws and of the estates; his subjects needed
to be educated to exercise their faculty of reason, which alone would
allow them to discover their proper interest. Given the imperfect ration-
ality of the people, Svarez argued, ‘‘insights can be incorrect, and then
a person desires something that he should not desire.’’ In such cases, he
declared, the state had the right to ‘‘compel [a subject] to act against his
conviction, but it cannot compel him to want anything other than what
he recognizes as good and reasonable.’’71 The state, according to this
view, needed to foster the moral and intellectual development of its peo-
ple. Svarez hoped to stimulate this process by granting the subjects
‘‘moral freedom’’; he favored, for example, establishing a general right
of freedom of expression.72
The above-cited passages from Svarez’s lectures foreshadow the idea
of the Erziehungsstaat—the ‘‘tutelary state’’—which came to full fruition
in Fichte’s Addresses to the German Nation. The state, according to this
view, needed to foster the moral and intellectual development of its peo-
ple. In subsequent chapters, we will witness the idea of the Erziehungs-
staat in various guises. This tutelary ideal became central to Prussian
political discourse largely because many intellectuals and political leaders
believed that it was vitally necessary to harmonize the desires of the
people with the will of the state. Fichte’s own development exemplified
this movement from an anti-statist to a state-centered approach. In 1794,
Fichte pronounced that ‘‘the goal of all government is to make govern-
ment superfluous.’’ By 1808, he sanctioned the state’s right ‘‘to coerce
those who are not mature [die Unmündigen] . . . for their own welfare.’’73
If fostering the maturity (Mündigkeit) of the subjects was one of the key
goals of the Prussian reform movement, it also proved to be a highly
elusive objective.

Conclusion: The Paradoxes of Enlightened Monarchy

According to seventeenth-century German chemist and economist Jo-
hann Joachim Becher (1635–1682), the proper goal of governance was
38 genesis

‘‘beauty’’ (Schönheit). Sovereignty, in turn, was the art of ‘‘beautiful po-

lice,’’ which aimed at preserving the proper symmetry and harmony
among the various estates that constituted the community.74 Becher’s
premises about the nature of governance were shared by many European
intellectuals and political leaders of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies. German cameralists, following Aristotle, held that politics was the
science of the ‘‘communal life of human beings’’ and that the proper role
of political authority was to intervene in the community so as to enhance
the good of all (Glückseligkeit).75 Likewise, the new discourses about the
‘‘self-regulating society’’ in Europe at the end of the eighteenth cen-
tury—Adam Smith’s free market theory in Britain, the physiocratic
movement in France, Nationalökonomie in the German states—should be
seen not simply as harbingers of an emerging liberal social order but also
as attempts to rearticulate traditional concerns about justice and com-
munal harmony in a new philosophical language.
A fundamental premise of all these discourses was that an identifiable
common good existed: that civilized humans did not subsist in a Hob-
besian war of each against all, but rather were bound together by some
unity of collective interests. In the premodern era, this collective unity
had been portrayed in terms of a divinely ordained, hierarchical chain
of being. The philosophers of the Enlightenment, proceeding from the
new assumption that all humans were ideally equal, sought to discover
secular and rational laws by which the common good might be defined
and attained.
The project of enlightened monarchy was rent with internal tensions,
both philosophical and practical in nature. Prussia’s eighteenth-century
rulers sought to combine a traditional Aristotelian view of government,
emphasizing the preservation of justice and harmony, with new efforts
to mobilize social resources on behalf of the state. Rather than abandon-
ing old institutions, they attempted to transform them to accord with
Enlightenment principles and absolutist objectives. Thus, for example,
the Prussian General Code of 1794 juxtaposed a declaration of universal
human rights with the preservation of serfdom and aristocratic privi-
leges. Likewise, administrative theorists, such as Justi, tried to reconcile
a dynamic theory of individual economic freedom with older notions of
a static social order that could be preserved only by judicious govern-
ment regulation. In the realm of political theory, Kant justified absolute
monarchy on the basis of republican political ideals.
In short, Prussian enlightened absolutism must be understood as an
unstable governing project that sought to unite fundamentally irrecon-
cilable political and philosophical principles. Ultimately it proved im-
 t h e p o l i t i c s o f h a r m o n y i n e i g h t e e n t h- c e n t u r y p r u s s i a 39

possible to forge a society that reconciled corporate privilege with uni-

versal equality or a government that was both monarchical and
republican in nature. The eighteenth-century political legacies discussed
in this chapter, however, played a powerful role in shaping the agendas
of the Prussian reformers of the Napoleonic era.
This page intentionally left blank
 Three

invoking the nation

On 14 October 1806, Prussia’s famed army collapsed in a single

day, routed by the French at the battles of Auerstädt and Jena.
Two weeks later, Napoleon entered Berlin, as the Prussian court fled
eastward toward Memel, a small Lithuanian seaport near the Russian
border. Throughout the following winter and spring, the Prussian mili-
tary forces were besieged in the towns of Prussia’s eastern marches. Major
August Neithardt von Gneisenau, commander of the garrison at Kolberg,
conveyed his desperation in a letter of May 1807, two months before
the Prussian capitulation to Napoleon at Tilsit:

What can we believe, what shall we hope, what must we do? These three
Kantian questions apply directly to us. If only the German were more
vigorous. But he is stupid: he believes the French pretenses, he bears like
a beast of burden, instead of rising up with flails, pitchforks, and scythes,
and exterminating the foreigner from our land.1

Gneisenau was not the only disciple of Kant in the upper ranks of the
Prussian army. Generals Gerhard von Scharnhorst and Hermann von
Boyen, who would collaborate with Gneisenau in the reorganization of
the Prussian army after 1807, were both close students of Kant’s writ-
ings—indeed, Boyen had attended Kant’s lectures on anthropology as a
student in Königsberg during the 1780s. In the new era of warfare, Boyen
declared, ‘‘impetuous raw force’’ must be placed ‘‘under the guardianship
of human reason,’’ so that even in the ‘‘bustle of war the sense of hu-
manity will progressively develop with every century.’’2
This curious blend of Kantian ethics with the most passionate nation-
alism reveals much about the impulses behind the Prussian reform move-
ment. Leaders of the defeated and diminished Prussian state sought a

41
42 genesis

means of combining strong monarchical authority with a politically ac-

tive populace. Their constitutional proposals presumed that properly de-
signed representative institutions would produce a unitary expression of
the true national interest, rather than simply give voice to a cacophony
of competing factions. By rationalizing the institutions of the Prussian
administration and by educating the populace for political participation,
they hoped ultimately to harmonize democratic and monarchical forms
of government. Popular enlightenment, they hoped, would ultimately
serve as a tool for national mobilization.

The Crises of 1806–1807

The military disasters of 1806–1807 were only the most spectacular of a
series of profound crises that shook Prussia during those years. In July
1806, Napoleon established the Confederation of the Rhine, an association
that initially comprised sixteen states in southern and western Germany
that he recognized as sovereign, on the condition that they provide sup-
port for France’s military efforts. This proved to be the final nail in the
coffin for the nearly 900-year-old Holy Roman Empire, and on 6 August
1806 Francis II of Austria abdicated the office of Roman emperor and
dissolved the Reich. The abolition of the Old Reich had little immediate
practical effect on Prussia, but by annihilating the overarching consti-
tutional structure within which the Prussian state had existed until that
year, it drew the nature of sovereign authority into question.3 All of the
Prussian political reforms of the Napoleonic era, therefore, took place in
the shadow of this event. Prussia’s bureaucratic reformers were chal-
lenged not only to establish a new constitutional order to replace the old
but also to define a new principle of political community in Central
Europe. The community of the nation, in other words, functioned in part
as a replacement for the old imperial order.
More urgent problems were created by the French military occupation
and the punitive Treaty of Tilsit, signed by King Frederick William III
in July 1807, which humiliated Prussia’s ruling elite and imposed intense
suffering on all sectors of the population. According to the terms of this
treaty, Prussia lost half of its territory, home to more than half of its
subjects, including its new Polish possessions and all of its lands west
of the Elbe River. It also agreed to shoulder crippling war tributes to
France as a condition for the withdrawal of the French troops occupying
the entire region west of the Vistula River. For almost three years, the
Prussian court remained exiled from Berlin in Memel, and until 1809 the
government maintained full administrative control only over the prov-
ince of East Prussia and the Silesian county of Glatz.
Prussia in 1806–1807
44 genesis

The war and the subsequent occupation ravaged all sectors of the
population: food prices soared while land values plunged; the numbers
of livestock in East Prussia fell to between 2 and 5 percent of prewar
levels; and epidemics of dysentery, cholera, and typhoid devastated cit-
ies. Berlin’s infant mortality rate in 1807–1808 approached 75 percent.
The Napoleonic blockade bankrupted many grain and timber exporters
along the Baltic Sea. French requisitions ruined landlords and peasants
alike. Altogether, it is estimated that in the two years after the battle of
Jena, the French extracted from the rump Prussian territories resources
equivalent to approximately sixteen times the Prussian government’s
annual revenue from before 1806. In the words of contemporary ob-
server Carl von Clausewitz, ‘‘The bankruptcies here are endless. . . .
what was achieved in this sandy waste throughout centuries in the way
of prosperity, culture, and trade, will now be destroyed in perhaps a
decade.’’4
In addition to impoverishing large portions of the population, Prussia’s
defeat also discredited the traditional ruling elites and brought a new
generation of leaders to the center of political power. In 1806, virtually
the entire Prussian officer corps was of aristocratic extraction, and half
of the 142 generals were over sixty years old. These officers, who had
made their careers in the wars of Frederick the Great, were reluctant to
learn from the triumphs of the French revolutionary armies. A coterie of
royal favorites constituted the cabinet, serving as the king’s closest ad-
visers.5
Confronted by the disasters of war and the prospect of the annihilation
of the Prussian state, Frederick William III was forced to seek assistance
from an ambitious cadre of reform-minded officials. Two of these figures,
Karl vom und zum Stein and Karl August von Hardenberg, had achieved
prominent positions in the Prussian government already before 1806.
Most of their key supporters were in their thirties and early forties, and
had served in middle-level civil service posts before 1806. These figures
included Hardenberg’s protégé Karl von Stein zum Altenstein (1770–
1840), Heinrich Theodor von Schön (1773–1856), Wilhelm von Humboldt
(1767–1835), Johann August Sack (1764–1831), Friedrich August von
Staegemann (1763–1840), and Friedrich Ludwig von Vincke (1774–
1844).6
Both Stein and Hardenberg came from outside Prussia. Stein, whose
family belonged to the imperial knights and owned estates in the Rhine-
land, attended the University of Göttingen and served in Westphalia
before joining the Prussian administration in 1780. In 1804, Stein was
named minister of economic affairs, though the king dismissed him for
insubordination in January 1807. Hardenberg, who was born to a
 invoking the nation 45

wealthy landowning family in Hanover, also studied at the University

of Göttingen and served as an official in Hanover and Brunswick before
accepting an appointment in the Prussian civil service, where he made
his reputation as the administrator of Prussia’s new territories in
Ansbach-Bayreuth and as a member of the General Directory in Berlin
after 1798. From 1804 to 1806, Hardenberg served as Prussian foreign
minister. In this capacity, he played a pivotal role in formulating Prussia’s
foreign policy, initially supporting rapprochement with France and then
advocating war. Hardenberg’s effectiveness as foreign minister was lim-
ited by bitter infighting with his rival, Christian von Haugwitz, one of
the king’s cabinet councilors. Six months before the outbreak of hostil-
ities with France, Frederick William III dismissed Hardenberg from office
under pressure from French officials, who were upset by Hardenberg’s
support for an alliance with Britain. In January 1807, Hardenberg re-
turned to office as the king’s chief adviser, but Napoleon forced his dis-
missal in October of the same year.7
Though Stein and Hardenberg both wielded immense political power
during the Napoleonic era, it is important to recognize that their status
in the Prussian administration was doubly unstable. First, they were
both geographical outsiders and were criticized as such by Prussian no-
bles incensed by their reform proposals. Second, before being named to
head the Prussian ministry, both of them had already been fired at least
once by the Prussian king. Stein served as first minister for only thir-
teen months, from October 1807 until November 1808, when he was
dismissed on Napoleon’s demand after a French spy intercepted a letter
that linked Stein to a group advocating a rebellion against France. From
November 1808 until June 1810, Altenstein and Count Alexander von
Dohna (1771–1831) headed the so-called interim ministry, which ended
with Hardenberg’s appointment as state chancellor (Staatskanzler), a
post that he held for twelve years without interruption until his death
in 1822. One factor contributing to Hardenberg’s longevity in office may
have been that he took care to avoid directly confronting either the
monarch or entrenched aristocratic interests. Hardenberg has often been
criticized by historians as lacking firm principles and as excessively
willing to compromise8; these attributes, however, may have stemmed
in part from his earlier struggles to establish his authority within the
Prussian administration.
Much recent scholarship on Prussian history of the Napoleonic era
emphasizes the instrumental motives behind the reform movement. After
1807, the Prussian government confronted a critical fiscal crisis. In the
Treaty of Tilsit, Napoleon had demanded a war tribute from Prussia of
154 million francs—later reduced to 120 million—as a condition of with-
46 genesis

drawing his troops, which occupied all of Prussia west of the Vistula
River. In December 1808, the French army vacated the country, reserving
the right to return should Prussia default on its remaining payments.
Thus, throughout the reform period, Prussia’s political autonomy re-
mained contingent on its fiscal solvency. These economic pressures were
particularly acute when Hardenberg was appointed state chancellor in
1810. With Prussia having fallen in arrears in its war tribute installments,
Napoleon was demanding either full payment or the cession of the prov-
ince of Silesia to France. Thus, some historians have concluded that the
fundamental objective behind all of Hardenberg’s reforms was ‘‘the aug-
mentation of national income.’’9 Along with this fiscal crisis, scholars
have pointed to other challenges that stemmed from the new ‘‘structural
conditions’’ of early nineteenth-century politics, including ‘‘the growing
need for social, for ‘national’ integration’’ and ‘‘the demand for an im-
proved legitimation of state activity.’’10 Certain scholars have gone so far
as to claim that Hardenberg and his associates proposed establishing rep-
resentative institutions primarily for ‘‘propagandistic effect.’’11
Though these challenges facing the Prussian state were essential pre-
conditions for the reformers’ initiatives, it is important to recognize that
the specific form of their response to these challenges reflected the cul-
tural legacy of the Enlightenment. Hardenberg set the tone for the reform
movement in his Riga Memorandum of September 1807, calling for
a revolution in a positive sense, one leading to the ennoblement of man-
kind, to be made not through violent impulses from below or outside, but
through the wisdom of the government. . . . Democratic principles in a
monarchical government—this seems to me to be the appropriate form for
the spirit of our age.12

Stein concurred with Hardenberg about the need to elevate the level of
popular participation in government, declaring in a letter of December
1807:

It is essential that the nation become accustomed to managing its own

affairs, so that it will emerge from this state of infancy in which an anxious
and officious government attempts to keep the people.13

Both Stein and Hardenberg viewed the project of nation building as

inextricably linked with the ‘‘ennoblement of mankind’’ through the
establishment of individual freedom. Like Kant, they believed that the
education of the Prussian populace would make it possible to overcome
the opposition between rulers and subjects, which had caused such mis-
ery in revolutionary France.
 invoking the nation 47

Harmony as a Consensual Feature of the Concept

‘‘Nation’’
Anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, in analyzing the construction of
myths and rites that serve as a culture’s common ‘‘memory bank,’’ draws
an analogy to the activities of the bricoleur, or jack-of-all-trades. Such
an individual completes projects by utilizing whatever tools and mate-
rials happen to be at hand: the ultimate product is a bricolage, patched
together from a variety of odds and ends lying around the workshop.
Cultural myths, he argues, arise through a similar (although less self-
conscious) process. ‘‘The characteristic feature of mythical thought,’’
Lévi-Strauss writes, ‘‘is that it expresses itself by means of a heteroge-
neous repertoire which, even if extensive, is nevertheless limited. It has
to use this repertoire, however, whatever the task in hand because it has
nothing else at its disposal.’’ Thus, mythical thought ‘‘builds ideological
castles out of the debris of what was once a social discourse’’; it patches
together the remnants of old myths and theories in constructing some-
thing fundamentally new.14
The construction of the concept ‘‘nation’’ in nineteenth-century Prus-
sia occurred through precisely such a process of ‘‘mythical’’ thinking.
This concept was a bricolage formed by combining older notions of po-
litical community in new ways. In part, the nation was modeled on the
Holy Roman Empire; in part, it reflected the Kantian ideal of the rational
republic, as well as cameralist theories of the well-ordered state and the
utopian social vision of the Freemasons. Nineteenth-century nationalists
in Prussia also drew their inspiration from the literature of romanticism,
from Herder’s musings about the German Kulturnation, and from the po-
litical writings of the revolutionaries in France. Thus, the concept ‘‘na-
tion’’ represented a synthesis of a wide range of disparate sources. While
some of these sources were quite old, this act of cultural synthesis itself
produced a novel result.
While Lévi-Strauss’s notion of bricolage helps illustrate the synthetic
nature of the concept ‘‘nation,’’ it tells us little about the specific form
of this cultural synthesis. A second analytical category, drawn from the
writings of Sigmund Freud, is useful in this regard, namely, the concept
of ‘‘overdetermination.’’ Freud argues that the symptoms of psychological
illness generally flow from multiple causes, each one of which is capable
of producing the same consequence independently. Because these mul-
tiple causes are mutually reinforcing, they produce an intensification of
symptoms, exaggerating the tendency of the afflicted person to think
and act in a certain manner.15
48 genesis

The concept of overdetermination provides a useful tool for analyzing

the specific type of bricolage involved in the construction of the concept
nation in Prussia. One of the central claims of this book is that, in Prussia
during the early nineteenth century, the ‘‘nation’’ became defined as an
ideally harmonious political community possessing a unitary interest and
a unitary will. These ideals of national unity and harmony, I conclude,
played an important role in inhibiting the formation of a pluralistic sys-
tem of parliamentary government. Freud’s notion of overdetermination
helps explain the intensity with which these premises about the nation
came to be articulated in Prussia during this era.
As was demonstrated in chapter 2, a variety of intellectual traditions
in eighteenth-century Europe pointed to the ideal of a harmonious po-
litical and social order, to be attained through rational governance. To-
ward the end of that century, another set of discourses emerged, both
within the German states and elsewhere in Europe, depicting the nation
as a primary cultural and political community. These discourses also em-
phasized the ideals of harmony and unity. The Weimar consistorial coun-
cilor Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) defined the nation mainly as
a cultural and linguistic community. He portrayed the Volk as ‘‘the in-
visible, hidden medium that links minds through ideas, hearts through
inclinations and impulses, the senses through impressions and forms,
civil society through laws and institutions, generations through exam-
ples, modes of living and education.’’16 The development of national
identity, Herder argued, would make possible the peaceful coexistence
of humanity, both within individual nations and among the nations of
the world. Herder was far from the only German of his age to portray
nationhood in cultural terms. In 1776, Johann Christoph Adelung’s
dictionary had defined ‘‘nation’’ as
the indigenous inhabitants of a country, in so far as they have a common
origin, speak a common language and are, in a more specific sense, dis-
tinguished from other peoples by a characteristic mode of thought or
action, or by their national spirit, whether they constitute a state of their
own or are dispersed throughout a number of states.17
A more specifically political understanding of nationhood was derived
from the rhetoric of the French revolutionaries. Inspired partly by Rous-
seau’s Social Contract, leading revolutionaries in France insisted on the
unanimous character of the ‘‘general will’’ of the nation. As François
Furet has shown, in the French Revolution the nation came to be un-
derstood as
. . . the homogeneous and unanimous group of citizens who have recov-
ered their rights. Society is thus conceived of in terms of the nation: the
 invoking the nation 49

multiplicity of individuals and of private interests is immediately cancelled

out and reaggregated by the existence of a historical contract harking back
to the nation’s origins.18

The French revolutionaries’ emphasis on the need for a unanimous and

dedicated national will was reinforced during the revolutionary and the
Napoleonic wars, when such patriotic appeals were used to mobilize the
resources of France against its external enemies.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Prussian leaders, acting
as bricoleurs, thus drew on a wide range of political and cultural
traditions that made it plausible to define the nation as a unified and
harmonious political community. In this sense, the ideals of national
unity and harmony were overdetermined: they were the product of mul-
tiple, mutually reinforcing causes. The most important overdetermining
factor of all, however, was the specific political crisis that confronted
Prussian leaders after 1806. In response to the devastating defeat by
Napoleon, this group of civil servants sought to mobilize the energies of
the nation in defense of the monarchical state. Thus, they sought to forge
a political community that would work in harmony with the monarchy,
rather than one fraught with internal strife.
The overdetermined character of the ideals of national unity and har-
mony contributed to the intensity with which these ideals were ex-
pressed. Indeed, the emphasis on the need for harmony was a constant
feature of the Prussian reformers’ political proposals. Like earlier political
writers, such as Turgot, Kant, and Svarez, leading Prussian civil servants
of the Napoleonic era held that the monarch’s interests coincided per-
fectly with those of his people. For the true common good to be recog-
nized, however, the faculty of reason had to be cultivated on both sides.
Both Stein and Hardenberg called for the rationalization of the state ad-
ministration—for example, through the abolition of the royal cabinet,
which was dominated by the king’s cronies—and the establishment of a
Council of State (Staatsrat) that would facilitate the more orderly exercise
of sovereign authority. Stein, Hardenberg, and other leading reformers
also considered the formation of a ‘‘national representation’’ to be critical
for the establishment of a harmonious political order. Such a represen-
tative body, Stein argued, would contribute to the formation of a ‘‘public
and common spirit.’’19
The ideal of a harmonious and unified national community appeared
regularly both in the reformers’ broad programmatic writings and in
their specific proposals for constitutional reform. For example, in the
Nassau Memorandum of June 1807, Stein claimed that representative
institutions would result in
50 genesis

the awakening of a spirit of community and civic pride, the employment

of dormant or misapplied energies and of unused knowledge, harmony
between the views and desires of the nation and those of the administra-
tive authorities of the state, the revival of patriotism and the desire for
national honor and independence.20

The document known as Stein’s ‘‘Political Testament,’’ which was drafted

by Theodor von Schön following Stein’s dismissal from office in Novem-
ber 1808, portrayed the role of representative institutions in similar
terms. Stein’s goal, the ‘‘Testament’’ declared, had been ‘‘to abolish the
disharmony that existed among the people; to eradicate the strife be-
tween estates that made us miserable.’’ After listing the reforms that had
already been enacted, Schön proceeded to describe the work that still
lay ahead. The next important task, he wrote, was a ‘‘general national
representation’’ (allgemeine Nationalrepräsentation). Schön declared:
The right [Recht] and the unlimited authority of our king was sacrosanct
to me, and remains so to us! But in order for this right and this unlimited
power to achieve the good that lies within it, it seemed to me necessary
to give the highest power a means through which it can become ac-
quainted with the wishes of the people and through which it can give life
to their determinations.

Only through the ‘‘participation of the people in the operations of the

state,’’ wrote Schön, could the ‘‘national spirit [Nationalgeist] be posi-
tively aroused and animated.’’21
While both Stein and Hardenberg believed that it was essential to
mobilize the nation politically, their plans for the adoption of a Prussian
national representation evolved only gradually during the Napoleonic
era. In April 1806, Stein wrote a memorandum calling for the abolition
of the king’s cabinet. In its place, he proposed creating a council of five
ministers, made up of the heads of each of the Prussian administrative
departments, who would deliberate with the king concerning legislative
proposals. Any new decree, he wrote, would be valid only if signed both
by the king and by the members of the ministerial council. Laws would
thus obtain their legitimacy not from the person of the monarch but from
the duly constituted administrative authorities of the state.22 Stein’s pro-
posal was fully consistent with Svarez’s earlier project of rationalizing
the exercise of state power to ensure that the king would be guided by
the true interests of the state and of the people, rather than by arbitrary
whims.
Stein’s memorandum on cabinet government also hinted at a more
radical agenda for constitutional reform. ‘‘Supreme power,’’ Stein de-
clared, should be ‘‘divided between the head [Oberhaupt] and delegates
 invoking the nation 51

[Stellvertretern] of the nation.’’ The nature of this division of powers,

however, was left completely undefined. Hardenberg, in his Riga Mem-
orandum, called for a national representation, but he rejected the idea
of establishing a national assembly on the French model. Instead, he
proposed the ‘‘amalgamation of representatives into the administration,’’
which he declared would be the most productive form of popular rep-
resentation, as well as the one that would pose the least danger to mon-
archical sovereignty. This proposal was the narrowest possible plan for
a national representation: no independent assembly at all but simply a
group of three delegates, who would collaborate with the central admin-
istrative authorities, along with various deputies advising the provincial
administrative departments.23
In the aftermath of the military defeat of 1806–1807, the Prussian
ministry moved cautiously toward expanding the role of representative
assemblies, initially establishing provincial diets and later, during Har-
denberg’s administration, creating experimental national representative
bodies. The history of these institutions illustrates the convergence be-
tween immediate financial exigencies and the broader project of nation
building. King Frederick William III and his ministers had two urgent
financial motives for convening provincial diets after 1807. In order to
pay the draconian war tribute installments imposed by Napoleon in the
Treaty of Tilsit, the king’s advisers proposed to adopt two measures, first,
to mortgage (and eventually sell) lands from the royal domains, and sec-
ond, to establish an income tax throughout the Prussian provinces. But,
for several reasons, neither of these measures could be adopted without
their acceptance by the provincial estates. To begin with the sale of the
royal domains, a decree of 1713 by King Frederick William I had pro-
claimed these lands to be permanently ‘‘inalienable.’’ In order to waive
the terms of this proclamation, the king needed to secure the estates’
approval. Their cooperation was especially important because the gov-
ernment wanted the nobles’ provincial credit associations (Landschaften)
to guarantee the new mortgage notes on the royal lands. The income tax
required the estates’ approval for another reason. Napoleon had de-
manded that Prussia’s war tribute be paid not by the central government
but by the individual provinces. He had identified the Landschaften as
the appropriate institutions for making these payments. The income tax
could be implemented, therefore, only with the assent of the Landschaf-
ten, so the government had to consult with these institutions to secure
its adoption.24
That the provincial assemblies were modeled on the nobles’ provincial
credit institutes (Landschaften), rather than on the traditional provincial
diets (Landstände), was in itself significant. Until the late seventeenth
52 genesis

century, any new taxes in Prussia had required the approval of the Land-
stände. With the rise of the centralizing monarchy, however, the diets
had been convened only sporadically. The East Prussian diet, for ex-
ample, had assembled only twice after 1740 (in the years 1786 and 1798)
and on these occasions simply in order to pay homage to new kings
upon their accession to the throne. The Landschaften, by contrast, were
relatively new institutions that had been established in order to provide
credit to the landholding nobility, either for improving their estates or
for purchasing new land. Frederick the Great had founded the first Land-
schaft, for Silesia, in 1770; the East Prussian Landschaft had been formed
in 1788.25
In convening the East Prussian diet of 1808, Stein and his associates
transformed both the organization and the function of the Landschaft.
They wanted it to serve not only as a credit institute that would guar-
antee the mortgages on the royal domain lands but also as a model for
a new general representative assembly. Thus they expanded the mem-
bership of the assembly to include non-noble large landowners (the Köl-
mer) as well as aristocrats. (The towns, however, remained unrepresented
in this first diet because they had no connection with the estate owners’
mortgage fund.) Presiding over the assembly was a royal commissioner,
Hans von Auerswald, rather than an official appointed by the provincial
nobles, as had been customary. The government not only restructured
the East Prussian Landschaft but also granted it a much broader sphere
of activity than it had previously possessed. The delegates, declared a
royal cabinet order, should deliberate ‘‘not only over matters concerning
the credit system, but also over those concerning the country [Land] in
general.’’26 The government thus changed the Landschaft from a purely
financial institution into one with the right to consult over legislation.
In a break from traditional practice, deputies to the East Prussian diet
were explicitly forbidden to accept binding instructions from their con-
stituents.27 The king’s cabinet order of January 1808, which dictated
voting procedures, declared: ‘‘The deputies cannot be bound at all by
instructions from the districts that elect them; otherwise all voting free-
dom and the usefulness of a general assembly would be vitiated.’’ Rather,
the order declared, each deputy must ‘‘candidly state and submit his
opinion according to his insight and conviction.’’28 Auerswald’s opening
speech to the assembly on 2 February 1808 expressed the logic behind
these stipulations: the deputies, he declared, must strive to act for ‘‘the
good of the whole, which is based on the voluntary sacrifice of every
one-sided private perspective.’’29 These changes in the composition and
voting procedures of the Landschaft aimed at erasing its traditional cor-
 invoking the nation 53

porate character, thereby allowing it to serve the common cause of the

‘‘national welfare.’’30
For Stein, the diet of 1808 represented only the first step in reforming
the provincial estates and ultimately in moving toward the formation of
a national representative body. He envisioned yearly provincial diets,
organized according to new principles, which would contribute to the
‘‘preservation of common spirit, of national feeling, and of participation
in the welfare of the whole.’’31 Auerswald shared Stein’s enthusiasm:
‘‘The general diet,’’ he wrote in May 1808, ‘‘can possess no interest other
than that of the nation.’’ He recommended that the East Prussian diet
meet annually in a purely advisory capacity, convening in a single cham-
ber and publishing its proceedings in order to maintain close contact
with ‘‘public opinion.’’ Such a diet, he argued, would cause ‘‘no restric-
tion of the legislative power of the ruler, but rather its reinforcement:
by liberating it from personal interest and from the restricted views of
officials, and by uniting the public voice and general trust with the legal
provisions.’’32
For Hardenberg, as for Stein, Prussia’s fiscal crisis provided the im-
mediate motivation for developing plans for parliamentary institutions.
In March 1809, fifteen months before being named Prussian chancellor,
Hardenberg proposed gathering a group of bankers and estate owners
from the various provinces to approve a plan for liquidating the state
debt. As he was himself an estate owner in Brandenburg’s Kurmark,
Hardenberg could observe from close quarters the proceedings of the
diet there. Remarking on the inadequacy of the provincial representation
as then arranged, he argued that the ‘‘first and most urgent’’ priority
should be ‘‘to organize a truly functional representation of the estates.’’
He returned to this idea the following spring, when Altenstein and
Dohna proved unable to cover the remaining war tribute payments. In
April 1810, he wrote to Altenstein urging the adoption of ‘‘a forced loan,
a national bank, the gathering of insightful and honest bankers and
members of the estates.’’33
Hardenberg developed the idea further in several memoranda written
during the next few months. In a memorandum of May 1810, calling for
the establishment of a national bank, he also proposed a ‘‘gathering of
insightful men from the whole monarchy,’’ including high civil servants,
estate owners, municipal officers, and bankers to deliberate on the proper
organization of the national bank and on the government’s plans for debt
liquidation. Serving ‘‘as an organ of Your Royal Majesty,’’ it was to ‘‘com-
municate the results of Your resolutions to the estates, representing those
plans . . . as acceptable and as capable of fulfilling the goal; thus awak-
54 genesis

ening patriotism and zeal for the salvation of the Fatherland.’’34 This
assembly, in other words, was not intended to represent the people to
the king but rather to represent the king’s policy to the people, thus
facilitating its implementation.
In August 1810, even after shelving his plans for a national bank,
Hardenberg argued that the creation of a ‘‘proper national representa-
tion’’ was essential:
In any case, publicity with respect to the finances is thoroughly necessary,
[and] helps to awaken trust . . . The king gives the state a constitution, a
consultative representation, whose members he initially names, and an-
nually submits to it the condition of the nation and of the finances.35

On Hardenberg’s request, his adviser Friedrich von Raumer produced a

plan for such a national representation. Raumer favored the creation of
a small assembly that would meet in a single chamber. It should be
strictly separated from the administrative authorities, he argued, ‘‘in or-
der that the different viewpoint leads to the truth along a different path.’’
Finally, he emphasized that the assembly should be granted a purely
consultative and subordinate political role: ‘‘The new representation must
emanate directly from the government alone; it must come down as a
good gift from above.’’36 It was an assembly of this nature that Harden-
berg had in mind when he drafted Prussia’s ‘‘first constitutional prom-
ise,’’ which was contained in the Finance Edict of 27 October 1810. This
promise gave no details and no timetable, it simply said that the king
‘‘reserved’’ to himself the role of ‘‘giving the nation an appropriately
arranged representation, both in the provinces and for the whole, whose
counsel we will gladly use.’’37 Though the king would repeat this promise
several times—in decrees published in 1811, 1815, and 1820—ultimately
it would remain unfulfilled until the year 1847.
While the leading reformers within the Prussian civil service believed
that a national representation should coexist harmoniously with the mon-
archical state, in practice they were reluctant to cede significant authority
to parliamentary institutions. Hardenberg, in particular, sought to limit
the independence of the new representative bodies, both by controlling
the selection of delegates and by limiting them to a purely advisory
political role. Despite this initial caution regarding the establishment of
representative government, the bureaucratic reformers’ rhetorical appeals
to national unity and harmony proved highly influential. Other constit-
uencies in Prussia soon would invoke these same premises about the
nation in order to challenge the political monopoly of the monarchical
state.
 invoking the nation 55

Equality and Its Limits: Contested Features of

National Identity
In June 1807, four months before returning to head the Prussian min-
istry, Stein summarized his goals for social and political reform in his
Nassau Memorandum:

The nation, despite all of its flaws, possesses a noble pride, energy, valor,
and willingness to sacrifice itself for fatherland and freedom . . . If the
nation is to be ennobled, the oppressed part of it must be given freedom,
independence, and property; and this oppressed part must be granted the
protection of the laws.38

For the Prussian reformers, universal freedom and some degree of civil
equality were fundamental prerequisites for the forging of a national
community. As Altenstein put it succinctly, ‘‘the slave has no interest in
the state.’’39 The citizenry, the reformers argued, could be bound together
by a common spirit only if they existed under common legal conditions
and were released from arbitrary rule. Nonetheless, two strategic consid-
erations dictated a cautious approach in attacking the privileges of Prus-
sia’s traditional elites. First, the reformers wanted to avoid destabilizing
the social order through an excessively radical legislative program, and
second, they were eager to secure the cooperation of the aristocracy in
attempting to mobilize resources against the French threat.
For these reasons, the proposals of Stein and Hardenberg reflected an
uneasy compromise between the older principles of the particularistic,
hierarchical social order and the newer, egalitarian, and universalistic
principles of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Though
these leaders portrayed the nation as a community of equals, they also
emphasized the importance of preserving elements of the traditional cor-
porate order. Stein, in particular, was devoted to reinvigorating, rather
than annihilating, what he saw as old organic institutions. These con-
flicting tendencies may be illustrated through an examination of several
key reform measures: Stein’s October Edict of 1807, which emancipated
the serfs and abolished many of the traditional barriers between the
bourgeoisie and the aristocracy, Stein’s Municipal Ordinance (Städteord-
nung) of October 1808, and Hardenberg’s free trade legislation and pro-
posed fiscal reforms of 1810.

The October Edict. The first great reform measure adopted during Stein’s
ministry was the edict of 9 October 1807, which declared momentously,
‘‘After 11 November 1810, there will be only free people’’ throughout
56 genesis

the Prussian realm.40 In keeping with the language of Stein’s memoran-

dum, the provisions of this edict were directed toward two goals, first,
to forge a liberal economic order that would allow each individual to
achieve prosperity ‘‘according to the measure of his energies,’’ and sec-
ond, to create a legal system under which all inhabitants of Prussia would
become ‘‘citizens of the state’’ (Staatsbürger), and all citizens would be
considered equal before the law.41
The movement to abolish serfdom in Prussia had begun in the late
eighteenth century. Between 1799 and 1806, Frederick William III had
abolished the feudal obligations of the peasants who lived on the royal
domains (about one-seventh of Prussia’s agricultural population). In 1803,
the king had also expressed support for a proposal that would have
gradually eliminated hereditary servitude throughout the realm, but he
withheld his final approval for this measure out of fear of provoking a
conflict with the nobility.42
The October Edict not only abolished all hereditary servitude in Prus-
sia but also eliminated certain traditional restrictions on the bourgeoisie
and the nobility. Commoners obtained the right to purchase landed es-
tates (Rittergüter), a privilege that had previously been reserved to the
nobility. Conversely, nobles received the right to practice bourgeois pro-
fessions without incurring any penalty to their status. Stein also favored
other reforms, not included in the initial edict, that would have funda-
mentally transformed the relationship between lords and peasants. For
example, he wanted to eliminate the nobility’s traditional exemption from
property taxes and, even more important, he sought to abolish the no-
bles’ police and judicial powers over their estates, placing the entire
realm directly under the legal authority of the state. These proposals
foundered against bitter opposition from the landholding nobility. Ulti-
mately, the Prussian nobles preserved their exemption from property
taxes until 1861, and they kept their police powers until 1872.43
At one level, the theory behind Stein’s plans was simple. He spoke
of the need to secure the ‘‘original and inalienable rights of mankind’’
by establishing a social order based on the principles of freedom and
the rule of law.44 Yet the October Edict left many questions unresolved.
For example, even though the serfs became officially free, the law did
not abolish their compulsory labor obligations (Frondienste) to their for-
mer masters, nor did it grant them any ownership rights over the lands
that they had farmed. Not until 1816 did the government finally settle
the questions of how Prussian estate owners should be compensated for
the loss of compulsory labor and how the lands should be distributed
between them and the former peasants. This settlement worked largely
to the advantage of the nobility, so that many of Prussia’s peasants
 invoking the nation 57

ended up living under worse material conditions than they had before
1807.45
A more fundamental ambiguity in Stein’s political theory involved the
status and function of the traditional estates. On the one hand, Stein
wanted to abolish the nobility’s hereditary exclusivity, as well as most
of its privileges. Yet Stein also hoped to restore the nobility to the po-
sition of political preeminence that it had enjoyed prior to the eighteenth
century. As a class consisting of Prussia’s largest landowners, the nobility
would play a leading role in the new representative assemblies that Stein
planned to establish. Stein believed that a politically active nobility
would support, rather than undermine, monarchical authority. In other
words, rather than establishing full civil equality, Stein wanted to rein-
vigorate what he saw as Prussia’s traditional hierarchical institutions. He
favored increasing the degree of mobility between estates rather than
abolishing outright the legal distinctions between different categories of
the population.46

Stein’s Municipal Ordinance. The provisions of the Städteordnung, enacted

near the end of Stein’s ministry in November 1808, revealed a similar
ambivalence toward the traditional social institutions of Prussia’s munic-
ipalities. Residents of the towns belonged to three main categories: ‘‘cit-
izens’’ (Bürger), ‘‘protected residents’’ (Schutzverwandten), and ‘‘ex-
empted’’ burghers (Eximierten). The status of citizenship was extended
to only a small minority of the population; to qualify, one needed to be
a self-sufficient practitioner of a ‘‘bourgeois trade.’’ The protected resi-
dents, who were less prosperous urban dwellers, such as journeymen,
day laborers, and domestic servants, lived under the authority of the
towns’ laws but possessed no political rights. Finally, certain residents,
such as civil servants and members of the academic professions, were
exempted from the towns’ legal jurisdiction and, like the protected res-
idents, they were excluded from voting or holding office in the town
government.47 Under this system, only the leading figures in the guilds
and other corporate bodies were entitled to participate in the political
life of the towns.
The Municipal Ordinance preserved all three of the traditional cate-
gories of residents, but it significantly expanded the class of Bürger,
stipulating that any male resident of a town, as well as any unmarried
female, could qualify for citizenship either by practicing a ‘‘municipal
trade’’ (städtische Gewerbe) or by owning a house in the town. All male
citizens who met certain property qualifications were permitted both to
vote and to hold office in the town council, which was responsible for
administering local institutions such as the police, schools, and poor re-
58 genesis

lief. Not only did the Municipal Ordinance increase the number of citi-
zens in the towns, it also established new local assemblies in many towns
that had previously lacked representative institutions, and it broke the
dominance of the guilds over existing municipal governments. The law
stipulated that the town representatives be elected by geographical dis-
trict, eliminating the traditional practice of selecting delegates to the
municipal council from each of a town’s leading corporate bodies. More-
over, it declared that delegates should be bound only by their own con-
sciences in casting their votes, rather than by the traditional practice of
a binding mandate from the electorate.48
Stein hoped that his Municipal Ordinance would produce a vigorous
public spirit in Prussia’s towns while still preserving their particularistic
institutions. In the words of one historian, Stein’s political theory stood
‘‘on the border between the old and the new constitutional thought.’’
Though he wanted to maintain the traditional estates as discrete corpo-
rate entities, Stein perceived their character in an entirely new way. No
longer did he view the estates as ‘‘beneficiaries of rights’’ that sought to
defend their private privileges against encroachment by the monarchy.
Rather, he saw the estates as institutions that derived their legitimacy
from their performance of a public function and that were bound to
serve the public good.49

Hardenberg’s free trade legislation. Stein’s reforms reflected a curious at-

tempt to balance the hierarchical principles of the medieval social order
with the new egalitarian ideals of the Enlightenment and the French
Revolution. Hardenberg’s reform plans, in contrast, attacked the very
principle of a social order based on estates—though he stopped short of
demanding the abolition of the nobility or other elements of the tradi-
tional corporate order. Proclaiming the precept of ‘‘equality before the
law,’’ he sought to abolish legal distinctions, such as the monopoly rights
of the guilds, the nobility’s tax exemptions and rural administrative pow-
ers, and the peasantry’s compulsory labor obligations. Hardenberg rarely
even used the word ‘‘estate,’’ preferring the term ‘‘class,’’ which at that
time had a more neutral meaning.50 His economic reforms, most of which
were promulgated in a series of laws of October and November 1810,
went a long way toward abolishing the remnants of aristocratic privilege
in Prussia and liberalized the economies of the towns as well. Two of
these measures were most significant: the Finance Edict of 27 October,
which declared the state’s intention to equalize tax burdens, reform the
tariff and toll system, create freedom of enterprise, and secularize church
lands, and the Gewerbesteueredikt of 2 November, which eliminated the
guilds’ monopolies over the practice of trades.
 invoking the nation 59

Hardenberg’s economic reforms contributed to leveling the social

status of the different estates both in rural and urban Prussia. The peas-
ants, who had been formally freed by the edict of 9 October 1807, were
now to be released from their economic obligations to the estate owners
and to be granted ownership of part of the land they occupied. The
nobility lost its exemptions from land taxes and consumption taxes,
among other levies. In general, residents of the countryside were now
to be taxed on the same basis as those of the towns. The nobles also lost
their rights to administer various local and provincial funds, such as
those providing mortgage credit and poor relief, as well as their monop-
oly rights over milling, brewing, and distilling in the countryside. In the
towns, Hardenberg’s program presented an equally forceful challenge to
the position of the guilds. Though the guilds were permitted to remain
in existence, they lost their exclusive rights to practice particular trades.
Anyone, whether a resident of the countryside or the towns, could now
begin practicing a trade simply by paying an annual ‘‘tax on enterprises’’
(Gewerbesteuer)—though one needed to obtain a certificate of competence
from the government in order to work in certain specified occupations.
In combination with the decree of October 1807, which had opened all
professions to both nobles and bourgeois, the Gewerbesteueredikt consti-
tuted a significant step toward the creation of a fully free labor market
in Prussia. It also enhanced the administrative powers of the central state
by shifting the authority to regulate economic activity away from the
guilds and towns.51
While some of Stein’s reforms—notably his attacks on the aristocracy’s
tax exemptions, as well as on their police and judicial powers—met with
opposition from Prussia’s social elites, these groups accommodated them-
selves to much of the new legislation, often finding ways to turn it to
their own economic advantage. Many nobles, for example, used the edict
emancipating the serfs as a means of absorbing peasant lands into their
estates.52 Hardenberg’s legislation, which represented a more radical as-
sault on the traditional social order, provoked a storm of outrage that
forced the government to retreat from many of its bolder plans.53 For
example, Hardenberg’s tax reforms remained incomplete, and the Gen-
darmerie Edict of 30 July 1812, which sought to diminish the adminis-
trative powers of the nobility by creating a bureaucratic rural govern-
ment in the French style, was ultimately revoked because of the
vehement protests of the Prussian aristocracy.

Hardenberg’s fiscal reforms. The leveling tendencies of Hardenberg’s so-

cial vision were likewise evident in his proposals for tax reform and debt
service, which were designed to overcome the dire fiscal crisis that Har-
60 genesis

denberg inherited when he took control of the Prussian ministry in 1810.

Confronted by a catastrophic shortfall in tax revenues, Altenstein and
Dohna, who had headed the Prussian ministry since Stein’s dismissal in
November 1808, advised defaulting on Prussia’s war tribute payments
and ceding the province of Silesia to France. Appalled by these ministers’
lack of courage and imagination, King Frederick William III and Queen
Luise decided to appoint Hardenberg in their place.
Though Hardenberg’s most pressing concern was to return the Prus-
sian state to solvency, a second goal—which has been overlooked by
most historians—was equally central to his legislative agenda, namely,
he hoped that his new economic system would foster social cohesion and
help build a politically unified nation. Hardenberg believed that the es-
tablishment of a free market for goods and labor would not simply max-
imize economic efficiency but also help forge a vibrant public spirit.54
His plans reflected the premises of the new discipline of Nationalökon-
omie (national economy), whose doctrines were inspired both by Kantian
philosophy and by the economic doctrines of the physiocrats and Adam
Smith. Kant had argued that the king should attempt to free his subjects
from ‘‘tutelage,’’ so that they might become autonomous and self-
determining beings. The national economists argued that the extension
of human freedom to the sphere of economic life, by liberating the pop-
ulace from the arbitrary power of the paternalistic state, would make
possible ‘‘the highest perfection of the physical condition of sociable
mankind.’’55 Hardenberg attempted to establish precisely such a new so-
ciability in Prussia. Through the establishment of a free market economy,
Hardenberg hoped ‘‘that the individual classes of the state society
[Staatsgesellschaft] mutually approach, support, and elevate each other;
that perfect justice occur in the exchange of their products.’’56
Two fiscal reforms proposed in Prussia during the Napoleonic era il-
lustrate this connection between finance and ‘‘national spirit’’: first, var-
ious ministers’ early proposals for the establishment of an income tax,
and second, Hardenberg’s plan to consolidate debts incurred by the Prus-
sian provinces into a single account managed by a Prussian national
bank. To the modern observer, each of these proposals appears to be
only tangentially related to the project of forging a unified and politically
active nation. For Hardenberg and his compatriots, however, these eco-
nomic reforms had profound political implications.
The initial plans for an income tax in Prussia were put forward during
the Stein ministry of 1807–1808 as a means of covering the war tribute
installments to France. Though Stein was able to obtain approval for this
tax by the East Prussian diet in February 1808, this legislation encoun-
tered intense resistance when the Prussian ministry attempted to extend
 invoking the nation 61

it to other Prussian provinces. Aristocrats in Brandenburg and other

parts of the realm objected to this tax not simply because it involved an
added financial burden but also because the imposition of an income tax
represented a fundamental break from traditional Prussian administrative
practice. Prussian ‘‘absolutism,’’ as noted above in Chapter 2, had fol-
lowed a different model than the French version, intruding to a much
lesser extent on the management of local affairs. Through the end of the
eighteenth century, the administrative authority of the central govern-
ment essentially ceased at the county level; in the countryside, the nobles
remained responsible for local administration, for exercising police and
juridical powers over the peasantry, and for apportioning and collecting
taxes.57 An income tax would upset this traditional arrangement by giv-
ing the central government the authority to impose fiscal levies directly
on individuals.
Indeed, it was precisely because the income tax promised to impose
uniformity of fiscal administration throughout Prussia that leading re-
formers found it so attractive. Under this system, taxes would be assessed
equitably on all Prussian residents as a proportion of their income, not
on the basis of special legal privilege. This allocation of taxes would thus
help break down particular corporate identities and forge a sense of
common interest throughout the populace. Altenstein and Dohna, who
were otherwise not especially energetic as political reformers, were both
strong supporters of an income tax. Because it would be levied on the
entire population of the country according to a common principle, Al-
tenstein declared, such a tax would discipline the ‘‘egotism’’ of the es-
tates, helping to break down particular corporate identities and to forge
a sense of common interest throughout the populace. Ultimately, Alten-
stein argued, the income tax would prepare the way for a ‘‘representation
of the nation and a constitution.’’58 Fiscal reform, in other words, was
an indispensable tool for the moral education of the Prussian populace
and for fostering a sense of national unity.
Like Stein and Altenstein, Hardenberg supported the adoption of an
income tax in Prussia, but he abandoned his attempt to extend this tax
beyond East Prussia as a result of strenuous aristocratic opposition dur-
ing 1810. Two proposals that were more central to Hardenberg’s initial
fiscal program were plans for the reorganization of Prussia’s public debt
and for the establishment of a national bank to manage this account.
Hardenberg’s plan, judged ‘‘dilettantish’’ by several historians,59 called
for the consolidation of all state debts and war tribute obligations (which
had originally been imposed upon the individual Prussian provinces) into
a single account managed by a national bank. The bank, which would
be funded in part by land tax revenues, would be responsible for paying
62 genesis

these debts and also for issuing paper money. By August 1810, in the
face of opposition from Stein and others,60 Hardenberg backed off from
his demand for a national bank. But he insisted on the consolidation of
war debts into a single central account. Such a policy was necessary,
Hardenberg declared, ‘‘because we want not to perpetuate provincialism,
but rather to establish nationalism.’’61 This was among the earliest oc-
currences of the word ‘‘nationalism’’ in Hardenberg’s writings—or in-
deed, in the writings of any of the Prussian reformers. It is no accident
that the word first appeared in conjunction with a financial issue: the
link between finance and national spirit surfaced constantly in Harden-
berg’s letters and memoranda.
Hardenberg and his allies viewed the rationalization of Prussia’s econ-
omy and fiscal administration as intimately intertwined with the broader
project of national renewal. Hardenberg sought not just to consolidate
state power but, as Reinhart Koselleck notes, to ‘‘establish a common
national interest, in which the financial engagement and political partic-
ipation of all property owners would grow together.’’62 By eliminating
the social barriers that pitted the estates against each other and by found-
ing a new order based on rational, egalitarian principles, he hoped to
create a more productive and harmonious national community. His vision
of the ideal society owed much to the eighteenth-century philosophical
and economic theories discussed in the previous chapter. Hardenberg
moved beyond the agendas of Smith and Kant, however, in linking the
principles of Nationalökonomie to the project of forging ‘‘national spirit.’’
By establishing economic freedom and by abolishing the legal barriers
between the estates, he hoped to encourage a sense of unity and purpose
among the Prussian population. His goal, in other words, was not simply
to rationalize but also to mobilize civil society.

The legislative measures described above illustrate the tension between

egalitarian and hierarchical tendencies in the reform measures promul-
gated in Prussia during the Napoleonic era. Though the reformers
wanted to preserve Prussia’s three traditional estates (nobles, burghers,
and peasants) as formal categories, their legislation radically redefined
the legal status and function of each estate, transforming hereditary legal
statuses into predominantly functional distinctions: estate owner, urban
worker, agricultural worker. The reformers hoped to establish a sufficient
degree of legal equality to forge a unified civil society or, in Hardenberg’s
terminology, Staatsgesellschaft (‘‘society of the state’’). For Hardenberg
and the other leading reformers, economic and fiscal reform was a critical
prerequisite for national mobilization. A cohesive society, they believed,
 invoking the nation 63

would inevitably become a patriotic one. Yet these figures disagreed over
one fundamental problem: whether social cohesion would best be at-
tained through the establishment of full civil equality or through the
judicious preservation of certain traditional legal hierarchies.

A ‘‘Prussian’’ or a ‘‘German’’ Nation?

The Uses of Ambiguity
For all of the Prussian reformers’ enthusiasm about the prospects for a
national awakening, they studiously avoided one political question of
critical importance: was the nation Prussia or Germany? The bureaucratic
memoranda of the Napoleonic era were littered with the words national
spirit, national interest, national consciousness, and so forth. But these
memoranda rarely referred to the nation either as German or as Prussian.
They identified the nation as possessing a unified political interest and
will, but they steered clear of discussing the cultural, linguistic, or ethnic
roots of national community.
The idea of the Kulturnation was certainly not unfamiliar to the Prus-
sian reformers. Herder had insisted on the cultural foundations of
national identity in the 1770s.63 Likewise, Fichte’s famous lectures of
1807–1808, the Addresses to the German Nation, advocated a program of
national education that would forge a common culture and spirit of pa-
triotism among all Germans. In 1808, Wilhelm von Humboldt, who
would become the chief of the Section for Education and Religion in the
Prussian Ministry of the Interior the following year, declared:

I love Germany with my deepest soul, and there is mixed in my love even
a materialism which often makes feelings less pure and noble but therefore
only the more powerful. The misfortune of the age binds me still closer
to it, and since I am firmly convinced that precisely this misfortune should
be the motive for individuals to strive more courageously, to feel himself
more for all, so I should like to see whether the same feeling rules others
and to contribute to spreading it.64

For the most part, however, Prussia’s leading ministers preferred to

remain silent over whether the nation they had in mind was Prussia or
Germany. There were good reasons behind this choice. As these officials
were acutely aware, the Prussian state was an artificial construct, a patch-
work quilt of territories whose inhabitants possessed little sense of com-
mon identity or common purpose. By appealing to ‘‘German’’ patriotism,
they could tap into a more organic—and therefore potentially more com-
pelling—identity. Such diffuse appeals might also serve to mobilize res-
64 genesis

idents of other German states, as well as those of Prussia. To speak ex-

plicitly about mobilizing the German nation, however, was a highly
problematic strategy for Prussian government officials during the Na-
poleonic era, for two reasons. First, they would thereby exclude Prussia’s
Polish and Lithuanian territories, fostering internal division in Prussia
rather than unity of purpose. Second, such rhetoric might be viewed as
a potential threat to the independence of other German states. Prussian
leaders wanted to direct their energies toward fighting France not the
rest of Germany.
This dilemma encouraged the articulation of implicit, rather than ex-
plicit, connections between Prussia and a greater German identity. On
17 March 1813, for example, King Frederick William III issued from
Breslau a proclamation entitled ‘‘To My People.’’ This decree, intended
as a general call to arms against France, was addressed to the residents
of the various Prussian provinces:

Brandenburgers, Prussians, Silesians, Pomeranians, Lithuanians! You know

what you have suffered for the past seven years; you know what your
miserable fate will be, if we do not end the struggle that is now beginning
with honor. Remember the time of antiquity, the great Kurfürsten, the
great Frederick.

In the same decree, however, Frederick William embedded this Prussian

identity within a broader German one, referring to the high sacrifices
that would be demanded ‘‘if we don’t want to stop being Prussian and
German.’’ This parallel between Prussian and German identity is drawn
three times in the one-page proclamation.65
Another way to split the difference between Prussian and German
patriotism was to use the word ‘‘fatherland’’ (Vaterland) alongside the
word ‘‘nation.’’ A royal decree of 1813 required all Prussian men to wear
the black-and-white ribbon called the ‘‘national cockade’’ on their hats.
The reasoning behind this measure was ‘‘that the inspirational general
expression of true love of the fatherland [Vaterlandsliebe] demands an
outward sign on the part of all citizens [Staatsbürger].’’66 The fatherland
referred to here transcended the Prussian state but was not explicitly
German. Likewise, within a week of Frederick William III’s exhortation
to his subjects in March 1813, Princess Marianne of Prussia called on
the women of the realm to make donations of all kinds for the ‘‘rescue
of the fatherland.’’ Many women exchanged pieces of gold jewelry for
replacements made of iron, which were inscribed with the motto ‘‘I gave
gold for iron.’’ In 1814, the royal ironworks in Berlin produced more
than 40,000 pieces of iron jewelry as part of this campaign.67 Strikingly,
 invoking the nation 65

Princess Marianne’s proclamation points to the gendered character of this

era’s conception of national community. Women, though excluded from
active citizenship, were called upon to lend their support for the patriotic
effort. But women occupied a separate political sphere: it was apparently
deemed appropriate that a princess confine her patriotic appeals to other
women rather than addressing the populace at large. During the War of
Liberation of 1813–1814, thousands of Prussian women joined patriotic
associations with names such as the Vaterländische Frauenverein. These
associations, however, confined themselves largely to tasks such as sup-
porting the war effort and providing care for the poor and sick. Their
members made few direct appeals to participate in political decision mak-
ing. Thus, the question of female citizenship represented another fun-
damental silence in Prussian discourses about the nation.68
This absence of rhetoric about the cultural foundations of national
community was mirrored in the reformers’ political program. Apart from
a few early memoranda alluding to the ‘‘Polish question,’’ as well as the
Jewish emancipation decree of 1812,69 Prussia’s leading civil servants of
the Napoleonic era largely ignored the challenges of establishing ethnic
and cultural solidarity within the nation. For example, these early re-
formers, unlike later generations of nationalists, did not emphasize the
importance of establishing German as the sole language to be employed
in government and in the schools. They rarely addressed the question
of whether ethnic Poles could be citizens of the nation; likewise, they
paid little heed to the problem of whether Catholics could be full mem-
bers of the national community. (After 1815, with the integration of the
predominantly Catholic territories of the Rhineland into Prussia, the
status of the country’s Catholic minority took on more immediate im-
portance.) Not only did the bureaucratic reformers deemphasize the cul-
tural foundations of national community, they also generally avoided
specifying the territorial dimensions of the nation. Thus, for example,
they rarely insisted that the nation’s territories be contiguous, a standard
demand of later nationalists both in Germany and elsewhere. Only at the
conclusion of the War of Liberation did the leading reformers openly
discuss the territorial extent of the nation: at that point, Stein, Harden-
berg, and Humboldt all called for the creation of a closely bound German
confederation under joint Austrian-Prussian leadership.70 Thus, a strong
correlation existed between the reformers’ use of political concepts and
their practical political priorities. Before 1815, the bureaucratic nation-
alists’ main objective was to recover the autonomy of the Prussian state,
not to establish internal cultural uniformity or to absorb other regions
of German-speaking Europe.
66 genesis

Conclusion: Key Features of Bureaucratic Nationalism

This chapter has demonstrated how the interplay of cultural traditions
and material interests shaped the concept ‘‘nation’’ in Prussian bureau-
cratic discourse during the Napoleonic era. My phrase ‘‘bureaucratic na-
tionalism’’ must be understood as denoting an ideal type. In practice, a
wide range of political views existed within the Prussian civil service.
Nonetheless, this term is useful in calling attention to certain widespread
discursive tendencies. The reformers’ immediate strategic concern was to
stabilize the Prussian state—and to secure their own political authority—
by addressing the urgent fiscal crisis and legitimation crisis resulting
from the catastrophic defeat of 1806–1807. In formulating their response
to these challenges, Stein and Hardenberg drew on the logic articulated
by earlier figures, such as Frederick the Great in Prussia and Turgot in
France. The rationalization of the state and civil society, they argued,
would enhance the productivity of the populace, as well as help forge a
harmonious relationship between the monarch and his subjects.
While Stein and Hardenberg’s social vision represented the logical
conclusion of the enlightened absolutist tradition, their political reforms
broke decisively from the eighteenth-century Prussian model. Unlike
Frederick the Great, who had sought to monopolize political authority
by eliminating the power of Prussia’s traditional representative institu-
tions, the Prussian reformers came to believe that their state could be
saved only through the political mobilization of the nation. They hoped
to achieve this task both through the establishment of parliamentary
institutions and through the rationalization of civil society. In calling for
the eradication of ‘‘strife between estates,’’ Stein hoped to abolish the
disparity of interests that encouraged the various elements of the Prus-
sian population to focus on their private, corporate interests, rather than
on the common good. When Hardenberg convened an Assembly of No-
tables in Berlin in February 1811, he asked the delegates to reject ‘‘prej-
udices and egotism’’ and to ‘‘subordinate the particular interest to that
of the whole,’’ by helping the government execute his economic reform
decrees. The adoption of these principles, Hardenberg proclaimed, to-
gether with ‘‘cultivation’’ and ‘‘true religiosity,’’ would lead to the for-
mation of ‘‘one national spirit, one interest, and one sense [Sinn], on which
our well-being and our security can be firmly grounded.’’71 These prem-
ises of Prussian bureaucratic nationalism are schematized in table 3.1.
This table is intended as a rough heuristic device, which serves to
highlight the fractured and ambivalent nature of the concept ‘‘nation.’’
Prussia’s leading civil servants shared several common premises about
the nation, identified in the table as ‘‘consensual features.’’ These di-
 invoking the nation 67

3.1 The Concept ‘‘Nation’’ in Prussian Bureaucratic Discourse, 1807–1815

Consensual features Contested features

The nation is a harmonious community Can Jews be citizens?
possessing one unified interest and will.
The nation must possess a rational social Must the old corporate bodies (e.g.,
order. the aristocracy) be abolished?
The nation must be politically educated. Must all citizens be equal before the
law?
The nation’s interest is identical to the
king’s interest.

mensions of the concept ‘‘nation’’ were overdetermined, in that they re-

flected a variety of mutually reinforcing political and cultural influences,
each one of which was an independent source of the same idea. The
overdetermined character of the ideal of national unity and harmony
meant that it was expressed with great intensity and frequency in Prus-
sian bureaucratic discourse. Because this ideal had its origins in so many
disparate cultural traditions and because it answered the political chal-
lenges of the age, it came to be a deeply rooted element of what Foucault
terms the historical a priori. While a few scattered authors suggested a
more pluralistic vision of the national community, such a vision was a
distinctly minor presence in political debate.72 The emphasis on the im-
portance of political unanimity within the nation was certainly not
unique to Prussia. Numerous historians have pointed to the centrality of
this ideal in the French Revolution,73 as well as in nationalist movements
throughout the modern world. Yet, this ideological tendency may have
become especially pronounced in Napoleonic Prussia because of the con-
fluence of factors pointing in this direction.
While Prussian civil servants strongly emphasized the desirability of
social rationalization, popular education, and domestic political harmony,
other dimensions of the national community remained less well defined
in their writings. For example, they expressed conflicting views over the
proper degree of social equality within the nation: should the old cor-
porate bodies be abolished altogether or simply redefined according to
new principles? On the question of Jewish citizenship, they sought a
compromise solution.74
Just as important as the disagreements among the bureaucratic na-
tionalists were the ambiguities and shared silences. During the Napo-
leonic period, Prussia’s reform-minded civil servants avoided addressing
two political questions of monumental import: first, whether the nation
68 genesis

was Prussia or Germany; and second, how sovereign authority should

be distributed between the monarch and the nation. They sought to link
Prussia to Germany without explicitly supporting German national uni-
fication. This conceptual ambivalence was reflected in their political pro-
gram: just as the reformers refused to identify the nation as Germany,
they also devoted little effort to asserting the linguistic, religious, and
territorial unity of the national community. Stein and Hardenberg’s initial
plans for constitutional reform were similarly sketchy: they called for
the nation’s participation in politics without advocating any specific leg-
islative role for the new representative assemblies.
The next three chapters explore the evolution of the concept ‘‘nation’’
in Prussia during the fifteen years between 1806 and 1820. These chap-
ters show that the fundamental silences within bureaucratic nationalist
discourse proved impossible to sustain. Chapter 4 examines how Prussian
aristocrats appropriated the new nationalist rhetoric in order to defend
their traditional privileges. Chapter 5 analyzes the rhetoric of bourgeois
political activists who demanded German national unification. These in-
dividuals forced Prussian officials to abandon their efforts to equivocate
over whether the true nation was Prussia or Germany. Chapter 6 focuses
on a series of political controversies that highlighted the problem of
sovereignty. The heated conflicts between Prussian state officials and self-
proclaimed representatives of the ‘‘nation’’ began to call into question
the most basic claim of the reform movement: namely, that the will of
the king and his people were one and indivisible.
 II
the concept in play
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 Four

a nation of aristocrats

When King Frederick William III dismissed Freiherr Karl vom

Stein from office in November 1808, he approved his first min-
ister’s final wish for a decree reorganizing the Prussian administra-
tion. Stein hoped that the edict, which concentrated supreme admin-
istrative authority in a new Council of State (Staatsrat) and called for a
national representative assembly, would carry forward the reform move-
ment by instilling in the government the ‘‘greatest possible unity, force,
and responsiveness . . . and laying claim to the energies of the entire
nation and of the individual in the most practical and simple way.’’1 This
decree, issued on 24 November 1808 but never implemented, linked all
the elements of Stein’s great reform memoranda of the previous two
years. By establishing popular ‘‘participation in the administration,’’ it
sought to mold the nation and forge a common spirit, thus fortifying
and unifying the state. Through this plan Stein believed that ‘‘the cul-
tivation of the nation will be furthered, common spirit awakened, and
the entire conduct of business become simpler, more forceful, and less
costly.’’2
Yet how different were Stein’s words less than two years later! In June
1810, Hardenberg took office as Prussian state chancellor, unifying the
departments of finance and interior, which had been divided between
Stein’s immediate successors Altenstein and Dohna. In August and Sep-
tember of that year, Stein (living in exile in Prague to avoid an arrest
order of Napoleon’s) wrote two memoranda concerning Hardenberg’s
plans for financial reform. Incensed by the Brandenburg nobility’s re-
calcitrance toward the adoption of an income tax, Stein counseled Har-
denberg to pursue his reform plan whatever the resistance:

71
72 the concept in play

In Prussia one should pay little attention to opinion. Deep-rooted egotism,

incomplete cultivation [halbe Bildung], and licentiousness dominate here,
coupled with the northern callousness and crudeness. This barbarous pub-
lic opinion must be corrected through rigorous means, not confirmed in
its confusion through indulgence and deference.3

Stein’s anger intensified six weeks later, after he learned that the noble
opposition had led Hardenberg to suspend the new income tax in Bran-
denburg’s Kurmark:
Insubordination, indifference to the good of the whole, insolence in speech
and writing, and gross egotism have taken hold of all of the estates, es-
pecially the civil servants and the nobles. Discipline and obedience can
be reestablished only through rigorous measures.4

Only by resorting to the ‘‘maxims applied by Richelieu,’’ Stein declared,

could Hardenberg control a ‘‘disobedient, degenerate, scheming nation.’’
Among the measures Stein considered necessary were surveillance of
leading figures among the nobility and bureaucracy, ‘‘sudden dismissals
from service, arrests, exile to small towns where the prisoner will be
isolated and live under control.’’5
In the same letter, however, Stein argued that the maxims of Richelieu
must be supplemented by the enlightened methods of the Swiss educa-
tional reformer, Pestalozzi. Children must be schooled in a way that
would foster their ‘‘spontaneity of spirit . . . and nobler human feelings,’’
countering the tendency to lead a ‘‘hedonistic, self-seeking life.’’ Writers
must be subjected to a governmental ‘‘leadership of literature,’’ which
would ‘‘keep public opinion pure and strong.’’ Finally, the country must
be granted a ‘‘national representation,’’ which would contribute to the
formation of a ‘‘public and common spirit.’’6
Stein was not alone in praising the principle of political representation
but excoriating its practice. His collaborators Ludwig von Vincke and
Johann August Sack, both strong proponents of a constitution, also railed
against the selfishness of the Kurmark estates in 1810. The nobility of
the Kurmark, Sack complained, wanted to ‘‘immortalize all differences
between provinces and castes’’; it was willing to ‘‘move heaven and earth
in order to preserve itself in its ancient egotism.’’7 Another illuminating
example is that of Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel, director of the West
Prussian Landschaft and another of Stein’s advisers. Hippel argued in a
constitutional proposal of 1808 that it was unnecessary to resolve
whether the king had the right to veto legislation, because ‘‘in a state
such as ours, where the regent and the people have good intentions
toward each other,’’ the need for a veto would never arise. In September
 a na t i o n o f a r i s t o c r a t s 73

1811, he heralded the convocation of a ‘‘provisional national represen-

tation’’ as a measure ‘‘which will tighten the bond of mutual trust be-
tween king and people.’’8 By December 1812, however, after the new
assembly had spent eight months in session, he demanded ‘‘still narrower
limits’’ on its already tightly circumscribed jurisdiction because of ‘‘the
experience that the representatives are not what they are supposed to
be, and the concern that they will go even further in their oppositional
spirit against the government, which they manifest at every opportu-
nity.’’9
Between 1808 and 1815, Prussia’s rulers created a series of experi-
mental representative institutions, all of which were intended to harness
the energies of the nation and to forge a public spirit. As the complaints
by Stein and his associates attest, however, the ideals of national repre-
sentation and participation in the administration proved far more prob-
lematic in practice than anticipated by the bold memoranda of 1807–
1808. Rather than supporting the government’s reform initiatives, the
new representative assemblies aroused, in Altenstein’s expression, a ‘‘hy-
dra’’ of entrenched, inflexible interests.10 Yet the ideal of participatory
politics continued to exercise a powerful grip over the imaginations of
Prussian leaders despite the difficulties in its implementation.
Prussia’s rulers sought to use the ideas of nationhood and popular
representation in the service of the monarchy. Yet, once introduced into
Prussian political discourse, the concept ‘‘nation’’ proved capable of be-
ing manipulated by other groups with widely varying agendas. Oppo-
nents of social reform, including aristocrats and members of the urban
elites, used the idea of the nation in a rallying cry for the defense of the
traditional social order. The aristocratic nationalism of this era was
marked by a peculiar tension: Prussian nobles sought to defend their
private corporate interests by employing universalistic rhetoric that em-
phasized the national interest.
Although, to a great extent, this aristocratic rhetorical strategy proved
successful, it was not without cost. In the aftermath of the Napoleonic
era, Prussian nobles found it difficult to reassert their traditional claims
that a special contractual relationship existed between the nobility and
the crown.11 Moreover, by insisting on the political rights of the nation,
aristocratic activists made it more difficult to banish this concept from
Prussian political debate during the era of the Restoration after 1815.
Although the reform optimism of the Napoleonic period was followed
by decades of deep suspicion toward a politically active Volk, the ex-
periments in national politics during the reform period irrevocably trans-
formed the conceptual framework of Prussian political debate.
74 the concept in play

Learning to Speak Nationally

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Prussian aristocracy
confronted serious challenges to its social identity and prestige. Tradi-
tionally, the aristocracy had been defined as a warrior class, and in the
late eighteenth century, nobles had held a near monopoly over positions
in the Prussian officer corps. The military disasters of 1806–1807 hu-
miliated the leadership of the Prussian army, inspiring Scharnhorst and
Gneisenau’s plans for a citizen militia in which members of the bour-
geoisie would be free to serve as officers. In the countryside, fundamental
social and legal dislocations were undermining the nobility’s traditional
role as well. Beginning in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, a
wave of land speculation swept Prussia, resulting in numerous sales of
noble properties, especially in the eastern provinces. The increasing flu-
idity of estate ownership made it more difficult to sustain the plausibility
of one of the guiding principles of the old social order, namely, that the
noble was like the father of his serfs and that this role gave him both
absolute authority to rule his estate and the responsibility to care for
those in his charge.12 Legal reforms enacted during the Stein ministry,
such as the abolition of serfdom, added to the challenge of reasserting
the nobility’s traditional paternalistic role. Hardenberg’s plans went even
further, attacking the very principle of a social order based on estates.
Proclaiming the precept of equality before the law, he systematically
attacked the web of legal distinctions that defined the Prussian estates,
such as the monopoly rights of the guilds, the nobility’s tax exemptions
and rural administrative powers, and the peasantry’s compulsory labor
obligations.
All of these factors contributed to a deep legitimation crisis for the
Prussian nobility and other traditional social elites. Forced to justify the
legal privileges that were under assault by the reformers, members of
these groups experimented with various rhetorical strategies. Some of
them launched impassioned defenses of the preexisting ‘‘contracts’’ be-
tween the king and the estates, declaring that the government’s legal
innovations violated the traditional constitution of the realm. Others
adopted a more novel strategy, invoking the new concept of national
representation as a means of defending their old prerogatives. Like the
bureaucratic reformers, they identified the nation as an ideally harmo-
nious and unitary political community, but they appropriated the re-
formers’ political symbols and rhetoric for their own purposes.
During the Napoleonic era, the Prussian government established a
series of representative assemblies, initially for the purpose of raising
funds to pay the country’s war tribute to France. Between 1808 and 1810,
 a nation of aristocrats 75

during Stein’s ministry and the eighteen-month interim ministry of Al-

tenstein and Dohna, the government convened assemblies in three of the
four rump Prussian provinces—East Prussia, Pomerania, and Branden-
burg—and attempted unsuccessfully to establish a provincial diet in Si-
lesia. Altenstein and Dohna also experimented, with little success, with
Stein’s plan to select representatives to serve directly in the provincial
administrative departments.13 In 1811, Hardenberg called together an As-
sembly of Notables, whose members were appointed by the king. In
1812–1813, an elective Provisional National Representation (interimisti-
sche Nationalrepräsentation) met in Berlin, and it reconvened under a
different name in 1814–1815.
The story of how Prussian aristocrats manipulated these new experi-
mental parliamentary bodies has been ably told in previous historical
works. Reinhart Koselleck, for example, has demonstrated how nobles
used their dominant position in these assemblies to block many of Har-
denberg’s fiscal and administrative reforms.14 Likewise, Herbert Obenaus
has spoken of the emergence of ‘‘two reform movements’’ that were at
cross purposes with each other: ‘‘a ständisch one and a state one.’’15
Whereas the bureaucratic reformers viewed representative institutions as
a means of overcoming corporate allegiances, aristocrats saw these assem-
blies as vehicles for reasserting their particularistic interests against the
state’s totalizing claims. What has been less thoroughly analyzed by his-
torians, however, is how this aristocratic activism shaped the evolution
of the concept ‘‘nation’’ and how Prussian nobles’ use of this concept
affected their own self-understanding as a political interest group.
The aristocratic nationalism discussed in this chapter, like the bureau-
cratic nationalism analyzed in chapter 3, is an ideal type. In practice,
Prussian aristocrats expressed widely varying political views, reflecting
both geographic and social differences. For example, nobles from Bran-
denburg, one of the original provinces of the monarchy, defended the
traditional provincial constitution far more zealously than those from
Silesia, where Frederick the Great had dismantled the old provincial gov-
erning bodies after annexing this territory in 1740. In East Prussia, a
history of close trading relationships with England and Holland exposed
the social elites to Western economic ideas, stimulating the emergence of
what some scholars have termed ‘‘aristocratic liberalism.’’ Likewise, in
the Rhenish territories annexed by Prussia in 1815, nobles’ political
views were influenced by their close contact with France during the
revolutionary and Napoleonic eras, as well as by the Rhineland’s rela-
tively strong tradition of regional self-rule. (This chapter, which focuses
on political debates within the rump Prussian states of 1807–1815, ex-
cludes the Rhineland from consideration.)16 Differences in social and legal
76 the concept in play

status also affected aristocrats’ attitudes toward state authority and con-
stitutional reform. For example, members of the former imperial (reichs-
unmittelbare) nobility, who had previously owed allegiance to the Holy
Roman emperor alone, often took a more fiercely oppositional stance
toward the Prussian state than did the less elevated members of the
‘‘knights’’ (Ritterschaft) of Prussia’s core provinces, who had traditionally
played prominent roles in the military and state administration.17 Despite
the wide variations in the political views of Prussian aristocrats, it is
possible to identify certain broad lines of consensus and conflict within
their discourse, an essential step in tracing the evolution of the concept
‘‘nation’’ and the impact of this concept on Prussian political culture.

The German word Repräsentation possesses a double sense: it can mean

either Vertretung (advocacy) or Darstellung (portrayal). Traditionally, rep-
resentative institutions in Prussia had performed the first role: the estates
had been viewed not as public but as private corporations, which were
charged with upholding the preexisting fabric of privileges that defined
the social order. The members of these corporations chose delegates who
would most effectively advocate their own interests to the government.18
The Prussian reformers, on the other hand, sought delegates who were
representative of the population, who would portray the condition of
the realm. Such a portrayal would help identify problems that required
government action and also aid in identifying the most rational solution.
The reformers’ innovative theory of representation reflected the po-
litical theories of Enlightenment philosophers such as Rousseau, Kant,
and Svarez, all of whom held that the purpose of politics was to identify
and act on the ‘‘common interest’’ of the people. In The Social Contract,
Rousseau distinguished the common interest from ‘‘private interests.’’ To
determine the true ‘‘general will,’’ he argued, it is essential to prevent
participants in politics from expressing the interests of particular factions
or ‘‘partial associations.’’19 Similarly, Kant maintained that the original
civil constitution of society arose ‘‘from the general, united will of the
people.’’ Under despotic rule, Kant argued, the sovereign sought to en-
force ‘‘his own private will,’’ whereas the republican legislator made ‘‘his
laws as if they could have arisen out of the united will of an entire
people.’’20 The Prussian reformers concurred with these views: in the
new era, they declared, all citizens must look past their private interests,
devoting themselves solely to the common good.
Broadly speaking, Prussian aristocrats and members of other tradi-
tional elites had two rhetorical options in seeking to defend their priv-
ileges against encroachment by the Prussian ministry, first, to appeal to
tradition, reasserting the inviolability of their private rights, or second,
 a na t i o n o f a r i s t o c r a t s 77

to invoke the new political theories of their opponents, arguing that the
preservation of these rights, was essential to the national interest. During
the Napoleonic era, the protests of Prussia’s social elites reflected both of
these rhetorical strategies. After 1807, the estates’ demands for represen-
tation intensified, partly because their social position had been threat-
ened by the massive physical and economic damage from the French
invasion. In 1810, when Hardenberg further undermined their status
with radical social and economic reforms, these pleas ascended to a fever
pitch.
In December 1810, responding to the wave of protests unleashed by
the Finance Edict and the Gewerbesteueredikt, Hardenberg announced
that an Assembly of Notables would convene in Berlin the following
February. This assembly was to consist of sixty-four delegates to be ap-
pointed by the king, thirty of them noble estate owners. Hardenberg
hoped that this assembly would assist the government in implementing
his economic reforms. His announcement, however, provoked numerous
petitions from nobles and members of other estates that demanded mod-
ifications to the reform legislation and the expansion of representative
institutions.21 These petitions surrounding the formation of the Assembly
of Notables revealed a distinctive blend of traditional and innovative
rhetorical strategies.
Some Prussian aristocrats, above all those from the province of Bran-
denburg, sought to legitimate their cause by appealing to Prussia’s con-
stitutional traditions—even as they reinterpreted those traditions to suit
their own purposes. In January 1811, for example, thirteen prominent
nobles representing the estates of Brandenburg’s Kurmark petitioned the
king concerning Hardenberg’s economic decrees. They insisted that the
‘‘proper and constitutional path’’ for any financial or tax reforms was
through ‘‘consultation, negotiation, and contract with the estates, assem-
bled in a diet.’’ To bolster their claims, the nobles cited passages from
several royal proclamations of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
which confirmed the political rights and social privileges of the estates.
The king, they maintained, was contractually bound to these traditional
agreements:
This ständische constitution, founded on inviolably preserved contracts,
was the most precious bond between the sovereign and the nation; it gave
rise to the nation’s unshakable devotion, which in earlier times sustained
our state in the most dangerous crises.

Only by continuing to observe these established contracts would it be

possible to ‘‘secure the state credit, guarantee the durability and effect-
iveness of the new laws, and prevent the dangerous fluctuation of legal
78 the concept in play

provisions, which has so often brought about the overthrow of all state
constitutions.’’22
By equating the constitution with the traditional ‘‘contracts’’ between
the king and the estates, the Brandenburg nobility did more than simply
reassert its customary social privileges. Rather, it represented itself as an
equal partner in the governance of the realm. Strikingly, none of the
traditional documents cited by the petition justified such a bold formu-
lation of the estates’ legislative role. In the Recess of the Diet of 1653,
for example, the king had pledged that when important interests of the
country were at stake, he would ‘‘neither conclude nor undertake any-
thing without the foreknowledge and counsel of our loyal estates.’’ He
had not granted the estates a deciding vote, however, on any issue except
the formation of military alliances.23 Thus the petition did not just rear-
ticulate, but it significantly extended traditional assertions concerning
the political role of the estates.
Not only did this petition insist on political parity between the mon-
archy and the estates, it also refused to elevate the authority of the na-
tion above that of the individual provinces. In order to safeguard tra-
ditional rights, the petitioners requested that ‘‘if the formation of a na-
tional representation should entail changes in our provincial constitution
and ständischen rights, these changes should ensue only by way of the
contract with the estates of the Kurmark.’’24 The nobles of the Kurmark
displayed a cautious attitude toward the idea of national representation:
they seemed to regard it as a possible political benefit, but they were
unwilling to grant it any power superior to that of provincial institu-
tions.
The government responded to the petitioners’ display of constitutional
erudition with deeds rather than words. One of Hardenberg’s reforms of
October 1810 had eliminated the estates’ control over the provincial poor
relief funds (Landarmenkassen). Friedrich August Ludwig von der Mar-
witz, a tempestuous champion of traditional social privileges, who ad-
ministered the fund for the Kurmark estates, defied the chancellor’s order
to surrender its receipts to the government. Hence, on 13 February 1811,
when Marwitz was away, government agents forced the safe in which
this money was kept and removed the 25,000 talers it contained. The
estates of the Kurmark immediately protested this act of force, but the
government responded coldly. Several weeks later, a second episode oc-
curred that added to Marwitz’s outrage. Again during his absence, a
government official appeared on his estate and ordered the village mayor
to begin collecting taxes there, in accordance with the tax laws of Oc-
tober 1810. Insulted by these two challenges to traditional noble prerog-
 a na t i o n o f a r i s t o c r a t s 79

atives, Marwitz composed a lengthy plea to the king denouncing the

arbitrariness of Hardenberg’s measures.25
This remonstrance, which was signed by twenty-two nobles from the
Kurmark counties Lebus, Beeskow, and Storkow and sent to the king on
10 June 1811, rejected the most basic premises of the reform movement.26
Marwitz returned to a more traditional political metaphor: the Prussian
state, he argued, had formerly been ‘‘like a great family, in which the
father enjoyed the utmost trust of all family members, and in which
everyone strove to establish the prosperity of the house.’’ Hardenberg’s
methods, however, threatened to turn Prussia into ‘‘an Indian plantation,
where the slaves are forced to work.’’27 The metaphor portraying the
king as the father of the realm was a venerable one in Prussian politics.
In Marwitz’s petition, it served two purposes, first, to emphasize the
king’s obligations to his subjects, and second, to legitimate other patri-
archal hierarchies, such as the one between nobles and their peasants.28
Marwitz attacked the government’s abrogation of ‘‘the most sacred con-
tracts’’ with the estates, and he scorned its promise to establish a national
representation because

the issue is not having a representation under any circumstances, but

rather having a lawful one.
A representation which is given is none at all, because just as it is
given, so can it be taken away again, and no one will believe himself to
be represented through it.

The petition warned that ‘‘calamity and ruin’’ would result from the
‘‘introduction of the alien principles of arbitrariness and force’’ in Prus-
sia. Hardenberg’s legislation would contribute toward the ‘‘leveling of all
estates.’’ Marwitz reserved particular vitriol for Jews, who under the
new laws were permitted to purchase estates. Depicting them as ‘‘the
necessary enemies of every existing state,’’ he claimed that they would
soon buy up all the land. As estate owners, Jews would then become
‘‘the principal representatives of the state, and so our venerable old
Brandenburg-Prussia will become a newfangled Jew state.’’29
It is not surprising that Hardenberg took offense at this petition,
though it is hard to say which upset him more: its inflammatory tone or
its pessimistic observations about the chancellor’s proposals for popular
representation. In a report to the king of 23 June, Hardenberg observed
that if the petition’s constitutional claims were accepted, ‘‘then practi-
cally everything that has been done by the glorious rulers of Prussia
since the Great Elector would be invalid.’’30 Calling the petition a grave
affront to royal authority, he recommended jailing Marwitz, along with
80 the concept in play

Friedrich Ludwig Karl Finck von Finckenstein, whose name appeared at

the top of the list of signatures on the document. The following day, the
king accepted Hardenberg’s recommendation, and the two nobles spent
the next five weeks under guard in the fortress of Spandau. Perhaps
more striking than Hardenberg’s response was that of the other Kurmark
nobles, who made only halfhearted attempts to secure the release of
Marwitz and Finckenstein from prison. In the view of many Brandenburg
aristocrats, Marwitz’s position was too extreme for the current age: most
nobles no longer supported the indiscriminate defense of all traditional
privileges.31
Such skirmishes with royal authority occurred elsewhere in the Prus-
sian provinces as well. In East Prussia, for example, the estates of Tapiau
County complained that Hardenberg’s legislation violated the ‘‘constitu-
tion’’ of the state. ‘‘[W]ith the stroke of a pen,’’ they declared, ‘‘the
welfare of thousands of families is destroyed,’’ and if the Finance Edict
were implemented, ‘‘nine out of ten of the present estate owners will
become beggars.’’ The assembly of Sehesten County, also in East Prussia,
resolved to suspend collecting any taxes under the new law until the
king justified the need for these extraordinary demands. Hardenberg,
acting in keeping with Stein’s advice to apply the ‘‘maxims of Richelieu,’’
retaliated by jailing two leaders of this disobedient group of nobles for
more than a month.32
Alongside such appeals to the authority of Prussia’s constitutional tra-
dition, which earned harsh rebukes from the government, some aristo-
crats began to develop an innovative rhetorical strategy that embraced
the principle of national representation. This strategy was evident in
petitions composed by the Committee of East Prussian and Lithuanian
Estates, which spearheaded a massive wave of East Prussian protests
against Hardenberg’s reforms in 1811. This committee, established in
1808, consisted initially of four nobles and one non-noble landowner;
later it was expanded to include representatives of the towns as well.
On 9 January 1811, the committee wrote to the king declaring its dis-
appointment with the proclamations of the autumn of 1810:

The new legislation, from which we expected deliverance and salvation,

has increased our misfortune and brought us more quickly to ruin. The
first pillar of the state, the sanctity of law [Recht], is demolished; as rights
[Rechte] whose maintenance was sworn by our kings, whose protection
was promised by our laws, have been annihilated with the stroke of a
pen.33

Like the nobles of Brandenburg’s Kurmark, the East Prussians associated

the welfare of the state with the preservation of traditional rights. By
 a na t i o n o f a r i s t o c r a t s 81

abolishing these rights, they implied, the state risked its own destruc-
tion.
In the view of the East Prussians, however, the best defense of these
old rights lay in the formation of new representative institutions:

[U]rgent is the wish that Your Royal Majesty may deign to convoke a
General Diet, granting admission to deputies from all estates and prov-
inces, who will be trustingly elected by the nation itself. Through the
union of a regent, acting as the father of the land, and a faithful nation,
much good could happen and the unfortunate state could perhaps be
helped.34

Here the East Prussians parted company from the Kurmark nobles by
arguing that the status of the national representation should exceed that
of any individual province or estate. The deputies of the Kurmark in-
sisted that no national representation be created except with their own
approval, thus arrogating to the provincial nobility a political authority
equal to that of the nation. The East Prussian petition, in contrast, de-
manded that deputies ‘‘from all estates and provinces’’ be elected to serve
in a general diet. Not only did the authors include all of the estates in
the nation, but they also implied that the nation was a higher political
entity than any of its geographical or social components. In effect, the
East Prussians aimed to forestall the potential criticism that they were
egotistically defending the rights of the provincial nobility by appealing
to the common good of the nation. Their petition established a model
for aristocratic protest rhetoric that would be refined in subsequent
years.
The nobility was not alone in demanding recognition of its political
rights; the other estates joined the fray as well. Representatives of the
municipalities, like the nobles, sought the restoration of the traditional
legal order. During the winter of 1810–1811, the cities (primarily those
of Silesia and East Prussia) protested vehemently against the Gewerbe-
steueredikt of November 1810, which abolished the monopoly rights of
the guilds and made the payment of an annual ‘‘tax on occupations’’ the
sole condition for the practice of most trades. In the Silesian city of
Glogau, the shoemakers, bakers, and butchers refused to obey the new
regulations. In Breslau, the elders of various guilds staged a boisterous
protest against the edict in front of the city hall, with the support of the
local merchants’ association. The city councils of both Breslau and Kö-
nigsberg petitioned the king for the repeal of this law. In the words of
the Breslau council, the abolition of the guilds’ rights (Gerechtigkeiten)
had led to ‘‘desperation’’ and ‘‘disruption in our community.’’ The king
himself, they observed, had confirmed these rights upon his accession
82 the concept in play

to the throne in 1797; and in ‘‘the eyes of the public,’’ they were so
inviolable ‘‘that the maxim became generally established among our cit-
izens: The house can burn down and be destroyed, but never the Ge-
rechtigkeit.’’ If the government insisted on abolishing these rights, it
would have to pay ‘‘full compensation’’ to the guilds: ‘‘Only in this way
is it possible to avert the ruin of our community.’’ Likewise, in the As-
sembly of Notables in Berlin, the deputy from Königsberg declared that
the Gewerbesteueredikt would lead to the ‘‘complete downfall of the cit-
ies’’ and that members of the guilds must be compensated for any loss
of rights.35
But the government displayed less indulgence toward the cities’ pro-
tests than toward those of the nobility (the imprisonment of Marwitz
and Finckenstein notwithstanding). The ministry rejected the guilds’ de-
mands for compensation; it instructed district authorities to take a firm
hand against craftsmen who refused to pay the occupation tax; and it
even banned an association that had been formed to lobby against the
new trade legislation.36 Though Hardenberg backpedaled from his initial
plans to abolish aristocratic privileges, he remained steadfast in his in-
sistence on urban economic reform.
Historians have identified several reasons why Hardenberg was more
responsive to aristocratic protests than to the complaints of the munici-
palities. For example, he was convinced of the efficiency of large-estate
agriculture, while he considered guild craft production outmoded. More-
over, unlike the leaders of the guilds, Prussian nobles had close personal
ties at court, and they exercised influence as guarantors of the state
debt.37 The analysis here, however, suggests a further reason for this
striking phenomenon: the municipal representatives may have failed to
persuade Hardenberg of the justice of their cause in part because they
failed to invoke the new principle of the national interest. Their una-
pologetic defense of traditional corporate privileges exposed them to the
fatal accusation of egotism.
Hardenberg initially envisioned the purpose of national representation
in highly restrictive terms. Indeed, he declared that the main goal of
convening the Assembly of Notables in 1811 was ‘‘to explain the internal
coherence of the measures taken,’’38 rather than to deliberate over how
his reform legislation might be improved. As one historian has observed,
Hardenberg initially believed that the representatives should serve ‘‘less
as spokesmen toward above than as a mouthpiece toward below.’’39 None-
theless, he proved responsive to complaints, particularly when they were
framed in public-spirited rather than in egotistical terms. The next sec-
tion explores how representatives of the Prussian estates came to master
 a nation of aristocrats 83

the new idiom of nationalist political rhetoric during the early years of
Hardenberg’s ministry.

The Politics of Privilege, 1811–1815

In an edict of 7 September 1811, Frederick William III announced his
intention to create a ‘‘general commission for the regulation of provincial
and communal war debts,’’ whose members would ‘‘also, for the time
being, constitute the national representation.’’40 Through the wording of
this edict, the king and his ministers displayed once again their ambiv-
alence toward popular political participation. While declaring their al-
legiance to the principle of national representation, they were careful to
limit its purview to the narrow context of supervising government debt.
Government leaders sought always to contain the activity of these as-
semblies within predetermined boundaries: to involve the people in pol-
itics without undermining monarchical authority. Yet the new assemblies
chafed at these restrictions. Created for the purpose of representing the
nation, they considered themselves entitled to deliberate freely concern-
ing all political matters of national import.
In the Provisional National Representation (interimistische National-
repräsentation), which gathered in Berlin in April 1812, the incompati-
bility of these two visions of political participation became painfully
apparent. The earlier representative institutions of the reform period had
been either provincial ones or, in the case of the Assembly of Notables,
composed of delegates appointed by the crown to carry out a clearly
restricted mandate. The new assembly (though containing only forty-
two members) was an elected one and a national representation in name.
Its members hoped to play a vital role in Prussian politics, and when
their hopes were disappointed, they expressed anger and bitterness at
Hardenberg’s regime.
The Provisional National Representation remained in session for ten
months, from April 1812 until February 1813, when it was suspended
because of the outbreak of war with France. In February 1814, it recon-
vened under a new name, the Provisional Representation of the Land
(interimistische Landesrepräsentation). The second session lasted until July
1815, when the king disbanded the assembly, announcing his intention
to establish a permanent one in its place. The session of 1812–1813 was
particularly eventful; major legislative battles over several issues sparked
vehement debates over the character and political role of the nation.
During these disputes, much of the hesitation about national represen-
tation that had characterized the petitions of 1811 fell away. Deputies of
84 the concept in play

all estates and all provinces called for a constitution guaranteeing na-
tional representation. Yet their vision of the nation as a union of the
traditional estates had little in common with Hardenberg’s political pro-
gram.
Though the government had announced its plan to convene a Provi-
sional National Representation in September 1811, it waited until the
following February to make public details about its organization and to
provide instructions to the district administrative departments concern-
ing the election of deputies. Like the Assembly of Notables, the new
institution consisted of a single chamber, with delegates drawn from each
of the three estates. Eighteen of the forty-two representatives were noble
owners of landed estates; the other twenty-four came from the peasantry
and the municipalities.41 Only landowners were permitted to serve as
deputies, even from the municipalities. As in the previous assemblies,
the representatives were supposed to serve as individuals rather than as
advocates for their particular estate. Additionally, the local authorities
who supervised the elections were instructed to ensure ‘‘that only irre-
proachable, insightful, . . . unprejudiced men whose faithful devotion to
the royal house and their fatherland is unquestionable’’ be elected.42
The ministry’s extensive prescripts about the procedures for electing
representatives contrasted with its almost total lack of attention to the
substantive issues that the assembly would discuss. When the assembly
met for its first session on 10 April 1812, its responsibilities and rules of
procedure remained completely undefined. No one had even prepared an
order of business, the most elementary requirement for beginning delib-
erations. In the absence of any direction from above, members of the
assembly began preparing their own legislative proposals, calling for the
introduction of a national paper currency, the establishment of a national
bank, and so forth. They also asked Hardenberg for the right to delib-
erate over one of his own financial plans: a tax on income and capital
assets. The chancellor agreed to show them the draft of this law and
permitted them to discuss it, but then, on 24 May, he submitted the law
to be signed by the king without having received the assembly’s opin-
ion.43
The representatives, unhappy from the beginning about the lack of
clarity concerning their position, took this legislative fiat as an affront
to their dignity and clamored for the clarification of their responsibilities.
On 2 June, Justice Commissioner Bock, the representative of the Lithu-
anian towns, delivered a bombastic speech to the assembly in which he
called on the king to establish a ‘‘formal constitution’’ as soon as possible.
The government, he argued, should be required to inform the Provisional
National Representation in writing of all legislative proposals, and the
 a nation of aristocrats 85

assembly must be permitted to vote on and to modify laws, including

measures involving taxation and government spending. Bock scoffed at
the suggestion

that the representation of the nation could be disadvantageous for our

beloved monarch, or perhaps for the honored men who should take, and
will take, the rudder of our ship of state, which remains on stormy waves,
amidst reefs, sand banks, and sharks.

No one in Prussia, he declared, desired the ‘‘exchange of the throne’’;

on the contrary, everyone ‘‘will gladly sacrifice treasure and blood to see
the happiness of the whole of the nation, and in it the royal house of
the Hohenzollerns.’’44
The assembly as a whole took a less adamant line than Bock; none-
theless, on 4 June it resolved, with only one dissenting vote, to petition
Hardenberg about the constitution. Describing themselves as ‘‘elected by
the nation,’’ the representatives pointed out that

through us, the bond between the monarch and the nation, as well as
between the individual provinces, is supposed to become more tightly
woven; therefore, everything depends upon our retaining the lasting trust
of the nation. This can only fully be the case, however, if our associates
know the exact relationship in which the National Representation will
come to stand to the monarch, and to his administration.

To remedy the current situation, they asked Hardenberg to publish a

brief notice confirming the king’s ‘‘definitive’’ plan to grant a constitu-
tion, promising to make the details of it ‘‘generally known.’’45
At the time of this petition, Hardenberg had been in Dresden with
the king for a meeting with Napoleon. He saw little urgency in answering
the assembly’s request, and the representatives received only an indirect
response. In late May, one of the delegates had written to Hardenberg
asking him to clarify the assembly’s rules of procedure. On 6 June, the
chancellor replied that for the time being, the form of the assembly’s
deliberations was ‘‘quite inconsequential.’’ The king, he observed, had
no intention of giving up either the right of legislative initiative or the
right to ratify the laws. The assembly’s role extended ‘‘only to consul-
tation over matters that are submitted to it for consideration.’’ More
specific stipulations concerning the organization of the assembly, he
promised, would be provided soon.46
Not surprisingly, the representatives took Hardenberg’s brusque re-
sponse as an insult. On 23 June, two delegates moved that the assembly
refuse to consider any additional legislative proposals until the govern-
ment had clarified its status and powers. The ministry, they charged, had
86 the concept in play

given the assembly ‘‘no firm goal’’; the representatives were ‘‘consulted
today, ignored tomorrow, so their responsibility has no boundaries and
their effort no use.’’ Rather than performing an honorable service, the
delegates risked becoming ‘‘laughing-stock’’ by appearing to be ‘‘a ma-
chine employed for amusement’’ by the government.47 The following day,
the assembly repeated its earlier petition to Hardenberg, complaining of
the ‘‘uncertain position . . . in which we still find ourselves as the rep-
resentatives [of our fellow citizens].’’48
This time Hardenberg’s reply was even frostier. ‘‘The members of the
various estates,’’ he observed, who were currently meeting as the ‘‘Gen-
eral Commission for the Regulation of Provincial and Communal War
Debts,’’ only constituted a ‘‘preliminary’’ national representation. Only
after the commission’s dissolution, he declared, would the government
take further steps toward clarifying this matter.49 The administration did,
however, adopt one of the assembly’s recommendations. In August 1812,
the king named Count Friedrich August Burchard von Hardenberg, a
Silesian estate owner who was both a relative of the chancellor and a
respected delegate, as ‘‘a commissioner, who for the time being will take
the presidency’’ of the assembly.50 Additionally, the king had issued an
order that sought to clarify the legal status of the representatives. ‘‘The
members of the commission,’’ he declared, ‘‘although they are initially
to be viewed as the proxies [Stellvertreter] and spokesmen of their elec-
tors, they are not permitted to make decisions on the basis of instructions
[from their constituents].’’ The delegates were responsible ‘‘not to the
province and the community that elected them, but rather to me and to
the entire state.’’51
Just a month later, the controversy over the assembly’s status erupted
again, with the enactment of the Gendarmerie Edict. This decree, which
mandated radical changes in local administration, was published in Au-
gust 1812, several weeks after being signed into law on 30 July, without
the slightest advance notice to the representatives. The edict divided
Prussia into new administrative districts; within these districts it estab-
lished 164 counties, according to size and population, with no regard for
the traditional boundaries. Except for the seven largest cities, which
formed individual administrative units, the municipalities were included
in the new counties. In place of the traditional county assembly (Kreis-
tag), in which the nobles dominated, the law mandated the creation of
a new representative institution with equal representation for the towns,
estate owners, and the peasantry. Likewise, the Landrat, an official
elected by the Kreistag, was to be replaced by a county director ap-
pointed by the crown, and the nobles’ patrimonial courts were to be
abolished in favor of centrally administered county courts.52
 a nation of aristocrats 87

The national representatives, especially those from the nobility, were

incensed both by the content of the new law and by the dictatorial
method of its enactment. The noble delegate Gerlach declared, ‘‘Through
the new constitution, the last remnant of political freedom is de-
stroyed.’’53 Another noble, Sanden, protested primarily on procedural
grounds. ‘‘The state has formally committed itself to give the nation an
appropriate representation,’’ he argued; thus the assembly must be per-
mitted to deliberate on the new law and to propose modifications.54 The
representative from Breslau, Lange, concurred: ‘‘Either our advice and
judgment are considered to be of value or they are not; if of value, they
should be made use of; if of no value, it must be demonstrated why
not.’’55
On 26 September, the assembly sent a detailed memorandum to Har-
denberg that protested the provisions of the Gendarmerie Edict.56 Six
weeks later, still having received no satisfactory response, the represen-
tatives finally resolved to petition the king directly, this time asking for
a constitution. The representatives argued that if they were to prove
themselves ‘‘worthy of the trust of Your Royal Majesty and of the na-
tion,’’ their authority and their relationship to the administration needed
to be clarified. In a petition sent on 28 November 1812, they noted that
the king had ‘‘wisely and generously’’ promised

to give our fatherland a constitution founded on representation. May Your

Royal Majesty therefore deign to take the requested step toward the fur-
ther execution of the initiated work, a work which will unite the interest
of the regent and the nation even more intimately, and which will elevate
the credit of the state and give the laws stability and duration.57

The debates of 1812 represent a fascinating moment in Prussian his-

tory: representatives from all estates and all provinces appeared to agree
on a basic political agenda. Though bourgeois and noble delegates dis-
agreed over certain substantive policy issues, such as whether aristocrats
should retain their patrimonial police and justice powers over their es-
tates,58 a strong majority of both groups favored the adoption of a con-
stitution providing for national representation. In November 1812, for
example, the assembly voted by an 18–12 margin to petition the king
for a constitution. Seven of the twelve dissenters were nonaristocratic
delegates, six of them from the Bauernstand. The assembly selected a
committee composed of three nobles—Quast, Bredow, and Burgsdorf—
to draft the petition.59 Strikingly, in 1815, Burgsdorf would be one of
the most outspoken opponents of the assembly’s resolution, which passed
by a vote of 22–13, to send another similar petition to the king. By that
time, he had come to believe that the difficult work of a ‘‘state consti-
88 the concept in play

tution’’ (Staatsverfassung) needed to be ‘‘prepared’’ through the devel-

opment of provincial constitutions.60 A number of other delegates also
voted against the 1815 petition, despite their support for a constitution,
because they believed that the decision to grant one was solely a royal
prerogative.61
Even the nobles of Brandenburg’s Kurmark, who had earlier expressed
deep reservations about national representation, were nearly unanimous
in their support for such an assembly. One of the delegates from the
Kurmark, Otto Christoph Leopold von Quast-Garz, proclaimed enthusi-
astically in February 1812 that a national representative assembly would
contribute to ‘‘the most forceful and beautiful animation of the national
spirit.’’62 Marwitz, though a steadfast opponent of Hardenberg’s social
reforms, embraced the idea of national unification. In the summer of 1806
(several months before the French attack on Prussia), he had proposed a
patriotic war against Napoleon.63 In September 1814, after France had
been defeated, he wrote to Hardenberg proposing the establishment of a
‘‘common German fatherland’’ under Prussian leadership.64 Though Mar-
witz largely equated the nation with the nobility, the idea of a nationally
united aristocracy was a new one. According to traditional theory, the
nobility was a particularistic institution rooted in provincial law.65 This
effervescent patriotism proved short-lived: less than a decade later, most
Kurmark nobles would again vehemently reject the idea of a politically
active nation.
Strikingly, the representatives from the peasantry appear to have dis-
played less vocal support for a constitution than did the nobility. This
did not hold true, however, for the municipal delegates. Representatives
such as Bock (from Lithuania) and Elsner (from Silesia) presented bold
calls for constitutional government and legal equality. The Stadtrat Po-
selger, the West Prussian representative from Elbing, was virtually the
only delegate from any estate who explicitly demanded that the assembly
be given a deciding vote over some legislative matters. He also noted
that because ‘‘monarchical power would be restricted in certain cases
through the conferring of this authority,’’ it could be granted only by
the direct decision of the king.66
The boldness of these municipal delegates may have resulted less from
their bourgeois economic interests than from the enactment of the Städte-
ordnung four years earlier. This law granted the Prussian towns extensive
rights of self-government. The delegates from the municipalities,
therefore, were the only members of the assembly with practical gov-
erning experience. Thus, they may have viewed local self-rule as an
example for the entire realm. This experience, however, had not trans-
formed them into radical republicans. Even Poselger asked for limits on
 a nation of aristocrats 89

monarchical power only ‘‘in certain cases.’’ Bock, who maintained that
the assembly itself had the right to draft a constitution, argued that its
goal should be to ‘‘secure the monarch and the people, and to forever
banish and restrain every conflict between His servants.’’67 Only if the
national representation were given an ‘‘adequate’’ constitution, he
claimed, could it serve as ‘‘the mainstay of the throne of the House of
the Hohenzollerns, and of the united Prussian people’’68
The above words of the delegate Bock illustrate a striking tendency
of Prussian oppositional rhetoric during the reform period. Bock sug-
gested that the future national representation should serve as the ‘‘main-
stay of the throne . . . and of the united Prussian people.’’ Similarly, the
assembly’s petition of 28 November 1812 claimed that a constitution
would ‘‘unite the interest of the regent and the nation.’’ Both of these
passages portrayed the nation (or the Volk) as possessing a unanimous
and harmonious will; more significantly, both of them drew a parallel
between the political authority of the king and that of the people. To
declare allegiance to both the monarch and the nation was to raise the
question: did the king stand above the nation, or vice versa? And whose
will should prevail in the event of a conflict between the two? Prussian
proponents of a constitution consistently avoided taking a stand on this
issue, in part because they viewed the political process as ideally har-
monious, rather than contestatory. Yet as popular political participation
moved from the realm of theory to that of practice, this question became
increasingly unavoidable.

The Intensification of Aristocratic Nationalism during

the War of Liberation
With Napoleon’s army in retreat from Moscow in December 1812, Gen-
eral Yorck von Wartenburg switched the Prussian troops under his com-
mand from the French to the Russian side. In response, King Frederick
William III stripped the general of his command and ordered his imme-
diate arrest. Nonetheless, by mid–January, Hardenberg also had con-
cluded that the time had come to change sides in the war. On 22 January,
the king moved away from the French garrison that occupied Berlin and
established his court in Breslau.
The War of Liberation of 1813–1814 raised the temperature of political
discourse in Prussia. Now, the nation stood united not against a usurping
bureaucracy but against a foreign enemy. Prussians boldly proclaimed
their loyalty to king and fatherland. And the king, recalling the ardent
patriotism of the French revolutionaries, began to become nervous at
their enthusiasm.
90 the concept in play

Upon learning of the king’s decision to move his court to Breslau, the
bourgeois delegate Elsner proposed that the representative assembly
move with him. The ‘‘pure preservation of the concept of monarchy,’’
he argued, required ‘‘the inseparability of the monarch and the national
representation.’’69 Other delegates, such as Quast, disagreed: the spectacle
of forty-two representatives joining the king’s retinue, he said, ‘‘would
undoubtedly create a sensation which might not be useful.’’70 Two days
later, the king decided the matter for them, ordering that the assembly
remain in Berlin under the direction of a government commission.71 The
delegates had to content themselves with composing, on 13 February, an
‘‘Appeal to Our Fellow Citizens,’’ which declared, ‘‘The fatherland is in
danger!’’ It called for popular sacrifice in support of the military effort:

Joyfully will the youths and the able-bodied men of the nation follow
[the king’s] call, which has been longed for. Märker and Silesians, Pom-
eranians and Prussians, united through the common bond of loyalty for
the king and the national honor, will vie with each other in streaming to
the colors. With the war–cry ‘‘Frederick William’’ and ‘‘Prussian father-
land,’’ they will defy every danger.72

The following day, the king ordered the Provisional National Represen-
tation to adjourn but kept a small group of delegates in session for pos-
sible wartime consultations. In a letter accompanying these instructions,
Hardenberg added: ‘‘I hope that a less stormy time than the present one
will soon allow us to organize definitively a national representation,
which will correspond to the wishes of all estates.’’73
In March 1813, Frederick William III formally agreed to join a cam-
paign with Russia for the liberation of Europe. On 17 March, he issued
a proclamation calling on his soldiers to ‘‘fight for the independence and
the honor of the Volk.’’ Every ‘‘son of the fatherland,’’ he declared, must
participate ‘‘in this battle for honor and freedom. . . . My cause is the
cause of my Volk, and of all well-intentioned Europeans.’’74 In April, the
offensive began, with the Prussian and Russian armies backed by a
Swedish force in the north and by British naval and economic power in
the west. Austria entered the war on the allied side in August. Metter-
nich secured the cooperation of most of the major middle-sized German
states, including Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden, and Hesse-Darmstadt, be-
tween October and December 1813. The decisive allied victory came at
the battle of Leipzig on 16–18 October 1813. The French lost 38,000
troops in combat and another 30,000 who were taken prisoner, and they
were forced to withdraw from the field. By early November, Napoleon’s
troops had retreated across the Rhine, and on 31 March 1814, the vic-
torious allied monarchs entered Paris. Except for a brief final act the
 a nation of aristocrats 91

following year, when the captured French emperor escaped from the
island of Elba and mounted a last military assault at Waterloo in June
1815, the Napoleonic era was over.75
On 17 November 1813, after the French army had been expelled from
German soil, King Frederick William III sent a cabinet order from
Frankfurt-am-Main that ordered the Prussian representative assembly to
reconvene for a second session. Despite the enthusiasm he had exhibited
for ‘‘the cause of my Volk’’ in his proclamation eight months before, he
insisted that the new assembly operate under even tighter government
control than the first. Its deliberations were to be supervised by a four-
member royal commission, and it would be authorized to discuss only
two issues: proposals for the ‘‘preservation of landowners’’ and the ‘‘ap-
propriate equalization of the burdens of war.’’76 Unlike the first assembly,
the new one was permitted to publish the results of its deliberations.
Only two numbers of this publication would appear, however, in part
because some of the delegates had begun to worry about the ‘‘inflamed’’
emotions of the public.77
The assembly gathered for the first time on 21 February 1814. An
episode from this meeting illustrates just how sensitive the issue of rep-
resentation had become for the king. The royal commission, in its report
on the session, used the name ‘‘National Assembly’’ (National-
Versammlung) several times. It also reported that the delegates twice
broke into a spontaneous cheer:
Hail and blessing to our worthy and righteous nation!
Hail and blessing to our good, worthy, and just king!78

Two weeks later, Frederick William sent a curt message back from his
headquarters at Chaumont, indicating that ‘‘under no circumstances’’ did
he want the institution called a ‘‘National Assembly’’ (a name that evoked
frightening memories of the French Revolution). The king knew that the
revolution of 1789 in France had begun with salutations to the king and
to the nation. He recognized that the delegates, through their words of
praise for both him and for the nation, were helping establish the nation
as a potential rival to his own sovereign authority. In response to this
order, the royal commission renamed the assembly the Provisional Rep-
resentation of the Land (interimistische Landesrepräsentation), a title that
carried no such fearful connotations.79
Despite the tight rein on the assembly’s deliberations in 1814–1815,
frictions between government and representatives still occurred. On 16
February 1814 (five days before the second session officially opened), the
delegates sent a petition to Hardenberg asking that the implementation
of the Gendarmerie Edict be deferred until the ‘‘general peace,’’ in order
92 the concept in play

that a representative assembly could deliberate over its provisions.80 This

request, in conjunction with a series of petitions from East Prussia, per-
suaded Frederick William to suspend the law indefinitely in March 1814,
even though the king criticized the East Prussians for their protests.81
The constitutional question also continued to resurface in the repre-
sentatives’ deliberations. The topic emerged repeatedly during the de-
bates of 1814; and in April 1815, the assembly resolved by a large ma-
jority to address another petition to Hardenberg, asking once again for
a constitution and thus the fulfillment of the king’s two previous prom-
ises to grant a national representation (in the edicts of 27 October 1810
and 7 September 1811). A constitution, the delegates claimed, would
secure ‘‘true civil freedom and all purposes of the social union,’’ thus
contributing to the king’s own glory. Although the representatives pro-
fessed to believe that the state intended to grant a constitution soon on
its own initiative, they still considered it their duty to ask, ‘‘in the name
of the nation,’’ for the ‘‘acceleration of that great work, which has been
yearned for so long and so universally.’’ The new ‘‘representation of the
land,’’ they wrote, should be ‘‘organically joined’’ to a ‘‘constitution of
the provinces, to be based on appropriate representation of all classes of
citizens [Staatsbürger].’’ Such a constitution, they declared, would en-
hance the ‘‘unshakable loyalty’’ of the traditional Prussian provinces ‘‘for
the cherished king, for the inexpressibly beloved fatherland.’’ It would
also offer ‘‘a principle of vitality and cultivation [Bildung]’’ for the newly
acquired lands (the Rhine territories and part of Saxony). In this way,
the new provinces would not simply be annexed by Prussia but rather
united into ‘‘one true great family.’’82
As this petition illustrates, the liberalization of aristocratic rhetoric
during the reform period had definite limits. The noble delegates (as well
as those of the other traditional estates) adopted some of the concepts
associated with reform, such as ‘‘citizen’’ (Staatsbürger), ‘‘civil freedom’’
(bürgerliche Freiheit), and Bildung. They also accepted the ideal of a uni-
fied nation, in whose name they claimed to speak; and professed their
ardent love for the fatherland and for the king. But the nation, in their
view, was still Prussia, not Germany; and within that nation, they jeal-
ously insisted upon the preservation of provincial rights. Count Dönhoff,
a member of the Committee of East Prussian and Lithuanian Estates,
declared in March 1815 that ‘‘salutary provincialism’’ was a necessary
condition for ‘‘true nationality.’’ He condemned the principle ‘‘that the
majority of votes in a general representative national assembly must be
viewed as the expression of the general national desire [Nationalwunsch]
of all provinces.’’83 Similarly, a petition of the East Prussian Committee
of April 1815 called for the ‘‘reanimation of the provincial estates,’’ which
 a na t i o n o f a r i s t o c r a t s 93

would function in interaction with the ‘‘general estates.’’ Such a system

of representation, ‘‘supported by freedom of the press, along with pub-
licity and freedom of deliberations’’ would foster the formation of a
‘‘truly venerable public voice [öffentliche Stimme].’’84
If the East Prussian nobility at least paid homage to the liberal prin-
ciples of freedom of the press and of parliamentary deliberations, not so
the nobles of Brandenburg. With the end of the war, the Kurmark estates
quickly resumed their defense of the gamut of traditional privileges. In
August 1814, the Kurmärkische Ritterschaft wrote to the king extolling
the ‘‘sacrifice’’ that they had ‘‘willingly offered, along with the whole
nation,’’ during the war and asking that their patriotic contributions be
acknowledged through ‘‘the restoration of our former constitution.’’
They thanked the king for his promise ‘‘to grant the whole monarchy a
representation’’ but noted that
for the completion of this beneficial deed, a provincial constitution is an
essential requirement. Without this, the representatives have no legal as-
sociation with the province; they remain unacquainted with its wishes,
and therefore cannot be the true organ of the province.85

The nobles of the Kurmark, in other words, still viewed a national rep-
resentative assembly as an instrument for advocating provincial inter-
ests—just as in their petition of January 1811. Their primary loyalty was
still not to the nation but to the province.
On 22 May 1815, the king published a decree that promised to estab-
lish a ‘‘representation of the Volk,’’ which would consist of both a central
representative assembly and a system of provincial estates.86 Seven weeks
later, Hardenberg dissolved the provisional assembly, declaring that ‘‘the
duties assigned to it by His Majesty have been completed, and the or-
ganization of a complete [vollständigen] representation of the land has
been ordered by the decree of 22 May.’’87 With the adjournment of this
assembly, no elected institution representing the entire realm would again
assemble in Prussia until 1847. During the intervening years, the public
debates over a Prussian constitution would be waged either through
provincial institutions or outside official channels.

Conclusion: The Ideal of Harmony in Aristocratic

Nationalist Discourse
Words have consequences and, as the representatives of Prussia’s privi-
leged elites discovered during the Napoleonic era, the defense of their
corporate interests depended on their ability to manipulate the new lan-
guage of national politics. A new historical a priori had emerged in Prus-
94 the concept in play

sia (for at least the brief moment in which Napoleon reigned supreme).
To participate effectively in legitimate political discourse, one needed to
claim to speak on behalf of the national interest rather than for the
egotistical interests of one’s own estate. To fail to pay homage to these
principles, as the aristocrats Marwitz and Finckenstein ruefully discov-
ered during their row with Hardenberg in 1811, could jeopardize not
only one’s cause but also one’s own liberty.
According to the prevailing interpretation of this era of Prussian his-
tory, the aristocratic opposition to Hardenberg’s social and economic re-
forms forced the government to abandon its plans for political liberali-
zation.88 Because the experimental representative assemblies established
during the Napoleonic era sought to derail Hardenberg’s reform program,
the chancellor chose to enact these measures by fiat, giving up his am-
bition to create a parliamentary system of rule in Prussia. Therefore,
historians have argued, during the early nineteenth century, Prussia de-
veloped liberal social and economic institutions, but its political system
remained a bureaucratic dictatorship.
Through a close analysis of the political debates of 1810–1815, this
chapter has demonstrated the inadequacy of this conventional interpre-
tation of the Prussian reform movement. Rather than abandoning the
idea of creating a national representation, Hardenberg significantly ex-
panded his constitutional plans over this period. In October 1810, Har-
denberg had insisted that the new central representative institution must
serve as a purely consultative body whose members would be appointed
by the king rather than elected. Coming down as a ‘‘gift from above,’’
the assembly’s role was to help with the implementation of Hardenberg’s
reform legislation rather than to deliberate over its provisions. In Sep-
tember 1811, the Provisional National Representation was charged only
with regulating ‘‘provincial and communal war debts,’’ and in June 1812,
Hardenberg brusquely denied that the king had any obligation to submit
a legislative proposal to this assembly for its opinion before signing the
measure into law. Yet, ultimately, Hardenberg and the king heeded many
of the assembly’s demands for a greater political voice. By 1815, Har-
denberg was calling for the establishment of a ‘‘representation of the
Volk,’’ involving both a central representative assembly and a system of
provincial diets, and in later years, he advocated granting these bodies
broad authority over legislative and fiscal matters.89
In the face of concerted opposition to social and economic reform,
Hardenberg did not retreat from his plans for a national representation.
Nor did he generally disregard the protests of Prussia’s privileged elites
against his reform proposals. Beginning in 1810, he backed off from his
proposal for an income tax, and, subsequently, he complied with aris-
 a nation of aristocrats 95

tocratic demands for the preservation of their police and judicial powers
on their estates, as well as for the maintenance of the traditional system
of local administration in the countryside. With respect to the legislation
establishing free trade, however, which affected primarily Prussia’s mu-
nicipalities, Hardenberg took a harder line, simply ignoring the com-
plaints of the representative assembly.
Hardenberg’s conduct thus followed a perplexing pattern. Rather
than—like Napoleon—rigging representative institutions that possessed
authority in theory alone,90 he created assemblies that in theory had little
authority but in practice exercised ever-greater power even as they
worked to undermine his program of social and economic reform. The
explanation for this curious phenomenon lies partly in the realm of po-
litical rhetoric. To the extent that Prussia’s privileged elites mastered a
new idiom by learning to ‘‘speak nationally,’’ they were able to persuade
Hardenberg and the king to expand the domain of the new representative
institutions. Thus, for example, in 1814 Frederick William III suspended
the Gendarmerie Edict indefinitely, in order that a representative assem-
bly might deliberate over its provisions before its implementation. Con-
versely, those groups that failed to invoke the principle of the national
interest, such as the urban guilds, enjoyed little success in their efforts
to lobby the Prussian ministry, perhaps in part because they employed
rather traditional rhetoric in defense of their legal privileges. The claims
about the nation analyzed in this chapter are summarized in table 4.1.
As table 4.1 illustrates, noble activists based their political arguments
on some of the same premises as the bureaucratic nationalists, for ex-
ample, they argued that the nation was an ideally unified and harmo-
nious community and that the nation’s political interests coincided with
the king’s. Yet they articulated this claim for a very different purpose

4.1 The Concept ‘‘Nation’’ in Prussian Aristocratic Discourse, 1810–1815

Consensual features Contested features

The nation is a harmonious community Can Jews be citizens?
possessing one unified interest and will.
Old corporate bodies such as the aristocracy What degree of legal hierarchy should
and the guilds must be preserved. be maintained?
Traditional property rights must be protected.
The nation’s interest is identical to the king’s Is the king sovereign, or is his authority
interest. limited by ‘‘contracts’’ with the nation?
How much political authority should be
vested in the nation vs. in the prov-
inces?
96 the concept in play

than the Stein-Hardenberg party. Whereas the leading reformers sought

to compel the nation to cooperate with the king, Prussian aristocrats
invoked the ideal of harmony as a means of persuading the king to
respect the wishes of the nation. This novel logic about the need for
national harmony coexisted with a more traditional line of reasoning in
aristocratic rhetoric. Many Prussian nobles challenged the principle of
monarchical sovereignty, arguing that the king’s authority was limited
by his ‘‘contracts’’ with the estates. These customary contracts, they
maintained, had to serve as the starting point for any new system of
representative rule. Many aristocrats (above all in the province of Bran-
denburg) also interwove their arguments in favor of national represen-
tation with calls for the preservation of the traditional provincial con-
stitution, along with the retention of old corporate distinctions and
property rights.
While invoking the authority of the nation proved—in the short
term—an effective means of defending aristocratic privileges, the use of
this rhetorical strategy also had two broader consequences. First, by
mastering the idiom of speaking nationally, Prussian nobles reinforced
the civil servants’ definition of the nation as an ideally unitary and har-
monious body. Second, by proclaiming the need for unity between the
nation and the monarchical state, aristocrats subtly transformed their
own social and political identities, for example, by conceiving of the
nobility as a national, rather than a provincial, institution and by starting
to back away from some traditional claims about the contractual nature
of sovereign authority. Thus, the advent of national politics exercised a
powerful effect on conservative political theory in Prussia. The impli-
cations of this transformation of Prussian nobles’ social and political
claims will be explored more fully in Chapter 7.
Like the bureaucratic reformers, most Prussian aristocrats expressed
relatively little interest in establishing linguistic, ethnic, or cultural sol-
idarity within the nation. A few exceptions, including Marwitz, called
for ‘‘a common German fatherland’’ under Prussian leadership. The next
chapter examines the rhetoric of bourgeois political writers and activists
who made German national unification the centerpiece of their political
program. This new popular nationalism presented a troubling spectacle
to the king and the nobility alike. By challenging the boundaries of
legitimate political discourse, these popular nationalists ultimately pro-
voked a powerful reaction against the movement toward a constitutional
system of government in Prussia.
 Five

a nation of romantics

In the winter of 1807–1808, Johann Gottlieb Fichte presented his

Addresses to the German Nation in a lecture hall in French-
occupied Berlin. Germany had become corrupt, Fichte declared, be-
cause its people had become completely ‘‘self-seeking’’; the ‘‘means of
salvation’’ lay in the establishment of a program of ‘‘German national
education’’ to forge new bonds between the people and their national
community. Fichte waxed rhapsodic in contemplating the joys that
awaited the Germans upon the reconstitution of their nation:

Love that is truly love, and not a mere transitory lust, never clings to
what is transient; only in the eternal does it awaken and become kindled,
and there alone does it rest. . . . [H]e to whom a fatherland has been
handed down, and in whose soul heaven and earth, visible and invisible
meet and mingle, and thus, and only thus, create a true and enduring
heaven—such a man fights to the last drop of his blood to hand on the
precious possession unimpaired to his posterity.1

Though the immediate reception of Fichte’s lectures was more modest

than reported in patriotic legends, the philosopher may still have found
cause to believe that the resurrection of the German nation could coincide
with the resurrection of his own career. A student of Kant’s in Königs-
berg, Fichte had won a chair in philosophy at the University of Jena in
1794 at the age of thirty-two, only to lose it five years later under the
accusation of atheism. After several nomadic years, Fichte settled in Ber-
lin; and by the eve of the Napoleonic invasion of Prussia, he had
achieved renown as an independent scholar, lecturing to prominent mem-
bers of Berlin’s society and civil service. In 1810, on the force of the

97
98 the concept in play

Addresses and his earlier philosophical works, he was named rector of

the new University of Berlin.2
The rhetoric of bourgeois intellectuals and popular activists in Na-
poleonic Prussia differed significantly from that of the civil servants and
nobles discussed in the previous two chapters. For the most part ex-
cluded from the privileged institutions of the realm, these figures went
outside official channels, addressing their appeals directly to the Volk.
Moreover, unlike the bureaucratic and aristocratic nationalists, whose
sober and abstract prose had remained signally vague in defining the
nation, these bourgeois activists emphasized the cultural and ethnic foun-
dations of national community.
Historians have often referred to these early nineteenth-century pop-
ular activists as ‘‘romantic nationalists,’’ because they drew their inspi-
ration in part from the culture of German romanticism, as represented
by figures such as Friedrich Hölderlin, Friedrich and Wilhelm Schlegel,
Novalis (Friedrich Hardenberg), and Heinrich von Kleist. While roman-
ticism was an amorphous movement, notoriously difficult to define, its
adherents shared certain concerns. Their writings highlighted the es-
trangement of the individual from the community. They often depicted
modern life as corrupt and fragmented and idealized the medieval world
as harmonious and pure. The romantics hoped to restore harmony and
to reunite the individual with the community by recapturing ‘‘true feel-
ings and authentic life.’’3
The world view of the romantic nationalists is frequently depicted as
sharply opposed to the eighteenth-century values of the Enlightenment.
Rather than articulating secular ideals, they presented an expressly
Christian—and specifically Protestant pietist—vision of the national
community.4 In contrast to the rationalism characteristic of Enlighten-
ment intellectuals, they adopted ‘‘the mentality of the miraculous,’’
which celebrated passion and irrational desire.5 Instead of valuing indi-
vidual autonomy as the greatest good, the romantic nationalists believed
that the individual could attain fulfillment only through immersion in
collective life.6 Each of these conventional judgments contains an im-
portant element of truth. The romantic nationalists’ rhetoric was tinged
with quasi–Christian elements, and they often portrayed the nation in
those breathless tones usually reserved for descriptions of a lover. By
denouncing the corruption of contemporary political life and by trum-
peting the advent of a utopian order, these activists raised the temper-
ature of Prussian and German political debate, alarming both the tradi-
tional social elites and leading members of the governments of most
German states.
 a nation of romantics 99

Nonetheless, it is too simplistic to hold that romantic nationalism rep-

resented a wholesale rejection of Enlightenment values. Though these
popular activists’ views cannot be located within the framework of en-
lightened nationalism, as defined earlier, they reinforced one of the key
premises of enlightened nationalist rhetoric, namely, that the nation was
an ideally harmonious and unified political community. Moreover, like
the leading reformers within the Prussian civil service, many of these
figures held that national harmony could be achieved only through a
process of popular education. Fichte’s intellectual biography illustrates
the blurring of boundaries between the Enlightenment and romanticism
in nineteenth-century Prussia. Scholars generally identify Fichte as a
rationalist rather than as a romantic: in the words of James Sheehan,
‘‘Fichte never abandoned the Aufklärung’s commitment to philosophical
analysis as the way to knowledge and morality.’’7 Nonetheless, his de-
nunciations of ‘‘self-seeking’’ and his paeans to national solidarity reveal
a typically romantic preoccupation with the isolation of the individual
in the modern world. By advocating a program of national education,
Fichte sought to use the tools of the Enlightenment as a means of solving
the dilemma of the romantics.
The socially marginalized status of many of the bourgeois activists
led them to criticize existing social and political institutions in more
radical terms than was the case with the civil servants and aristocrats
discussed in previous chapters. Yet their movement represented a frac-
tured and often self-contradictory set of political discourses and actions.
Though many of these figures called for the preservation of traditional
hierarchical institutions, the public political spectacles they staged were
often relentlessly egalitarian in their implications. Moreover, while
nearly all of these figures professed devotion to the principle of monar-
chical sovereignty, they both appealed to and helped constitute a public
sphere autonomous from the will of the Prussian king and his ministers.
Thus, the romantic nationalists provoked suspicions that they were se-
cretly fomenting a revolution. Finally, while the bourgeois activists em-
phasized the ethnic and cultural foundations of nationhood, they often
disagreed over the specific characteristics that defined the national com-
munity.

The Genesis of Romantic Nationalism

Despite the populist rhetoric of the romantic nationalists, which pur-
ported to represent the will of the entire Volk, this movement was con-
fined to a narrow segment of the population during the Napoleonic era.
100 the concept in play

Throughout the German states, popular nationalism was an over-

whelmingly urban phenomenon. Its adherents were primarily Protestant
men who belonged to the literate bourgeoisie,8 including students, pro-
fessors, journalists, and freelance writers. They were relatively few in
number and possessed little socioeconomic power, but they exercised a
disproportionate influence on the political debates of this era.
That the early popular nationalist movement was centered in the lit-
erate bourgeoisie is unsurprising. As scholars such as Karl Deutsch and
Miroslav Hroch have observed, increasing ‘‘social mobility and commu-
nication’’ have historically contributed to the emergence of nationalist
movements.9 Likewise, Benedict Anderson notes that the rise of print
capitalism in Europe from the sixteenth century onward ‘‘laid the bases
for national consciousnesses’’ by creating ‘‘unified fields of exchange and
communications’’ in vernacular languages.10 The invention of national
identity, these scholars argue, provides a basis for unifying diverse
regions that are increasingly linked both economically and through the
exchange of ideas. In the German states at the beginning of the nine-
teenth century, groups such as students, professors, and freelance jour-
nalists were both relatively mobile, frequently moving from city to city
for their studies or their work, and more capable than most of exchang-
ing ideas beyond their own localities through the medium of print. Thus,
these groups were one logical nexus for the formation of a nascent
German national identity.
Numerous historians have observed that bourgeois popular national-
ism in nineteenth-century Germany strongly emphasized the importance
of collective solidarity within the nation.11 This obsession with the re-
constitution of a harmonious community may be explained both cultur-
ally and sociologically. As Anderson observes, nationalism possesses ‘‘a
strong affinity with religious imaginings’’; in the face of the ‘‘modern
darkness’’ of ‘‘rationalist secularism,’’ it aims to achieve ‘‘a secular trans-
formation of fatality into continuity, contingency into meaning.’’12 Many
German romantic nationalists drew directly on the cultural legacy of the
Protestant spiritual movement known as pietism. Initiated by Philip Spe-
ner (1635–1705) and August Hermann Francke (1663–1727), pietism em-
phasized the importance of a direct and powerfully emotional relation-
ship between the individual believer and God. The pietists devalued
dogma and external church authority, identifying Christian love as the
central element of devotional experience. They envisioned a religious
fellowship founded on spiritual communion and the equality of all be-
lievers.13
From a sociological standpoint, the radical temperament of many
German romantic nationalists also reflected a response to the marginali-
 a nation of romantics 101

zation experienced by many members of the German educated middle

classes during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries which
resulted in what one scholar has termed ‘‘an oppressive sense of status-
inconsistency among those who eventually became the prime movers of
German nationalism.’’14 As Gordon Craig remarks of romanticism, ‘‘polit-
ically it was an escape from the bourgeois dilemma of powerlessness.’’15
Over the course of the eighteenth century, the German states experienced
substantial population growth, along with significant increases in literacy
rates and in numbers of university graduates. This expanded educated
class, however, was confronted by stagnant or declining numbers of
positions in the traditional occupations for university graduates: the civil
service, the church, and schools and universities. This squeeze gave rise
to a growing ‘‘intellectual proletariat’’—ambitious university graduates
forced to endure a decade or more of humiliating work as tutors or
apprentices before obtaining permanent positions.16 During the late eigh-
teenth and early nineteenth centuries, increasing numbers of young ed-
ucated Germans turned to careers as freelance writers, a path that gen-
erally led to impoverishment, in part because the lack of adequate
copyright protections led to widespread piracy in publishing, thus di-
minishing the royalties paid to authors.17
In certain respects, the plight of Prussia’s literate bourgeoisie during
this era mirrored the situation that had existed in late eighteenth-century
France. Historians such as Robert Darnton have explored how the social
marginalization of many French intellectuals during the decades preced-
ing the revolution fostered the growth of a ‘‘Grub Street’’ literature by
struggling and embittered writers, far more radical in tone than the High
Enlightenment.18 Likewise, Lynn Hunt has demonstrated that many of
the most ardent participants in revolutionary politics in France were
educated commoners who had failed to achieve advancement within the
social hierarchies of the Old Regime.19 In each of these cases, the repeated
frustration of social ambitions among the members of the literate bour-
geoisie contributed to the radicalization of their political views.
Like Fichte, most romantic nationalists developed their political the-
ories as ambitious outsiders. Craving status and a sense of belonging,
these activists projected their desires onto an ideally harmonious and
unified national community. Excluded from the experimental represen-
tative institutions established during the Napoleonic era, the romantic
nationalists appealed for legitimacy by attempting to constitute a space
for public politics autonomous from the authority of the state. It was
their claim that the authority of the nation was equal to that of the
monarchical state, this ultimately proved most troubling to representa-
tives of the established order.
102 the concept in play

Equality: Constituting the Public

Like the reform party in the Prussian civil service, the bourgeois popular
nationalists cannot be pigeonholed either as a progressive or as a reac-
tionary political force by twentieth-century standards. Their political
views were simultaneously forward-looking and backward-looking. They
were torn between the desire to forge a new egalitarian political com-
munity and the desire to recover the organic solidarity found in tradi-
tional hierarchical institutions. The lives of two of the most influential
early nationalists, Joseph Görres and Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, illustrate
these conflicting tendencies of romantic nationalism. Though both Görres
and Jahn portrayed themselves partly as defenders of the traditional
order, they both played an important role in constituting a politicized
public sphere that came to challenge the monopoly over public life
claimed by the monarchical state.
Joseph Görres was born to a Catholic family in Koblenz in 1776, the
son of a prosperous wood merchant. Attending Gymnasium during the
early 1790s, he was swept up in the enthusiasm for the French Revolu-
tion. In 1795, after the French invasion of the Rhineland, he published
an article that celebrated the deeds of the ‘‘Frankish republic,’’ which
he predicted would liberate Europe from its tyrants and erect a temple
of freedom on the rubble of despotism. Upon visiting Paris in 1799,
however, Görres became disillusioned with revolutionary ideals. After a
brief career as a journalist, he settled in Koblenz in 1800 as a teacher of
physics and chemistry at the école secondaire, a post he held until 1814
(except for a two-year hiatus in Heidelberg, where he worked on a pro-
ject to recover German folk art). Over the course of the Napoleonic oc-
cupation, Görres became increasingly frustrated and pessimistic. Though
happy in his domestic life, his efforts to obtain a university professorship
came to naught, and he found the French occupation increasingly bur-
densome. With the liberation of the Rhineland from Napoleonic rule in
January 1814, he began publication of a newspaper, the Rheinische Mer-
kur, which exultantly called for the unification of Germany under joint
Austrian and Prussian leadership and the establishment of a constitu-
tion.20
By this time, Görres had long ago abandoned the centralizing and
leveling ideals of the French Revolution. Too much centralization of
power, he argued, would result in despotism; the best form of govern-
ment for Germany would be ‘‘strong unity within free multiplicity.’’ Just
as the German people had a duty to obey their princes, the individual
princes owed allegiance to the fatherland. It must be remembered, he
declared, ‘‘that the freedom of the people finds its limits in the freedom
 a nation of romantics 103

of the princes—but also vice versa.’’ Görres was thus no republican, nor
did he believe in the abolition of legal differences between the estates.
The new constitution (ständische Verfassung), he wrote, should be
founded on ‘‘the three pillars’’ of the ancient ‘‘estates of the learned, the
warriors, and the farmers’’ (Lehrstand, Wehrstand, und Nährstand), who
would form a new ‘‘ruling contract’’ (Staatsvertrag) with the prince: ‘‘The
heads of the three estates will stand around the prince as participants in
his responsibility, . . . mediators between the people and the govern-
ment.’’21
Though many German leaders had welcomed Görres’s patriotic
publications during the war of 1813–1814, the end of the war against
Napoleon brought a sudden chill in rulers’ attitudes toward popular na-
tionalism. Concerns about the implications of the nationalist movement
were especially pronounced in the states of southern and central Ger-
many. Many of these states had substantially increased their territories
during the Napoleonic era, but the leaders of these states recognized that
national unification might mean their own absorption into a greater Ger-
many. The abolition of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 meant that the
governments of these Mittelstaaten had to struggle to assert their legit-
imacy. The empire, despite its practical weakness, had provided an over-
arching constitutional structure that united the various German states.
This unity was only partly reestablished in the new German confeder-
ation of 1815, a loose federal order that defined each territorial prince as
the supreme sovereign within his territory. In the wake of the Vienna
Settlement, a potentially explosive situation developed: the German
princes nervously guarded their autonomy, while popular nationalists
like Görres sought to establish a stronger political union that would serve
as a more worthy replacement for the Old Reich.
Fearing that Görres’s patriotic ardor might jeopardize their sover-
eignty, the rulers of Baden, Bavaria, and Württemberg had banned dis-
tribution of the Rheinische Merkur in the summer of 1814. The following
year, under the terms of the Vienna Settlement, Koblenz (along with most
of the rest of the Rhineland) came under Prussian rule. Facing pressure
from other members of the German confederation, Hardenberg reluc-
tantly agreed to shut down Görres’s newspaper outright in January
1816.22
Görres, however, did not let this setback dissuade him from further
political activism. In May 1815, King Frederick William III published a
decree promising to establish a ‘‘representation of the Volk’’ in Prussia,
which would consist of both a central representative assembly and a
system of provincial estates.23 Deliberations on this project, however,
proceeded at a snail’s pace. Thus, on 18 October 1817, at a celebration
104 the concept in play

in Koblenz commemorating the German victory at Leipzig four years

earlier, Görres took the opportunity to circulate a petition to the Prussian
king that called for the fulfillment of the constitutional promise of 1815.
During the following three months, the petition (which came to be
known as the Koblenz Address) was passed around the city and its out-
lying areas. Having obtained 3,296 signatures, Görres presented it to
Hardenberg in a ceremony held on 12 January 1818.
The Koblenz Address was remarkable for its blend of traditional and
modern political logic. On the one hand, it explicitly disavowed any
Jacobin ambitions, decrying ‘‘despotism coming up from below, as well
as down from above.’’ Rather than a republican form of government, the
petition called for a state consisting of organically linked estates, founded
on ‘‘eternal justice’’ (Gerechtigkeit), with an inviolable monarch at its
peak.24 The people of Koblenz, Görres declared, desired ‘‘the reestablish-
ment of the freedoms of the land [Landschaft] and the ancient truly
German constitution [wahrhaft teutschen Verfassung].’’ This ancient con-
stitution had long been under assault by ‘‘foreign tyranny,’’ which ‘‘for
centuries, through its indirect and direct influence, has brought about
the suppression and annihilation of those ancient freedoms, rights, and
constitutions.’’
Yet these appeals to antiquity were wedded to an innovative logic
about the nature of the German ‘‘public’’ and its relationship to royal
authority. In justifying the decision to petition the king, Görres noted
that Frederick William III had asked the provincial governors to survey
local views concerning a constitution. To be successful, he argued, the
survey must reflect not just the views of a few prominent citizens but
‘‘public opinion and the collective conviction of the great majority.’’ For
this reason, the signers of the petition considered it their ‘‘duty as citi-
zens’’ (Bürgerpflicht) to ‘‘approach the throne’’ with their opinions on this
subject. The signers of the petition viewed themselves ‘‘not only as cit-
izens [Bürger] of the Prussian monarchy, but also as Germans’’; as such,
‘‘the salvation of the entire Fatherland is a matter close to their hearts.’’
The petition reminded the king of his constitutional promise and also
asked him to use his influence in the Bundestag to ensure that all German
states would receive constitutions, in accordance with Article 13 of the
German Articles of Confederation of 1815.25
The Koblenz Address provides one fascinating glimpse at how the
Prussian bourgeoisie learned to speak nationally during the early nine-
teenth century. The petition is fraught with internal tensions between
egalitarian and hierarchical principles. Though Görres avowed the su-
premacy of the Prussian king, he also expressed allegiance to the higher
goal of the ‘‘salvation of the entire [German] Fatherland.’’ Görres de-
 a na ti on of rom a nti cs 105

manded the reestablishment of the ancient constitution (which would

have been based on limited political participation by legally privileged
elites), but he justified the petition on the grounds that it expressed
‘‘public opinion’’ and the ‘‘collective conviction’’ of the majority of cit-
izens. In stating this claim, he implicitly acknowledged the egalitarian
principle of majority rule and the democratic premise that the citizenry
possessed a unified collective voice. These ideals of equality and unity
were hardly compatible with the traditional hierarchical institutions that
were lauded elsewhere in the petition.
For Görres, public opinion was no mere abstraction. By circulating his
petition for signatures, he literally helped constitute the politicized pub-
lic sphere to which he appealed. Even as he called for the reestablishment
of the traditional corporate order, he transcended the boundaries of the
old estates by seeking an expression of the desires of the citizenry as a
whole. Through this act of political communication, the nation began to
take on reality as an entity at least partly autonomous from the royal
will.
A more colorful figure than Görres was Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, who
founded both the gymnastics movement (Turnerschaft) among the
German youth in 1811 and the first nationalist student organization (Bur-
schenschaft), which he established in Jena in 1815. Jahn was the son of
a Lutheran minister, born in Prussia’s heartland, the Kurmark of Bran-
denburg, in 1778. Initially educated at home by his father, Jahn attended
Gymnasium in Berlin, then studied theology at the Universities of Halle
and Greifswald without completing a degree. Throughout most of his
twenties, Jahn led an itinerant existence as a private tutor and freelance
political publicist. During the Napoleonic invasion of 1806, he became a
camp follower of the Prussian army, and, in the wake of Prussia’s defeat,
he wandered throughout the country for several years attempting to stir
German nationalist sentiment against the French.
Unlike Görres, Jahn never went through a Jacobin stage. He came to
German nationalism after expressing ideals of Prussian patriotism. Jahn’s
first book, written at the age of twenty-one in 1799, appealed for Prus-
sian rather than German patriotism. Jahn declared in this tract that in
hand-to-hand combat, ‘‘one Prussian defeats three Saxons, Hanoverians,
Mecklenburgians, or Swedes.’’26 After 1806, however, influenced by the
nascent nationalism of figures such as Fichte and Ernst Moritz Arndt,
Jahn began to shift his allegiances to an imagined pan–German collec-
tivity that included Switzerland, Denmark, the Low Countries, Prussia,
and Austria.27 Like Görres, Jahn believed that Germany possessed a glo-
rious past, but that it had fallen from greatness in recent times. Jahn
maintained that the German Volk had ‘‘never overcome’’ the ‘‘wretched,
106 the concept in play

5.1 Friedrich Ludwig Jahn’s gymnastics ground on the Hasenheide in

Berlin, 1818. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin—Preußischer Kulturbesitz—
Handschriftenabteilung, YB 14220 m.

shameful Peace of Westphalia’’ of 1648. A powerful German empire, he

argued, could be reestablished only through the unification of the Volk:
‘‘A state is nothing without a Volk—a soulless artifact. A Volk is nothing
without a state—a bodiless phantom, like the wandering gypsies and
Jews. Only the unity of state and Volk makes a Reich.’’28
Jahn was not content to confine his nationalism to the realm of theory.
In 1809, he finally achieved a secure position as a schoolteacher at the
Gymnasium in Berlin-Kölln that he himself had attended. There, in col-
laboration with a fellow instructor, Friedrich Friesen, he devised a plan
for martial training inspired partly by Greek ideals of harmony of body
and spirit and partly by Fichte’s idea for a German national education.
In 1811, the two teachers opened the first gymnastics ground (Turnplatz)
on the Hasenheide, in front of the gates of Berlin, deriving the word
turnen from the medieval tournaments, which for Jahn symbolized the
ancient German spirit.29
In part, Jahn envisioned the Turnerschaft as a training ground for the
new national militia, which he hoped would soon overthrow the French
occupation of Germany. By performing gymnastic exercises, Jahn wrote,
the ‘‘entire Volk will become manly and patriotic, and, feeling its power,
will be reborn.’’30 Yet Jahn’s gymnastics movement also served as a visual
emblem of the unity and equality of the German nation itself. He and
Friesen began with a group of 200 youths, whom he instructed in games,
gymnastic drills, and other athletics. The gymnastics movement, like the
 a nation of romantics 107

Burschenschaft organization Jahn subsequently founded, attempted to

break down the social differences among its adherents. Both students
and workers participated, all of them wearing an identical gray linen
uniform. All of them employed rough and familiar speech (which Jahn
considered authentically German), addressing each other with the infor-
mal Du. They sang songs, which likewise emphasized the equality of all
Germans:
So hegen wir ein freies Reich,
An Rang und Stand sind alle gleich!
Freies Reich! Alles gleich! heissa juchhe!31

The Turner movement, in other words, was intended to function as a

public spectacle, as a festival that would constitute the nation as a fra-
ternity of equals.32 Franz Schnabel describes the exercises of the Turner
as follows:
From all occupations, they stood here in rank and file, addressed each
other as ‘‘Du,’’ wore the same clothes, performed the same gymnastic
exercises, and raved in the same way about Volk and fatherland. The
community of the Turner was also supposed to be the germ-cell of the
Volksgemeinschaft.

Jahn, declares Schnabel, would have ‘‘happily put the entire Volk in the
Turner uniform [Turntracht] and urged them to perform exercises.’’33

Both Görres’s petition campaign and Jahn’s gymnastics movement rep-

resented attempts to define a new public space. Their efforts illustrate
some of the complexities and ambiguities that attended the birth of pop-
ular politics during the Napoleonic era. Neither demanded the abolition
of the monarchy nor the creation of a republic. Moreover, though both
men offered a more egalitarian vision of the nation than was evident in
the aristocratic rhetoric discussed in Chapter 4, neither called for the
outright elimination of the traditional corporate social order. In this re-
spect, the nomadic Jahn was more radical than Görres, who had spent
much of his life as a pillar of the Koblenz bourgeoisie and who demanded
the restoration of the ‘‘ancient truly German constitution’’ in the Rhenish
provinces. Even Jahn’s egalitarianism, however, was tempered by def-
erence to the aristocracy and Germany’s royal houses; estates, he de-
clared, were ‘‘natural divisions of the Volk.’’34 In the Burschenschaft
movement initiated by Jahn, a continuing dispute existed over whether
the future constitution should build on old German institutions or
whether it should begin from new egalitarian premises, and, in this ar-
gument, the ‘‘olds’’ held the upper hand.35
108 the concept in play

Thus, even for those at the vanguard of the popular nationalist move-
ment in Germany during the 1810s, the notion of full social equality
remained beyond the pale of discussion. Nonetheless, their ideas repre-
sented a serious potential threat to the legitimacy of existing social hi-
erarchies. Jahn’s gymnastics movement, by eliminating distinctions in
costume and forms of polite address, inevitably called into question the
system of social ranks symbolized by these distinctions. Likewise, by
insisting that the nation was Germany, rather than Prussia, and by be-
ginning to mobilize mass movements of self-identified ‘‘Germans,’’ Görres
and Jahn began to forge new spaces for political activism independent
of the Prussian monarchy. Unlike the aristocratic activism of the Napo-
leonic era, which had been expressed through channels formally estab-
lished by the monarchy, these new bourgeois movements claimed to have
emerged spontaneously from the nation itself. Consequently, many civil
servants and aristocrats, along with the king, soon would come to view
the new popular nationalism as a dire threat to all existing social and
political hierarchies.

Harmony: The Reconciliation of King and People

The popular nationalists’ arguments about the proper foundations of sov-
ereign authority, like their notions about traditional social hierarchies,
were highly ambivalent. On the one hand, few of these activists explic-
itly challenged royal authority; indeed, they generally assumed that Ger-
many would retain monarchical rule. In all of the German states, only
Karl Follen, a university lecturer and Burschenschaft leader in Jena, called
for the overthrow of Germany’s kings and the founding of a unified
‘‘ethical republic,’’ and he never attracted more than two dozen follow-
ers. Indeed, even Follen’s constitutional plan called for the election of a
king by the governing council of the realm.36
Popular nationalism may be viewed as potentially democratic in na-
ture, however, because these activists envisioned an entirely new rela-
tionship between the monarch and the people. This shifting attitude
toward monarchical authority is illustrated by the writings of Ernst Mo-
ritz Arndt (1769–1860), whose early works inspired Jahn’s discovery of
German nationalism. During the French occupation, Arndt wrote nu-
merous patriotic pamphlets and songs; he was also the author of several
longer treatises, including the four-volume Geist der Zeit, which cele-
brated the rise of national consciousness in Germany. In July 1815, Arndt
declared that ‘‘princes are there only as servants and officials of the Volk,
 a nation of romantics 109

and they must cease to exist as soon as the Volk does not need them
anymore, or as soon as they actually become the ruin of the Volk.’’37
Arndt’s own political program was tamer than his rhetoric suggests; in
Ernst Müsebeck’s words, he favored ‘‘the foundation of a monarchical-
democratic unity under Prussia’s leadership.’’38 Arndt intended his crit-
icisms not for the idea of monarchy per se but for some of the princes
of the Mittelstaaten, who he thought were obstructing German unity.
Nonetheless, Arndt’s attacks suggested the possibility of a more far-
reaching critique of monarchical sovereignty. Lamenting that the words
‘‘democrat’’ and ‘‘democracy’’ had become vilified as ‘‘rat poison’’ as a
result of the upheavals of the revolutionary era, Arndt declared that ‘‘all
states, even those that are not yet democracies, will become from century
to century more democratic.’’ In the true sense, he wrote, these words
implied only ‘‘what the best kings and emperors have always known,’’
namely, that ‘‘they are there for the people and that they rule for and
with the people. The people are just as holy as the mob is unholy; anyone
who wishes for the people to be ruled for and through the people is a
democrat.’’39 At one level, Arndt’s manifesto echoed the words of Har-
denberg’s Riga Memorandum of 1807. ‘‘Democratic principles in a mon-
archical government,’’ Hardenberg had written, was the appropriate rul-
ing formula ‘‘for the present age,’’ but gradually (perhaps by the year
2440, he declared) a true democracy might evolve in Prussia. Arndt,
however, also radicalized Hardenberg’s formula: he made it abundantly
clear that the duty of kings was to do the people’s bidding and not vice
versa.
Like Arndt, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn argued for a fusion of the prin-
ciples of monarchical and democratic sovereignty. He eagerly anticipated
the day when ‘‘the German nation will be unified through wise laws
under a powerful monarch.’’ For Jahn, however, the monarch served
primarily as an official representative of the sovereignty of the state:
‘‘Only one is lord—the state; and the residents of the state are subject
only to it.’’ Jahn did not favor simply imposing a unitary state upon the
Volk. Rather, he argued for a gradual organic fusion of the two through
the ‘‘cultivation of the Volk’’ (Volkserziehung), which he said would ‘‘in-
noculate the ancient race’’ against ‘‘all future epidemics’’ and ‘‘breed a
new ennobled Volk within the Volk.’’ As a result of this Volkserziehung,
‘‘the citizen [Bürger] will feel, think, and act with the state, through it,
for it, and in it. He will become one with it, and with the Volk, in life,
passion, and love.’’40 Jahn’s ideas, as this passage indicates, were ‘‘dem-
ocratic’’ more in the sense of Rousseau’s volonté générale than in the sense
of modern parliamentary republicanism. In Jahn’s view, the Volk could
110 the concept in play

5.2 Procession of the Turner at the Wartburg, 18 October 1817. Bildarchiv

Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin.

achieve self-determination only through absolute unity. He wanted the

Volk to live and act as a single organism, pure and strong.
Thus, though the romantic nationalists generally claimed that they
favored the principle of monarchical sovereignty, the princes of the
German states might be forgiven if they were nervous about the potential
implications of these new doctrines. These nationalists all concurred that
the Volk existed as an organism autonomous from the monarchy and
other political institutions; they also insisted that kings were bound to
rule for the benefit of the Volk. Moreover, while some of these figures
lauded Prussia as the vessel of the future nation, they were far more
antagonistic toward the leaders of the other German states.
The tensions between the monarchical and democratic tendencies of
romantic nationalist thought exploded into full view on 18 and 19 Oc-
tober 1817, when 468 members of Burschenschaften from various German
universities gathered at the Wartburg, the castle in Eisenach where Lu-
ther had translated the Bible, to call for constitutional government and
German unification. The date marked not only the fourth anniversary of
the victory at Leipzig but also the tricentenary of the Reformation. In
keeping with the occasion, the order of the service at the Wartburg was
patterned on the Christian liturgy: the festival opened with a hymn (Lu-
ther’s ‘‘Eine feste Burg ist unser Gott’’) sung around a fire, then came
 a na ti on o f rom a n ti cs 111

more songs and ‘‘patriotic sermons,’’ and the service closed with a prayer
of thanksgiving.41 Jena theology student Heinrich Hermann Riemann,
who gave the opening speech at the Wartburg Festival, cited Luther as
a national hero, sent by God ‘‘out of the dark walls of an Augustine
monastery . . . to . . . free the world from the worst of all bondages, that
of the spirit.’’ Jakob Friedrich Fries, a philosophy professor at Jena,
attended the Wartburg Festival and preached to the students that they
must remain ‘‘inviolably united’’ through the ‘‘holy chain of friend-
ship,’’42 a sentiment echoed by other speakers.
Several of the speakers at the Wartburg framed their political demands
in highly inflammatory terms, exciting the wrath of rulers throughout
the German states. Riemann’s speech alluded to the patriotic spirit dis-
played at the battle of Leipzig four years earlier:
Then the German people had high hopes. Now these hopes have all been
frustrated. Everything turned out differently than we expected. Many
grand and noble dreams that could have happened—that had to hap-
pen!—were treated with scorn and derision!

Only one German ruler, Riemann observed, Duke Karl-August of Saxe-

Weimar, where the Wartburg was located, had so far kept his promise
to establish a constitution. Riemann admonished the other German
princes by invoking the memory of Luther: ‘‘Thoughts of thee shall give
us strength in every struggle and make us able for every sacrifice. Hatred
of the righteous and damnation to those who forget in their lowly, dirty
selfishness the common good!’’43 Ludwig Rödiger, another student leader
from Jena, declared that the princes of the Mittelstaaten ‘‘shamelessly
destroyed’’ Germany during the Napoleonic era, when its people were
‘‘under the iron yoke of the destroyer.’’ Speaking in the name of the
veterans of the War of Liberation, Rödiger demanded a greater popular
voice in domestic politics:
Those who are allowed to bleed for the fatherland also have the right to
speak about how they can best serve the fatherland in peacetime. . . . For,
thank goodness, the time has come when Germans need no longer fear
the poison pen of spies and the executioner’s axe of tyrants.44

Another element of the ceremony at the Wartburg that created par-

ticular consternation among the rulers of the German states was a book
burning staged at the end of the festival, after most of the students had
left. Imitating Luther’s public burning of the papal bull ‘‘Exsurge Dom-
ine’’ in 1520, the students consecrated to the flames various books they
denounced as ‘‘un-German’’; they also burned three symbols of the mil-
itary authoritarian state: an Austrian corporal’s cane, a uniform from the
112 the concept in play

5.3 Book burning at the Wartburg Festival, 18 October 1817. Woodcut by

F. Hottenroth, 19th century. Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin.

Prussian Ulanen cavalry, and a pigtail from a Hessian officer’s wig.45 One
of the immolated works was Saul Ascher’s pamphlet Die Germanomie,
which criticized the anti–Semitism of the student movement. It was
thrown into the fire accompanied by calls of mockery against the Jews.
This ritual of book burning, chillingly imitated by later nationalist move-
ments, including the National Socialists, had a biblical foundation in Acts
19:19–20, in which Paul, preaching to the Ephesians, induced practi-
tioners of the magic arts to burn their books publicly, thereby demon-
strating the power of the Lord’s word. Thus, this event provides a further
illustration of how the rhetoric and rituals of the popular nationalists
drew on a Christian vocabulary.
Shortly before the close of the festivities at the Wartburg, an argument
erupted between two factions of the Burschenschaft of Giessen over
whether Germany should receive an ‘‘old’’ or a ‘‘new’’ constitution. An
account by one of the participants describes the crowd’s response to the
dispute:

A cry arose as from one soul, one voice: ‘‘Pardon each other! Forgive each
other!’’ And since they were standing there in doubt of what to do, the
leader of the Jena Burschenschaft came forth and said: ‘‘Listen, brothers!
Forget what’s past! Let’s not inquire here who is right and who is wrong—
 a nation of romantics 113

but he is wrong, who here follows the voice of discord; he is wrong, who
disdains the word of his brothers.’’

The leader from Jena called on the parties to the controversy to join their
hands in friendship, then shouted out to all the assembled students to
extend their hands to one another ‘‘and promise and swear, in this holy
place, to adhere to the Bund to the end!’’ The chronicler continued:

And then the youths reached out their hands to each other and fell in
each other’s arms and pressed against each other in inward love. The
silence continued—only single words or broken sentences could be heard,
being passed softly from soul to soul. ‘‘To the future!’’—‘‘For now
and forever’’—‘‘Until death!’’—‘‘Never forget this moment!’’—‘‘Never!
Never!’’46

Episodes such as these illustrate not only the youthful exuberance

and utopian hopes of the celebrants at the Wartburg but also the pre-
cariousness of the balance of monarchical and democratic principles in
romantic nationalist rhetoric. Even though most of the student activists
professed to accept the principle of monarchical sovereignty, their words
and deeds emphasized the primacy of the brotherhood of the nation.
This balance would prove increasingly difficult to sustain over the course
of the decade after the end of the Napoleonic wars.

Unity: The Communion of the German Nation

In public spectacles such as the Wartburg Festival, the nation was made
manifest as a fellowship of equals. Yet the activities of figures such as
Görres, Jahn, and the Burschenschaft leaders, by putting the nation on
display through petitions and festivals, inevitably gave rise to the ques-
tion of how membership in the nation should be determined. Who would
be admitted to the fellowship, and what sources of political and social
cohesion would bind the nation together? Görres defined Germany in
territorial and institutional terms—as the land covered by the ‘‘ancient
truly German constitution.’’ Other authors offered cultural or racial def-
initions of the nation. Arndt, whose early works inspired Jahn’s discov-
ery of German nationalism, linked national identity to the mobilization
of a common spirit. In volume 3 of Geist der Zeit, published in 1813, he
declared:
From the North Sea to the Carpathians, from the Baltic to the Alps, from
the Vistula to the Schelde, one belief, one love, one spirit, and one passion
must again bring together the whole German Volk in brotherly union.
114 the concept in play

They must learn to feel how great, powerful, and fortunate their fathers
were in obedience to one German emperor and one Reich, when the many
feuds had not yet incited them against one another.

This imagined past bore little relation to the actual historical Holy Roman
Empire, which had always been a diverse and fragmented political entity.
Nonetheless, Arndt’s historical vision provided a powerful model for fu-
ture efforts at political reform. The German people, he proclaimed, must
‘‘no longer [be] Catholics and Protestants, no longer Prussians and Aus-
trians, Saxons and Bavarians, Silesians and Hanoverians.’’ He called on
them to ‘‘be Germans, be one, desire to be one through love and faith;
and no devil will defeat you.’’47
Like Görres, Arndt invoked the notion of an original state of grace in
which Germany was unified both politically and spiritually. He blamed
the nation’s current fallen condition on ‘‘feuds’’ between different fac-
tions of the Volk. Divisions had erupted, he argued, both between ter-
ritorial states and between the Catholic and Protestant confessions. In his
view, all Christian Germans belonged to a greater spiritual and political
whole. By recognizing their common membership in the German nation,
they could reestablish the ancient union. Arndt wrote:

Like other men I am egoistic and sinful but in my exaltation I am freed

at once from all my sins, I am no longer a single suffering individual, I
am one with the Volk and God. In such a moment any doubts about my
life and work vanish.

The ‘‘highest form of religion,’’ he maintained, ‘‘is to love the fatherland

more passionately than laws and princes, fathers and mothers, wives and
children.’’48
For Jahn, racial purity defined the nation. In Deutsches Volkstum, Jahn
defined nationality on the basis of a blend of religious, racial, and cul-
tural elements. Like Arndt, Jahn identified Christianity as a key attribute
of German national identity. But Jahn placed far more emphasis than
Arndt on the need to recapture Germany’s racial purity.49 ‘‘Mixed-breed
animals,’’ he wrote, ‘‘have no true power of propagation; and just as
little do mongrel peoples achieve national [volkstümliches] survival.’’
Jahn continued:

The Spanish proverb ‘‘Trust no mule and no mulatto’’ is quite apt; and
the German ‘‘neither fish nor fowl’’ is a warning. The purer the Volk, the
better; the more mixed, the more it resembles a horde [je bandenmäßiger].
. . . The founding day of the universal monarchy will be the final moment
of humanity.50
 a nation of romantics 115

As these examples illustrate, romantic nationalist writers concurred

that the nation must be a unified community of all Germans—whether
that unity derived primarily from territory, laws, moral commitment,
language, race, or religion. In large part a movement of young people
and social outsiders, it centered around an effort to reconstitute what
was imagined to be a lost original community—or, in stronger terms, an
original communion of believers. Though employing the rhetoric of a
return to the past, these activists’ logic was thoroughly modern: they
insisted on cultural and social uniformity and on the civic equality of
all citizens, unlike the multiplicity of hierarchical orders that had char-
acterized the traditional world. It was their very insistence on uniformity
that made their quest to identify the true characteristics of the national
community so urgently pressing. It is worth emphasizing, however, the
fractured and contested nature of these claims about the sources of this
communion: there were always numerous strands in the popular nation-
alists’ arguments, rather than one single characteristic vision of the na-
tional community. The contested character of German identity may be
illustrated by exploring the images of two potential out-groups—Jews
and Poles—that met with strikingly different treatment in the popular
nationalist rhetoric of this era.

Jews, Poles, and the Limits of National Community

In 1819, a series of anti–Jewish uprisings broke out throughout the
German states. These riots, motivated partly by a postwar economic
downturn, represented the culmination of a backlash against Jewish
emancipation that had been building for several years. Some historians,
referring to these incidents, have concluded that anti–Semitism became
a dominant ‘‘axiomatic’’ element of nineteenth-century German political
culture. In an iconoclastic history of the Holocaust, Daniel Jonah Gold-
hagen declares: ‘‘From the beginning of the nineteenth century, anti–
Semitism was ubiquitous in Germany. . . . Jews came to be identified
with and symbolic of anything and everything which was deemed awry
in German society.’’51 This view is an exaggeration. As with other is-
sues, substantial disagreements existed, even among nationalists them-
selves, over the significance and centrality of religion in defining the
national community. Nonetheless, Goldhagen rightly identifies a dis-
turbing tendency of German romantic nationalism. In the aftermath of
the Napoleonic era, a number of prominent German intellectuals artic-
ulated anti–Semitic ideas that anticipated subsequent Nazi racial doc-
trine. This new political anti–Semitism was qualitatively different from
116 the concept in play

traditional anti–Jewish thought of the premodern era. Nationalists’ ar-

guments about the need for religious purity should be understood as
one disturbing dimension of a larger project of ‘‘imagining the nation’’
that took place in the German states during the early nineteenth cen-
tury.
During the Napoleonic era, the German states of the Confederation of
the Rhine had adopted the Code Napoléon, thus granting for the first
time full civic equality to Jews. In 1812, Prussia had implemented a more
limited edict that eliminated most of the social and economic restrictions
on Prussian Jews, though it still denied them active political rights and
excluded them from government service.52 This legislation was consistent
with the broader spirit of Hardenberg’s reform program, which rejected
the traditional legal distinctions between estates, favoring a social order
based on equality of citizens before the law. In his Riga Memorandum,
Hardenberg had argued that the ‘‘only effective means to improve’’ the
Jews was ‘‘the appropriate instruction of their children and their partic-
ipation in freedom of trade and civic burdens.’’53
The immediate impulse for the Prussian Emancipation Edict, however,
came not from Hardenberg but from the progressive minister Friedrich
Leopold von Schrötter. In the autumn of 1808, Schrötter asked the Kri-
minalrat Brand, the legal adviser for the city of Königsberg, if he knew
of a means ‘‘to slay [the Jews] all at once, though of course without
bloodshed.’’ Brand replied that he was ‘‘in possession of an effective
method of slaying not the Jews, but Judaism.’’ Brand proceeded to draft
a law that mandated ‘‘equal rights and equal duties’’ for Jews living in
Prussia, which became the basis for the edict of 1812.54
The use of this astonishingly bloody language to describe a liberal
piece of legislation highlights one of the central dilemmas of the Prussian
reform movement. As the above exchange illustrates, both Schrötter and
Brand found the juridical distinctions between Jews and other Prussian
subjects intolerable. In order to forge a unitary Prussian state, they be-
lieved, all citizens must have the same legal status. For many centuries,
Jews had lived under tight restrictions in most European countries: gov-
ernments imposed limitations on Jews’ choice of occupation and place
of residence and subjected them to special taxes. In the particularistic
social structure of the premodern period, however, Jews had constituted
only one of many individual corporate groups, each of which possessed
its own unique juridical and social status. As non–Christians, Jewish
residents had long been attacked as a threat to the religious integrity of
the realm, but their special system of laws had not been considered a
social or political ‘‘problem,’’ because all social groups were differenti-
ated on the basis of their particular legal status.55
 a nation of romantics 117

At the end of the eighteenth century, with the emergence of the ideas
of the unitary state and the politically unified nation, this way of think-
ing began to change. Christian Wilhelm von Dohm’s 1781 treatise, On
the Civic Improvement of the Jews, anticipated subsequent arguments for
Jewish emancipation. Dohm declared that centuries of oppression had
rendered the Jews ‘‘morally corrupt’’; the abolition of these oppressive
conditions would facilitate the Bildung of the Jews, enabling them to
participate in society as full equals.56 In proposing to ‘‘slay Judaism,’’
Brand was building on Dohm’s logic: he emphasized the need to eradicate
the juridical distinctions that inhibited the formation of a common public
spirit among the citizenry.
In France during the revolution, the question of Jewish rights had
been decided with the stroke of a pen in September 1791 with the pas-
sage of a decree securing full civic equality for Jews. Under the terms
of this decree, Jews were entitled to active citizenship upon swearing a
‘‘civic oath’’ and renouncing the ‘‘privileges and exceptions’’ that had
previously been granted to members of autonomous Jewish communities
in France.57 This unambivalent approach was consistent with the radical
spirit of the French Revolution as a whole, in which virtually the entire
fabric of feudalism was abolished on the night of 4 August 1789, and
aristocratic titles were legally eradicated by decree in June 1790. The
Prussian reform movement, by contrast, followed a more gradualist ap-
proach. For example, rather than abolishing the aristocracy, the reformers
sought to transform it from an egotistical into a public-spirited class. The
adoption of this incrementalist strategy in the sphere of religious policy
ensured that the question of Jews’ legal and social status would become
a long-running controversy in nineteenth-century Prussia. Dissatisfied
with Hardenberg’s compromises, purists argued that a true unity of the
nation could only be attained by establishing full equality of conditions
among the citizenry. Some argued that the ‘‘Jewish problem’’ could be
solved by assimilation (i.e., by abolishing the differences between Jews
and Christians); others claimed that only the elimination of the Jews
could make the nation pure.
After the end of the Napoleonic wars, chillingly anti–Jewish rhet-
oric appeared in the German press, some of it penned by ‘‘respectable’’
authors. In 1815, Christian Friedrich Rühs, a professor of history at
the newly founded University of Berlin, who later became the official
historian of the Prussian state, published a tract entitled The Demands
of the Jews for German Citizenship. Rühs rejected Jewish claims to be-
come German citizens, maintaining that Jews constituted a separate na-
tion of their own by virtue of their system of law, which was both
religious and political. Rühs viewed conversion to Christianity as the
118 the concept in play

sole means of integrating Jews into the state. Jews who refused to
convert, he argued, should be treated only as a ‘‘tolerated people,’’ and
they should be excluded from public offices, the army, guilds, and
corporations. Rühs also proposed that Jews be required to wear a yel-
low badge, so that Germans could recognize immediately the ‘‘Hebrew
enemy.’’58
Jakob Friedrich Fries, one of Germany’s leading Kantians and a pro-
fessor of philosophy at the University of Jena, published an even more
virulent attack on Judaism the following year, in the form of a review
of Rühs’s tract. Fries called the Jews ‘‘junk dealers and pillagers of the
Volk’’; he labeled Judaism a ‘‘people’s disease’’ (Völkerkrankheit) and a
‘‘plague.’’ Fries wrote: ‘‘We declare war not on the Jews, our brothers,
but rather on Jewry [Judenschaft].’’ Fries thus drew a distinction between
individual Jews, against whom he claimed to harbor no animus, and the
collectivity of Jews as a corporatively constituted institution. Possessing
their own ‘‘theocratic state constitution,’’ the Jews could be ‘‘subjects of
our government’’ but never ‘‘citizens in our Volk.’’ Indeed, Jews ‘‘form
not just a Volk, they also form a state.’’59
Not only did the Jews form ‘‘a separate nation,’’ according to Fries,
they were also ‘‘a political association’’ and a ‘‘religious party,’’ which
possessed a ‘‘strictly aristocratic constitution’’ that stemmed from the
power of the rabbis. Motivated by ‘‘caste spirit,’’ their activities had a
‘‘terribly demoralizing power’’ on the entire Volk. It was of utmost im-
portance, concluded Fries, ‘‘that this caste be exterminated root and
branch, as it is manifestly the most dangerous of all the secret and public
political societies and states within the state.’’60 To this end, he argued
for the prohibition of Jewish immigration into Germany and the en-
couragement of Jews’ emigration, as well as for further restrictions on
Jewish marriages. Jews should be banned from living in the countryside,
wrote Fries, ‘‘because their influence is much too quickly pernicious
there’’; they should be permitted to live only in towns, under restricted
conditions. Jews, he maintained, should also be required to send their
children to Christian schools.61 Fries’s pamphlet was read aloud in beer-
houses after its publication in 1816, and its ideas even provoked a re-
sponse from Hegel, who criticized the ‘‘brew and stew’’ of Fries’s German
philosophy.62

Though political anti–Semitism became widespread in early nineteenth-

century Germany, it was far from ubiquitous. A few examples will serve
to illustrate the complexity of the religious issue in the German states
during this period. In 1816, two proconstitutional journals in the Rhine-
land, the Hermann and the Westfälische Anzeiger, defended Jews against
 a nation of romantics 119

the attacks by Rühs and Fries. Arnold Mallinckrodt, the editor of the
Westfälische Anzeiger, declared: ‘‘The struggle against the Jews is a truly
peculiar spectacle of our convulsive time,’’ and he argued that Jews
should be granted the same legal rights as Christians.63 Other authors
had no love for Judaism but all the same criticized the virulent spirit of
the student movement. In 1817, for example, historian Karl Adolf Menzel
of Breslau published a tract chastising Jahn and his associates for their
‘‘cannibalistic war songs’’ and for their ‘‘un–German’’ egalitarianism,
which threatened to annihilate the existing social order. ‘‘All this,’’ he
concluded, ‘‘is not Christian and German, but pagan and Jewish, Jewish
in the worst sense of the word, in spite of the haughtiness with which
you look down from your German superiority upon Jews and Juda-
ism.’’64 Menzel attacked the nationalists’ anti–Semitic agitation as a symp-
tom of their troubling egalitarianism, which sought to abolish all dis-
tinctions in the social order.
Other figures, however, took precisely the opposite tack, criticizing
anti–Jewish sentiment as an obstacle to achieving a truly rational egali-
tarian order. In 1817, the young scholar Friedrich Wilhelm Carové (1789–
1852), Hegel’s assistant in Berlin and one of the early leaders of the
Burschenschaft movement, wrote a plan for transforming the Burschen-
schaft into a truly universal community that would facilitate the edu-
cation of its members as free and autonomous individuals. Carové argued
that prohibitions on the membership of Jews and foreigners in German
student organizations prevented them from becoming associations of ra-
tional beings. In the words of one of Carové’s allies, ‘‘the main goal of
the Burschenschaft should be considered patriotic [vaterländische] edu-
cation, but not German patriotic education; instead, for each according
to his own way.’’65 Carové’s views won him no love from his former
compatriots in the student organization: he was attacked as a betrayer
of the nationalist cause, and his program was easily defeated at the Bur-
schenschaft congress in Jena in the autumn of 1818.66
One final example illustrating the complexity of this issue may be
found in the pamphlets of Saul Ascher (1767–1822), a Jewish publicist,
who argued against the extremes of anti–Semitism. In Die Germanomie,
conceived in part as a response to Rühs’s diatribe against Jewish citizen-
ship, Ascher denied that Germany possessed or should seek to attain ‘‘an
original state, an original Volk, and an original language.’’ Ascher argued
that the division of humans into ‘‘isolated nations’’ reflected the ‘‘lower
stage of formation in which humans formerly found themselves.’’ In the
nineteenth century, he contended, a new cosmopolitan identity was ren-
dering obsolete the more primitive divisions of humanity into races and
nations:
120 the concept in play

We have, thank heaven!, come so far that we do not divide humans into
tribes and races and deduce dissimilarities within the human race from
territorial distinctions. From a legal perspective, the human race is now
conceived in its full magnitude by the name Humanity . . . Gradually, in
all regions of the world, every human individual will be assured an equal
latitude for the exercise of his energies.67

In this manner, Ascher sought to refute religious bigotry with radiant

optimism about the potential for universal enlightenment and human
progress.
This brief survey of literature on the ‘‘Jewish question’’ in the early
nineteenth century suggests two conclusions about the nature of roman-
tic nationalism. First, nationalist anti–Semitism was both more extreme
and different in character from earlier anti–Jewish thought. The new
nationalist theory held that Germany must be unified not only religiously
but also socially and politically. This new totalizing vision, which in-
sisted on the cultural and social homogeneity of the nation, encouraged
the formation of a new view of Judaism. No longer were Jews simply
‘‘a quasi-autonomous estate on the margins of society’’; now they were
seen as a threat to the very integrity of the nation.68 Second, for many
romantic nationalists, religious purity served as a vital source of cultural
and social cohesion for the new community. It is striking that Menzel, a
defender of traditional hierarchies, chastised the nationalists for their
anti–Semitic ardor, viewing it as gratuitous and irrational. More egali-
tarian authors, such as Jahn and Fries, on the other hand, argued that
the nation could achieve spiritual and political unity only through forg-
ing a specifically Protestant identity. Follen, the leader of the most rad-
ically democratic faction in the Burschenschaft, was also one of the most
fanatical opponents of Jewish inclusion, arguing that ‘‘religious and na-
tional [volksthümliches] struggle are profoundly unified.’’69 For most
members of the Burschenschaft, Carové’s arid rationalism (not to mention
Ascher’s cosmopolitan ideals) appeared insufficient for nurturing the
community that they craved.

While popular nationalists of the 1810s focused intense scrutiny on the

relationship between German and Jewish identity, they hardly even al-
luded to the status of the ethnic Poles living within Prussia’s boundaries.
Prussia’s Polish minority was rarely, if ever, mentioned in early nation-
alist tracts, such as Jahn’s Deutsches Volkstum, Arndt’s Geist der Zeit, and
Görres’s Teutschland und die Revolution. Another telling example of this
omission was found in a report on the Wartburg Festival composed in
 a nation of romantics 121

1817 by the nationalist professor Lorenz Oken and published in the Wei-
mar journal Isis. Along with a list of the books burned at the festival,
Oken provided illustrations, including a goose, a donkey, a caricature of
a Jew’s head with a hooked nose, and a Star of David.70 While employing
these anti–Semitic images, Oken remained silent on the status of Poles.
In addressing the students at the Wartburg, he described them as a ‘‘uni-
versal’’ group, who would be entitled to live and work in any of the
German states. At the same time, he insisted:

This universality does not extend to the entire world. At the university,
you do not learn French, English, Spanish, Russian, Turkish ethics and
science. You can become, and desire to become, . . . nothing other than
educated Germans, who are all equal, and who are all free to do business
everywhere.71

In this passage, Oken demarcated Germans from Spaniards, Russians,

Turks, and so forth; but he apparently did not think to distinguish Ger-
mans from Poles.
The relative absence of the ‘‘Polish question’’ from early popular na-
tionalist discourse is surprising. Prussia had long contained a substantial
Polish minority, and figures such as Frederick the Great had expressed
blatantly anti–Polish sentiments long before the Napoleonic era. After
the founding of the German Empire in 1871, the policy toward Poles
would become a question of burning concern for German nationalists.72
During the Napoleonic era, the bureaucratic reformers sometimes referred
to Prussia’s Polish minority as an ethnic nation in its own right: Stein,
for example, declared in his Nassau Memorandum: ‘‘The Polish nation
. . . possesses a noble pride, energy, courage, nobility, and willingness to
sacrifice itself for fatherland and freedom.’’ Similarly, in a memorandum
of March 1807, Altenstein lauded the Poles’ ‘‘national pride’’ and pro-
posed that the Polish gentry participate in Prussia’s local and central
administration.73
Yet this issue was a decidedly subordinate theme in German popular
nationalist literature at least until 1830, the year in which a popular
uprising in Russia’s Polish territories called new attention to this region.
Indeed, during the 1830s and 1840s, many German nationalists sup-
ported the cause of Polish unification. At the German national festival
in Hambach in 1832, for example, speaker Johann Georg August Wirth
demanded ‘‘freedom, enlightenment, nationality, and popular sover-
eignty [Volkshoheit]’’ not only for Germans but also for the ‘‘brother
peoples’’ of Poland, Hungary, Italy, and Spain.74 Likewise, in the Frank-
furt National Assembly of 1848, the radical delegate Arnold Ruge de-
122 the concept in play

picted Poles as the ‘‘element of freedom in the Slavic peoples,’’ and he

called for the ‘‘reestablishment of a free and independent Poland.’’75
The Revolution of 1848, however, marked a turning point in the re-
lations between the German and Polish nationalist movements. During
the initial uprising in March of that year, revolutionary leaders in Berlin
freed several leaders of the Polish independence movement from a Moa-
bit prison and led them in a triumphal parade through the city. In a
cabinet order of 24 March 1848, King Frederick William IV promised a
‘‘national reorganization’’ of the grand duchy of Posen, whose population
was of mixed German and Polish ethnicity. Yet, over the next few
months, most of the revolutionaries in the German states took a less
generous stance toward the Polish national movement, and ‘‘friends of
Poland’’ like Ruge found themselves in a distinct minority. In July 1848,
the Frankfurt National Assembly rejected a resolution calling for the
reestablishment of an independent Polish state, and it voted by a 342–
31 majority to absorb the predominantly German-speaking territories of
Posen into the German Confederation.76 This new harsher line toward
Polish independence foreshadowed the rise of anti–Slavic sentiment in
Germany during the late nineteenth century.
Two provisional explanations may be advanced for the early popular
nationalists’ lack of concern for Poland. First, during the economic de-
pression that struck the German states in the aftermath of the Napoleonic
wars, Jews may have served more easily as scapegoats than Poles. Prus-
sia’s Polish population was overwhelmingly agrarian: it consisted largely
of peasants and aristocrats living on the land. Thus, direct social contacts
between ethnic Poles and ethnic Germans would have been limited in
most regions. Throughout the German states, however, Jews lived mainly
in urban areas, and historically, they had been legally restricted to oc-
cupations in trade and finance. The Jewish economic elite, who were
financiers and large merchants, attracted resentment from Christian debt-
ors and competitors. Poor Jewish peddlers, who traveled from village to
village, often generated hostility from local artisans.77 Thus, early pop-
ular nationalism in Germany may have been more anti–Semitic than anti–
Polish in part because of the higher degree of economic friction between
Germans and Jews than between Germans and Poles.
A second likely reason why the early nationalists attacked Jews more
than Poles is that these activists drew their inspiration from a religious
rather than a racial model of thought. Only during the latter half of the
nineteenth century did racialist theories of national identity become
highly developed in Europe, making it easier to conceive of a permanent
and unalterable opposition between Germans and Poles.78 At the begin-
 a nation of romantics 123

ning of the nineteenth century, this ethnic boundary may still have ap-
peared more permeable and less absolute than it became in subsequent
generations. In contrast, many romantic nationalists viewed Christianity
as the keystone of German national identity, and they labored vigilantly
to defend this religious frontier.

Conclusion: The Clash of Symbolic Economies

This chapter has explored the political discourses and practices of bour-
geois popular activists in the German states during and immediately after
the Napoleonic era. Unlike the enlightened nationalists within the Prus-
sian civil service, who built on eighteenth-century theories of rational
administration, these activists drew their inspiration partly from the cul-
ture of romanticism and from pietist spirituality. Moreover, unlike the
bureaucratic reformers, whose primary goal in mobilizing the nation was
to enhance the authority of the state, these romantic nationalists viewed
the nation as an object of quasi-religious devotion, a communion of souls
that accorded its citizens an earthly link to the eternal.
For all of the differences between these two strands of nationalism,
they proved to be mutually reinforcing in certain critical respects. Like
the Stein-Hardenberg party, the romantics stressed the ideally harmoni-
ous and unitary character of the national community. Furthermore, these
popular activists generally favored monarchical sovereignty, at least in
principle. They contended that many of the smaller German states would
need to be absorbed by Prussia, but most argued that the Prussian mon-
arch himself should remain in power. Virtually all of these figures called
for cooperation between the nation and its king; outright republicanism
was not yet a serious option (except for Karl Follen and his tiny band
of followers).
Thus, an uneasy balance existed between the enlightened nationalism
of Prussian officialdom and the romantic nationalism of the bourgeois
popular activists. Several findings of my analysis are summarized in table
5.1.
As this table indicates, important ambivalences existed within German
bourgeois nationalist discourse during this era. For example, these figures
were far from united in demanding the abolition of aristocratic privilege.
Most of them agreed on the desirability of ‘‘equality before the law.’’
Nonetheless, many popular nationalists also hoped to preserve elements
of the old corporate order. Even as enthusiastic a leveler as Friedrich
Ludwig Jahn supported the preservation of some remnants of the tra-
ditional estates, and the question of whether economic classes should be
124 the concept in play

5.1 The Concept ‘‘Nation’’ in Romantic Nationalist Discourse, c. 1815

Consensual features Contested features

The nation is a harmonious community Can Jews be citizens?
possessing one unified interest and will.
The nation is Germany not Prussia.
The nation must possess one contiguous
territory.
The nation must be linguistically and
culturally unified.
All citizens must be equal before the Must the old corporate bodies (e.g.,
law. the aristocracy) be abolished?
The nation’s interest is compatible with What is the relationship between
the Prussian king’s interest. the other German states and the
nation?

abolished was not yet an issue open to debate. Though all of the popular
nationalists agreed on the need for German unification, there was little
consensus about the primary characteristics that defined that unity. Some
figures, such as Görres, defined ‘‘Germany’’ in primarily institutional and
cultural terms; others, such as Jahn, emphasized race and ethnicity. Re-
ligion served as an important marker of national identity, but not every-
one agreed that Jews must be excluded from the nation. The question
of the relationship between Protestants and Catholics in the national com-
munity (which would become so central in the Kulturkampf later in the
century) was as yet little discussed. Nor did these activists devote much
attention to the status of ethnic Poles in the German nation. In their
writings, female citizenship remained out of the question.
Bourgeois popular nationalism was marked by contention over the
proper mix of new and old institutions and over the proper relationship
between the people and their princes. On these issues, the arguments
offered by the popular nationalists often resembled those of reform-
minded ministers, such as Stein and Hardenberg. In one vital respect,
however, the romantic nationalists both moved beyond and challenged
the conceptions of the reform party within the Prussian ministry. The
bureaucratic reformers always envisioned the nation as existing in tan-
dem with and in support of state institutions. The romantic nationalists,
by contrast, labored to forge a national community as an organic entity
autonomous from the state. Since they viewed the people as the highest
court of appeal, they saw no need for official sanction for launching a
petition drive or for holding a festival on behalf of national unity. Thus,
while not explicitly antimonarchical, the popular nationalist movement
 a na ti on o f rom a n ti cs 125

played an important role in politicizing the public sphere in Prussia and

the other German states during the early nineteenth century and, con-
sequently, in challenging the symbolic centrality of the king and his
ministers in the political process. The next chapter traces the Prussian
government’s response to this challenge during the initial years after the
Vienna Congress.
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 Six

a nation of revolutionaries

In March 1819, alarmed by the spread of nationalist activism

among young people, the Prussian government closed Jahn’s
gymnastics ground on the Hasenheide in Berlin. The following eve-
ning, about fifty youths gathered in front of Jahn’s house. Lighting
two torches, they proceeded to sing Luther’s ‘‘Eine feste Burg’’ and then
cheered Jahn three times with a Lebehoch. Jahn, it turned out, was not
at home, so the group quietly withdrew. Two days later, Berlin’s police
inspector filed a report on this incident with Hardenberg. Over the next
month, the inspector identified and interrogated several of the partici-
pants, at least one of whom professed not to know that ‘‘political dem-
onstrations’’ had been prohibited in Prussia since 1815.1
One of the youths who had joined in saluting Jahn was a twenty-
four-year-old army captain by the name of Hans Rudolph von Plehwe.
At the beginning of April, Plehwe came under additional suspicion when
he insulted a Berlin innkeeper, who had condemned the assassination of
the conservative publicist and playwright August von Kotzebue. Con-
sequently, Plehwe was arrested, and he was denied the right to have
visitors in jail.2 During his imprisonment, the young captain wrote a
series of bizarre letters both to the king’s adjutant and to the king him-
self. Plehwe addressed both the adjutant and the king with the familiar
Du, and his letters intertwined German and Christian images in a most
unsettling way. One of Plehwe’s letters to Frederick William III read as
follows:

My King and Lord, God’s anointed: Take me to thee [Nimm mich zu dir]:
I have seen thee pray and kneel down among thy Volk, which made my
heart so soft that I cannot leave thee in eternity. Thou dost an injustice

127
128 the concept in play

before God and men; of such terrible sins there is nothing to say—that is
why thy heart is so heavy. Let me be with thee in a German frock; then
thou wilt tell if I am a fool: as thou desirest, for worldly wisdom is fool-
ishness to God. Dear King and Lord, take me to thee—I want to tell thee
everything: I have received it all from Christ, who is the savior of us both,
before whom we are brothers; but on earth I want to be thy servant
[Knecht] and son. Take me on, for it is high time. God in high heaven has
received thy tears and thy prayer for thy Volk; hear my true voice—thou
wilt lead thy Volk to the Lord.
I will pray for thee; I cannot do more. Christ, thou Lamb of God, thou
who carriest the sins of the world, forgive us ours. Christ, thou Lamb of
God, thou who carriest the sins of the world, give us thy peace of the
Lord.
Ruler, rule! Conqueror, conquer! King, use thy regiment, lead thy realm
to war, make an end to slavery.3

The letter was signed, ‘‘Thy servant and son, Hans Rudolf [sic] Plehwe.’’
Having read Plehwe’s letters, Hardenberg called him a ‘‘crazy religious
fanatic’’ who was ‘‘ripe for the madhouse’’ and recommended that he be
dismissed from the army.4 The chancellor’s judgment of Plehwe’s mental
state may well have been justified, but the young army officer’s ravings
reflected the logic of romantic nationalism. To call the king Du was out-
rageous, yet this pronominal usage only extended the practice of the
Turner and the Burschenschaftler, who used the familiar form of address
toward members of all estates. Plehwe’s language also echoed the enthu-
siastic spirituality of the pietists, who proclaimed the equality of all
believers and who emphasized the existence of a direct bond between
the individual Christian and God. Some of the letter’s passages invoked
the Bible: for example, the claim that ‘‘worldly wisdom is foolishness to
God’’ is a paraphrase of I Corinthians 1:20. A particularly fascinating
aspect of the letter was its portrayal of the triangular relationship be-
tween the king, his subjects (as embodied by Plehwe), and God. Plehwe
wrote that on earth, he was the king’s ‘‘servant and son,’’ but before
Christ they were both brothers. He described the king as the leader of
the Volk (‘‘Ruler, rule! . . . King, use thy regiment, lead thy realm to
war’’), but he also said that the king had done ‘‘an injustice before God
and men’’—thus, in effect, placing the people on the same level as God.
Indeed, Plehwe’s use of the pronoun Du was itself ambiguous: in German
one employs this pronominal form not only with one’s familiars but also
when addressing God. It was thus unclear whether Plehwe was portray-
ing the king as his own equal or as God’s representative on earth (‘‘My
King and Lord, God’s anointed’’).
 a nation of revolutionaries 129

In Plehwe’s letter, every hierarchical relationship (whether political,

social, or religious) was in flux. Plehwe was both the king’s servant and
his brother. The king was both the leader of the Volk and a sinner
‘‘before God and men.’’ Moreover, though the king was ‘‘God’s
anointed,’’ Plehwe portrayed himself as a prophet who must convey
Christ’s word to the king. The degree of confusion in Plehwe’s letter was
extreme; yet this tendency to confuse or obscure fundamental political
and social relationships appeared in many of the writings by the romantic
nationalists. Political authority depends upon political legitimacy, and,
in the years after 1815, German leaders came to fear that the moral
foundations of monarchical rule might crumble under the assault of the
new nationalist ideas.

At the conclusion of the Napoleonic wars, deep ambivalences and am-

biguities existed within the concept ‘‘nation.’’ For example, while the
romantic nationalists insisted that the nation was Germany, not Prussia,
both the bureaucratic and the aristocratic nationalists generally avoided
committing themselves one way or the other on this issue.5 While the
aristocratic nationalists insisted that the Prussian nobility preserve its
privileged status in the new nation, both the bureaucratic and the ro-
mantic nationalists were divided over the proper balance of egalitarian
and hierarchical social principles. Indeed, many bourgeois popular na-
tionalists, despite their reputation as radical egalitarians, favored the
preservation of the aristocracy and other traditional corporate elites. Fi-
nally, the nature of sovereign authority within the nation remained ill-
defined. On the one hand, nearly all participants in Prussian politics
agreed that the nation was an ideally harmonious and unified political
community, and virtually no one had yet developed a systematic critique
of monarchical sovereignty. On the other hand, both the aristocratic and
the romantic nationalists were advancing claims about their political
rights that proved troubling to Prussia’s leading civil servants and to
King Frederick William III.
The present chapter, which focuses mainly on the rhetoric of a small
group of leading civil servants and aristocrats who were influential ad-
visers to Frederick William III, has two objectives. First, it examines the
crystallization of the concept ‘‘nation’’ during the years immediately fol-
lowing Napoleon’s final defeat in 1815, analyzing how the range of am-
biguity within this concept narrowed in this period. In particular, it
examines why two definitions of this concept that had been employed
during the Napoleonic era—the ‘‘Prussian nation’’ and the hierarchical
‘‘nation of aristocrats’’—began to disappear from use. Second, this chap-
130 the concept in play

ter analyzes how certain consensual features of the concept ‘‘nation’’

shaped Prussian political culture during this era.
Despite the many differences among civil servants, aristocrats, and
bourgeois popular activists, these groups all concurred about the ideally
harmonious and unanimous character of the national will. Thus, the vol-
atile internal conflicts of the years after 1815 proved highly troubling to
Prussia’s political elite. Some figures interpreted this turbulence as merely
a temporary setback on the path to a future utopian order; others re-
sponded more pessimistically, rejecting the ideal of a politically active
nation altogether. Neither side, however, acknowledged that intense do-
mestic disputes might be an acceptable feature of a viable constitutional
government.
Drawing on previously unpublished documents, I show how these
semantic struggles over the concept ‘‘nation’’ influenced King Frederick
William III’s decision against the adoption of a Prussian constitution.
Though historians have often depicted the Prussian king as having ca-
pitulated to the forces of an aristocratic ‘‘Reaction’’ after Napoleon’s fall,
this view is too simplistic. Frederick William III decisively dismissed the
possibility of fully restoring Prussia’s traditional political and social hi-
erarchies; nonetheless, he came to believe that a politically active nation
would inevitably challenge monarchical sovereignty. Ultimately, the
king’s political imagination proved as powerful as his material interests:
he sought to forge a new defensive alliance, along with leading civil
servants and aristocrats, to fend off what he perceived as an imminent
revolutionary threat.

The Perils of Speaking Nationally in the Post–

Napoleonic Era
Napoleon’s final defeat in 1815 had profound effects on nationalist dis-
course in Prussia. The advent of peace, along with the end of the Prus-
sian ministry’s aggressive efforts at domestic social reform, diminished
the motivation of civil servants and aristocrats alike to appeal for the
mobilization of the nation. The Prussian government no longer needed
to mobilize the populace in order to fend off the French military threat.
Likewise, by 1815, the aristocracy had coopted or defeated some of the
Prussian ministry’s more onerous reform proposals. For example, many
nobles had turned the liberation of the serfs to their own economic ad-
vantage, and aristocrats had successfully resisted the implementation of
various measures, such as the income tax, the Gendarmerie Edict, and
the abolition of patrimonial justice and police powers.6 Hence, Prussian
nobles had less urgent motives than before to demand a national repre-
 a nation of revolutionaries 131

sentation that would protect them against the arbitrary power of the
state.
While the intensity of bureaucratic nationalist and aristocratic nation-
alist rhetoric in Prussia generally declined after 1815, the opposite was
true of bourgeois romantic nationalism. The patriotic war of 1813–1814
had stimulated popular demands for political liberalization and German
national unification. The Vienna Settlement, however, produced no sub-
stantial progress toward either of these objectives. Thus, after 1815,
bourgeois activists increasingly invoked the authority of the nation for
the purpose of compelling the leaders of the German states to fulfill the
political desires of their people. During this period, in other words, na-
tionalism became increasingly an oppositional ideology rather than a
source of legitimation for the state.
The abandonment of the concept ‘‘nation’’ by Prussia’s ruling elites,
however, was neither sudden nor complete. In the aftermath of the Na-
poleonic Wars, the lines of political debate in the German states remained
blurred and indistinct. The complexity of the national question was ev-
ident at the Vienna Congress of 1814–1815, which brought together the
four leaders of the alliance against Napoleon (Britain, Russia, Austria,
and Prussia), along with representatives of France, Spain, and the smaller
German states. The statesmen who gathered there faced a complex chain
of interconnected problems. At the international level, they needed to
resolve the territorial claims of various powers and to forge a permanent
alliance that would restrain French expansionism in the future; within
Central Europe, they needed to forge a viable plan for reorganizing the
German states.
The twenty-five-year upheaval following the French Revolution had
resulted in a massive reorganization of the German political order. Not
only was the Holy Roman Empire abolished in 1806, but many of its
smaller constituent states were absorbed during this period by their
larger neighbors. Independently governed church lands were secular-
ized, and the so-called imperial (reichsunmittelbare) nobility, who had
previously owed allegiance to the emperor alone, were subjected to
princely authority. In addition, all but a handful of the autonomous
Reichsstädte were absorbed into the territorial states. Prior to the French
Revolution, close to 1,800 distinct political units had existed in German-
speaking Europe; in 1815, the German Confederation counted only
thirty-nine members.7
These massive political changes had produced a volatile situation in
Germany, and the representatives of the various German states came to
the Vienna Congress with significantly differing agendas. For example,
numerous groups that had lost traditional rights during the period of
Prussia in 1815
 a nation of revolutionaries 133

Napoleonic domination, such as the imperial nobility and the Catholic

church, sent delegates to Vienna to lobby (generally in vain) for the
restoration of their special status. A number of small and middle-sized
states in southern and central Germany, in contrast, had substantially
increased their territories as a result of the political reorganization under
Napoleon. Baden, for example, had quadrupled its holdings since the
French Revolution; Bavaria and Württemberg had also significantly ex-
panded. In order to consolidate and legitimate their gains, these states
needed to establish their political authority over their new holdings,
while at the same time fending off the expansionist urges of larger
German powers. These states were thus forced to strike a delicate bal-
ance: they had to justify their internal consolidation of political power
but to reject demands for more extensive centralization of powers within
a greater Germany. In order to anchor their political authority, many of
these states enacted constitutions. Nassau, for example, had established
a constitution in 1814; Bavaria, Baden, and Württemberg all declared
such intentions by January 1815 (though each of these states issued its
constitution only several years later).8 Yet these south German states,
which led the movement toward constitutional government, would also
be among the first to denounce the popular German nationalism of the
postwar era.
Austrian and Prussian objectives at the Vienna Congress were some-
what less clear-cut than those of the smaller states. Prussia had significant
territorial ambitions. In addition, Hardenberg wanted to establish a
closely knit league of German states, within which Prussia and Austria
would play the leading roles. In the initial stages of the Vienna delib-
erations, Metternich supported Hardenberg’s plan, which, in the words
of one historian, would have converted the smaller German states to a
‘‘double-headed protectorate’’ under Austrian and Prussian domination.9
Metternich, however, was more concerned with forging a stable system
of European alliances than with increasing Austrian influence over do-
mestic affairs in Germany. By 1815, he had backed off from the goal of
achieving a more unified German order, instead applying his energies
to strengthening Austrian influence in northern Italy and consolidating
the dynastic Habsburg lands. The Vienna Settlement of June 1815 thus
created not a Bundesstaat but a loosely federated Staatenbund, which
possessed little authority over its members. Austria’s decision against a
more united Germany also signaled a turn away from the principle of
constitutional government. Article 13 of the Vienna Settlement of 1815
stipulated that ‘‘in every federal state there will be a constitution [land-
ständische Verfassung],’’ but this provision was left wide open to interpre-
tation. Within its own territories, Austria created a series of regional
134 the concept in play

diets, but it rejected calls for a central representative institution. For a

multiethnic empire bound together by dynastic loyalty, Metternich re-
alized, the idea of a united and politically active nation posed a poten-
tially fatal threat.10
As Austria turned its attention away from the German Confederation,
however, Prussia was thrust into closer involvement with it. At the Vi-
enna Congress, Russia demanded control over a new Polish protectorate,
to be created partly out of lands acquired by Prussia in the 1790s through
the second and third Polish partitions. As compensation, Prussia wanted
to annex Saxony, which had remained allied to France throughout the
war; but instead it was forced to accept the former French satellite state
of Westphalia, along with most of the Left Rhine territories that had
been annexed by France during the war. This territorial acquisition
posed significant problems for Prussia: although the Rhine possessions
were among the most prosperous lands in Germany, they were not con-
tiguous with the rest of Prussia’s holdings, and they would force the
country into the front lines of any future war with France. Additionally,
the Rhineland was predominately Catholic, in contrast to the Lutheran
majority in the other Prussian provinces.
In seeking to integrate the new Rhenish possessions into the exist-
ing state, the Prussian government confronted a difficult challenge.
One potential strategy for legitimating its dominion over these lands
was for the Prussian government to associate itself with the twin prin-
ciples of German unity and constitutional rule. Initially, Hardenberg
and other leaders found this strategy attractive, partly because for
Prussia, the nationalist movement posed a less imminent challenge than
for many other German states. Unlike the ethnically splintered Habs-
burg Empire, Prussia was predominantly German, though it contained
a substantial Polish minority; and unlike some of the smaller German
states, Prussia was in no danger of being swallowed by an ambitious
neighbor in the name of national unity. Moreover, the romantic nation-
alists themselves displayed more sympathy toward Prussia than toward
other members of the German Confederation. Arndt, for example, de-
rided the autonomy of the south German states (he argued that
‘‘princes . . . must cease to exist as soon as the Volk does not need
them anymore’’) but proclaimed that Prussia’s historical mission was to
lead a united Germany.11
Yet the ideal of national unity also carried dangers. If Prussia advo-
cated the creation of a unified ‘‘German’’ nation, it would endanger its
alliances with the other German states and call into question the status
of its predominantly Polish possessions in the east. To simply call for the
union of the ‘‘Prussian’’ nation, on the other hand, might mean alienating
 a nation of revolutionaries 135

the residents of the new Rhine territories, most of whom had no historical
bond to Prussia. For these new subjects, an identity as Germans seemed
far more natural. Finally, as Prussia’s leaders were acutely aware, the idea
of national sovereignty had fatally undermined the French monarchy.
They wanted to avoid at all costs a German sequel to the revolution in
France.
Prussian statesmen had begun to struggle with these dilemmas during
the war. In December 1813, for example, Wilhelm von Humboldt (since
1810 the Prussian ambassador in Vienna) had sent a memorandum to
Stein concerning the future German constitution.12 Humboldt had no
doubt that ‘‘Germany forms a whole’’; all of its constituent states bene-
fited from their association with each other, and Germans would always
perceive it to be ‘‘one nation, one Volk, one state.’’13 Both Stein and
Hardenberg initially supported this plan for a closely bound confedera-
tion under joint Austrian-Prussian leadership, along with constitutional
guarantees within the individual German states.14 In 1815, after Metter-
nich rejected this proposal, Hardenberg briefly flirted with the idea of
attempting sole Prussian hegemony in the Mittelstaaten, secretly corre-
sponding with a nationalist group under the leadership of Carl Hoff-
mann.15 Any open discussions of German unification among the Prussian
ruling elite, however, came to an abrupt halt in that year, and Harden-
berg restricted his subsequent efforts at institutional reform to the Prus-
sian context.
Even at the level of Prussia alone, the idea of national representation
remained highly problematic. During the War of Liberation, King Fred-
erick William III had expressed deep anxiety about the revolutionary
potential of a national assembly. The monarch’s ambivalence about con-
stitutional rule was shared by royal advisers, including Johann Peter
Friedrich Ancillon (1767–1837), the tutor of the crown prince and a for-
mer Huguenot pastor, who ultimately became one of Hardenberg’s most
influential opponents. Ancillon is often dismissed by historians as an
‘‘intriguer’’ or as a leader of the ‘‘court camarilla’’ in Prussia against a
constitution.16 This judgment is not entirely fair: Ancillon consistently
favored the eventual adoption of a constitution, but he grasped more
clearly than most of his contemporaries the difficulties of sharing sov-
ereignty between the nation and the king. In the flush of victory after
the battle of Leipzig of October 1813, Ancillon offered a depiction of the
relationship between nation and king that was as ambiguous as Plehwe’s.
He declared in a letter to the crown prince:

The nation stands as high as the army, and both of them as high as the
King. This forms a glorious unity or trinity [Dreieinigkeit], unique in its
136 the concept in play

form. In this respect it is the ideal of a state: a true republican spirit under
true monarchical forms.17
By the spring of 1815, however, he was warning the king of the perils
of national representation and urging him to delay publication of the
edict promising a constitution:
To desire to change the constitution of Prussia is to desire to impose limits
and barriers on the existing sovereign authority; or rather, to introduce a
division of sovereignty . . . , whereas up to the present it has emanated
from one source alone.18
Only after a period of years, when Prussia’s financial condition had im-
proved and popular emotions had quieted would it be safe to establish
a national constitution.19
The tensions exhibited in Ancillon’s writings inhibited the delibera-
tions over a constitution from the outset. In January 1815, with news in
the air of proposed constitutions for Württemberg, Baden, Bavaria, and
Poland, Hardenberg appointed a four-member commission to draft a
Prussian constitution. By April, the commission had agreed on the re-
sponsibilities of the representative assembly but remained divided over
whether the assembly would have a deciding or only a consultative vote
and over the extent of the representatives’ rights to propose and amend
laws. The commission agreed that the king should maintain control over
the army and foreign affairs, whereas the national representation would
deliberate over the creation of new state debts, the assessment of taxes,
and the passage of laws. One faction of the commission, in agreement
with Frederick William III, favored tightly restricting the assembly’s
right to propose and modify legislation; Hardenberg and the other faction
argued for greater flexibility. Likewise, one faction argued along with
the king for a purely consultative vote; Hardenberg now held that the
estates of the realm (Reichsstände) should have at least a limited right of
decision over financial questions.20
In March, Napoleon had returned triumphantly to Paris after escaping
from the island of Elba; the Prussian king and his ministers had no time
to resolve their differences before mobilizing the country for war. Har-
denberg and Frederick William agreed to publish, in place of an imme-
diate constitution, a declaration of the king’s intention to grant a con-
stitution—a ‘‘second constitutional promise’’ that elaborated on the first
promise of October 1810. The page-long edict of 22 May 1815 expressed
in concentrated form the contradictions that would later doom the con-
stitutional movement. Hardenberg insisted on opening the proclamation
with the sentence: ‘‘A representation of the people [Repräsentation des
Volkes] shall be established,’’ but in section 3, the document retreated to
 a nation of revolutionaries 137

the less provocative term preferred by the king: ‘‘assembly of represen-

tatives of the land [Versammlung der Landes-Repräsentanten].’’21 Section
2 referred to the establishment of provincial assemblies in a manner ‘‘con-
sistent with the needs of the time’’—leaving untouched the question of
whether the historical claims of the nobles should be recognized or the
estates organized on a new rationalistic basis.22 Finally, though the edict
specifically identified the assembly’s role as one of ‘‘consultation’’ (Ber-
atung), this provision satisfied neither Hardenberg, who now preferred a
deciding vote in some matters, nor his opponents, who would come to
doubt that a national representative assembly could be confined within
a consultative role.
As the above discussion illustrates, the idea of a politically active
nation became highly problematic for German statesmen following the
Vienna Congress. In Austria, figures such as Metternich worried that
popular political mobilization had the potential to splinter the Habsburg
Empire along ethnic lines. The leaders of the Mittelstaaten, by contrast,
feared the loss of their states’ political autonomy through their absorp-
tion into a unified Germany. Even Prussian leaders, such as Hardenberg,
who were initially optimistic about harnessing the idea of nationhood in
the service of their political objectives, soon adopted a more cautious
approach. After 1815, Hardenberg severed his ties with Carl Hoffmann’s
secret nationalist association; and in his correspondence with King Fred-
erick William III, Hardenberg stopped advocating the creation of a na-
tional representation because of the king’s aversion to this term. Instead,
the chancellor spoke of establishing an ‘‘assembly of representatives of
the land’’ or a ‘‘constitution based on estates’’ (landständische Verfassung),
phrases that Frederick William found less alarming.
Yet these semantic acrobatics by Hardenberg and other proponents of
a constitution failed to resolve two fundamental dilemmas. First, how
could national spirit be fostered without reference to a German nation?
Second, how could the Volk participate in politics without challenging
monarchical sovereignty? Within a few years after the Vienna Congress,
one faction (identified by historians as the Reaction) began to argue that
both dilemmas were insoluble, that the ideas of nationhood and popular
representation were inherently incompatible with the existing social and
political order.

Contesting the Boundaries of the Public Sphere

Histories of Prussian politics during the era of the Restoration frequently
allude to the activities of an archconservative court camarilla surround-
ing Frederick William III, plotting first secretly, then openly, to overturn
138 the concept in play

the legislative accomplishments of the Stein-Hardenberg party and to

block any movement toward political liberalization. Political alignments
during this period, however, were more fluid than this conventional
interpretation suggests. Leading figures in the supposed camarilla, such
as Ancillon and Prince Wittgenstein, Prussia’s police minister, were slow
to clarify their ideas concerning a constitution in the wake of the Vienna
Congress. Indeed, even Metternich flirted with the idea of establishing
a constitutional system of government in the Habsburg Empire for a year
or two after Napoleon’s demise. On the other side of the political spec-
trum, some figures generally identified as progressives, most notably Har-
denberg, embraced the cause of press censorship in 1819 because they
were concerned about the destabilizing potential of popular nationalist
agitation.23
Rather than speaking of a struggle between rigidly defined parties, it
is more productive to analyze Restoration politics as motivated by the
common struggle to reconcile two principles, first, an increasingly polit-
icized public sphere, and second, the sovereign authority of the monar-
chical state. Those figures who believed in the possibility of such a rec-
onciliation have commonly been identified as progressives, whereas those
who came to doubt the wisdom or desirability of such a political bal-
ancing act have become known to posterity as reactionaries.
Between 1815 and 1820, a series of events in Prussia and elsewhere
in Europe created challenges for those who hoped for a harmonious re-
lationship between a politically active populace and a sovereign monarch.
In March 1815, elections were held in Württemberg for a unicameral
assembly whose first task was to approve a constitution proposed by the
king. These elections produced a fractious assembly composed of mem-
bers of the old imperial nobility, who demanded the restoration of their
traditional rights; lawyers, who wanted greater representation for the
towns; and radicals, who were dissatisfied with the powers granted to
the parliament. The delegates were united only in their contempt for the
king’s constitutional proposal, and the Württemberg assembly’s rejection
of this document created a sobering example for other German monarchs
who were also considering establishing constitutions.24
The events at the Wartburg Festival in October 1817 and the Koblenz
Address of January 1818 presented more alarming challenges to the au-
thority of the Prussian king. In the aftermath of the Wartburg Festival,
Frederick William III demanded that his ministry take swift action: ‘‘It
is an urgent duty,’’ he declared, ‘‘to counteract vigorously the highly
dangerous and criminal state of mind which has gained ascendancy
among the inexperienced youth of the German universities.’’25 Even Har-
denberg, who had long supported the principle of freedom of the press,26
 a nation of revolutionaries 139

wrote to Metternich in December 1817 concerning the need to ‘‘suppress

the revolutionary tendency . . . and Jacobinism, which is almost every-
where raising its head.’’ Hardenberg argued that ‘‘firm measures’’ were
essential in order to ‘‘prevent the evil which threatens us,’’ specifically:
‘‘A common law for all of Germany is absolutely indispensable in order
to put limits to the unbridled license of our gazetteers and journalists,
who are protected by the small sovereigns and the city of Bremen.’’27
While Hardenberg and Frederick William III were equally exercised
over the outbursts of romantic nationalism at the Wartburg, the two men
reacted in strikingly different ways to Görres’s Koblenz Address. On 12
January 1818, Hardenberg (who was then traveling in Prussia’s new
Rhenish provinces to gather opinions about a constitution) met with
Görres and other citizens to receive the address, which was signed by
more than 3,000 residents of the Rhineland. The petition reminded the
king of his constitutional promise and also requested him to use his
influence in the Bundestag to ensure that all German states would receive
constitutions, in accordance with Article 13 of the German Articles of
Confederation of 1815.28 On 30 January, Görres followed the petition with
the publication of a pamphlet, The Delivery of the Address of the City
Koblenz, which described his audience with Hardenberg.
Hardenberg, who had remained on cordial terms with Görres despite
having banned the Rheinische Merkur two years earlier, forwarded the
petition to Frederick William III on 19 February, observing: ‘‘It is com-
posed in a deferential tone, and contains in itself nothing objectionable.’’
Nonetheless, Hardenberg felt that the very act of collecting so many
signatures presented the ‘‘appearance of distrust in Your Highness’s
promise.’’29 He drafted a royal response to the petition that acknowledged
the right of ‘‘immediate access to the throne’’ in the Prussian monarchy
but criticized this ‘‘appearance of distrust.’’ The Rhinelanders had no
grounds for ‘‘the slightest doubt’’ that the king intended to grant a con-
stitution, Hardenberg wrote, the constitutional deliberations were pro-
ceeding at a careful pace rather than in ‘‘detrimental and wholly unac-
ceptable precipitance.’’30
Some of the king’s advisers in the Prussian court, however, viewed
this affair with alarm, and they compared the signers of the Rhenish
petitions to the French mob that assembled in front of the Tuileries on
10 August 1792.31 On 23 February Frederick William III wrote to Har-
denberg, pointing to Görres’s pamphlet as new evidence of the ‘‘utmost
pernicious intrigues in the Rhine provinces.’’ The petition was an intol-
erable affront to royal authority: ‘‘It is impossible to permit and condone
that one or several individuals collect signatures in such a manner, even
if the petition itself is acceptable.’’ The king demanded that Görres be
140 the concept in play

removed from the Rhineland and ordered Hardenberg to reprimand the

local administrative authorities for allowing the petition to circulate.32
Stung by the royal rebuke, Hardenberg replied to the king on 10
March by defending the right of subjects to petition the monarch: ‘‘In
the Prussian state, access to the throne is open to every man. . . . The
bond of trust between the sovereign and the subjects cannot be drawn
tightly enough.’’33 Though Hardenberg viewed the Koblenz Address it-
self as blameless, he now condemned Görres’s pamphlet, which he had
earlier described with qualified approval.34 Hardenberg agreed that Gör-
res should be removed from the Rhineland—though he recommended
accomplishing this by appointing the activist to a post in the Ministry
of Education and Religious Affairs in Berlin—and he proposed publish-
ing an open response to the Görres pamphlet.
Hardenberg’s draft of an open letter to Görres dated 10 March 1818
(which was never sent) provides a fascinating glimpse of the uneasy
balance between the democratic and monarchical elements in Harden-
berg’s political thought. He accused Görres of publicizing ‘‘dangerous
errors concerning the spirit [Geist] and conduct of the Prussian govern-
ment’’; the pamphlet depicted the government ‘‘as if it had been and
still were in conflict with Prussia’s Volk.’’ Nothing could be further from
the truth, claimed Hardenberg: the Prussian king had freely granted the
constitutional promise of 22 May 1815; the Prussian government had
supported the stipulation in the Articles of Confederation of 1815 that
all German states would receive a constitution; and a constitutional com-
mission was currently at work. The Rhinelanders had no right to ques-
tion the sincerity of the royal promise: ‘‘It is blasphemy to doubt the
Royal word; it is duty to trustingly await its fulfillment.’’35 Hardenberg
criticized especially harshly Görres’s suggestion that a Reaction in Prussia
was working against a constitution:

Everything that you say about a Reaction in Prussia is thoroughly un-

founded. One cannot speak of the opinions of particular parties and their
activities. The government stands impartially [unpartheyisch] above every-
one. It tolerates all, as long as they do not become dangerous and do not
overstep the boundaries given to them by the nature of the matter and
the welfare of the state. It will know how to restrain and chasten those
who overstep these bounds.36

Hardenberg depicted the Prussian government as impartial and enlight-

ened, tolerating free expression of opinion—as long as it did not threaten
the ‘‘welfare of the state.’’ But the government stood ready to ‘‘restrain
and chasten’’ any subject who overstepped the proper ‘‘boundaries’’ by
expressing ‘‘dangerous’’ ideas.
 a nation of revolutionaries 141

Frederick William III rejected Hardenberg’s distinction between a pe-

tition that properly expressed public opinion and a pamphlet that en-
dangered the monarchy. On 21 March the king issued his abrupt response
to the residents of Koblenz:

I will determine when the promise of a constitution [landständische Ver-

fassung] shall be fulfilled. The subjects’ duty is to await in trust my free
resolution, which gave this pledge and which occasioned the correspond-
ing article of the Articles of Confederation. Guided by a view of the whole,
I will choose the proper moment for the fulfillment of this promise.37

The king’s rebuke to the Rhinelanders discouraged his first minister as

well. Despite a request from the king of the same day to continue work
on a constitution,38 Hardenberg dropped this project entirely for almost
half a year.39
The debate between Hardenberg and Frederick William III over the
significance of the Koblenz Address reflected a larger controversy about
the nature of the Prussian public and its relationship to the state. Fred-
erick William III objected primarily not to the content of the Koblenz
Address but to the method of its circulation. Though, as Hardenberg
observed, Prussian subjects had traditionally possessed the right of ‘‘ac-
cess to the throne,’’ this access was provided only via officially sanc-
tioned channels, for example, to royally chartered associations of nobles
communicating directly to the king. Görres, by openly distributing his
petition for signatures, both appealed to and helped constitute a public
that existed entirely independently of the royal will. This invocation of
a principle of political authority parallel to—but autonomous from—
monarchical authority was deeply disturbing to Frederick William III,
because he saw the potential for this new public to rival his own claims
to sovereignty.

The final event that catalyzed support for stringent censorship measures
in the German states was the assassination of August von Kotzebue on
23 March 1819. Kotzebue was a playwright, a reactionary publicist, and
a sometime political agent of the Russian government. His assassin,
twenty-three-year-old Karl Ludwig Sand, was a theology student and a
Burschenschaftler who was a fringe member of Karl Follen’s radical po-
litical group in Jena. Sand, however, apparently acted on his own ini-
tiative. Traveling to Kotzebue’s home in Mannheim, he found the author
in his study and plunged a dagger into his chest, crying: ‘‘Here, you
traitor to the fatherland!’’ Outside the house, Sand left a manifesto ex-
plaining the bloody deed; and then, thanking God for his ‘‘triumph,’’ he
stabbed himself with a second dagger. Sand’s suicide attempt was un-
142 the concept in play

successful: he survived to stand trial and to be executed fourteen months

later.40
It was not only the assassination itself that alarmed German officials;
they were equally shocked by the subsequent attempts of various figures
to justify Sand’s deed. A week after the murder, Wilhelm de Wette, a
professor of theology at the University of Berlin, wrote a letter of con-
solation to Sand’s mother, copies of which were circulated within the
student movement. Praising her ‘‘excellent son,’’ de Wette conceded that
Sand’s act was ‘‘unlawful and punishable by the worldly magistrate’’;
nonetheless, he argued that Sand should be judged not by the ‘‘error’’
of his deed but by the purity of his convictions:
Error is excused and to some extent absolved by steadfastness and sin-
cerity of conviction, and passion is sanctified by the good source from
which it flows. I am firmly convinced that both of these were the case
with your pious and virtuous son. He was certain of his cause; he believed
it was right to do what he did, and so he did right.41

Because Sand’s act was motivated by the ‘‘purest inspiration,’’ de Wette

considered it a ‘‘beautiful sign of the time,’’42 and he was not alone in
offering apologies for the assassination of Kotzebue. The contemporary
depiction of ‘‘Sand the free’’ portrays this youth as pure and slightly
otherworldly, bidding farewell to the beloved mountains and valleys of
his homeland as he sets out on the path to Mannheim. He clutches a
walking stick in one hand, and a dagger is tucked into his tunic.
When the Prussian Police Ministry intercepted a copy of de Wette’s
letter, Wittgenstein circulated it to receive expert opinions. Most striking
was the response of the court bishop, Rulemann Friedrich Eylert. Eylert
was outraged by de Wette’s argument, which he said replaced an objec-
tive moral standard with a purely subjective one; according to de Wette,
‘‘murder is no longer a sin if he who commits it intends well by it.’’ If
this teaching were accepted, Eylert warned:
not only will every moral law be invalidated, but respect for authority and
for legal power [gesetzlichen Gewalt] will be undermined. . . . From then on
there will be no more talk of what a person should do according to the
law; everyone can do what he wants to, and he has done the best if he
has acted ‘‘according to his conviction.’’43

The spread of this doctrine would mean that ‘‘no regent in his land, no
father of a family in his house, will any longer be sure of his life.’’ De
Wette’s moral teaching, Eylert concluded:
comes not from heaven but from hell; it is the birth of an overexcited
fantasy which obtains its unclean destructive fire from egotism and pas-
 a nation of revolutionaries 143

6.1 ‘‘Sand the free’’: Karl Sand on his way to Mannheim to assassinate
August von Kotzebue (1819). Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin—Preußischer
Kulturbesitz—Handschriftenabteilung, YB 14260 kl.

sion. In the turbid intoxication of political-mystical feeling, it fancies itself

to be serving God, while becoming a tool of the devil.44
Frederick William III, not surprisingly, agreed with Bishop Eylert, and
on 30 September 1819, the king summarily dismissed de Wette from his
teaching post.45 But the tale of de Wette also had a tragicomic counter-
part, one involving the young philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Carové.
Carové was a former activist in the Heidelberg Burschenschaft, who was
serving as Hegel’s assistant in Berlin. In June 1819, he sent Altenstein
(now Prussia’s minister of education and religion) a long tract denouncing
the assassination of Kotzebue. Carové hoped to impress Altenstein with
his learned discourse, but unfortunately, he employed such an esoteric
Hegelian style that the minister interpreted it as a defense of Sand’s act.
According to one hostile reviewer of the tract, Carové argued that ‘‘only
Sand’s outer deed was bad; the inner deed, which expressed itself
through such an infamous act, was that of a pure youth.’’46 Though
Carové attacked the ‘‘Jacobin swindle of freedom and equality,’’47 he
lauded Sand’s energy and virtue, and he declared that the murder was
a ‘‘necessary’’ object lesson for the development of the German people,
because it revealed the corruption that afflicted the German national
144 the concept in play

spirit.48 Carové offered the following bafflingly ambivalent assessment of

the assassination:

That Kotzebue had not entirely corrupted the popular spirit was demon-
strated by the deed itself. That, over the past four years, ideas, language,
history, and the youth had become confused, and the popular spirit cor-
rupted, was demonstrated by Sand’s deed and the excuses, even the de-
fenses, offered for it.49

During the next eleven months, many of Prussia’s leading government

officials exchanged letters and reports debating how to interpret Carové’s
pamphlet. Not only did Altenstein and Wittgenstein become involved
but so did Wittgenstein’s deputy Karl von Kamptz, Justice Minister Kir-
cheisen, Interior Minister Schuckmann, and even Hardenberg. Carové
was interrogated by the German censorship commission (Untersuchungs-
kommission) in Mainz; his movements were restricted; and even after the
matter was finally resolved in his favor, he was banned from any future
academic employment in Germany.50

Most histories of the early Restoration period in Germany dismiss the

notion that the popular nationalist movement posed a potential ‘‘revo-
lutionary threat.’’51 The entire movement, scholars note, was quite small,
and most of its adherents supported not revolution but constitutional
monarchy. The Demagogenverfolgung, most historians argue, was a plot
by aristocratic reactionaries, such as Metternich and Wittgenstein, to
turn back the German states’ progress toward political liberalization.
This standard interpretation oversimplifies the German political situ-
ation in 1819. During the post–Napoleonic period, German leaders were
acutely aware of the unpredictability and the potential fury of revolu-
tionary politics. In 1819, Europe had just endured almost three decades
of cataclysmic political upheavals. Moreover, these leaders recognized
that the French Revolution of 1789 had begun not with demands for a
republic but with calls for the ‘‘regeneration’’ of the French state through
the establishment of a constitutional monarchy. Many contemporary ob-
servers believed that an analogous progression of events was conceivable
in the German states as well.
Germany’s rulers were disturbed both by the content of the nation-
alists’ attack on the principles of the traditional social and political order
and the channels via which the popular nationalists chose to communi-
cate their ‘‘subversive’’ ideas. Jahn’s gymnasts, for example, all wore
identical uniforms and addressed each other as Du, thus obliterating the
social distinctions between estates. Moreover, they performed their ex-
 a nation of revolutionaries 145

ercises as a public spectacle on a gymnastics ground in the heart of

Berlin: Jahn believed that the fortitude and purity of the individual
gymnasts would serve as an example to help strengthen and purify the
national body at large. De Wette, in justifying Kotzebue’s assassination,
argued that Sand’s act was morally right because it was motivated by
the ‘‘purest inspiration.’’ He permitted copies of his letter to Sand’s
mother to be circulated within the student movement, thus helping con-
stitute another public space autonomous from state control. Bishop
Eylert’s outrage at de Wette’s claim was understandable: if the traditional
religious and social moral codes were replaced by a purely subjective
morality, then the privileged status of kings, fathers, and other authority
figures might all be thrown into doubt. In this sense, the nationalist
movement was indeed a potentially subversive social force.
Yet German rulers failed to respond to this potential threat in a nu-
anced way. Beginning in 1819, they resorted to massive repressive mea-
sures, including press censorship, surveillance, interrogations, and im-
prisonment of suspicious figures. The fear of revolution became
remarkably widespread during that year. Hardenberg wrote to Wittgen-
stein in April: ‘‘I am quite fearful that the malignant spirits here are in
union [with the assassination of Kotzebue].’’52 Wittgenstein, in turn,
warned the king in June of the existence of a secret association of
German students, government officials, military officers, and others

whose goal is to change the present public constitution both of the whole
of Germany and of the individual federated states, in part through the
dissemination of demagogical principles among the youth and the Volk,
in part through force; and to introduce a new constitution based on unity,
tribalism [Volksthumlichkeit] and freedom.53

Such a dire warning was not unexpected from Wittgenstein; but in the
summer of 1819 Karl vom Stein too became alarmed at the radical threat.
That July, he wrote to Görres, ‘‘It is the duty of every moral and religious
man to insist that this accursed sect be punished and that it become the
object of public repugnance.’’54 Even General von Gneisenau, who had
himself been accused in 1815 of being a Jacobin and in 1819 was still
under suspicion, defended the necessity of the Karlsbad Decrees after
their publication.55 In Austria, Metternich began referring to the revo-
lutionary threat as a malignant ‘‘cancer,’’ a theme he would sound with
ever-increasing alarm throughout the next thirty years.56 Yet not all of
Prussia’s statesmen supported these policies. Wilhelm von Humboldt op-
posed the Karlsbad Decrees and was therefore forced out of the govern-
ment in December 1819.
146 the concept in play

Motivating all of these fears was one underlying concern: that the
newly emerging public sphere had somehow exceeded the ability of the
state to control it and was poisoning rather than nurturing rational pub-
lic discourse. Both the romantic nationalists and their opponents envi-
sioned sovereign authority as ideally unanimous, rather than as shared
between competing factions. Thus, neither side saw the possibility of
mediating between the monarchical state and the popular activists. The
explosion of the traditional boundaries of political expression, both in
terms of ideological content and in terms of channels of communication,
forced the leaders of Prussia and the other German states to reevaluate
the relationship between state authority and the populace at large. One
possible approach to this challenge, the tack taken at Karlsbad, was to
attempt to tame the public sphere by severely limiting the scope of pop-
ular political expression. Censorship, however, offered only a partial so-
lution to the dilemma. German leaders also needed to find new ways of
articulating the legitimacy of monarchical sovereignty, taking into ac-
count the dramatic social and political transformations that had occurred
in Europe over the previous thirty years.

1819: The Year of Indecision

According to the prevailing interpretation of this period of Prussian his-
tory, the events of the summer of 1819 marked a decisive defeat for the
cause of political reform. Already in January of that year, King Frederick
William III had signed a cabinet order (drafted by Altenstein and Har-
denberg) that had called for restrictions on the Turner movement and
the preparation of press censorship legislation.57 During the last days of
July, Frederick William III and Hardenberg met with Metternich in the
Bohemian resort town of Teplitz to plan for the Karlsbad Conference,
which would begin the following week. In the Teplitz Accord of 1 Au-
gust 1819, Austria and Prussia agreed to support stringent press censor-
ship measures and controls over the schools and universities throughout
the German Confederation. The Karlsbad Decrees subjected all works less
than twenty sheets (320 pages) long to censorship prior to their publi-
cation.58 On its part, Prussia pledged that it would adopt a constitution
‘‘only after completely settling its internal and financial arrangements.’’
Moreover, Prussia declared that it would ‘‘establish no general popular
representation [allgemeine Volksvertretung]’’ but rather merely a ‘‘central
committee of representatives of the land,’’ which would be selected by
provincial representative bodies.59
Yet the debate over a Prussian constitution remained far from resolved
in August 1819. It is true that Metternich had become a strong opponent
 a nation of revolutionaries 147

of constitutional government by this time,60 but the Austrian chancellor

apparently shied from expressing these views openly to Frederick Wil-
liam III.61 Within the Prussian ministry, virtually no one expressed un-
equivocal opposition to a constitution as late as the summer of 1819.
Hardenberg, who had made little progress toward framing a constitution
between 1815 and 1818,62 took up this cause with great urgency during
the final four years of his life. On 3 May 1819, six weeks after the
assassination of Kotzebue, Hardenberg sent the king a draft of a consti-
tutional proposal. In a letter to Frederick William that accompanied this
plan, Hardenberg argued that the government must act boldly to quell
popular unrest rather than remain passively silent. ‘‘The yearning for
representative constitutions is becoming constantly more vociferous and
traverses all estates,’’ wrote Hardenberg: this demand was an expression
of the ‘‘truly general spirit of the age, brought forth through the occur-
rences of the last fifty years.’’ The government could not hope to resist
the tide of history, rather the ‘‘wisdom of a ruler’’ consisted of the ability
‘‘to meet the true Zeitgeist halfway with appropriate measures, to steer
it for the happiness of his subjects.’’63
Hardenberg’s plan called for the establishment of a Prussian General
Assembly (allgemeine Landtagsversammlung) in conjunction with a net-
work of provincial and county assemblies. The members of the county
assemblies were to be elected by the estate owners (Rittergutsbesitzer) of
each district, whether noble or bourgeois. These county assemblies
would choose delegates to the provincial diets (Provinzialstände), which
would assemble in a single chamber. In addition to the representatives
from the county assemblies, the provincial estates would include the
former imperial nobles residing in each province—now known as the
Standesherren—along with a delegate from each town that was large
enough to constitute its own county (Kreis). The General Assembly,
which would convene annually, was to consist of two chambers some-
what analogous to the English Houses of Lords and Commons. The first
chamber would include the princes of the royal house; the heads of the
families of the former imperial nobility in Prussia (Häupter der standes-
herrlichen Familien), the country’s archbishops, bishops, and prelates
(both Catholic and Lutheran), and representatives from Prussia’s univer-
sities. The second chamber would consist of delegates elected by the
provincial assemblies, along with some others elected directly by the
large towns. Hardenberg’s plan left open the question of whether the
delegates elected to serve in the General Assembly must themselves be
members of the provincial diets.64
Though Hardenberg billed his constitutional proposal as a means of
securing and enhancing monarchical authority, the plan avoided clari-
148 the concept in play

fying the exact nature of the relationship between the king and the
General Assembly. On the one hand, Hardenberg included several pro-
visions that restricted the assembly’s power. His plan reserved to the
king the right to introduce legislative proposals before the assembly;
furthermore, no proposal could become law without the royal sanction,
along with the approval of both chambers of the assembly. Yet Harden-
berg refused to state explicitly whether the assembly should possess a
deciding vote over legislation or only a purely consultative one. In his
letter of 3 May 1819 to the king, the chancellor declared that it was of
‘‘no practical use’’ to address this issue, rather, he thought that this topic
was ‘‘one of those things that it is better not to bring up at all.’’ Har-
denberg explained his reasoning:

The monarch will not lightly proceed against an opinion of the estates,
even if it were merely consultative; if he finds the case such that it must
happen, if he has the courage and strength to proceed against such an
opinion, then he will not lack means to do so even against an opinion not
explicitly declared to be merely consultative.65

In other words, it was unnecessary to determine the status of the assem-

bly’s vote because conflicts between king and assembly would be rare
and because the king could if necessary prevail against any opposition.
The wording of Hardenberg’s letter to the king suggests that in 1819,
the Prussian chancellor still remained convinced that a fundamentally
cooperative, rather than contestatory, relationship could be forged be-
tween the monarch and the national representatives. To the modern ob-
server, Hardenberg’s belief in the possibility of conflict-free representa-
tive politics may appear baffling—especially in light of Hardenberg’s
own serious difficulties with the experimental Prussian assemblies estab-
lished between 1811 and 1815. Yet Prussian political leaders did not
initially recognize any fundamental incompatibility between monarchical
and parliamentary rule. Indeed, as late as the summer of 1819, even many
of the most ‘‘reactionary’’ Prussian political figures still supported the
principle of constitutional government.
In May 1819, apparently at the king’s request, Police Minister Witt-
genstein circulated copies of Hardenberg’s constitutional proposal to at
least four leading ministers, all of whom have generally been identified
by scholars as staunch opponents of a constitution. These ministers in-
cluded Ancillon, Interior Minister Kaspar Friedrich von Schuckmann,
Kabinettsrat Daniel Ludwig Albrecht (the king’s secretary), and the Prus-
sian foreign minister, Count Albrecht von Bernstorff. Of the four min-
isters polled by Wittgenstein, only Bernstorff (a Danish noble, who had
 a nation of revolutionaries 149

joined the Prussian ministry only in 1817) unequivocally opposed the

adoption of a constitution.66 The other so-called reactionaries who re-
viewed Hardenberg’s plan all assessed it in more ambivalent terms.
Though all of them expressed concern about the danger of ceding too
much power (such as budgetary authority) to a representative assembly,
each of these men favored the eventual establishment of a constitution.
Ancillon, for example, observed that the government had formally prom-
ised to establish a constitution. Hence, he argued, it had imposed ‘‘duties
upon itself that it cannot cast off without losing face, and without ex-
posing itself to the suspicion of [ruling by] fear or the reproach that it
has broken its word.’’67 Albrecht agreed that, given the ‘‘prevailing sen-
timent of the nation in favor of a constitution [landständische Verfass-
ung],’’ the king must eventually fulfill his pledge—even though he was
not legally bound to do so.68 Schuckmann declared (with greater opti-
mism than the others): ‘‘My opinion on the matter is that consultation
with representatives and publicity in the administration, if intelligently
conducted, would be truly beneficial.’’69
Frederick William III, who bore the ultimate responsibility for decid-
ing whether Prussia would receive a constitution, vacillated between the
impulses of Hardenberg and those of Metternich. In August 1819, Fred-
erick William still hoped to reconcile monarchical sovereignty with at
least a small central representative assembly. Then, in January 1820, he
urged Hardenberg to accelerate his work on the constitution, demanding
that it be completed by the end of the year.70 In the same month, Fred-
erick William approved Hardenberg’s proposal for the State Debt Law,
which provided a plan for amortizing the debts that Prussia had accu-
mulated in order to pay indemnities to Napoleon and to fight the War
of Liberation. The law also mandated that, henceforth, the Prussian gov-
ernment would be allowed to accumulate new debts ‘‘only upon con-
sultation with and coguarantee by the future estates of the realm.’’71 By
December 1820, however, Frederick William III had come to view the
establishment of a central representative assembly as impossible—at least
under the then-existing conditions in Prussia.

The Monarchical Principle and the Rejection of

Constitutionalism
In order to understand the king’s change of heart, it is necessary to
examine the concept of the ‘‘monarchical principle,’’ an idea that first
appeared in Germany around the time of the Karlsbad Conference and
that quickly became a nearly universally accepted axiom in German
150 the concept in play

political debate. The term ‘‘monarchical principle’’ originated in France

during the deliberations over that country’s charte constitutionelle of June
1814; it was transmitted to Germany through the writings of French
royalists, such as Louis de Bonald and Joseph de Maistre.72 The term
received a formal definition in the Vienna Final Acts of June 1820. Article
57 of this document declared: ‘‘The entire state power [Staatsgewalt] must
remain united in the supreme head of the state. Only in the exercise of
certain rights can the sovereign be bound to the participation of the
Estates through a landständische constitution.’’73
In Germany, the monarchical principle was first articulated in the Ba-
varian constitutional charter of 1818,74 and it was further elaborated the
following year in an influential essay by Friedrich von Gentz, a re-
nowned political theorist who was Metternich’s closest adviser. Circu-
lated at the opening of the Karlsbad Conference in August 1819,75 Gentz’s
essay was entitled ‘‘Concerning the Difference between Constitutions
Based on Estates and Representative Constitutions.’’ The essay presented
a new interpretation of Article 13 of the German Bundesakte of 1815, in
which all German states had pledged to establish constitutions. Gentz
argued that German leaders must distinguish between two types of con-
stitutions. The first type, he wrote, were those based on the estates of
the country (landständische Verfassungen). Under such constitutions,
Gentz declared:
[M]embers or delegates of existing corporate bodies exercise a right of
participation in either part or all of a state’s legislative process [Staatsge-
setzgebung], whether through consultation, consent, remonstrance, or
through some other constitutionally determined form.

Quite different from this first type were ‘‘representative constitutions,’’

where the delegates were expected to ‘‘represent not the privilege [Ge-
rechtsame] and the interest of individual estates . . . but rather the entire
mass of the Volk.’’
According to Gentz, the first type of constitution would tend to sta-
bilize and protect the traditional social and political order, whereas the
second type would result in rebellion and chaos. Landständische consti-
tutions, he argued, existed ‘‘on the natural foundation of a well-ordered
civil society,’’ which recognized the ‘‘ständische relationships and stän-
dische rights’’ of particular ‘‘classes and corporations.’’ Consequently,
they naturally tended to preserve ‘‘all true positive rights and all true
freedoms which are possible in the state.’’ Representative constitutions,
on the other hand, were founded on ‘‘the perverted concept of the su-
preme sovereignty of the Volk.’’ Thus, they had the
 a nation of revolutionaries 151

constant tendency to set the phantom of so-called freedom of the people

(i.e., universal arbitrariness) in the place of civil order and subordination;
and to set the delusion of equality of rights, or (what is no better) universal
equality before the law, in the place of the ineradicable distinctions be-
tween the estates that were established by God Himself.
Not only did representative constitutions undermine the status of the
privileged estates, argued Gentz, they also had catastrophic consequences
for monarchical authority. Under a landständische constitution, the king
remained the ‘‘supreme legislator’’ and the ‘‘recognized organ of the
state.’’ Representative constitutions, in contrast, derived from the prin-
ciple of ‘‘division of powers—an axiom which . . . always and every-
where must lead to the complete destruction of all power, and hence to
pure anarchy.’’76
Gentz was hardly the first German to express misgivings about pop-
ular representation. Figures such as Ancillon had been worried about the
results of a constitution since 1815. By November 1818, Metternich had
warned Prussian police minister Wittgenstein: ‘‘Central representation
through deputies of the people means the dissolution of the Prussian
state.’’ Metternich had urged that the Prussian king ‘‘never go further
than the establishment of provincial diets,’’ which he considered less
dangerous than a central representative body.77 Yet Gentz’s essay of 1819
played a key role in crystallizing German anticonstitutional theory. This
essay was among the first German documents to argue that a unified and
politically active Volk was inherently incompatible with monarchical sov-
ereignty; it also presented the clearest argument of any so far that mon-
archical sovereignty depended upon the preservation of aristocratic priv-
ileges.
Beginning at the Karlsbad Conference, the monarchical principle
quickly gained wide acceptance in German political debate. Many ad-
vocates of a constitution, not just opponents like Gentz and Metternich,
enlisted this concept in support of their views. Hardenberg, for example,
wrote in his constitutional proposal of August 1819: ‘‘Everything must
be directed toward the proper reinforcement of the monarchical princi-
ple, which is completely consistent with the true freedom and security
of the individual and his property.’’78 Similarly, Humboldt declared in a
memorandum of October 1819: ‘‘The constitution, which the Prussian
state requires, must serve to support and complete the monarchical prin-
ciple. . . . The force and authority of the government must not be di-
minished, but rather enhanced, through [the constitution].’’79
As Heinrich Otto Meisner observes, a distinction must be drawn be-
tween the monarchical principle and the theory of unlimited or absolute
152 the concept in play

monarchical sovereignty. The monarchical principle implied ‘‘not the

reestablishment of an unlimited governing power for the ruler; nor the
greatest possible expansion of his authority. Rather it involved the ‘‘pri-
marily defensive assertion and demarcation of a clear sacrosanct area of
royal rights against the onslaught of the masses.’’80 But the nature of
these sacrosanct royal prerogatives was a hotly contested issue. Austrian
statesmen, such as Gentz and Metternich, viewed the king as the ‘‘su-
preme legislator’’ in a hierarchical ‘‘well-ordered civil society.’’ Prussian
leaders, by contrast, offered more ambiguous interpretations of the
monarchical principle. Even the leading opponents of constitutional rule
accepted the modern political principles of freedom and legal equality,
at least in part. Proponents of a constitution held even more complex
views: they hoped to preserve a strong monarchy, even though they un-
abashedly supported many of the principles of a modern liberal social
and political order. The terms ‘‘Restoration’’ and ‘‘Reaction’’ are mislead-
ing characterizations of Prussian politics after 1819. Figures such as
Frederick William III had no ambition to overturn the major social re-
forms of the Napoleonic era; rather, their overwhelming concern was
simply to stabilize the authority of the state in the face of potential pop-
ular unrest.

As late as February 1820, six months after the adoption of the Karlsbad
Decrees, the king still expressed clear support for a constitution. By
December of that year, however, he had concluded that the establishment
of a central representative assembly must be indefinitely postponed. The
key events during the intervening months were a series of revolutions
that swept southern Europe, beginning in Spain and quickly spreading
to Portugal and Italy, in the spring and summer of 1820. During the
previous decade, national liberation movements had erupted in Spanish
colonies throughout Latin America, initially in Mexico (1810), then in
Venezuela (1811), Chile (1817), and Colombia (1819). With Russian assis-
tance, King Ferdinand of Spain built a navy and assembled an army,
which he intended to send to quell the American rebellions. But on New
Year’s Day 1820, a mutiny broke out within the troops near Cadiz. The
uprising soon spread throughout Spain, and on 9 March King Ferdinand
bowed to popular pressure by accepting the Cortes constitution of 1812.
This constitution, which had first been enacted after the Spanish victory
over Napoleon, preserved the monarchy but severely restricted the king’s
authority. It established a unicameral representative assembly whose
members were to be popularly elected every two years and granted the
king only a limited veto right over legislative proposals.
 a nation of revolutionaries 153

Inspired by the Spaniards, the Portuguese army also mutinied, rebel-

ling against the English dominion over the country. In July, the move-
ment jumped to Italy, where the Neapolitan army revolted, and from
Naples to Sicily. Everywhere, the revolutionaries triumphed easily over
a weak and dispirited opposition; everywhere, they proclaimed versions
of the Cortes constitution—even in Sicily, where no complete reprint of
this document could be located anywhere in the country. In Germany
and other northern European lands, the educated public reacted enthu-
siastically to these liberation movements. But in Vienna, Berlin, and St.
Petersburg, the monarchs and their leading ministers viewed the chal-
lenges to monarchical authority abroad as omens of potential insurrection
at home.81
From late October through December 1820, representatives of the Eu-
ropean Great Powers (Russia, Austria, Prussia, France, and Britain) as-
sembled in Troppau, the capital of Austrian Silesia, to determine a re-
sponse to the uprisings in southern Europe.82 After several weeks of
deliberations at Troppau, the three eastern powers arrived at a provi-
sional agreement (later rejected by Britain and France) that: ‘‘States in
which a change of government has taken place in consequence of revolt,
and when the consequences of this change threaten other states, spon-
taneously cease to participate in the European alliance.’’83 The conference
adjourned at Christmas, with no final resolution having been reached on
a course of action. In January, representatives of the five powers recon-
vened in Laibach, the capital of Slovenia. There Metternich won approval
for his plan to send an Austrian force to restore the original governments
on the Italian peninsula, a task that was accomplished with surprising
ease in March and April 1821.84
Historians have always faced difficulties in deciphering King Frederick
William III’s views concerning the constitutional question—partly be-
cause he wrote so little on the subject and partly because he vacillated
so much. Frederick William III repeatedly expressed support for the prin-
ciple of a constitution—for example, in decrees published in 1810, 1811,
and 1815—but he worried from the start that a Prussian national assem-
bly might submit him to the same fate as Louis XVI, and his fears inten-
sified after the end of the War of Liberation. With a few exceptions,
scholars have generally portrayed the king as being firmly within the
clutches of the Prussian Reaction by 1819.85
The Prussian State Archive contains several previously unpublished
documents that shed important new light on the questions of when and
why Frederick William III ultimately decided not to establish a consti-
tution. The documents consist of three letters and two memoranda ex-
154 the concept in play

changed between an aide to the king, Friedrich von Schilden, and a

former minister who had bitterly opposed the reform movement, Otto
von Voß-Buch. This correspondence proves that Frederick William III
made his final choice against a constitution between October and Decem-
ber 1820, during the congress of Troppau. More significantly, these doc-
uments give us a much clearer and more detailed view of the king’s
thoughts about the constitutional question during this period than any
materials previously published.
In early October 1820, Frederick William III wrote to Hardenberg
asking him to prepare a short essay summarizing the principles of the
proposed constitution for Prussia, to be completed before the chancellor’s
departure for Troppau.86 Hardenberg responded by repeating his earlier
ideas on this subject. He declared that ‘‘the state will consist of free
persons’’ and that ‘‘each community and corporation has the right to
manage its own affairs.’’ He observed, however, that the constitution
must be regarded as the ‘‘free and spontaneous gift of the sovereign,’’
and he claimed that his plan would ‘‘preserve the monarchical principle
in all its purity.’’87
In addition to consulting Hardenberg, the king also asked for an opin-
ion on the constitutional question from Voß-Buch. A Junker from the
Kurmark, Voß had long been an implacable foe of both Stein and Har-
denberg. He had served under Stein in the Prussian ministry, but the
king had dismissed him in February 1809 because of his resistance to
the reforms. Since that year, he had remained in private life, though he
had joined in some of the protests by the Kurmärkische Ritterschaft
against Hardenberg’s reforms.88 Voß’s isolation from public affairs ended
in the autumn of 1820, when Frederick William III asked him to write
an essay summarizing his views on ‘‘the appropriate establishment of a
constitution [ständische Verfassung].’’ Schilden, who was master of the
royal house [Obenhofmeister], had apparently discussed this issue with
Voß in late September or early October 1820. The king was intrigued by
the former minister’s ideas, and he wanted Voß to explain them in more
detail.89
Schilden’s first note to Voß, written under the heading ‘‘Remarks of
the King concerning the Establishment of a Constitution,’’ offers a de-
tailed summary of Frederick William III’s opinions on this subject just
prior to the congress of Troppau. The king expressed profound ambiv-
alence about a central representative assembly but apparently still con-
sidered himself bound by his earlier promises to establish such an insti-
tution. He observed, however, that ‘‘nothing has been determined about
the manner and method of fulfillment’’ of these promises, so that the
obligation could be met through a constitution that would restrict mon-
 a nation of revolutionaries 155

archical authority ‘‘to the least possible extent.’’ To this end, the king
favored the establishment of ‘‘consultative provincial estates, which
would assemble in small committees in a manner most appropriate to the
condition of the state. These provincial estates would concern themselves
only with matters laid before them for consultation by the king.’’
Frederick William III expressed ‘‘great anxiety concerning an assem-
bly of Reichsstände,’’ which he considered a ‘‘dangerous central point in
which revolutionary views could quietly develop.’’ He declared that he
‘‘could never resolve himself to swear [an oath to] a constitution,’’ and
he roundly criticized the new constitutions of Bavaria and Württemberg.
The king said he was pleased by the loyal sentiments ‘‘of the greatest
part of the royal subjects,’’ but he declared that ‘‘much had occurred
from the side of the administration to corrupt these sentiments’’ and that
‘‘this negative influence would not be very easy to eliminate.’’
One of the most interesting aspects of this document is that Frederick
William III repeatedly rejected the notion of a return to Prussia’s feudal
past. Though the king refused to grant ‘‘a constitution based on the new
political [staatsrechtlichen] theories,’’ he also believed it would be im-
possible to ‘‘reestablish the old estates in their earlier great rights and
grounded relations.’’ He declared:

The laws of recent years were written partly in the new spirit. A formal
reversal would not be possible, but rather an expedient guidance and
application of these laws in order to prevent greater damage.

The king was particularly eager to hear Voß’s views because he believed
the former minister understood the need to avoid both ‘‘the entirely old
and the entirely new in matter of the estates.’’ Apart from a few people
(including Prince Metternich), the king said that virtually everyone ad-
vised positions belonging either to ‘‘the one or the other extreme on this
subject.’’ Unable to resolve these dilemmas on his own, the king was
easily swayed by Voß’s urgently worded reply, which counseled in the
strongest possible terms against the adoption of a constitution.
According to Voß, proponents of constitutional rule were motivated
not by the ‘‘good of the land’’ but rather by a ‘‘factious spirit’’ that
sought the ‘‘restriction of the monarchs.’’ Voß warned that a constitution
could only result in ‘‘internal discord’’ and Prussia’s ‘‘loss of political
greatness’’ as a European power. It was a ‘‘delusion’’ to think that the
king might be able to ‘‘guide a central assembly.’’ Voß declared:

How easily this center will seize unauthorized powers; then those who
are well and justly intentioned will withdraw from it. The king will be
abandoned (as examples have already taught), and he will be carried away
156 the concept in play

against his will toward revolutionary measures, and compelled to do what

he does not desire!

A constitution was both unnecessary and dangerous, argued Voß. Prussia

owed its greatness not to republican institutions but rather to ‘‘the force,
the courage, the wisdom—in short, to the personality of its regents.’’
Thus the king should seek to consolidate his own power, not to give it
away to his political opponents.90
From Troppau, again via Schilden, Frederick William III replied to
Voß on 9 November 1820. The king had read Voß’s memorandum with
‘‘true pleasure and just appreciation.’’ Frederick William expressed the
view that ‘‘the Minister von Voß is correct, but the matter has already
gone too far.’’ Therefore the king had decided on behalf of ‘‘consultative
estates, and [he] sometimes also speaks of a small Central Committee,
which would convene on his authority alone.’’ In addition to conveying
the king’s response to Voß’s memorandum, Schilden also sent a copy of
the plan for the communal and county estates, which had been written
by the third constituent committee. The king had requested Voß’s opin-
ion on this matter as well.91
As this letter shows, Frederick William III still had not firmly decided
against establishing a central representative assembly as late as Novem-
ber 1820. But this changed during his sojourn in Troppau. At the con-
gress, the king kept his distance from Hardenberg, holding many long
conversations with Wittgenstein and Metternich. According to Wittgen-
stein, he had become so anxious over the constitutional question that he
considered abdicating.92 Finally, Frederick William III decided to stay on
the throne but to follow the advice of Metternich, Wittgenstein, and
Voß, namely, to establish provincial estates but to avoid creating any
central representative assembly.
In early December 1820, the king returned to Berlin. Awaiting him
was a new memorandum from Voß, which harshly criticized the report
of the third constituent committee concerning the local assemblies. The
committee’s proposals, Voß argued, were nothing but an ‘‘artificial fabric
of democratic maxims’’ that provided ‘‘the first building blocks for a
complete transformation of the governing constitution that has existed
up to now in the Prussian state.’’93 Schilden replied on 3 December that
the king agreed with Voß, but that Frederick William had observed that
‘‘not everyone shared these views.’’94 On 19 December 1820, Frederick
William III appointed yet a fourth constituent committee, which he or-
dered to review and revise the proposals for the communal and county
estates. The new committee, which was chaired by the crown prince,
 a nation of revolutionaries 157

consisted entirely of ministers who were deeply critical of Hardenberg’s

constitutional plans. Meanwhile, the king sent his chancellor to the con-
gress of Laibach, in distant Slovenia, to prevent him from interfering
with the new committee’s work.95 By the time Hardenberg returned to
Potsdam in April 1821, his struggle for the adoption of a Prussian con-
stitution had been lost.
These newly discovered letters not only reveal a strikingly different
image of King Frederick William III’s political views after 1819 than is
found in the existing scholarly literature but also indicate the inadequacy
of conventional interpretations of the ‘‘reactionary’’ movement in post–
Napoleonic Prussia. This correspondence provides two particularly sig-
nificant revelations about the king’s state of mind during the year after
the adoption of the Karlsbad Decrees. First, it demonstrates that, for
Frederick William III, as for Hardenberg, the acceptance of press cen-
sorship legislation was not synonymous with the rejection of a consti-
tution. The king continued seriously to consider establishing a central
representative assembly in Prussia for more than a year after agreeing to
strict censorship measures for the German states. Second, these letters
show that fear of a revolution, rather than the desire to placate Prussia’s
privileged elites, proved the decisive factor in the king’s decision against
the adoption of a constitution. Frederick William III decisively rejected
the possibility of fully restoring the nobility’s traditional privileges, in-
sisting instead on a fusion of old and new political and social principles.96
But he remained terrified that an assembly of estates of the realm would
become a ‘‘dangerous central point’’ for the formation of revolutionary
sentiments—a fear that Voß eagerly reinforced.
That Frederick William III continued so long to weigh the adoption
of a constitution, despite his long-standing concerns about political up-
heaval, is evidence of the power of discourse to transform the landscape
of Prussian political debate. By 1820, the king saw no compelling ra-
tionale for the establishment of representative institutions of govern-
ment, and he expressed powerful arguments against such a move. None-
theless, he found it difficult to justify abandoning his earlier pledges on
behalf of a constitution, and he was unable fully to dismiss Harden-
berg’s claims that the Zeitgeist was ineluctably propelling Prussia toward
a system of parliamentary rule. In effect, Frederick William remained at
least partially convinced by the argument that the legitimacy of monar-
chical authority depended upon the consent of the people. While fig-
ures such as Gentz, Metternich, and Voß worked feverishly to exorcise
the demons of this new thinking, ultimately this proved to be an im-
possible task.
158 the concept in play

Conclusion: The Crystallization of the Concept

‘‘Nation’’
This chapter has illustrated the intimate connection between political and
conceptual history in Prussia during the Restoration era. Scholars have
often explained the events of this period in terms of an implacable op-
position between the forces of progress and reaction, in which the latter
side ultimately prevailed. As the analysis here has demonstrated, how-
ever, political alignments were fluid and ill-defined in the aftermath of
the Vienna Congress. ‘‘Progressives,’’ such as Hardenberg and Gneisenau,
worried seriously about the threat of political subversion posed by the
popular nationalist movement, and they favored strict measures to coun-
teract this danger. Conversely, a number of leading ‘‘reactionaries’’ ini-
tially supported the creation of representative assemblies, and Frederick
William III seriously considered establishing a constitution for a full year
after the adoption of the Karlsbad Decrees.
Between 1815 and 1820, however, political discourse in Prussia be-
came increasingly polarized. At the heart of this division was a disagree-
ment over the nature and proclivities of a politically active nation.
Hardenberg and his compatriots believed institutions for popular self-
government could coexist harmoniously with a sovereign monarch. Even
though Hardenberg forcefully supported the Karlsbad Decrees in 1819,
he envisioned these laws as interim measures that would become super-
fluous as soon as the citizenry had achieved a higher level of maturity.
Hardenberg’s opponents, however, came to believe that a politically ac-
tive nation would necessarily become a rival center of political authority
to the king. Put in different terms, members of the reform party believed
that the creation of a self-regulating and self-determining national com-
munity would enhance the authority of the Prussian monarchy, whereas
conservatives thought that the emergence of an autonomous public
sphere would destabilize the monarchical state.
The outcome of this struggle over the concept ‘‘nation’’ had important
consequences both at the level of practice and at the level of discourse.
The immediate practical result was that the party of fear triumphed over
the party of hope. The popular nationalist movement was effectively
driven underground by punitive censorship measures, and the Prussian
king rejected moves toward political liberalization. Moreover, fearing a
revolution, many Prussian nobles also backed away from their traditional
arguments against royal absolutism: by the 1820s, allegiance to the mon-
archical principle became nearly universal among the traditional elites.
In the absence of any serious challenge either from the left or the right,
the monarchical state consolidated its political authority to a greater ex-
 a nation of revolutionaries 159

tent than ever before. Indeed, some scholars have suggested that the
project of absolute monarchy was fulfilled in Prussia not during the era
of Frederick the Great but only in the aftermath of the Napoleonic
Wars.97
Discursively, however, the political developments of the Restoration
era had a strikingly different result. Because the opponents of national
representation often denied the very existence of the nation, the work
of defining this concept was to a great extent left to bourgeois popular
activists and their compatriots. Since these figures supported German
unification, the idea of the Prussian nation largely disappeared from use
after 1820;98 as did the idea of the nation of aristocrats, which had been
championed by Marwitz and other stalwarts of the Prussian nobility.
From the 1820s onward, most Prussians who wrote of the nation used
this term to indicate a harmonious pan–German community organized
according to the principle of civil equality. The next two chapters ex-
plore the impact of this conceptual development on Prussian political
debate between 1820 and 1848.
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 III
legacies
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 Seven

experiments in conservatism

‘‘The people will never attain maturity,’’ declared Otto von Voß-
Buch in January 1821.1 This statement, as clearly as any other,
signaled the end of the era of reform in Prussia. Dismissed from the
Prussian ministry in 1809 because of his bitter opposition to Stein and
Hardenberg, Voß reentered the inner circle of the king’s advisers in the
autumn of 1820. Upon Hardenberg’s death in November 1822, Voß be-
came the new head of the Prussian ministry—though he died within two
months of assuming his new post.2
The Prussian reformers, for all their differences, shared a commitment
to the same central Enlightenment ideal: they believed that Prussia’s pop-
ulace could be educated and its laws perfected, in order that the people
could assist in governing themselves. Stein’s Municipal Ordinance and
Hardenberg’s provisional representative assemblies both constituted at-
tempts to establish channels for popular participation in the Prussian
government. Likewise, their social and economic reforms—from the ab-
olition of serfdom to the establishment of a free market economy—
sought to create a common Prussian citizenry by eliminating the legal
barriers between estates. Voß’s claim represented a direct challenge to
this basic premise of the reform movement. By denying that the Prussian
people could ever attain maturity (Mündigkeit), Voß rejected not only the
notion of national representation but also the Enlightenment ideal of
human perfectibility. Against the concept of a unified nation composed
of free and equal citizens, Voß and his allies presented a hierarchical
social vision, arguing that order could be preserved only by authority.
The years between Napoleon’s defeat in 1815 and the Revolution of
1848 are commonly designated the era of Restoration or Reaction in Prus-
sia. Both of these terms suggest that a fundamental reversal of the Stein-

163
164 legacies

Hardenberg reforms occurred during this period. This conventional in-

terpretation, however, both underestimates the creativity of Prussian
conservatives and overestimates their success. Though figures such as
Voß portrayed themselves as staunch traditionalists, they in fact sought
to fashion a fundamentally new social and political order in response to
two ongoing challenges. First, the dramatic socioeconomic changes in
Prussia since 1806—including the abolition of serfdom, the elimination
of restrictions on the sale of noble estates, and the establishment of a
free market economy—had rendered increasingly problematic the tra-
ditional vision of a paternalistic social order dominated by an aristocratic
elite. Thus, conservatives had to find new ways of defining and justi-
fying social hierarchies to replace the traditional distinctions that were
becoming ever more blurred. Second, in the wake of twenty-six years
of political upheaval in Europe, from the fall of the Bastille to the fall of
Napoleon, conservatives considered it urgently necessary to neutralize
the danger of a German revolution by reasserting the legitimacy of mon-
archical and aristocratic authority. Prussian conservatism thus involved
not a simple return to the past but rather a series of experiments that
sought to re-create traditional forms of rule within a new social and
political universe.
This chapter reassesses the evolution of conservative theory and prac-
tice during the early nineteenth century, focusing primarily on one spe-
cific dimension of this movement, namely, how did Prussian aristocrats
grapple with the implications of the concept ‘‘nation’’ during the decades
leading up to 1848? Parts I and II of this study explored the impact of
material interests on political concepts, analyzing how, between 1806 and
1820, the ‘‘nation’’ came to be defined as a harmonious and politically
unified pan–German community, organized according to the principle of
civil equality. In this chapter the logic of the inquiry is reversed: I con-
centrate less on how the clash of interests among competing constitu-
encies shaped the concept ‘‘nation’’ than on how this concept itself in-
fluenced conservatives’ political strategies. An abbreviated account of
Prussian conservatism, as the one here, cannot aim at comprehensiveness.
For example, my analysis is confined primarily to Prussia’s older East
Elbian territories,3 and while the chapter makes some references to the
ideas of conservative civil servants and academic theorists, the bulk of
it is devoted to the rhetoric of aristocrats.4 The goal of this chapter is to
illustrate certain ways in which the rhetoric employed by various con-
servative activists played a role in defining the political possibilities of
this era.
Many historians have viewed conservatism primarily as ‘‘traditional-
ism made articulate.’’ I conclude, however, that Prussian conservatism
 experiments in conservatism 165

was a highly fluid and experimental phenomenon during the decades

leading up to the Revolution of 1848. Efforts to reestablish traditional
social hierarchies after 1815 frequently proved unsuccessful, forcing aris-
tocrats to reevaluate their identities and interests. Likewise, conservative
theories of sovereignty cannot be easily pigeonholed as traditionalist in
character. Some conservatives, fearing a revolution, went so far as to
deny the political rights—and even the very existence—of the nation;
yet these efforts to ‘‘dis-invent’’ the nation undermined aristocrats’ own
claims to political authority. Other conservative activists, troubled by
their waning influence in public affairs, sought to recast the rhetoric of
aristocratic nationalism in order to claim a more active political role.
While this second strategy proved more effective than the first in reas-
serting the authority of the Prussian nobility, it also reinforced funda-
mental changes in aristocrats’ social and political identities. Thus, during
the decades leading up to the Revolution of 1848, Prussian conservatism
must be understood not simply as a reaction against, but also as an
integral element of, the country’s process of modernization.

Traditionalism and Conservatism

In the landmark essay ‘‘Conservative Thought,’’ Karl Mannheim distin-
guished between two forms of political behavior, which he termed ‘‘tra-
ditionalism’’ and ‘‘conservatism.’’ Mannheim viewed traditionalism as a
‘‘general psychological attitude’’ that reflected the fear of innovation.
‘‘Almost purely reactive in nature,’’ traditionalism signified ‘‘a tendency
to cling to vegetative patterns, to old ways of life.’’ Conservatism, by
contrast, was both creative and articulate, and it emerged as a specific
historical response to the ‘‘natural law thought’’ of the Enlightenment
and the French Revolution. Conservatism, wrote Mannheim, ‘‘grew out
of traditionalism: indeed, it is after all primarily nothing more than tra-
ditionalism become conscious.’’ But paradoxically, the self-conscious con-
servatism of the nineteenth century appeared precisely at the moment
when much of the traditional social order had been irrevocably under-
mined:
[C]onservatism first becomes conscious and reflective when other ways of
life and thought appear on the scene, against which it is compelled to
take up arms in the ideological struggle. . . . The simple habit of living
more or less unconsciously, as though the old ways of life were still ap-
propriate, gradually gives way to a deliberate effort to maintain them
under the new conditions, and they are raised to the level of conscious
reflection, of deliberate ‘‘recollection.’’ Conservative thought thus saves
itself, so to speak, by raising to the level of reflection and conscious ma-
166 legacies

nipulation those forms of experience which can no longer be had in an

authentic way.5

In the scholarly literature on German conservatism, at least until re-

cently, a broad consensus has existed that this political movement must
be understood in large part as a reaction to the rationalistic and egali-
tarian impulses of eighteenth-century politics and philosophy.6 Some his-
torians portray conservatism primarily as a response to the French Rev-
olution7; others view it as an answer to the Enlightenment.8 Still other
scholars emphasize that conservatism evolved in the context of the
German nobility’s struggle against the ambitions of the absolutist state.9
Yet, in contending that conservatism represented ‘‘the elevation of
traditional patterns of authority to a conscious and formal level of artic-
ulation,’’10 many historians have underestimated a key dimension of this
movement identified by Mannheim, namely, that German conservatives
did not so much restore old ways of life as create a convincing memory
of tradition.11 At heart, the project of conservatism was to retrieve the
irretrievable, to construct the illusion that the present was seamlessly
bound to an organic past.
A pair of examples may help illustrate this point. The Prussian kings
Frederick William III and Frederick William IV were both conservatives,
but they displayed strikingly different attitudes toward many funda-
mental social and political questions. Frederick William III, rejected the
possibility of reversing most of the social and economic reforms of the
Napoleonic era, and he adopted the new rationalistic definition of sov-
ereignty reflected in the monarchical principle. When the first railroads
were constructed in Prussia during the 1830s, however, Frederick Wil-
liam III was deeply suspicious. He feared that the advent of rapid in-
tercity travel, by increasing the mobility of the Prussian population,
would break down traditional social distinctions and contribute to the
rise of democratic sentiments. Frederick William IV possessed a far more
romantic sensibility than his father: he glorified the medieval world,
insisting that monarchical sovereignty derived from the ‘‘grace of God.’’
But the younger Frederick William was also a railroad enthusiast. Indeed,
it was his support for a government bond issue to finance a railway from
Berlin to Königsberg that forced him to convene the United Diet of 1847,
an event that helped precipitate the Prussian Revolution of 1848.12
Along with railroads, nineteenth-century conservatives were forced to
grapple with a wide variety of other radical changes in Prussia’s social
and political landscape. The abolition of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806
marked the end of a governing structure that had been uniquely con-
genial to the independence and political authority of the nobility. The
 experiments in conservatism 167

empire had provided an overarching constitutional framework that pro-

vided extensive autonomy for local rulers and protected smaller lords
from their ambitious neighbors. The new German Confederation, estab-
lished at the Vienna Congress in 1815, created a loose federal structure
that linked the various German states, but each territorial prince was
formally defined as the supreme sovereign within his borders.13 Thus,
the political events of the Napoleonic era contributed to the consolidation
of the authority of the territorial states and the decline of the indepen-
dence of the aristocracy. The traditional authority of the nobility was
rendered even more problematic by legal reforms, such as the abolition
of serfdom and the loosening of restrictions on the sale of Rittergüter, as
well as by economic and social changes, such as the rise of free market
capitalism and rapid population growth, which led to increasing urban-
ization.
To preserve intact the traditional social order in the face of all these
assaults was an impossible task. Thus, rather than resisting all changes,
conservatives sought to identify and fortify those elements of the old
order that were critical to maintaining their own authority and prestige.
In this sense, conservatism was a reinvention of tradition.14 What re-
mained unclear in the aftermath of the Vienna Congress, however, was
precisely which elements of the traditional order were capable of being
salvaged, and how. For example, to what extent could the landed no-
bility continue to play its traditional paternalistic role, and to what ex-
tent would it have to accommodate the new principle of civil equality?
Could the nobility successfully manipulate a system of popular represen-
tation in order to serve its political goals, or would it need to deny the
political rights of the nation in order to defend old social hierarchies?

The Impossibility of a Restoration

In 1820, King Frederick William III decided against the establishment of
a central representative assembly in Prussia, concluding that such an
assembly would be a ‘‘dangerous central point’’ for the nourishment of
revolutionary views.15 As a compromise solution, however, he decided
to proceed with the establishment of representative assemblies in each
of the eight Prussian provinces. For this purpose, he convened a com-
mission under the chairmanship of Crown Prince Frederick William. The
so-called Crown Prince’s Commission, (Kronprinzenkommission) was ini-
tially appointed in December 1820 and deliberated until March 1821,
reviewing (and rejecting) Hardenberg’s proposals for communal and
county representative assemblies, which will be discussed in Chapter 8.
It reconvened from late 1821 through 1824, drafting plans for the new
168 legacies

provincial representative assemblies. The nine-member commission in-

cluded old-line nobles, such as Otto von Voß-Buch, along with career
civil servants of both aristocratic and bourgeois extraction, including
Wittgenstein, Ancillon, and Vincke.16
In January 1822, the commission sent its preliminary report regarding
the new provincial diets to Frederick William III. In a cover letter to the
king, the commission declared:

[F]or the future everything depends upon the further separation, securing,
and ordering of the different estates . . . ; if this structure should be ef-
faced, then the entire ständische constitution would also vanish. . . . The
preservation of the nobility is intimately linked with the preservation of
the monarchy.

The monarchical principle and the aristocratic principle, in other words,

were one and the same. To buttress the traditional order, the commission
urged that the social and economic reforms enacted during the Napo-
leonic period be rescinded wherever possible. For example, Prussia’s
trade guilds should be reestablished, and the nobility should maintain
ownership of the country’s large landed estates.17
Though the notion that the interests of the monarchy coincided with
those of the aristocracy may seem unremarkable, the commission’s ar-
guments were more novel than they appear. As late as 1819, the year of
the Karlsbad Decrees, relations between the Prussian king and the no-
bility had often been highly contentious. From the time of Napoleon’s
defeat, for example, the nobles of Brandenburg had repeatedly petitioned
the Prussian king for the ‘‘restoration of our former constitution.’’18 In
November 1819, the nobility of the Kurmark counties of Westhavelland
and Zauche sent another such plea to Frederick William III. The petition
criticized the new constitutions in other German states, such as Bavaria,
Württemberg, and Baden, claiming that the ‘‘so-called popular represen-
tatives [Volks Repräsentanten] confuse all rights and interests, irreconcil-
ably dividing the particular elements of the nation, [and] nourishing a
fatal distrust between prince and people.’’ For nearly half a millennium,
the ‘‘landständische constitutions’’ of the German states had ‘‘precisely
determined, by mutually inviolable promises, the rights and obligations
of the prince and of the particular elements of the population.’’ These
traditional relationships could not legitimately be modified ‘‘except
through the agreement of both sides—that is, by way of contract.’’ After
enumerating some of these ancient rights, the petition concluded by
demanding the ‘‘restoration of the essence of our old provincial consti-
tution.’’19
 experiments in conservatism 169

Despite having just agreed to stringent press censorship legislation

intended to counter the revolutionary threat, Frederick William III con-
temptuously dismissed the plea by the nobles of Zauche and Westhav-
elland in December 1819 with a single brusque sentence:
In response to your petition of 15 November, I inform you that your
request for the restoration of the former provincial constitution cannot be
granted; instead, you must await the general organization of estates of the
land [Landständen], which is currently under way.20

Within the next few years, with the outbreak of revolutions throughout
southern Europe, attitudes on both sides softened considerably. Prussian
aristocrats began to back away from their claims about the contractual
basis of monarchical authority,21 and the king himself adopted a more
conciliatory attitude toward the nobility than he had displayed in pre-
vious years.22
To proclaim the unity of interests between the monarchy and the ar-
istocracy was one thing; to succeed in reestablishing the traditional social
order was something else again. In analyzing the history of Prussian con-
servatism between 1815 and 1848, it is essential to distinguish between
the rhetoric and the reality of Restoration. Though many historians have
insisted that the Prussian aristocracy remained socially and politically
dominant throughout the first half of the nineteenth century,23 an equally
persuasive case can be made that ‘‘the aristocratic position disintegrated’’
during the decades after 1815.24 Patterns in the ownership of landed es-
tates provide one barometer of the status of the aristocracy. By 1800,
approximately two-thirds of the aristocracy owned no landed property,
and about 10–15 percent of noble estates had been sold to members of
the bourgeoisie. Following the adoption of the October Edict of 1807,
which ended legal restrictions on the sale of Rittergüter, bourgeois own-
ership of estates rose higher—especially during the agricultural crisis of
the 1820s, which resulted in numerous bankruptcies and forced sales. By
1842, one-third of noble estates had bourgeois owners, and this figure
rose to 42 percent by 1856. This transfer of estates to members of the
bourgeoisie proceeded rapidly despite the government’s economic inter-
vention to support aristocratic ownership of Rittergüter. Moreover, even
those estates that remained in noble hands frequently had new owners,
undermining the traditional patrimonial bond between lords and peas-
ants; by 1856, only 16.4 percent of Rittergüter were still owned by the
same family as in 1807.25 If aristocrats’ ownership of landed estates was
in decline, so too was their position in the bureaucracy and army. In the
mid–eighteenth century, under Frederick the Great, 95 percent of min-
170 legacies

isterial appointments had gone to Junkers, and the officer corps was al-
most exclusively aristocratic. By the 1820s, bourgeois appointees consti-
tuted three-quarters of the staff of the Prussian ministries and almost half
of the military officers.26 Some retrenchment occurred between 1820 and
1848. For example, in 1820, 59 percent of all provincial administrators in
Prussia (including the Landräte) were commoners; by 1845 this propor-
tion had declined to 53 percent.27 The aristocracy, however, never fully
recovered its previous position of dominance.
Not only was the preeminence of the nobility under assault in these
purely quantitative terms, but the very nature of the aristocracy as a
ruling estate was fundamentally redefined during this era. Though the
First Estate was still called the Ritterschaft (the ‘‘knights’’), commoners
as well as nobles were entitled to membership in this estate upon pur-
chasing a Rittergut. The Provincial Estates Law of 1823 confirmed this
change by entitling bourgeois estate owners to be represented along with
nobles in the First Estate. Procedures for deliberating and voting within
the assemblies likewise reflected a hybrid of traditional and modern po-
litical logic. The Crown Prince’s Commission adopted the general prin-
ciple that ‘‘the municipalities and peasants together elect the same num-
ber of deputies as the Ritterschaft,’’ thus attempting to strike a balance
between the old principle of aristocratic preeminence and the new prac-
tice of allocating representatives in proportion to population.28 In the
assembly, the delegates were to sit in a block with the other members
of their estate, but as a rule the whole body was to deliberate together.
Voting in the assembly was generally by head, rather than by estate;
and the traditional practice whereby constituents would give binding
instructions to their representatives was forbidden.29
In the words of one contemporary observer, the new provincial diets
provided for representation not for the traditional corporate entities of
the realm but rather for ‘‘mere classes of the population.’’30 As philoso-
pher of law Eduard Gans noted, the growing permeability of the estates
fundamentally undermined the old corporate order:

The laws of 1807 dissolved the three Stände by permitting a nobleman to

pursue a trade and a tradesman to own a noble estate. The provincial diets
have called these Stände back from the dead. Stände, however, are only
truly present when an individual can belong to only one Stand; if he can
simultaneously belong to various Stände, the ständisch principle is merely
an artifice, the acceptance of it arbitrary, and its inner truth is stripped
away.31

By defining membership in an estate in purely functional terms, in other

words, the old social hierarchy no longer appeared to reflect a natural
 experiments in conservatism 171

and divinely ordained order. It was precisely this loss of the fixed and
sacred character of the traditional order that Brandenburg Junker Adolf
von Rochow had in mind when he declared that ‘‘the nobility in the
Prussian state is to be considered as politically annihilated.’’32
Like the aristocracy, the peasantry and the guilds proved impossible
to restore to their previous condition. By the end of the Napoleonic era,
all but the staunchest conservatives viewed the liberation of the serfs as
a fait accompli. A petition of 1818 by the nobles of Brandenburg’s Kur-
mark and Neumark was characteristic in this regard. Though the nobles
demanded the reestablishment of the traditional provincial constitution,
they also declared: ‘‘By no means is it however the intention of the
estates . . . to request the establishment of that which is incompatible
with the rights and innate freedom of humanity, among which we count
hereditary serfdom [Leibeigenschaft] and the subjection of the peasant
estate.’’33 This passage illustrates how Enlightenment premises concern-
ing the desirability of universal human freedom penetrated the rhetoric
of conservatives as well as liberals during this era. As for the urban
guilds, the reestablishment of their trade monopolies proved impractical,
despite the support of the Crown Prince’s Commission and that of six of
the eight Prussian provincial assemblies during the 1820s. Frederick Wil-
liam III rejected the idea of overturning Hardenberg’s free trade legisla-
tion, arguing that ‘‘a rapid, forcible transition to a different legal order
will only lead to new disturbances and destroy lawful relationships and
procedures which have more or less put down roots.’’ By the mid–1820s,
the economic upturn in Prussia was widely attributed to Hardenberg’s
economic policies, and a government commission on guild reform sub-
sequently confirmed the principles of the new economic order.34
However ardently Hardenberg’s opponents denounced the reform
movement and demanded the reestablishment of traditional institutions,
many of the social and political changes that had occurred in Prussia
since the Napoleonic period proved irreversible. Though some historians
have claimed to find evidence of the ‘‘feudalization of the German bour-
geoisie’’ during the nineteenth century, it is perhaps more accurate to
speak of an ‘‘embourgeoisement of the aristocracy.’’35 Hans Rosenberg
has gone so far as to argue that a ‘‘pseudodemocratization’’ of the Prus-
sian landholding nobility began during the reform period. Not only did
members of the bourgeoisie gain control over many estates, observes
Rosenberg, but the changing pattern of land ownership ‘‘accelerated the
transition to ‘rational agriculture.’ The landholding nobility ‘democra-
tized’ itself, in that it developed into a class of productive large land
owners who operated more and more according to purely economic con-
siderations.’’36
172 legacies

In the face of these dramatic social and political changes, Prussian

aristocrats struggled to develop rhetorical strategies to defend their
status. Some historians, in characterizing these strategies, have distin-
guished between old (altständische) conservatives, who rejected any
modification of traditional social hierarchies, and new (neuständische) con-
servatives, who advocated a compromise between feudal and egalitarian
social principles.37 This divide between old and new conservatism man-
ifested itself in debates over the theory of sovereignty as well. Some
nobles, coming to believe that a politically active nation would inevitably
threaten their own privileged status, attempted (with only partial suc-
cess) to extinguish all elements of the new thinking from their political
rhetoric. Others, however, tentatively embraced the principle of national
representation, arguing that their political objectives would best be
served through the adoption of a constitution.

Strategy 1: Dis-inventing the Nation

‘‘The idea of a common German fatherland has irrevocably taken root.
He who seizes this idea will rule in Germany.’’ Thus wrote Brandenburg
noble Friedrich August Ludwig von der Marwitz to Chancellor Harden-
berg in 1814, in the first flush of the military victories over France.38
During the Napoleonic era, many Prussian nobles had fervently sup-
ported the idea of a national representative assembly. In 1812, for ex-
ample, Brandenburg Junker Otto von Quast had argued that such an
institution would contribute ‘‘to the grand education [Ausbildung] of this
general voice, and to the most forceful and beautiful animation of the
national spirit.’’39 Even Hardenberg’s enemy Voß, who had refused to
serve as a delegate to the Provisional National Representation in 1812,
had proclaimed the importance of forging ‘‘national unity and a feeling
for the interest of the whole’’ among the Prussian provinces.40 A decade
later, these and many other aristocrats had lost their ardor for partici-
patory politics. Popular representative assemblies, they now believed,
produced nothing but confusion and division, threatening the stability
of the realm.
This rejection of popular politics corresponded with a new distrust
for the very concept of the ‘‘nation.’’ Marwitz, who had written with
such passion about seizing the national idea,41 now articulated his views
more circumspectly, defending the rights of ‘‘the owners among the peo-
ple, who hitherto, along with their king, had formed the nation.’’42 The
transformation of Quast’s political thought was equally striking. Aban-
doning his ambition to animate the ‘‘national spirit,’’ Quast’s attitude
became overwhelmingly defensive by the early 1820s. The estates of the
 experiments in conservatism 173

province of Brandenburg, he insisted, comprised only the ‘‘Ritterschaft

and the towns.’’43 Asked for his advice on the organization of the new
Brandenburg provincial assembly in 1822, Quast argued strenuously
against the inclusion of representatives from the peasantry. Neither the
traditional German constitution nor Prussian law permitted peasants ‘‘un-
restricted participation’’ in the provincial estates, he claimed. To offer
them such rights now would be risky, ‘‘because some demagogues would
easily purchase peasant properties and thus achieve entry into the as-
sembly, and then could become dangerous to the monarchy.’’ Moreover,
because the peasantry not only made up most of the population but also
owned most of the land in Brandenburg, peasant representatives might
be tempted to ‘‘strive for predominance’’ in the assembly, ‘‘which can
lead to popular sovereignty [Volkssouverainität], particularly if secret in-
fluences interfere.’’44
The ideas expressed by Marwitz and Quast in the 1820s reflected the
deep fear of revolution that gripped much of the Prussian political elite
in the wake of Napoleon’s defeat. Despite the virtual absence of repub-
lican sentiment in the German states during this era, many participants
in political debate were convinced that the ‘‘spirit of destruction’’ threat-
ened to annihilate all existing order. This attitude was particularly pro-
nounced among the aristocrats of Brandenburg, who had been the most
strenuous opponents of social reform during the Napoleonic era. In other
provinces, such as East Prussia, where the nobility had willingly acceded
to some of the Stein-Hardenberg reforms, suspicions about the revolu-
tionary designs of the nation were less pronounced during the 1820s and
1830s.45
These fears were not limited to Prussia alone. The Austrian chancellor,
Metternich, for example, warned obsessively of the danger of impending
political chaos throughout the period between 1815 and 1848, employing
a rich panoply of medical and geological metaphors: in his letters the
revolution appeared variously as a cancer, a plague, a monster, an earth-
quake, and a volcano.46 The adoption of a ‘‘representative constitution,’’
warned Metternich’s adviser Friedrich von Gentz, would ‘‘lead to the
complete destruction of all power, and hence to pure anarchy.’’ Not only
did Gentz argue for the defense of the traditional hierarchical order, but
he denied the very existence of the nation conceived as the ‘‘entire mass
of the people.’’47 Gentz’s essay on landständische constitutions did not
use the word ‘‘nation’’ even once, nor is this word to be found in the
writings after 1819 by other leading conservatives, such as Metternich,
Wittgenstein, Ancillon, Voß, and Adam Müller. To stem the tide of rev-
olution, these figures believed it was necessary to ‘‘dis-invent’’ the na-
tion.
174 legacies

The dis-invention of the nation, however, proved to be a problematic

political strategy for aristocratic activists. In attempting to reassert the
social preeminence of the traditional elites, conservatives often presented
ideas that limited the political authority and independence of the nobil-
ity. These points may be illustrated by examining the political thought
of three leading theorists of this era: Carl Ludwig von Haller (1768–1854),
Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach (1795–1877), and Friedrich Julius Stahl (1802–
1861), whose writings provide a sense of how some conservatives at-
tempted to shore up existing hierarchies and to contain the destabilizing
potential of a politically active populace.
Haller, who was born to a patrician family in the Swiss city of Bern,
sought to answer this challenge in a six-volume work published between
1816 and 1834 entitled Restauration der Staatswissenschaft. Having be-
gun his career in the civil service at age nineteen as a devotee of En-
lightenment ideals, Haller became disillusioned by the revolutionary
events both in France and in Bern during the 1790s. In his Restauration,
he put forth a scathing critique of the liberal theory of the social con-
tract, which he said had resulted in ‘‘nearly universal confusion’’ among
Europe’s educated classes during the eighteenth century. The true state
of nature, he argued, was not characterized by the universal equality of
all humans but rather by gradations of strength and weakness, of in-
dependence and dependence: ‘‘Where strength and need meet, a rela-
tionship develops in which the former acquires domination and the latter
dependence. It is therefore the eternal law of God that the more powerful
dominates, must dominate, and will always dominate.’’48
Haller’s theory thus served to legitimate the full array of patrimonial
relationships that characterized the traditional order, including the rule
of husbands over their wives and children, of masters over their ser-
vants, and of lords over their peasants. His arguments were appealing to
many Prussian aristocrats because he defended the indivisibility of sov-
ereignty, arguing that nobles should continue to exercise unlimited police
and judicial powers over their estates. Moreover, Haller denied that any
fundamental difference existed between the public authority of the mon-
arch and the private authority of the nobility. Rather, all power, includ-
ing that of the prince, was essentially private in character: ‘‘Every family
forms a small monarchy. . . . Every individual man is king and monarch
in the circle of his realm, only smaller and less powerful, more or less
subordinated, by nature or contract, to a higher authority.’’ The prince,
in other words, was distinguished from the smaller landlord only by the
size of his realm and by the degree of his independence.
The insistence on the private character of monarchical authority had
ambiguous consequences for Haller’s theory of sovereignty. On the one
 experiments in conservatism 175

hand, this principle imposed certain limits on the prince’s rights with
respect to his subjects, for example, the prince did not have the right to
compel his subjects to perform military service, and subjects had the
right to resist a prince who abused his authority (as a result of the natural
law of self-defense). Moreover, if the prince wanted to impose any special
tax on his subjects (for example to support a military campaign), he
needed to consult his vassals, who acted through the Landstände. Yet,
the delegates to the Landstände represented only themselves not the peo-
ple as a whole. Because the rights of the nobility and other social elites,
like those of the prince, were essentially private in character, these
groups possessed no general right to participate in the exercise of sov-
ereign authority. Instead, the prince was the sole legislator in the state,
and law was ‘‘a binding expression of the will’’ of the monarch. Haller
denounced the principle of separation of powers, articulated by Mon-
tesquieu and other authors, as the ‘‘first step toward a revolutionary
system.’’ Haller’s political theory thus represented a curious hybrid of
old and new legal principles. He developed a highly rationalistic argu-
ment against natural law rationalism. He also defended the traditional
social privileges of the nobility but only by undermining their claims to
participate in the exercise of public power.49
In contrast to Haller, who viewed absolute monarchical sovereignty
as an essential bulwark against revolution, Gerlach depicted ‘‘royal ab-
solutism and revolution’’ as ‘‘but different aspects of one and the same
thing, twin children of the same mother.’’50 Gerlach was the descendant
of an old Brandenburg family ennobled in 1735 and the son of Berlin’s
first mayor. A veteran of the War of Liberation, he became active in the
Awakening (Erweckungsbewegung), a revival of evangelical Christianity
that spread throughout Germany after 1815, and he was one of the lead-
ing contributors to the Berliner Politisches Wochenblatt, an influential
conservative journal founded in 1831. In 1848, he became one of the
founders of the Prussian Conservative party. Though he spent his entire
career as a bureaucrat, serving as a high-ranking official (Gerichtspräsi-
dent) in the judicial branch of the government, Gerlach glorified the
medieval social order. He went even further than Haller in his defense
of paternalistic institutions, decrying the rise of free market capitalism
and arguing for the reestablishment of hereditary serfdom.51
Absolutism, argued Gerlach, was the most ‘‘able and fearful ally of
revolution’’ because it robbed ‘‘the king of the brilliance of his majesty,’’
stripping away the divine sanction for royal authority. Anticipating
Tocqueville’s interpretation of the French Revolution,52 Gerlach con-
tended that Europe’s absolute monarchs, by leveling the social order and
by annihilating the political authority of the aristocracy, had prepared
176 legacies

the ground for the destruction of the monarchy itself. Moreover, those
who made claims to ‘‘immoderate and boundless royal power’’ haughtily
ignored the principle that the king ruled ‘‘only by God’s grace, only as
God’s servant.’’ The ‘‘right of subjects [der Untertanen Recht],’’ Gerlach
insisted, ‘‘is as holy as the right of the king, and his right is limited by
ours.’’53 Thus, in defending the religious foundation of the social order,
Gerlach also sought to resuscitate the old contractual obligations between
the king and his vassals, along with the entire web of rights and privi-
leges that defined the old corporate order. This social philosophy left
little room for accommodating the dramatic changes that had wracked
Europe over the previous half century—or, indeed, since the rise of
absolute monarchy in the late seventeenth century. Thus, Gerlach and
his circle displayed an almost purely negative and defensive attitude
toward contemporary historical events.
Stahl, while sharing elements of Haller’s and Gerlach’s critiques of
modernity, expressed less hostile views toward recent historical devel-
opments in Prussia. Stahl was a converted Jew from a Bavarian merchant
family who, as a professor of political philosophy at the University of
Berlin, became the most influential Prussian conservative theorist of the
mid–nineteenth century. Like Haller and Gerlach, Stahl attacked natural
law rationalism as intrinsically revolutionary in character, both because
it idealized social equality and because it sought to reconstruct the world
purely from reason, rather than viewing the social order as divinely
ordained. Like the other two theorists, Stahl articulated a hierarchical
conception of civil society, defending paternalistic institutions, such as
nobles’ police and judicial powers over their estates, as traditional ‘‘or-
ganic’’ relations of authority. Yet, Stahl’s political philosophy was
grounded in a dynamic rather than a static conception of history. He
directed his energy toward containing the revolutionary potential of the
nation, instead of denying altogether the existence of such a political
community.
In Stahl’s view, his era was marked by an irreversible ‘‘progress from
corporate particularism to national unity, from a patrimonial to a statist
or constitutional system.’’ Thus, though he denounced the ‘‘political sys-
tem of the West,’’ which was based on ‘‘popular sovereignty, the division
of powers,’’ and ‘‘simple numerical representation of the people,’’ he
argued that any viable system of government must acknowledge the
growing unity of the realm as well as its traditional ‘‘corporate hierar-
chy.’’54 Moreover, Stahl rejected Haller’s theory of the private nature of
princely authority and, more generally, Haller’s claim that the true ‘‘law
of nature was simply the domination of the stronger.’’ Instead, the state
was an ‘‘ethical kingdom’’ whose charge was to educate its citizens to
 experiments in conservatism 177

become moral human beings. Within the state, the king embodied the
‘‘personality of Herrschaft.’’ For the state to perform this moral mission,
Stahl argued, the monarch had to exercise ultimate and undivided po-
litical authority.55
For Stahl, the monarchical principle denoted more than simply the
‘‘sovereignty of the king,’’ rather, it meant that ‘‘the prince truly remains
the center of gravity of the constitution, the positively shaping power
in the state, the leader of development’’—in other words, that ‘‘the
prince has the right and the power to rule by himself.’’56 This insistence
on enhancing the powers of the monarch did not mean the rejection of
constitutionalism. Indeed, Stahl called for the fulfillment of the Prussian
king’s promise to establish a constitution. In place of the traditional pro-
vincial diets, which had represented the interests of the individual es-
tates, he advocated the creation of a ‘‘healthy representation’’ based on
occupation or profession, which would illuminate both the particular
needs of ‘‘the Land’’ and the general desires of ‘‘the Volk’’ as a whole.
Such an institution would be almost purely advisory in nature, for ex-
ample, it would have the right to approve taxes, but it would possess
neither the authority to allocate taxes nor to deprive the government of
the power to collect existing taxes. The representatives would have no
right to initiate legislation nor would the king be obliged to consult the
assembly over legislative proposals, except those affecting the ‘‘basic
laws’’ of the realm. Stahl’s watchword was ‘‘authority, not majority’’:
representative institutions, by informing the king of public opinion,
would help him rule more justly and efficiently—but they were not
intended to challenge his rights as sovereign.57
The writings of Haller, Gerlach, and Stahl represented three attempts
to develop new legitimacy for traditional ruling structures. Haller and
Gerlach both avoided any reference to the nation, viewing this concept
as intrinsically revolutionary in its implications. Stahl, while less alarmed
by this concept and by the political developments of the modern era,
insisted on the need to contain popular political activism through the
unbending defense of monarchical sovereignty. None of these three the-
oretical approaches, however, provided an effective intellectual founda-
tion for the revitalization of the nobility as a political elite. Haller’s theory
of private law sought to defend the rights of the nobility against en-
croachment by the absolutist state, arguing that the king was merely the
largest landowner in the realm rather than the supreme overlord. But
Haller’s theory also depicted the nobility’s authority as essentially private
in nature. Thus, while justifying nobles’ dominion over their own es-
tates, he provided no theory that would legitimize aristocratic claims to
public power. The writings of Gerlach and his collaborators on the Ber-
178 legacies

liner Politisches Wochenblatt presented the most explicit critique of ab-

solute monarchical sovereignty voiced by Prussian conservatives during
this era. ‘‘All absolutism,’’ declared Gerlach, ‘‘is the service of idolatry.’’58
He sought to overcome the ‘‘atomistic pulverization’’ of the people
caused by absolutism and revolution, returning the realm to a feudal
theocracy. But the Wochenblatt’s deep pessimism about the future and its
unrelenting attacks on capitalism, railroads, and the ‘‘aristocracy of
money’’ ultimately rendered it a marginal force in Prussian political de-
bate.59 Stahl’s theory of the Christian state also sought to reconstitute a
hierarchical social order based on the principle of paternalism. Unlike
Haller and Gerlach, however, Stahl argued that the king embodied the
‘‘personality of Herrschaft.’’ His theory of the monarchical principle thus
undermined aristocratic claims for an independent political voice.

As the above analysis suggests, the dis-invention of the nation proved

to be a counterproductive strategy for Prussian aristocrats seeking to
organize politically and to articulate their claims. By denying the exis-
tence of the nation, the nobility deprived itself of the opportunity to
redefine itself as a national institution rather than as a local or provincial
one. Likewise, by rejecting the principle of popular representation, many
nobles abandoned any attempt to strike alliances with other constitu-
encies, such as the peasantry and the towns, against the ambitions of
the absolutist state. The history of the provincial diets established in
Prussia during the 1820s provides a further example of how conserva-
tives’ fears of a revolutionary nation impeded efforts toward an aristo-
cratic renaissance. The Crown Prince’s Commission, charged with design-
ing these new assemblies, proclaimed in its initial report that its goal
was to reinvigorate Prussia’s traditional landständische constitution.60 But
the Provincial Estates Law of July 1823, which it drafted, resulted in a
basic restructuring of the political process that severely limited the as-
semblies’ capacity to act independently or to challenge the authority of
the monarchical state.
The provisions of the Provincial Estates Law were tailored to restrict,
rather than encourage, the free and open airing of political views in
Prussia. The government closely monitored the deliberations of the pro-
vincial diets and placed tight restrictions on their activities. For example,
a royal commissioner attended all of the sessions in order to ensure that
proper procedures were followed. The assemblies were given the right
to offer opinions concerning legislation that would affect the whole
realm—but only if consulted by the king. They were granted a deciding
vote only on legislative proposals concerning local and provincial af-
fairs—but even these measures required royal approval in order to be-
 experiments in conservatism 179

come law. The diets had the right to petition the king on issues affecting
the ‘‘particular interest’’ of their province, but if the government rejected
their petition, they were forbidden to renew their complaint. The mem-
bers of the assemblies were strictly banned from publishing their minutes
and from corresponding with the assemblies of other provinces, and even
their correspondence with local governing bodies in their own province
had to be approved by the royal commissioner.61
Not only did the provincial diets fail to provide an effective forum
for aristocratic activism, but they also contributed to the decline of al-
ready existing representative institutions, such as the Kurmärkische Rit-
terschaft and the Committee of East Prussian and Lithuanian Estates. The
law of July 1823 made no specific determination concerning the fate of
these old regional corporate bodies, and initially their constituents at-
tempted to preserve them. Between 1824 and 1827, for example, the East
Prussian Committee continued to meet and correspond regularly during
the periods between sessions of the new provincial assembly. Indeed, in
1824, the assembly of the province of Prussia voted unanimously in favor
of maintaining the committee and for expanding it to include delegates
from West Prussia as well. In 1828, however, Frederick William III de-
cided to abolish the Committee of East Prussian and Lithuanian Estates,
accepting his advisers’ opinion that no need existed in this region for a
separate committee concerned with communal affairs.62
Hampered by these severe limitations on their activities, the provincial
diets played little meaningful role in Prussian politics during the pre–
1848 era. The government frequently overruled resolutions passed by
these assemblies, and it often delayed for as long as two years before
responding to such resolutions. Moreover, many important laws were
adopted without even being submitted to the diets for consideration. In
other words, the provincial assemblies possessed the form, but few of
the functions, of genuine representative institutions. In the words of one
scholar, the assemblies served as ‘‘committees for rendering opinions on
legislation’’ rather than as true parliamentary institutions—and even in
this capacity their participation was not mandatory.63
Why did the delegates to the representative assemblies accede to this
tight circumscription of their legislative role? Some historians have ar-
gued that Prussian nobles willingly accepted a diminished voice in pol-
itics for the simple reason that the government had already granted their
most important demands. According to Rosenberg’s classic interpretation,
a new ruling compromise was established between the bureaucracy and
the aristocracy in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, resulting in a
‘‘streamlined system of political absolutism; a modified pattern of aris-
tocratic privilege and social inequality; [and] a redistribution of oligar-
180 legacies

chical authority among the revitalized segments of the traditional master

class.’’64 Rosenberg argues that the bureaucracy and the landholding no-
bility created an alliance against the monarchy, whereby the nobility
preserved its privileged social status and the bureaucracy tightened its
control over state power. By 1820, the Prussian government had con-
ceded to the nobles’ demands on a wide variety of issues, for example,
estate owners had achieved a favorable settlement with their former
serfs, and they had retained many of their administrative rights, as well
as their police and judicial powers, over their lands.65 Hanna Schissler
concurs, observing that the bureaucracy sacrificed its own ‘‘members
who were unwilling to compromise’’ with the nobility, and the estate
owners ‘‘transformed themselves into a class of noble and bourgeois
agrarian capitalists.’’66
The Prussian state’s increasingly accommodationist stance toward aris-
tocratic privilege, along with the aristocrats’ changing conceptions of
their own self-interest, were undoubtedly important factors in transform-
ing the dynamic of political debate after 1815. Nonetheless, it is essential
to add two nuances to the interpretation of Prussian conservatism ad-
vanced by Rosenberg, Schissler, and other scholars. First, the motives
for the new alliance between elements of the Prussian aristocracy and
civil service were more complex than these historians suggest. Rather
than simply seeking to enhance their own authority at the expense of
the Prussian monarchy, leading civil servants were deeply troubled by
the prospect of a revolutionary upheaval that might overthrow the state
and the aristocracy alike. Indeed, it is not clear that any sharp schism
existed between interests of the civil service and those of the royal fam-
ily. It is true that the exercise of monarchical authority became increas-
ingly regimented by bureaucratic procedure during the early nineteenth
century, with the establishment of institutions such as the Council of
State, which further formalized the legislative process.67 Both the king
and the crown prince, however, played extensive personal roles through-
out the early nineteenth century in supervising the provincial estates
and in other vital political deliberations, and leading civil servants and
aristocrats alike continued to acknowledge the centrality of the monarch
in political decision making.68 Moreover, it is important to note that the
increasing regimentation of political authority during the early nine-
teenth century imposed strict limits on the activities of the civil service
itself, as well as on those of the monarch.69 While there may be truth to
the claim that Prussian civil servants struck bargains with aristocrats in
hopes of containing the authority of the king, it is equally true that all
three of these groups—aristocracy, civil service, and the royal family—
made common cause with each other against the phantom of a revolution.
 experiments in conservatism 181

This shared fear of chaos was a powerful force in reshaping political

alliances in Prussia during this era.
The notion that Prussian aristocrats accepted a diminished political
role in exchange for the preservation of their social privileges must be
qualified in a second way as well. Although certain elements of the
nobility willingly acknowledged the supremacy of the state, others con-
tinued to lobby actively for the right to participate in the exercise of
sovereign authority. The next section assesses various Prussian nobles’
efforts to revitalize their status after 1820 by demanding a greater role
for the ‘‘nation’’ or the ‘‘public’’ in political decision-making.

Strategy 2: Appealing to Public Opinion

Although the Provincial Estates Law of 1823 established a tightly cir-
cumscribed role for the new provincial diets, most Prussian nobles ini-
tially expressed satisfaction with this legislation. Under the new system,
fully half of the delegates to the assemblies were reserved to the owners
of landed estates (Rittergutsbesitzer), except in the Rhineland, where this
class received one-third of the delegates. Some Rhenish aristocrats argued
that greater barriers needed to be erected to differentiate the old land-
holding nobility from the new bourgeois estate owners. In the East Elbian
provinces, however, even the most conservative aristocrats, such as Mar-
witz, accepted the organizational principles of the new diets.70
Yet, over the course of the 1820s and 1830s, as the relative impotence
of the provincial diets became increasingly evident, both bourgeois and
aristocratic delegates in various provinces began to campaign for the
expansion of these institutions’ political role. The diet of the province
of Prussia (which combined the former provinces of East Prussia and
West Prussia) petitioned the crown repeatedly, beginning already in its
first session of 1824, for the right to publish the minutes of its deliber-
ations. During the 1830s, the diets of Saxony and the Rhineland likewise
petitioned for permission to publicize their proceedings, and the pressure
for the loosening of censorship became more intense after Frederick Wil-
liam IV’s accession to the throne in 1840.71
These demands for a closer bond between the provincial diets and the
public were often combined with requests for the fulfillment of the king’s
pledge to establish a constitution. In 1824, Count Fabian Dohna wrote
to the chair of the Committee of East Prussian and Lithuanian Estates,
pondering whether a ‘‘German empire’’ was likely to be established in
the near future. Dohna also referred to the need for internal political
reform:
182 legacies

One appreciates how necessary it is to establish a bond that will unite the
old and new provinces into a single state: in other words, a constitution.
This will not be made by deputies of the nation, as would be appropriate;
presumably it will simply be laid before them for their approval. . . .
These hearings by the deputies would need to be public.72
Likewise, at the beginning of the second session of the diet of the prov-
ince of Prussia in 1827, the delegate von Rosenberg requested that the
assembly grant him permission to present a written petition calling for
the ‘‘convening of General-Estates.’’ The diet voted by a majority of 65–
27 to delay taking up this petition, declaring that the time was not yet
ripe for such a measure. Two aspects of the debate surrounding this
petition are particularly noteworthy. First, support for Rosenberg’s pe-
tition was stronger among the nobility than among either of the other
two estates: of those who voted to take it up for consideration, sixteen
were from the Ritterschaft, seven from the towns, and four from the
peasantry (Landgemeinden). (Of those who voted against the petition,
twenty-seven were from the Ritterschaft, twenty from the towns, and
eighteen from the peasantry.) Second, Rosenberg himself was a West
Prussian estate owner who subsequently established a reputation as one
of the most conservative nobles of the province.73 These facts suggest
that support for a constitution during this era cannot be identified as an
essentially bourgeois phenomenon.
Historians have puzzled over the reasons for the strong support for
political reform among the nobles of East and West Prussia during the
1820s and 1830s, a phenomenon that was at odds with developments in
Brandenburg and other provinces. Some scholars have argued that the
high level of bourgeois ownership of Rittergüter during this era gradually
converted the East and West Prussian aristocracy into a landed gentry,
as existed in England, and that this class displayed progressive political
attitudes that were elsewhere associated primarily with the bourgeoisie.
Other historians have noted that the extensive grain trade between this
region and other countries, especially Britain, inspired the rise of liberal
economic ideas among aristocrats.74 One especially intriguing interpre-
tation holds that East and West Prussian nobles were deeply troubled
by a series of disastrous harvests that threatened to undermine the sta-
bility of the social order. Serious crop failures occurred from 1819
through 1822 and again in 1826–1827, 1835, 1838, and 1844–1847, in-
spiring unrest and resentment within the agrarian population. According
to this interpretation, East and West Prussian nobles sought to preserve
their authority in the face of this crisis by making concessions to the
peasantry and the towns—hence they developed more progressive social
and political views than was the case elsewhere in the realm.75
 experiments in conservatism 183

To identify the reasons for the differences among the political views
of Prussian nobles of various provinces is a project beyond the scope of
the present inquiry. Rather, the objective of this chapter is to illustrate
how the rhetorical strategies employed by Prussian aristocrats played a
role in defining their political program. In this respect, two points are
of particular significance. First, by appealing to the authority of the
nation or of public opinion (öffentliche Meinung), nobles posited a vision
of a homogeneous political community that was difficult to reconcile with
support for a hierarchical ständisch social order. Second, such appeals
had the potential to shift the symbolic locus of political authority away
from the aristocracy and the monarchy and toward the nation as a whole.
A critical difference existed between the aristocratic nationalism of
the Napoleonic era and that of the period after 1820, a difference related
less to the content of the claims than to the audiences toward which
they were directed. Between 1807 and 1815, Prussian aristocrats had
taken advantage of new representative institutions, such as the Assembly
of Notables and the Provisional National Representation, in order to ad-
vocate their political positions. Though many of these nobles had claimed
to speak on behalf of the nation, they had presented their pleas as mem-
bers of royally sanctioned institutions via petitions addressed to the king
and his ministers. From the 1820s onward—and especially after 1840—
petitioners both from the aristocracy and from other estates began to
address public opinion as a second, parallel audience along with the
monarchical state. For example, they began to publish their views in
journals accessible to all literate Prussians, rather than directing them
solely to the monarch. This rhetorical strategy tended to erode the very
distinctions among estates on which the special status of the aristocracy
rested.
The cadre of royal advisers who constituted the Special Commission
for Estate Affairs (Immediatkommission für ständische Angelegenheiten),
which supervised the provincial diets, was acutely aware of the dangers
posed by this development. In 1832, the commission summarily rejected
a request by one of the diets to admit observers to its sessions, arguing
that ‘‘the publicity of deliberations would seduce the delegates into striv-
ing for the approval of the public, leading them away from a calm and
thorough consideration’’ of the issues at stake.76 Historian Heinrich von
Treitschke, writing at the end of the nineteenth century, made a similar
point:

With the [end of] the secrecy of deliberations, a foundation pillar of the
old order of estates [alten Ständewesens] collapsed. Diets that abandoned
themselves to the judgment of public opinion could not long remain sat-
184 legacies

isfied with providing unbinding recommendations; instead, they had to

lodge demands.77

The accession to the throne of Frederick William IV excited great hopes

in Prussia. Many observers saw in this event the advent of a new age,
and the king contributed to these expectations by temporarily easing
press censorship and by promising to revisit the constitutional question.
Frederick William’s new minister for censorship declared in a memoran-
dum of 1841 that the ‘‘bond of trust between the government and its
own people’’ could no longer be preserved through instruction alone but
only through insight and persuasion. Indeed, during the early 1840s, the
government adopted several measures that eased restrictions on the pro-
vincial diets. Beginning in 1840, Prussian newspapers were permitted to
report on the progress of bills submitted to the provincial diets. From
1843 onward, the press was also granted limited rights to discuss the
substance of the delegates’ deliberations, as well as to publish certain
petitions that had been submitted to the diets for their consideration.78
During the early 1840s, provincial diets throughout the realm, partic-
ularly in the Rhineland and the province of Prussia, were flooded by
petitions—most of them from the bourgeoisie and the peasantry but
some from aristocrats as well. These petitions addressed a wide range of
issues: some demanded social and economic reforms or changes to the
legal code, others called for the lifting of press censorship and the es-
tablishment of a constitution. For example, in 1843, a group of seventeen
residents of the Marienwerder region of East Prussia, among them eight
Rittergutsbesitzer, called on the king to honor ‘‘the general desire of the
people for the establishment of a legal state of affairs through the ful-
fillment of the contract of 1815 [to create a constitution].’’79 In the same
year, a West Prussian estate owner petitioned the provincial diet to ask
the king to grant ‘‘the most ardent desire of the nation,’’ namely, ‘‘the
General Constitution [Allgemeine ständische Verfassung] after the manner
of the German Bundesstaaten,’’ along with ‘‘freedom of the press without
any censorship.’’80
During the 1840s, certain prominent conservative intellectuals and
civil servants also began appealing to the authority of public opinion or
of the nation. For these scholars and officials, this rhetoric served pri-
marily a defensive purpose. In the words of one historian, conservative
civil servants sought to ‘‘integrate publicity into the existing political
order as a means of securing the domination of the state.’’81 This strategy
was evident in the writings of Friedrich Julius Stahl, who—despite his
fierce defense of the monarchical principle—favored the establishment
of representative institutions to communicate the desires of the people.
 experiments in conservatism 185

Stahl may be identified as a transitional figure in the history of Prussian

conservatism: on the one hand, he was deeply suspicious of the revo-
lutionary potential of the nation, but on the other hand, he was con-
vinced of the need to respect the wishes of the populace in order to
preserve the authority of the state.
Another such transitional figure was Viktor Aimé Huber, a Marburg
literature professor and publisher of the conservative journal Janus. Dur-
ing the early 1840s, Huber composed two treatises in which he identified
the need to fuse the ‘‘conservative elements’’ into ‘‘the conservative
party’’ and in which he argued that Prussia should become the ‘‘central
point of all true conservative, national, Christian-monarchical forces in all
of Germany.’’82 Like Stahl, Huber supported the establishment of a central
representative assembly as a means of distilling a true expression of pub-
lic opinion, while insisting on the purely advisory capacity of such an
assembly. ‘‘The political influence of the estates,’’ Huber declared, ‘‘will
go precisely so far as their political education [Bildung].’’ Indeed, he
criticized Stahl for conceding too much authority to the parliamentary
assembly by proposing that such an assembly have a deciding vote over
new taxes.83
While conservative leaders hoped to fend off the revolution by rein-
vigorating traditional forms of authority, they found themselves obliged
to make compromises with the new order. The disposition of the consti-
tutional question between 1820 and 1848 provides perhaps the most
telling illustration of how Prussian conservatism sought to balance old
and new governing principles. Despite Frederick William III’s deep fears
about the revolutionary potential of a central representative assembly, he
never formally repudiated the constitutional promise of 1815, even at
the height of the Reaction during the 1820s and 1830s. The law of 5
June 1823, which established provincial assemblies in Prussia, remained
signally vague on this subject. It declared simply: ‘‘The question of when
a convocation of general estates will be required, and how they shall be
established on the basis of the provincial estates, will be left to Our
further determination.’’84 The State Debt Law of January 1820, which
stipulated that any new state debts must be approved by the Prussian
Reichsstände, remained officially in force, and Frederick William IV hon-
ored its terms by convening the United Diet of 1847.
Many prominent conservatives during this era expressed intense am-
bivalence about representative politics. Consider the voices of two of
Hardenberg’s leading political opponents, Ancillon and Wittgenstein.
Scholars have generally portrayed both of them as stalwart reactionaries
who ardently opposed a constitution from the time of the Vienna Con-
gress. As shown above, both men actually vacillated a great deal over
186 legacies

the constitutional question.85 A further illustration of this point comes

from two memoranda of 1821 and 1822, which they wrote as members
of the Crown Prince’s Commission. Both of these memoranda were writ-
ten in confidence to the other members of the commission, most of whom
also strenuously opposed Hardenberg’s constitutional plans. Yet both au-
thors referred to the issue of a central representative assembly in re-
markably equivocal tones. Ancillon, writing in January 1821, criticized
Hardenberg’s plan for the communal ordinance by arguing that it would
transform a ‘‘monarchy with estates’’ into a ‘‘royal democracy.’’ None-
theless, he conceded that ‘‘in the important matter of the constitution,
we are all convinced that something must happen and happen soon.’’ An-
cillon argued that ‘‘the beginning must be made with the provincial
estates’’ and that these bodies should serve as the basis for further con-
stitutional developments both at the local and at the central level.86 Witt-
genstein’s remarks, in a memorandum of September 1822 that concerned
the proposed Provincial Estates Law, were even more striking. Wittgen-
stein wrote that he ‘‘dare not express an opinion’’ on the question of
whether the law should state that the provincial assemblies would even-
tually elect the delegates to the Prussian ‘‘general estates.’’ The king,
Wittgenstein noted, had already declared that any further pronounce-
ments concerning the general estates would come only at his own dis-
cretion. In the draft of this memorandum, Wittgenstein wrote—and then
crossed out—the following words:
In expressing myself in this sense, I hope I may not be misunderstood by
the High Commission as if I entertained the fear that the convening of
general estates could become dangerous and detrimental to the monarchy.
I am far from giving credence to this thought.87

Even though Wittgenstein excised this passage from the final version of
the memorandum, it is striking that one of Prussia’s leading ‘‘reaction-
aries,’’ writing to an audience of his like-minded peers, should have felt
compelled to avow his faith in the ideal of constitutional rule.88
‘‘The storms of today must be met with the institutions of today,’’
declared historian Leopold von Ranke in the aftermath of the Revolution
of 1848.89 Ranke’s remark reflected the attitude of a growing number of
Prussian conservatives during the mid–nineteenth century. Stahl, decry-
ing the ‘‘negative spirit of the age,’’ called for the establishment of ‘‘na-
tional unity’’ and parliamentary institutions.90 Likewise, Joseph Maria
von Radowitz, a close adviser of King Frederick William IV, concluded
that ‘‘the monarchy based on estates [die ständische Monarchie] is extinct
in the consciousness of the masses.’’ The state, Radowitz contended, had
‘‘lost its foundation in public opinion,’’ and it was essential to restore
 experiments in conservatism 187

the loyalty of the people to their king through the establishment of a

‘‘constitutional monarchy.’’ After the Revolution of 1848, Radowitz at-
tempted to revitalize the monarchy through his unsuccessful union pro-
ject, a precursor to Bismarck’s program of German national unification
under conservative auspices during the 1860s.91
King Frederick William IV declared in alarm in 1854 that his closest
ideological allies had ‘‘may God have mercy!, suddenly become consti-
tutional!!!’’92 Indeed, what one scholar has termed the ‘‘pseudoconstitu-
tionalization’’ of the Prussian Right became a widespread tendency after
the defeat of the revolutionary movement in 1848–1849.93 Yet, as will be
discussed further in Chapter 8, Frederick William IV had himself played
a major role in creating a new popular form of monarchy.94 Frederick
William IV recognized that, in the new age of mass production and mass
politics, it was essential to employ innovative methods for legitimating
monarchical rule. To recast the form of the monarchy, however, inevi-
tably meant to transform its substance as well. Despite conservatives’
deep suspicion toward the idea of a politically active nation, the new
political ideas exerted a profound influence over the thinking of even
the most reactionary figures in Prussia. With the decline of the old agrar-
ian corporate social order, appeals to the sanctity of the traditional Stände
had lost much of their resonance, so it was essential to redefine the bonds
of community that unified the realm.

Conclusion: Prussian Conservatism and

the Dilemma of Nationhood
Most historical accounts of conservatism in nineteenth-century Prussia
emphasize how aristocratic social interests shaped conservative political
theory and rhetoric. This chapter has focused on the opposite phenom-
enon, analyzing how discursive conventions influenced the ways in
which conservative nobles and civil servants conceived and articulated
their own interests. During the decades leading up to 1848, Prussian
aristocrats confronted a perplexing dilemma: by rejecting the ideas of
nationhood and national representation, they limited their capacity to
organize as a unified interest group vis-à-vis the monarchical state; by
embracing these ideas, however, they undermined the theoretical basis
for the traditional corporate privileges of the provincial nobility. Thus,
a division emerged within the conservative movement of this era. One
strand of conservative thought, motivated by the fear of revolution, was
characterized by the effort to deny the existence of the nation, or, at
least, to subordinate the nation’s political rights unequivocally to the
authority of the state. Other conservatives, however, were dissatisfied
188 legacies

with this rejection of the principle of a politically active nation. Some

aristocratic activists, particularly in Prussia’s easternmost provinces,
viewed the establishment of a constitution as the only viable means of
achieving an active role in the exercise of sovereign authority. Some of
these activists explicitly demanded a national representation; others em-
ployed a more diffuse vocabulary, calling on the government to heed the
authority of public opinion. For some leading conservative civil servants
and scholars, the appeal to public opinion served a different purpose:
namely, to secure the legitimacy of the monarchical state by coopting
popular demands for political representation.
This conservative dilemma concerning what stance to take toward the
idea of the nation reflected the broader problem of how to respond to
the epochal social and political transformations occurring across Europe
during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. As a fluid and
urbanized society emerged in place of the relatively stable, agrarian, and
localized premodern order, the old legal fictions about natural social hi-
erarchy and the paternalistic mission of the aristocracy proved increas-
ingly difficult to sustain. During the Restoration, the government’s efforts
to revitalize Prussia’s traditional ständische order met with only limited
success. The reestablishment of the trade guilds proved impractical and
unpopular, and the ongoing transformation of the agricultural sector was
irreversible.
More important for our inquiry here, conservative leaders failed to
reestablish the old symbolic ground of Prussian politics. Both of the
conservative rhetorical strategies explored in this chapter had important
transformative effects on Prussian political culture. Those aristocrats who
sought to foil the revolutionary threat by dis-inventing the nation found
it difficult to forge political coalitions with other classes in opposition to
the state or to legitimate their own preeminence as a ruling elite. After
1820, most Prussian nobles declared their allegiance to the monarchical
principle, thus in effect abandoning their claims that royal power was
limited by a contract with the estates. As a result of this defensive at-
titude on the part of many aristocrats, the monarchical state succeeded
in consolidating its political authority during this era to a greater extent
than ever before. The second conservative strategy, the appeal to ‘‘public
opinion,’’ was equally disruptive of traditional ruling relationships. Aris-
tocratic efforts to speak on behalf of the nation or the public tended to
blur, rather than reinforce, the boundaries between estates.95 As one his-
torian observes, ‘‘ ‘Publicity’ was tightly linked to parliamentarization
and party formation, as well as to freedom of the press and access to
information.’’ Thus, an ‘‘insurmountable contradiction’’ marked the ef-
 experiments in conservatism 189

forts of civil servants who sought to preserve the state’s monopoly over
political power by invoking the authority of ‘‘public opinion.’’96 The
next chapter carries this story further, examining how, during the years
leading up to 1848, bourgeois liberals and radicals strove to balance the
authority of the ‘‘nation’’ with that of the monarchical state.
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 Eight

toward a democratic monarchy

With the adoption of the Karlsbad Decrees in 1819, the scope

for the free expression of political ideas narrowed dramatically in
Prussia and the other German states. These measures, which re-
mained in effect until April 1848, not only established strict censorship
of the popular press but also allowed for surveillance of the universities
and civic life and the summary imprisonment of dissidents. An American
observer offered the following portrait of public life in Berlin during the
1820s:

Conscious as every Prussian is that the almost omniscient eye of the gov-
ernment, through the medium of its system of espionage is fixed upon him,
and that a single word expressed with boldness, may furnish an occasion
for transferring him to Koepnic or Spandau; he becomes of course, in
every circle, suspicious of those around him, sustains a negative character
in his conversation, advances those indefinite opinions which are harm-
less, and if he does not commend, he takes very good care never to censure
the proceedings of government.1

Many historians have argued that these conditions of repression fatally

handicapped Prussian liberalism throughout the first half of the nine-
teenth century. Under the weight of censorship and suspicion, declares
one scholar, Berlin’s ‘‘flowering Enlightenment culture . . . gradually lost
its intellectual élan and social coherence.’’ Prussian progressives ex-
pressed their political views through ‘‘resentment and passive resis-
tance,’’ but until the eve of the Revolution of 1848 they failed to form
any ‘‘coherent political movement.’’2
Though the censorship measures adopted at Karlsbad were vital fac-
tors in inhibiting open political discourse, the existence of political re-

191
192 legacies

pression alone does not explain the distinctive character of Prussian lib-
eral thought after 1819. Prussian liberalism emerged as a legacy of the
political struggles of the Napoleonic era. As such, it reflected some of
the same basic impulses and internal tensions that had characterized the
thought of Stein and Hardenberg.
Throughout the pre–1848 era, leading liberal activists—and even
many radicals—struggled to reconcile the principles of democratic and
monarchical sovereignty. Like the Prussian reformers of the Napoleonic
era, these figures sought to establish a harmonious relationship between
the nation and the monarchical state by rationalizing civil society, fos-
tering public education, and establishing parliamentary political insti-
tutions. Although in the 1840s, a few radicals began calling for the out-
right abolition of the Prussian monarchy, this faction remained quite
small even after the outbreak of the Revolution of 1848. A substantial
majority of revolutionary leaders, including many who are often iden-
tified as radical republicans, favored the preservation of at least some
elements of monarchical authority. Rather than seeking to abolish the
monarchy, most of the revolutionaries hoped to achieve a union of the
monarch and the people—a goal that ultimately proved impracticable.
Historians have often blamed the failure of the German Revolution of
1848 on the fractured and indecisive character of its leadership. Yet it
was this shared commitment to forging a democratic monarchy, as much
as the infighting among competing factions, that sabotaged the revolu-
tionary movement of 1848 in Germany.

Shifting Conceptions of State and Civil Society

Chapter 2 of this book identified two fundamental challenges that con-
fronted Prussian leaders at the beginning of the nineteenth century: the
problem of social cohesion and the problem of sovereignty. In certain
critical respects, the agendas of Stein and Hardenberg continued to in-
form the writings of later theorists on both of these issues. Philosophers
from Hegel to Marx, like the Prussian reformers, hoped to solve the
problem of cohesion partly by establishing social harmony. If private
interests could somehow be synchronized with the public good, they
argued, then the latent destructive forces within civil society could be
tamed. The harmonization of private and public interests, these philos-
ophers believed, would also help resolve the problem of sovereignty. If
the institutions of the state were sufficiently rational and impartial, and
the populace sufficiently enlightened, any tensions between state and
civil society would be diminished. In Hegel’s view, the ‘‘general estate’’
of the civil service would ideally act solely for the benefit of society as
 toward a democratic monarchy 193

a whole. Marx’s theory went still further: he hoped that social life would
ultimately become so harmonious that sovereign authority would ulti-
mately ‘‘wither away.’’
While similarities existed between the thought of the Prussian reform-
ers and that of subsequent theorists, there were profound differences as
well. First and foremost, the emergence of the ‘‘social question’’ during
the decades leading up to 1848 shifted the center of gravity of philo-
sophical inquiry and political debate. For Stein and Hardenberg, the
liberation of the Prussian state from French domination had been the
paramount objective. Though Hardenberg’s reform program had funda-
mentally recast Prussia’s economic and social order, these reforms had
been motivated by the desire to mobilize the energies of society on behalf
of the monarchical state.
After 1815, the political constellation changed dramatically in Central
Europe. The fall of Napoleon inaugurated a century of relative peace,
diminishing the need for states to mobilize their populations for political
and military objectives. Moreover, the dramatic expansion of the popu-
lation, along with the initial stages of industrialization, resulted in wide-
spread social dislocation and pauperization. Between 1815 and 1845, the
population of non–Austrian Germany increased by 38.5 percent. These
demographic pressures became especially pronounced during the two
years before 1848, when poor harvests led to misery and starvation,
fueling social discontent. Among the educated elites, widespread frus-
tration existed as well. During the 1820s, university enrollments ex-
panded significantly, nearly doubling the number of lawyers in some
cities by the mid–1830s. The number of new university graduates ex-
ceeded the number of available positions. These structural conditions
encouraged the radicalization of certain segments of the educated classes,
as some disappointed jurists took up careers in journalism.3
These changing social and political conditions were reflected in the
philosophy of the era. From 1820 onward, many publicists and political
theorists placed increasing emphasis on social issues. Hegel’s Philosophy
of Right (1821), for example, portrayed civil society as a sphere of activity
separate from the state, which warranted it being studied on its own
terms. Earlier German political theorists, such as the eighteenth-century
cameralists, had used ‘‘state’’ and ‘‘society’’ as identical categories. The
state, according to their terminology, represented the sum of all social
relations. Conversely, social order was constituted and maintained only
by judicious government regulation. Even Prussian reformers, such as
Hardenberg, who had sought to reduce government intervention in so-
ciety, had still spoken in terms of creating a ‘‘state society’’ (Staatsge-
sellschaft) or ‘‘citizens’ society’’ (Staatsbürgergesellschaft). As these terms
194 legacies

suggest, Hardenberg intended that the populace be mobilized both by

and on behalf of the state.4
Hegel’s theory signaled the transition toward the concept of a ‘‘modern
economic society, set free from ständisch corporate ties.’’5 Hegel envi-
sioned civil society as an autonomous sphere in which individuals acted
according to ‘‘particular’’ goals and needs. The social principle of ‘‘par-
ticularity for itself,’’ however, inevitably resulted in ‘‘selfish’’ activity,
which, if unrestrained, would result in universal suffering and ‘‘ethical
degeneration.’’ The potentially destructive character of social behavior
gave rise to a ‘‘system of complete interdependence,’’ when members of
society recognized that the good of the individual was intimately linked
with the preservation of the ‘‘welfare and the rights of all.’’6 This rec-
ognition of mutual dependence resulted in the foundation of the state.
The sphere of civil society, according to Hegel, was dominated by
individualistic and self-seeking activity. The state, by contrast, was an
impartial institution representing the common good. ‘‘The whole [die
Ganzheit],’’ Hegel declared, ‘‘must preserve the strength to keep partic-
ularity in harmony with ethical unity,’’ and this project could only be
carried out by the institutions of the state. Hegel defined the civil service
as the ‘‘general estate’’ that had the ‘‘general interests of the community
as its business.’’ The mission of the state was to preserve social harmony
by working to overcome the conflict between private interests and the
public good.7
Hegel’s theory of the state was open to profoundly opposing inter-
pretations, depending on whether he was understood as writing in a
descriptive or in a prescriptive mode. If it were read as a description of
the state in its present form, Hegel’s account appeared to glorify Prussian
absolutism. Conservative Right Hegelians, such as legal philosopher Karl
Friedrich Sietze of Königsberg, celebrated the Prussian state as ‘‘a gigan-
tic harp tuned in the garden of God to lead the world chorale.’’8 Read
as a prescription for the ideal government, however, Hegel’s theory could
be understood as a plea for radical political reform. This was the direction
followed by the Left Hegelians, such as Arnold Ruge, Bruno Bauer, Lud-
wig Feuerbach, and Karl Marx, who employed Hegelian principles in
order to justify social and political revolution.9
The same ambiguity that characterized Hegel’s stance toward the ab-
solutist state was found in the writings of other Prussian political and
social theorists of this era as well. Jurist Karl Friedrich von Savigny, for
example, has often been depicted as an archconservative whose ‘‘histor-
ical school of law’’ helped establish the juridical foundation for the Res-
toration in Prussia. This interpretation, however, is overly simplistic. As
a recent study reveals, Savigny belonged to a group of ‘‘visionary con-
 toward a democratic monarchy 195

stitutional reformers,’’ who sought to adopt Roman law in Germany ‘‘be-

cause they believed it carried within it the seeds of a rebirth of Rome.’’
Savigny and other ‘‘advocates of the Rechtsstaat offered their ‘rule of
law’ as a third way between Volkssouveränität and Absolutismus, be-
tween the absolutism of the popular revolutionaries and that of the
princes.’’10
On the left of the political spectrum as well, writers and activists
sought to navigate between the extremes of absolute monarchy and de-
mocracy. In the summer of 1841, Ruge became one of the founders of
the radical Left Hegelian movement in Germany. Becoming disillusioned
with the ‘‘Christian state’’ of Frederick William IV, who had ascended to
the Prussian throne the previous year, Ruge proclaimed the birth of a
‘‘Jacobin’’ party on German soil.11 Only months earlier, however, Ruge
had written a pamphlet in a far different tone. This pamphlet, entitled
Prussian Absolutism and its Development, had heralded the advent of a
‘‘republican monarchy.’’12 Ruge had distinguished the early stages of
monarchical rule in Prussia, which had been characterized by ‘‘egotism’’
on the part of both princes and nobles, from a second era of absolute
monarchy, which had culminated during the reign of Frederick the Great.
Ruge had declared: ‘‘Frederick II was the fully realized absolute monarch
of the Protestant state, in that he acted entirely for the generality [für’s
Allgemeine],’’ rather than on behalf of his private interests. Ruge had
praised Frederick the Great for having freed himself ‘‘inwardly’’ from
‘‘egotism.’’ Yet, only in the third and final historical stage, the ‘‘age of
revolution,’’ would this transformation of government become complete.
As a result of the revolution, ‘‘the egotism of the absolute monarchs
would also be negated in reality, and the entire organism of the state
would be . . . permeated by a new life and . . . spirit.’’
The ‘‘revolution’’ in Germany, Ruge had argued in this pamphlet,
would not result in the abolition of monarchy. Rather, it would bring
about a new form of monarchical rule combining ‘‘spiritual and political
freedom.’’ The ‘‘king of the future,’’ Ruge had declared, would fulfill
Frederick the Great’s mission of ‘‘abstracting himself from all private
dynastic interests, and directing the state toward the goal of establishing
the freedom of all.’’13 Ruge’s call for a ‘‘republican monarchy’’ was strik-
ingly reminiscent of Kant’s plea that monarchs, even if they ‘‘rule auto-
cratically,’’ should ‘‘govern in a republican manner.’’14 For Ruge in 1841,
as for Kant in the 1790s, republicanism still had more to do with the
spirit than with the institutional form of government.
With the emergence of the Left Hegelian movement, Ruge and his
collaborators abandoned any hope of reforming the monarchical state
from within, assuming an openly oppositional line. (This move to the
196 legacies

left, incidentally, alienated the majority of liberal Hegelians, so that

Ruge’s group represented only a tiny splinter party in Prussian politics.)
A ‘‘true’’ and ‘‘free’’ state, wrote Ludwig Feuerbach, would need to be
an egalitarian, democratic republic. In such a state, which would be a
real ‘‘communal being [Gemeinwesen],’’ any difference between the com-
munal will and the private will of individuals would be abolished.15
The most influential of the Prussian Left Hegelians was Karl Marx,
who belonged briefly to the movement before becoming disenchanted
with its idealist intellectual foundation. A systematic analysis of Marx
lies beyond the scope of this study, but a few brief remarks concerning
his thought are in order. The tradition of enlightened nationalism in-
volved two intertwined projects, first, the effort to mobilize the nation
politically, and second, the attempt to harmonize the will of the nation
with that of the state. In one sense, both Left Hegelianism and Marxism
represented radical ruptures with the legacy of enlightened nationalism,
because both rejected the primacy of the nation as a political community.
For Ruge, the ‘‘true nationality of the new Germany’’ lay in the ‘‘union
of political and spiritual freedom,’’ rather than in ‘‘raw tribalism [rohe
Volksthümlichkeit].’’16 Marx went still further, denouncing nationalism as
a form of ‘‘false consciousness’’ that obscured the universal unity of the
proletariat.
Though Marx rejected nationalism, he embraced the ultimate goal of
social harmony. ‘‘From each according to his abilities, to each according
to his needs,’’ Marx declared. This slogan reflected the premise that, in
a communist society, the interests of the individual would be recognized
as identical to those of the community as a whole. Likewise, Marx’s
notion that the state would eventually ‘‘wither away’’ was rooted in his
belief that the abolition of ‘‘egotism’’ would render political authority
superfluous. Like earlier Prussian theorists, Marx argued that the edu-
cation of the populace was an essential precondition for overcoming ego-
tism—though this education, he believed, would occur not in schools
but in the daily brutalities of class struggle. As the contradictions in-
herent within the capitalist economy became ever more starkly obvious,
the true unity of interests of all workers would gradually be revealed.
The proletariat, Marx contended, would become capable of revolutionary
action only when it attained ‘‘true consciousness’’; and a successful rev-
olution would in turn lead to the negation of antisocial, individualistic
activity. In Marx’s views regarding social harmony and popular educa-
tion, striking parallels existed with the political tradition that is the sub-
ject of this book. Like the Prussian reformers of the Napoleonic era, Marx
hoped to help forge a new rational social order that would overcome the
conflict between private and public interests. In this rational society, the
 toward a democratic monarchy 197

people would be energized, devoting their full efforts toward achieving

the good of all.

If Prussian political theorists’ arguments about social cohesion exhibited

significant continuities throughout the first half of the nineteenth cen-
tury, so too did their writings on the problem of sovereignty. Like the
Stein-Hardenberg party, many subsequent authors argued that institu-
tions for popular political representation would enhance the authority of
the monarchical state. Up to the Revolution of 1848, nearly all German
intellectuals and political activists, except for a small group of radicals,
including the Left Hegelians, continued to accept the principle of mon-
archical sovereignty.17 As Dieter Langewiesche observes, ‘‘For liberals,
the governmental form that would bring about the society of the future,
founded on reason and freedom, was a constitutional monarchy rather
than a republic.’’18
The modern Western concept of the balance of powers was not en-
tirely absent from Prussian political theory of the early nineteenth cen-
tury, but it played a more minor role than in British or American con-
stitutional political theory. During the Napoleonic era, for example, both
Stein and Hardenberg favored the establishment of a Council of State
(Staatsrat), partly in order to limit the king’s capacity to act arbitrarily.
The Staatsrat, finally established in 1817, came to play a decisive role
in the Prussian legislative process.19 Similarly, early nineteenth-century
liberals, both in Prussia and in other German states, viewed parliamen-
tary institutions as a necessary check on royal power. The Hanoverian
Friedrich Dahlmann, for example, declared: ‘‘The chambers [of parlia-
ment] should cooperate in the legislative process, protecting the laws.
They should, however, not be co-rulers or co-administrators [of the
realm].’’20 This formula provided for a much weaker representative as-
sembly and a much stronger monarchical executive than was found in
other contemporary parliamentary systems, such as that of Britain. Dahl-
mann envisioned the parliamentary assembly mainly as a restraint on
monarchical authority, rather than as the prime moving force in govern-
ment.
Dahlmann’s attitude toward the absolutist state was fundamentally
ambivalent. Prussia, he declared, was a state ‘‘with the magic spear
which heals as well as wounds.’’21 This ambivalence was shared by many
other German liberals throughout the period leading up to 1848. Rather
than deciding between the stark alternatives of monarchy and democ-
racy, or between corporatism and universal equality, their instinct was
to try to find a means of balancing and integrating these disparate po-
litical and social principles. Like the earlier generation of Prussian re-
198 legacies

formers, they hoped to overcome the internal contradictions within their

political philosophy through the rationalization of state authority and
through the ‘‘education of the nation.’’

The Project of National Education

In historical accounts of nineteenth-century Europe, Prussia is conven-
tionally portrayed as socioeconomically ‘‘backward’’ with respect to the
countries of Western Europe. In its industrialization, Prussia lagged
about two generations behind England and about one generation behind
France and Belgium. In the development of public schooling, however,
this pattern was reversed. Prussia was the first European country to
develop a centralized, state-run network of schools for its youth, and
during the nineteenth century, its educational system became a model
for the Western world. During the first half of the nineteenth century,
Prussia reformed and expanded its universities and classical Gymnasien
for training the intellectual elites; it also embarked on a program of
providing universal elementary instruction. By the 1840s, more than 80
percent of Prussian children between the ages of six and fourteen were
attending primary schools, a figure far greater than for any other con-
temporary society, with the exception of Saxony and parts of Scotland
and New England.22
The question of why Prussia was the first European country to
develop such an extensive program of public education has been de-
bated among historians. Ultimately, this ‘‘schooling revolution’’ must
be understood as one integral element of the broader response to the
crisis that confronted the Prussian state during the Napoleonic era. As
one scholar has observed, the discussion about educational reform in
the early nineteenth century was entwined with ‘‘a larger consideration
of problems that were seen as dangers to Prussia’s social cohesion.’’
Perceiving that ‘‘society was in danger of coming apart,’’ Prussian lead-
ers sought to generate ‘‘new binding myths’’ that would restore a sense
of ‘‘wholeness’’ in social and political life.23 They perceived popular
education as an instrument for establishing harmony and ‘‘national
spirit.’’
As previous chapters have shown, in the wake of the military defeat
of 1806–1807, nearly all of the leading bureaucratic reformers shared the
conviction that Prussia faced a crisis of social cohesion. Altenstein, for
example, lamented the absence of a unified ‘‘voice of the nation,’’ which
he claimed had contributed to the disaster. ‘‘What was heard,’’ he wrote,
‘‘were one-sided insights of individuals, guided and limited by private
interest.’’24 Gneisenau denounced the ‘‘stupidity’’ and passivity of the
 toward a democratic monarchy 199

Germans. Stein lambasted the nobles of Brandenburg for their ‘‘deep-

rooted egotism’’ and ‘‘incomplete education [halbe Bildung].’’25
In the first years of the Prussian reform period, both Stein and Har-
denberg composed memoranda that emphasized the importance of
schooling for forging a unified national community. In October 1808,
Stein proclaimed the commitment of his ministry to ‘‘the raising [Erzie-
hung] of the youth into a powerful species [Geschlechte], in which the
goals of the state will be preserved and developed.’’ His plans for school
reform, he declared, would be an essential step toward a ‘‘uniform na-
tional education [Nationalbildung],’’ which would reinvigorate the state.26
Hardenberg described the links between schooling and his broader re-
form program in similar terms:

In the interior of the state . . . a new constitution will take shape. The
energies of individuals will be urgently demanded by the state, but these
energies will not be used as a mere tool by others. Rather, they will be
dedicated, through the highest freedom, and the freest use of these en-
ergies, to the attainment of the greatest good.27

The first generation of nineteenth-century educational reformers in

Prussia expressed a highly idealistic vision of the techniques and ultimate
ends of schooling. The goal of universal schooling, declared Johann Wil-
helm Süvern, was to form Prussia into ‘‘an organism [Organismus] in
which each of society’s components, province, nobleman, vassal, or lo-
cality, is allowed to develop its life [while] allowing at the same time
these components to grow together into a unified whole [Ganzen].’’28 The
schools, he argued, should foster the ‘‘general education of humanity
[allgemeinen Bildung des Menschen]’’ through the ‘‘education of the nation
and the youth [National- und Jugendbildung].’’29 This goal was to be at-
tained not through narrow occupational training but rather through a
broader program of humanistic learning. Up through the 1820s, the
methods of the Swiss educational reformer Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi
(1746–1827) served as the pedagogical model for the Prussian elementary
schools. Pestalozzi, whose work was applauded by Stein, Süvern, and
other leading reformers, encouraged spontaneous and independent in-
quiry by students. He also emphasized the intimate link between the
formation of intellect and character.30
Numerous observers have pondered the ‘‘irony of liberal England pro-
ducing a rigid undemocratic school system while hierarchical Germany
developed a fairly open one.’’31 The American educational reformer Hor-
ace Mann, visiting Berlin in the 1840s, remarked in amazement that Prus-
sian children were ‘‘taught to think for themselves.’’ Another American
observer remarked on the ‘‘extraordinary spectacle’’ of the combination
200 legacies

of despotic government and a wise educational system in Prussia.32 The

existence of an open educational system, however, is fully consistent
with the interpretation of the Prussian reform movement advanced in
this book. The Prussian reformers hoped that the education of the nation
would advance the cause of harmony and public spirit rather than un-
dermine the authority of the monarchical state.
As with the proposals for political liberalization, the Prussian educa-
tional reforms came under heavy attack during the early 1820s. A con-
servative educational commission appointed by Frederick William III re-
ported in 1821 that the new school system had contributed to ‘‘increasing
moral corruption’’ in Prussia, as shown by ‘‘fantastic rawness in cloth-
ing’’ and ‘‘arrogant cheekiness in conduct’’ among the youth. The lib-
erals’ attempt to foster the ‘‘self-development of religion and ethics in
young people,’’ declared the commission, had contributed to a ‘‘lack of
true Christian religious teaching’’ and to a ‘‘revolutionary tendency of
the young.’’ These dangerous developments could be countered only by
a return to ‘‘the one effective method of instruction, whereby the teacher
communicates his knowledge or the results of his experience as some-
thing fixed and certain, in a manner appropriate to the intellectual ca-
pacity of the pupil.’’33
Beginning in 1821, under the leadership of the conservative Ludolf
von Beckedorff, the development of Prussian schools took a much dif-
ferent direction than in the previous decade. Beckedorff criticized the
leveling tendencies of Pestalozzi’s pedagogy, as adapted by Süvern and
other Prussian educational reformers. ‘‘Society,’’ he argued, ‘‘does not
rest on the possession of equal rights or demands upon its members, but
upon their division . . . into separate classes and estates.’’ Süvern’s reform
proposals, he claimed, would lead to ‘‘insecurity for the individual and
eternal turmoil for the society as a whole.’’34 Rather than promoting an
‘‘artificial equality,’’ wrote Beckedorff, the proper goal of schooling was
‘‘the creation of orders or estates [Standes-Bildung].’’ Thus, he advocated
the formation of a rigidly separated system of schools for each individual
estate: Landschulen for peasants; Armenschulen for the lower urban or-
ders; Bürger- and Hauptschulen for the industrial and commercial estates;
and, finally, Gelehrtenschulen, Gymnasien, and universities for training
members of the learned estates.35
Though Beckedorff sought to re-create a hierarchical, particularist so-
ciety, it is essential to recognize that his program cannot be understood
as purely reactionary in character. No less than the liberal educational
reformers like Süvern, Beckedorff recognized that the traditional social
order in Prussia had been permanently disrupted. The older division of
the population into ‘‘the estates of the peasants, the warriors, and the
 toward a democratic monarchy 201

learned’’ (Nähr-, Wehr-, und Lehr-Stand), he declared, ‘‘was appropriate

to the relations of the earlier age, but does not entirely match those of
the present.’’ Instead, schools should be designed to prepare children for
each of the ‘‘main types of occupations’’: agriculture, industry, trade,
and scholarship.36 In the future, he observed, the Prussian state would
‘‘have to be molded with forethought and purpose, like a work of art.’’37
Thus, rather than attempting to abolish the new public school system,
he expanded it, seeking to infuse the Prussian populace with an anti-
egalitarian consciousness based on the notion of a ‘‘positive Christian-
ity.’’38
The debates in Prussia over education policy during the period 1815–
1848 mirrored the broader political and social disputes between liberals
and conservatives. The liberal program of national education was far
from being anti-monarchical in intent. Rather, liberals sought to fuse
together the Prussian populace into a living organism, to forge a unified
national consciousness, and to eliminate ‘‘strife between estates.’’ They
considered Bildung—the cultivation of both intellect and character—to
be an essential prerequisite for overcoming egotism, which they believed
was a fundamental source of conflict between the populace and the state
authorities. Thus, for liberals, school reform was a critical tool for en-
suring the future viability of the Prussian monarchical state. For conser-
vatives, schooling was equally important. In their case, however, the
primary lessons to be conveyed were that social hierarchy was eternal
and that monarchical sovereignty was guaranteed by the will of God.
Conservatives, in other words, attempted to use the innovative institu-
tion of universal schooling to secure the legitimacy of traditional social
and political hierarchies.

The Pedagogical Function of Participatory Politics

Universal schooling was but one of several elements of the broader pro-
gram of national education favored by the Prussian reformers and their
successors in the liberal movement. As previous chapters have shown,
the Stein-Hardenberg party believed that popular participation in poli-
tics would also serve a vital pedagogical role. For example, in the Nas-
sau Memorandum of 1807, Stein argued that local and provincial assem-
blies would promote ‘‘the awakening of a spirit of community and civic
pride, the employment of dormant or misapplied energies and of unused
knowledge,’’ along with ‘‘harmony between the views and desires of
the nation and those of the administrative authorities of the state.’’39
Stein’s Municipal Ordinance, as well as Hardenberg’s experimental rep-
resentative assemblies of 1810–1815, were organized with this pedagog-
202 legacies

ical function in mind. A brief discussion of two additional proposals for

political reform will be useful in illustrating this connection between
the goals of popular representation and national education. These pro-
posals were the plans for a communal ordinance and for a general rep-
resentative assembly for the Prussian state. Hardenberg lobbied fiercely
for both of these measures between 1819 and 1822, during the final
three years of his life, but ultimately neither proposal was adopted be-
fore the Revolution of 1848.
Plans for a Prussian communal and county ordinance went through
several incarnations between 1808 and 1820. Stein originally proposed
these measures as a counterpart to his Municipal Ordinance, to allow for
political representation for residents of the Prussian countryside, as well
as the towns. Stein’s associates prepared drafts for such a law in 1808
and 1810, but neither was enacted.40 In February 1820, Frederick William
III ordered the formation of yet a third committee charged with drafting
plans for the local and county representative assemblies.41 Six months
later, the committee completed a 240-page report, which included de-
tailed legislative proposals for the communal and county estates. The
committee envisioned these institutions as the first steps toward a ‘‘gen-
eral representation of the state,’’ which would ‘‘awaken a vigorous com-
mon spirit in the Volk’’ and move the citizenry to ‘‘forget individual and
particular concerns on behalf of common goals.’’ These local represen-
tative bodies would play a vital role in educating the Prussian populace
for self-government. The committee observed: ‘‘In order to be released
from guardianship and administer one’s own affairs, one must be ma-
ture.’’ To this end, the local assemblies were designed ‘‘not only to accord
with a future higher level of popular cultivation [Volksbildung], but also
to prepare it.’’42 Kant had defined Enlightenment as ‘‘man’s emergence
from his self-imposed immaturity.’’43 The constituent committee directed
its legislative proposals toward precisely this goal.
Strikingly, the committee’s lofty vision of Germans’ capacity for self-
government did not extend to Prussians of Polish ethnicity. The com-
mittee’s report claimed that Stein’s Municipal Ordinance had been a rous-
ing success ‘‘even in the smallest agricultural villages’’ of the German
provinces. Thus, the ‘‘differing levels of education’’ should not prove to
be an obstacle to self-government in the countryside. Nonetheless, ‘‘ev-
eryone who had the opportunity to become familiar with the non–
German provinces acknowledges that the rural communities of these ter-
ritories cannot be recognized as mature.’’44 The diametrically opposed
perceptions of German and Polish villagers point to a much larger con-
troversy, which lay at the heart of the project of national education,
 toward a democratic monarchy 203

namely, whether to seek to Germanize Prussia’s Polish territories or to

respect non–German language and culture.
Like the ‘‘Jewish question,’’ the status of the Prussian Poles would
remain hotly contested throughout the nineteenth century and beyond.
Karl von Altenstein, who served as minister of education and religion
from 1817 until his death in 1840, took a relatively conciliatory attitude
toward Polish culture. He declared in 1822: ‘‘Religion and mother tongue
are the most sacred possessions of a nation,’’ warning that ‘‘a government
which shows itself indifferent to them, or even allows attacks upon them,
embitters and dishonors a nation and makes of its members untrue and
bad subjects.’’ For Altenstein, in other words, the existence of an auton-
omous Polish cultural nation presented no threat to the integrity of the
Prussian state. Under Altenstein’s ministry, elementary education in the
Polish territories was conducted in the pupils’ mother tongue, though
most advanced courses at the Gymnasium level were taught in German.
As the century progressed, however, the Prussian government came to
place increasing pressure on Polish culture, emphasizing the use of the
German language in education and government.45 This repressive activity
stemmed in large part from the conviction that the political unity of the
nation required cultural unity as well.

Like the plans for communal and county assemblies, the Prussian re-
formers’ proposals for a general representative assembly were intended
partly to further the political education of the populace. Before 1815,
Hardenberg had used the term ‘‘national representation’’ to describe this
new political body, but in the climate of growing suspicion toward pop-
ular nationalism, he subsequently employed less-threatening names such
as ‘‘representatives of the land’’ (Landesrepräsentanten) or ‘‘estates of the
realm’’ (Reichsstände).46 In 1819, shortly before the adoption of the Karls-
bad Decrees, both Hardenberg and Wilhelm von Humboldt presented
proposals for a Prussian constitution to Frederick William III. These out-
lines, which were similar in their basic features, illustrate how progres-
sive Prussian statesmen of this era sought to harmonize monarchical sov-
ereignty with parliamentary institutions.
Both Hardenberg and Humboldt favored establishing the Reichsstände
in connection with a network of local, county, and provincial represen-
tative assemblies. By requiring the citizenry to participate in governing
itself, Humboldt hoped to stimulate the moral development of the indi-
vidual and to forge a living bond between the state and the national
spirit. Like Hardenberg, Humboldt argued for a two-chamber central
representative assembly; in the upper chamber, representation would be
204 legacies

granted on a hereditary basis to members of the privileged estates,

whereas delegates to the lower chamber would be elected by the nobility,
the non-noble landowners, and the citizens of the towns. Unlike Har-
denberg, Humboldt insisted that the delegates to the central assembly
be elected directly by the Prussian citizenry rather than indirectly by
the members of the local and provincial assemblies. Though Humboldt
claimed that national elections were essential in order to overcome the
‘‘corporative spirit,’’ he also (like Stein) emphasized more than Harden-
berg the need to preserve the traditional estates.47
Apart from these minor differences over the details of their consti-
tutional plans, Hardenberg and Humboldt also clashed with each other
over political tactics. For example, Humboldt insisted that the central
representative body should convene no later than 1822 or 1823, whereas
Hardenberg was too wary to propose a definite timetable. Humboldt also
demanded that the central estates be granted a deciding vote over leg-
islation and the right to initiate legislative proposals, while Hardenberg
knew that Frederick William III would only accept an assembly with a
purely consultative role.48 Hardenberg was willing to work within the
constraints dictated by the king; Humboldt preferred to stand on prin-
ciple.
Historians have often portrayed Humboldt as a far more liberal and
laudable character than Hardenberg. Indeed, in the autumn of 1819,
Humboldt’s principled stance against the Karlsbad Decrees earned him
expulsion from the Prussian government. Yet, regarding monarchical sov-
ereignty, the two men held remarkably similar views. When Hardenberg
presented his constitutional proposal to King Frederick William III in
August 1819, he declared:

All necessary steps must be taken to ensure that the monarchical principle
shall be firmly established, that true freedom and security of person and
property shall harmonize with that principle, and that in this way freedom
and security may best and most enduringly persist in conjunction with
order and energy. Thus the principle will be maintained: Salus publica
suprema lex esto!49

Hardenberg hoped that the monarch and the estates would cooperate
harmoniously on behalf of the public good. Likewise, Humboldt argued
in October 1819: ‘‘The constitution, which the Prussian state requires,
must serve to support and complete the monarchical principle. . . . The
force and authority of the government must not be diminished, but
rather enhanced, through [the constitution].’’50
Hardenberg and Humboldt shared a deep faith in the capacity of an
enlightened nation to coexist harmoniously with a sovereign monarch.
 toward a democratic monarchy 205

Because of this faith, Hardenberg included in the State Debt Law of

January 1820 a provision mandating that, henceforth, the Prussian gov-
ernment would be allowed to accumulate new debts ‘‘only upon con-
sultation with and co-guarantee by the future estates of the realm.’’51
Abiding by this requirement, Prussian leaders refrained from issuing any
new state bonds until 1847. In that year, King Frederick William IV,
seeking funds for the construction of a Berlin-Königsberg railroad, re-
vived the public debate over a Prussian constitution.

Frederick William IV’s Monarchical Offensive,

1840–1847
The final two decades of the reign of King Frederick William III, from
1820 to 1840, were characterized by a highly rigid and defensive political
stance. In his Last Testament of 1827, Frederick William III declared:
‘‘Prussia’s position in the general state system depends above all on the
unlimited character of royal power.’’ He strongly counseled his succes-
sors against any measure that would alter this ‘‘foundation pillar of the
monarchy,’’ thus weakening the Prussian state.52 Frederick William IV,
who ascended to the throne in 1840, shared his father’s suspicion of the
revolutionary potential of a politically active populace. Nonetheless, the
younger Frederick was convinced that the Prussian monarchy needed to
secure new sources of legitimacy in order to survive and flourish. It was
impossible, he declared early in his reign, ‘‘to come up with any kind
of concept that could describe the political entity called Prussia. This
thing has no historical basis; it consists of an agglomeration of territories,
which themselves once had such a basis and then lost them.’’53 Frederick
William’s remark about the artificial character of the Prussian state was
strikingly reminiscent of Karl vom Stein’s 1806 observation that Prussia
was merely an ‘‘aggregation of many individual provinces brought to-
gether through inheritance, purchase, and conquest’’ and that it lacked
any ‘‘state constitution.’’54
While Stein had sought to establish unity among the Prussian prov-
inces by rationalizing the exercise of sovereign authority and by estab-
lishing representative institutions, Frederick William IV took a very dif-
ferent approach: he asserted that the Prussian monarchy was divinely
ordained and that he was king ‘‘by the grace of God.’’ As David Barclay
notes, Frederick William IV was thus ‘‘breaking with the actual traditions
of his own state,’’ which had long emphasized the legal rather than the
sacred foundations of monarchical authority.55 These theological appeals,
however, were only one element of Frederick William IV’s effort to re-
vitalize the Prussian monarchy: he also sought to legitimate his rule on
206 legacies

the basis of popular support, using public speeches and mass gatherings
in order to secure the loyalty of his subjects. In effect, Frederick William
IV sought to portray himself as a representative both of God and of the
people. These two dimensions of his monarchical project are neatly cap-
tured by illustration 8.1, which depicts the ‘‘ceremonial entry of Their
Majesties the King and Queen into Breslau’’ in September 1841. Here,
Frederick William appears (at the bottom center of the frame) riding on
horseback in military uniform, with the queen at his side. He is sur-
rounded by his subjects rather than addressing them from a distance—
a king of the people, not apart from them. At the same time, the
ceremonial gate behind the king emphasizes the link between royalty
and divinity. This edifice, whose spires resemble those of a cathedral, is
capped by several ornate crowns. The design vividly depicts the prin-
ciple of Gottesgnadentum—Frederick William’s claim that he ruled ‘‘by
the grace of God.’’ Thus, this image associated the Prussian king equally
closely with God and the Volk.56
In seeking to inspire popular allegiance, Frederick William IV often
portrayed Prussia as the vessel for a greater German identity. In 1842,

8.1 ‘‘Ceremonial entry of Their Majesties the King and Queen of Prussia
into Breslau on 13 September 1841.’’ Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin—
Preußischer Kulturbesitz—Handschriftenabteilung, YB 15476 m.
 toward a democratic monarchy 207

for example, at an event that celebrated the resumption of construction

of the unfinished Cologne Cathedral, he saluted the ‘‘spirit of German
unity and strength’’ in front of an ecstatic crowd. Frederick William
envisioned that union quite differently than did the bourgeois popular
nationalists of his day. In Barclay’s words:
Germany was, to his mind, a medieval world of corporative or ständisch
freedom, based on a hierarchical and paternalistic social order, infused
with Christian humility, and sustained by a harmonious union of prince
and people.57

Nonetheless, his listeners may not have caught all of these nuances.
Chancellor Metternich of Austria, who also attended the Cologne event,
warned that the king’s ‘‘artistic’’ tendencies would inevitably lead him
and his subjects ‘‘in new directions invented only by themselves.’’58 One
such direction is captured by the ominous image in illustration 8.2,
which the anonymous artist entitled simply ‘‘1942.’’ In the background
of this engraving, produced around the time of the 1842 celebration, a
circle of men dances around a liberty tree while the Cologne Cathedral
burns. In the foreground, a German (appearing as the mythic figure Her-
mann, dressed in a bear pelt and a crown of oak leaves) and a Frenchman
wearing a laurel wreath grasp each other’s hands while straddling the
Rhine River. This image was intended as a radical fantasy of the future,
in which French and German citizens would unite in peace, liberated
from what the artist saw as the reactionary tyranny of the church. (Chill-
ingly, the prophecy proved half right: the first bombing raids on Cologne
during World War II occurred in 1942, but these fires were the product
of continuing enmity rather than newfound peace between Germany and
France.) As this engraving shows, popular support for the notion of a
sacralized German-Christian monarchy modeled on the medieval order
was by no means universal during this era.59
In defining himself as king by grace of both God and the Prussian
people, Frederick William IV attempted a difficult balancing act. During
the first years of his reign, Frederick William vacillated between two
contradictory impulses: on the one hand, to create a more open political
process, thus binding the monarchy more tightly to the populace, and
on the other hand, to suppress any potentially revolutionary activities.
Within a few days of becoming king, he began to discuss the possibility
of convening representatives from the Prussian provinces in Berlin. He
also abolished most press censorship, granted amnesty to political pris-
oners, and allowed the provincial assemblies to publish the results of
their deliberations. Yet, at the same time, he jealously guarded his gov-
ernment’s monopoly over sovereign authority. For example, when the
208 legacies

8.2 ‘‘1942’’: Prophecy of the burning of the Cologne Cathedral

(1842). In the foreground, the German mythic hero Hermann,
dressed in a bear pelt and a crown of oak leaves, grasps the
hand of a Frenchman wearing a laurel wreath. Staatsbibliothek
zu Berlin—Preußischer Kulturbesitz—Handschriftenabteilung,
YB 15511 gr.

easing of press censorship measures in Prussia resulted in open criticism

of the monarchy, the king reacted by reinstating the earlier restrictions.
Likewise, the decision to allow the provincial estates to publish their
deliberations quickened the pulse of political life in Prussia. The dele-
gates to the assemblies began to stake bolder claims about their own role
as guardians of the public interest, and they campaigned openly for
expanding the role of representative institutions.60
 toward a democratic monarchy 209

Frederick William’s ideas concerning the establishment of parliamen-

tary institutions reflect this tension between the desires to secure popular
support and to maintain a monopoly on political power. In 1840, for
example, he toyed with a proposal for convening a central assembly of
representatives in Prussia, modeled on his father’s idea of bringing to-
gether thirty-two delegates from the various provinces along with an
equal number of delegates drawn from the Council of State. By stipulat-
ing that half of the delegates in the assembly would be appointed directly
by the king, this plan sought to ensure that the representative body
would support rather than undermine the monarchy.61 Four years later,
in 1844, Frederick William IV returned to the project of constitutional
reform with greater seriousness. The king was becoming increasingly
frustrated over his government’s inability to raise money for building
railroads and highways; moreover, delegates to the eight provincial diets
were taking an increasingly oppositional stance because of their desire
for a Prussian constitution. Frederick William decided that the best so-
lution to this dilemma would be to call together all of the delegates from
the various provincial diets in Berlin. The activities of this assembly
would be strictly limited to guaranteeing state debts and raising taxes.
Moreover, the king was adamant that there should be ‘‘no national rep-
resentation,’’ no direct elections of delegates, and no stipulation of a
regular interval between meetings of the assembly, which would stim-
ulate a ‘‘periodic fever’’ of public opinion in Prussia. He insisted: ‘‘I will
not drop the sceptre from my hands, I will not issue a Charter, I will
never share my sovereign powers with the estates.’’62 After more than
two years of deliberations involving the king’s ministers and members
of the royal family, this plan became the basis of the Patent of 3 February
1847, which announced that the provincial diets of the country would
convene as a United Diet whenever the state needed to secure new loans
or additional taxes.
The first meeting of the United Diet was scheduled for 11 April 1847,
and in the two months leading up to the opening session, political ac-
tivists on both the right and the left of the political spectrum expressed
intense disappointment with the February Patent. For conservatives, this
document represented the first step on the slippery slope toward a con-
stitution. Some leading liberals, however, threatened to boycott the as-
sembly because the king’s plan defined the diet’s legislative role in such
narrow terms.63 The king’s opening address to the United Diet only in-
creased the unhappiness on all sides. Frederick William IV spoke to the
assembled delegates from the throne in the White Hall of the royal palace
in Berlin. The physical organization of the assembly—the delegates ar-
ranged in orderly rows with the king seated on a high platform in the
210 legacies

8.3 The opening session of the United Diet in Berlin, 11 April 1847.
Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin—Preußischer Kulturbesitz—Handschriftenab-
teilung, YB 15912 m.

center—reflected the monarch’s own view of the proceedings. He de-

scribed himself as the ‘‘inheritor of an undiminished crown, which I must
and will pass on undiminished to my successors.’’ He dismissed out of
hand the notion of the ‘‘division of sovereignty’’ or the ‘‘breaking of the
full authority [Vollgewalt] of kings.’’ Frederick William IV said that he
regarded the assembly as ‘‘German estates in the ancient sense.’’ By this,
he meant that the delegates should serve as ‘‘representatives and protec-
tors of particular rights [eigenen Rechte], the rights of the estates.’’ Fred-
erick William, in other words, defined the role of the delegates in exactly
the opposite sense from Stein and Hardenberg, who had demanded that
representatives act on behalf of the ‘‘good of the whole’’ rather than
expressing their own ‘‘private perspective.’’ Frederick William declared
that the deputies also had the right to offer conscientious advice to the
king on issues concerning which he requested their counsel. They pos-
sessed no brief, however, to ‘‘represent opinions.’’ Rather, their role was
confined to helping the king rule ‘‘according to the law of God and of
the land.’’64
Despite the king’s highly restrictive vision of representation, the very
act of publicly convening a central representative assembly in Prussia
made it possible for the delegates to demand a broader political role.
 toward a democratic monarchy 211

Frederick William IV pledged: ‘‘From this time on, every man in the land
will know that I . . . will negotiate no state bond measure, that I will
increase no tax, and establish no new tax without the free consent of all
the estates.’’65 Like Hardenberg before him, Frederick William IV sought
to expand the role of representative institutions in Prussia, while still
preserving the principle of absolute monarchical sovereignty. This bal-
ance, however, proved impossible to sustain.
Frederick William’s opening address of 11 April provoked conster-
nation among the delegates to the assembly: in the words of the Austrian
observer Count Trauttmansdorff, the speech ‘‘hit the assembly like a
thunderbolt. . . . With one blow the Stände have seen their hopes and
desires obliterated; not one happy face left the assembly.’’66 On 20 April,
the delegates to the United Diet voted to send the king a formal reply.
Their petition thanked Frederick William for convening the diet, which
they said represented ‘‘a great step’’ toward the ‘‘development of the life
of the nation [National-Lebens]’’; however, they admonished the king
that the responsibilities of this assembly fell short of what had been
articulated by the State Debt Law of 1820 and the Provincial Estates Law
of 1823. The petition declared that the viability of the Prussian monarchy
depended upon the further involvement of the Prussian people in po-
litical decision making:

The power of the throne is firmly grounded when it is rooted in the ethical
consciousness of the nation. . . . Under the blessings of a powerful mon-
archical government, [the Prussian people] will share the benefits of a free
and open public life [Staatslebens], which will elevate all classes of the
people; and, rallying around its royal leader in love and faithfulness, face
the great destiny, to which Providence has called the Prussian state and
with it the entire German fatherland.67

While acknowledging the principle of monarchical sovereignty, the del-

egates demanded a clarification of the diet’s legislative role. In particular,
they were concerned that the king guarantee regular meetings of the
assembly, rather than convening it solely at his own discretion.
In replying to the assembly’s address, Frederick William IV dismissed
the delegates’ objections by insisting that the Patent of 3 February was
‘‘inviolable in its foundations’’; nonetheless, he allowed, ‘‘We do not
regard it for that reason as fully completed, but rather as capable of
further development.’’68 The king’s ambivalent response inspired a group
of dissidents within the diet to obtain the signatures of 138 delegates on
a letter that protested the lack of ‘‘complete conformity’’ between the
Patent of 3 February 1847 and the ‘‘older laws guaranteeing the rights
of the estates.’’69 The continuing wrangling over procedure stymied the
212 legacies

United Diet’s work. The delegates to the assembly, bridling at the limi-
tations imposed on them and at the government’s rejection of their re-
quest for regularly scheduled meetings, refused to approve the bond
measure or the tax reform proposals brought before them.
While the deliberations of the United Diet ended on 26 June 1847
with little having been achieved, this episode planted the seeds for the
revolutionary movement that erupted in March of the following year.
Metternich had warned Frederick William in advance against convening
a United Diet: ‘‘Your majesty will bring together eight separate represen-
tative bodies and they will return home as a national parliament.’’70 In-
deed, the failure of the diet contributed to a heightened level of political
activism throughout the remainder of the year. Liberals circulated peti-
tions demanding constitutional reform and lobbied publicly at the meet-
ings of city councils in Prussia. By early March 1848, inspired by the
eruption of revolutionary events in Paris, mass demonstrations occurred
in Cologne, Breslau, and Königsberg. On 14 March 1848, the king reluc-
tantly agreed to reconvene the United Diet the following month to dis-
cuss the adoption of a constitution. Within four days of this decision,
however, Berlin itself was swept up in revolutionary violence.71
In the midst of all this upheaval, the premises of enlightened nation-
alism continued to shape the views of politically active Prussians. Ex-
plicitly antimonarchical sentiment was virtually nonexistent among the
delegates to the United Diet of 184772; and even at the height of the
political turmoil of the following year, few revolutionary leaders called
for the outright abolition of the monarchy. Illustration 8.4, which dates
from 1848, shows how liberal revolutionaries both built on and trans-
formed the king’s self-image as a popular sovereign. This engraving de-
picts the ‘‘ceremonial procession of His Majesty Frederick William IV . . .
on 21 March 1848 in Berlin,’’ the day on which the Prussian king issued
a proclamation ‘‘to my people and the German nation,’’ announcing that
‘‘Prussia will henceforth merge into Germany.’’73 In many respects the
composition of this engraving parallels that of illustration 8.1, from 1841.
As in the earlier picture, the king is pictured on horseback in military
dress, riding among his people. The (largely bourgeois) citizens, however,
are much more clearly drawn than in the earlier picture, where they are
depicted as indistinct forms and faces. In the 1848 picture, the members
of the crowd are shown to be as fully human, and as fully individualized,
as the king himself. Strikingly, numerous women are present in this
crowd, suggesting that the national community was not exclusively
male.74 Just as in the picture of 1841, an edifice stands behind the king,
but this time it is the State Opera in Berlin, above whose portal is in-
scribed ‘‘Fridericus Rex Apollini et Musis’’ (Frederick the King for Apollo
 toward a democratic monarchy 213

8.4 The king recrowned: ‘‘Ceremonial procession of His Majesty Frederick

William IV, King of Prussia on 21 March 1848 in Berlin.’’ Staatsbibliothek
zu Berlin—Preußischer Kulturbesitz—Handschriftenabteilung, YB 17110 m.

and the Muses). This visual reference seems to associate Frederick Wil-
liam IV less with God than with Kultur. To the extent that he helped
educate and civilize the Prussian people, preparing them for the task of
self-determination, he would earne the enduring loyalty and love of his
citizens.
In illustration 8.4, Frederick William IV is preceded by an officer on
horseback, who carries the black-red-gold flag of the German nationalist
movement. At the bottom of the frame, the artist has paraphrased the
Prussian king’s proclamation of 21 March: ‘‘I have adopted the German
colors not in order to usurp crowns, but to join myself, along with my
people, to the German nations, in order to be able to work in union with
them against all storms from within and from without.’’ Surrounding a
depiction of two clasped hands is the slogan: ‘‘Union of the German
nations.’’75 Thus, in this picture, as in the revolutionary movement itself,
the themes of unity, harmony, and Bildung are fused. The joint projects
of national unification and national education, the artist suggests, will
allow Germany to overcome the ‘‘storms’’ of social unrest and political
dissension.
214 legacies

Revolutionary Ambitions of 1848

In early 1848, a constellation of factors, including famine, high urban
unemployment, and long-simmering political discontent, combined to set
off a wave of revolutions across Europe. The first uprising occurred in
Palermo, Sicily, in January of that year. In February, a revolution in Paris
toppled the reign of King Louis-Philippe of France, and within the next
two months, more than forty revolutions erupted in the Italian states
and throughout Central Europe.
After the outbreak of revolutionary events in Baden in April 1848,
an anonymous caricaturist drew a scathing comparison of the political
spirit in southern and northern Germany. Entitled ‘‘The German Michael
has trouble deciding between a sleeping cap and a Jacobin cap,’’ the
picture contrasts the southern republican on the left, bearing a sword,
with the northern monarchist on the right, carrying an olive branch.76
This illustration, while exaggerating the political differences between
northerners and southerners, effectively captures the powerful tensions
within the revolutionary movement of 1848 in Germany. The 1848 rev-
olutionaries, both in Prussia and in the other German states, were deeply
divided both socially and politically. In their program for social reform,
many revolutionaries desired both to establish equality and to preserve
certain traditional hierarchies. In their political program, many revolu-
tionaries sought both a democratic constitution and the preservation of
the monarchy.
The views of Friedrich Ludwig Jahn point out some of these internal
tensions of the revolutionary movement. Elected as a deputy to the
Frankfurt National Assembly in 1848 at the age of sixty-nine, Jahn con-
sidered this honor the crowning achievement of his career. Having suf-
fered years of persecution for his role in founding the gymnasts’ move-
ment and the Burschenschaft, he relished the opportunity finally to
‘‘speak in a public assembly as a representative of the German people on
behalf of the unity and freedom of Germany.’’ Jahn cautioned, however,
that ‘‘by unity I do not mean leveling [Einerleiheit], by freedom I do not
mean boundless arbitrariness.’’ In August 1848, Jahn voted against the
abolition of the nobility; in January 1849, he advocated the establish-
ment of a hereditary emperor in Germany.77
On 25 August 1848, Jahn took the floor of the assembly to warn
against the ‘‘subversive activities of the communist associations of the
so-called radical democrats.’’ The plotting of these groups, Jahn declared,
threatened to plunge Germany into a ‘‘bloody civil war.’’78 The manifest
irony of this speech was not lost on an anonymous caricaturist, who
 toward a democratic monarchy 215

8.5 ‘‘The German Michael has trouble deciding between a sleep-

ing cap and a Jacobin cap’’ (1848). The southern republican on
the left wears the Jacobin cap; the northern monarchist on the
right wears the sleeping cap. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin—
Preußischer Kulturbesitz—Handschriftenabteilung, YB 16262 kl.

portrayed Jahn sardonically as the ‘‘exterminator of democrats,’’ stand-

ing like Robespierre in front of the guillotine. Having himself long been
suspected of harboring subversive intentions, Jahn now leveled the same
exaggerated warnings about a ‘‘revolutionary threat’’ against his own
foes.
Jahn’s political views placed him toward the right of the political
spectrum among delegates to the Frankfurt Assembly.79 For example, the
proposal to establish a hereditary emperor in Germany was initially re-
jected by a vote of 263 to 211. (The assembly subsequently reversed its
decision on this matter in March 1849, voting by a narrow margin to
216 legacies

8.6 Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, ‘‘The exterminator of democrats’’

(1848). Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin—Preußischer Kulturbesitz—
Handschriftenabteilung, YB 18041 m.

create a hereditary title of Kaiser.)80 Jahn’s conception of the ideal nature

of political authority, however, had much in common with that of even
the most radical German revolutionaries.
Histories of the Revolution of 1848 customarily draw sharp distinc-
tions among the various revolutionary factions, for example, socialists
versus liberals, monarchists versus democrats. While these labels provide
a useful starting point for analysis, they tend to obscure the conceptual
continuities that existed across the revolutionary movement. Jahn, de-
spite his support for aristocracy and hereditary monarchy, expressed
anti-elitist sentiments that resonated with those of the socialists. Money,
he argued, was the source of ‘‘evil’’ and corruption. The ‘‘upper estates,’’
he declared, had ‘‘destroyed Germany’’ by abandoning authentic German
language and culture.81
 toward a democratic monarchy 217

If radicals and moderates both criticized excessive social hierarchy,

important similarities also existed in their political views. A recent study
of the democratic movement in the Prussian Rhineland examined the
editorial content of the Trier’sche Zeitung, one of the most radical socialist
newspapers in the Rhineland before 1848. Reviewing more than 300 in-
cidents of censorship in 1846 and 1847, the author found that ‘‘explicitly
communistic ideas made up only a small portion of the offending mate-
rial.’’ Far more common were attacks on the Prussian government, in-
dividual officials, censorship, and the church. Significantly, only 4 per-
cent of the incidents of censorship were motivated by direct ‘‘attacks on
monarchy.’’82 Thus, even on the eve of the Revolution of 1848, many
Prussian radicals continued to follow a venerable oppositional strategy
of the premodern world: rather than criticizing the king himself, radicals
decried the shortsightedness of royal officials and their policies.
Even for committed democrats of the 1848 era, the concept of a re-
public remained an abstraction. In the words of one historian, ‘‘The
‘democratic republic’ meant . . . a ‘constitution in which the [people as
a] whole assumed responsibility for the freedom and well-being of the
individual.’ ’’83 Many democratic activists supported the preservation of
the monarchy in some form. For example, a group of Düsseldorf radicals
founded a new political club in April 1848, which they called the As-
sociation for Democratic Monarchy.84 The prominent Rhenish labor leader
Andreas Gottschalk, while calling for the founding of a ‘‘workers’ re-
public,’’ also opposed any agitation against the Prussian royal family. In
May 1848, he refused to join a campaign that condemned the return
from exile of Prince Wilhelm, the heir to the throne, who had advocated
using artillery against the revolutionary crowds in Berlin—though it
must be noted that Gottschalk’s position on this question provoked a
hostile reaction from nearly all of the city’s other radical leaders.85
An examination of the rhetoric of two of the more radical delegates
to the revolutionary assemblies, Friedrich Wilhelm Carové and Christian
Gottfried Nees von Esenbeck, will help illustrate the ambiguous nature
of democratic ideology in 1848. Carové, in his youth, had been one of
the founders of the Burschenschaft movement and had served as an as-
sistant to Hegel at the University of Berlin. In 1819, he had run afoul of
the Prussian authorities for his ambiguous pamphlet discussing the as-
sassination of Kotzebue.86 Banned from subsequent university employ-
ment, he led a nomadic existence as an independent scholar. Upon the
outbreak of the Revolution of 1848, Carové was elected as a delegate to
the preliminary parliament (Vorparlament) in Frankfurt. In this capacity,
he wrote a pamphlet entitled The Sovereignty of the German Nation and
218 legacies

the Competence of Its Constituent Assembly, which was published in July

1848.
Carové’s pamphlet defended both the principle of national sovereignty
and the right of the Vorparlament to compose a German constitution. The
‘‘true democrat,’’ Carové declared, desired the ‘‘freedom of every indi-
vidual.’’ In a democracy, the principle of sovereignty meant simply that
‘‘the state, consisting of free individuals, was dependent on no external
power.’’ Whether Germany called itself a republic by name was unim-
portant, he argued; the most fundamental political principle was that ‘‘in
the state as in every organism,’’ the good of the individual was linked
to that of the whole. Thus, all members of the state must dedicate them-
selves to the ‘‘preservation of the commonweal [Gesammtwesens],’’ and
moreover, ‘‘whoever wants to be the highest, must serve all the others
to the greatest extent.’’87
The goal of the 1848 revolutionaries, wrote Carové, was the ‘‘struggle
for rational freedom [vernunftrechtlichen Freiheitsstrebens].’’ This struggle
was being waged against the ‘‘absolutism of the monarchical principle.’’
Its goal, however, was not to replace absolute monarchy with a new
‘‘abstract absolutism . . . of the so-called democratic principle or of a doc-
trinaire contract theory.’’ Rather, it was to forge an ‘‘ethical communal
being [Gemeinwesen],’’ in which all individuals would recognize their
duties to the whole. The fulfillment of the revolutionary project,
therefore, required more than just the establishment of new laws and
new political institutions. Carové envisioned the revolutionary process
in Kantian terms, describing national sovereignty as the ultimate stage
of a process of popular Bildung:

For the individual human being, the release from guardianship [Vormund-
schaft] and the achievement of rational law [Vernunftrecht] is conditional
upon his being capable of and willing for self-determination. Thus, as we
have also shown, a Volk is only fully entitled to constitute and govern
itself when it truly wants to be a free nation, and when it also wills the
conditions that are essential for this end.88

For Carové, in other words, the goal of political self-determination was

inseparable from that of ethical self-determination. As for Kant, the term
‘‘republican’’ referred less to the form than to the spirit of government.
Carové’s ideal was a political community that would dedicate itself to
justice and the common good. Whether or not this community retained
a monarch as its chief executive was a question of secondary importance.
Christian Gottfried Nees von Esenbeck (1776–1858) entered politics
along a different path than Carové. Born in Hesse, he attended the Uni-
versity of Jena, studying medicine, natural history, and philosophy.
 toward a democratic monarchy 219

While at the university, he also became a member of the Weimar circle,

developing a friendship with Goethe. Until the age of forty-two, Nees
lived as a country gentleman on a small estate left to him by his first
wife, who had died in childbirth. He devoted himself to the study of
European languages and to assembling natural history collections. In
1818, finally running short of money, he obtained an appointment as
professor of botany, first at the University of Erlangen and then at Bonn.
In 1830, he moved to the University of Breslau. In Breslau, Nees became
active in civic causes, cofounding a health insurance plan and, in 1845,
becoming the leader of a community of ‘‘Christian Catholics.’’ In 1848,
Nees helped found the Breslau Workers’ Club, and upon the outbreak
of the revolution, he was elected a delegate from Breslau to the Prussian
National Assembly in Berlin.89
Nees’s pamphlet Die demokratische Monarchie, which he presented to
the Berlin Assembly in July 1848, articulated a constitutional plan based
on radically democratic views. ‘‘The Volk is the sole legislative power in
the state and the sole object of its legislation,’’ Nees declared. ‘‘The Volk
is lord, and the concept ‘subject’ [Unterthan] is struck from the life of
the state for all time.’’90 Even Nees’s compatriots on the left of the Berlin
Assembly were shocked by the ‘‘extremism’’ of his constitutional plan.
After the collapse of the revolutionary movement, Nees was dismissed
without pension from his professorship and permanently banned from
Berlin.91
Nees favored the establishment of a unicameral legislative assembly
that would exercise sovereign authority. His plan preserved the monar-
chy but offered a severely constricted vision of the monarch’s political
rights. Within the legislative assembly, the monarch would possess a
single vote, but he would have no special power to veto legislation. The
king was to be president of the ministerial council (Ministerrath), and he
would also have the power to choose government ministers and other
officials. He would open the sessions of the legislative assemblies and
‘‘sanction their decisions through his signature.’’ Moreover, Nees de-
clared that ‘‘if the legislative assembly injures the constitution,’’ the king
would be bound to dissolve the body and call for new elections. All in
all, under this proposal, the rights of the king would have resembled
those of a twentieth-century European prime minister.
Though Nees insisted on the principle of democratic sovereignty, his
constitutional plan reserved a central role for the king as the ‘‘personal
organ of the legislative . . . will of the Volk.’’ He strenuously denied that
he wanted to make the Prussian king a ‘‘puppet’’ of the national assem-
bly. The institution of monarchy, he declared, was essential for distilling
the thoughts and desires of the nation as a whole:
220 legacies

The king is the Volk in the form of a person. He has adopted all of the
thoughts, all of the perceptions, all of the resolutions of the entire Volk,
so that they are his thoughts, his perceptions, his resolutions. . . . Thus,
the democratic-monarchical state presupposes the king to be a great, wise,
powerful, and humanitarian man. It assists him through its basic law, in
order that, in his elevated position, he may act without falling prey to
pernicious swindles.92

As one scholar has observed, the term ‘‘republican’’ is somewhat of a

misnomer for the radical faction among the German revolutionaries of
1848. Though many democratic activists supported the principle of a
republic as the ‘‘ideal form of government,’’ in practice they sought to
establish a ‘‘parliamentary monarchy.’’ Nonetheless, the radicals’
theoretical affirmation of the republic sufficed, in the perception of liberals
and conservatives, to brand them as social revolutionaries. That is why
the battle cry ‘‘republic or constitutional monarchy’’ was able to divide
the organized revolutionary movement into two hostile camps, even
though there were hardly any determined republicans in Germany.93

In other words, in Germany during the Revolution of 1848, even most

of the republicans were monarchists, at least in terms of their immediate
political objectives.
Over the course of the revolutionary events of 1848–1849, however,
the possibility of a more categorical critique of monarchical sovereignty
began to emerge. This process of political radicalization is illustrated by
the history of the Democratic Club (Demokratischer Klub) of Berlin, which
was the largest democratic political association in Prussia during 1848.
Founded as the Political Club (Politischer Klub) on 23 March 1848, only
days after the outbreak of the revolution, this association was initially
open to progressives of every stripe, from socialists to liberals, and was
intended to safeguard the achievements of the revolution. The club’s
early meetings, which were held every evening, often dissolved into an
‘‘extraordinary confusion’’ of political views, according to a contempo-
rary observer.94
By May 1848, frustrated by the club’s ineffectuality as a political force,
its members decided to reorganize it under the name Democratic Club,
publishing a statement of principles that read: ‘‘The goal of the club is
the propagation and implementation of the democratic principle,’’ which
it defined as the ‘‘full guarantee’’ of political freedoms ‘‘through a con-
stitution which secures for the people its sovereignty and the right of
self-rule’’ at every level of society. Even so, this initial manifesto stopped
short of declaring whether the Prussian state should take the form of a
monarchy or a republic, because the club’s members considered other
 toward a democratic monarchy 221

issues, such as suffrage qualifications, more pressing ones to resolve. The

Democratic Club attracted a large and growing following over the spring
and summer of 1848. By June it had more than a thousand formal mem-
bers, and some of its sessions attracted an audience of several thousand
listeners. The leadership of the club consisted primarily of students and
members of the academic proletariat (freelance journalists, private tutors,
etc.), but the rank and file was increasingly dominated by Berliners from
the working classes. Only men were permitted to become members, al-
though women were allowed to attend meetings as guests. Over the
course of 1848, female participation in the club’s activities expanded
steadily: more than 300 women were reported to have attended one ses-
sion in August.95
A pivotal event in polarizing the revolutionary movement in Prussia
was the storming of the Berlin arsenal on 14 June 1848. Alarmed by
rumors that the king was plotting to suppress the revolution, a group
of workers surrounded the arsenal, demanding weapons in order to de-
fend their cause. Members of the bourgeois citizen militia guarding the
arsenal opened fire on the crowd, killing two demonstrators and severely
wounding two others. This event sparked a full-scale riot: barricades
were thrown up in the streets, the arsenal was overrun and plundered,
and groups of workers flew red flags, shouting, ‘‘Es lebe die Republik!’’
As Rüdiger Hachtmann observes, the word ‘‘republic’’ remained for
many of its advocates merely ‘‘a slogan that was associated with no
precise political conceptions, rather, it was a synonym for diffuse social
demands, overfreighted with chiliastic hopes.’’96 Nonetheless, this vio-
lence (which occurred almost simultaneously with the bloody June Days
in Paris) terrified not only conservatives but also bourgeois liberals, pro-
viding a political opening for opponents of the revolution, who warned
of the danger of impending anarchy.
While the violence of June 1848 drove Prussia’s moderates into closer
collaboration with the monarchy, it also radicalized many members of
the democratic faction. During the late summer and fall of 1848, red flags
were displayed at many popular demonstrations of the working classes,
and speakers displayed a ‘‘revolutionary nostalgia’’ for the events of the
French Terror of 1793–1794. The Democratic Club of Berlin intensified
its rhetoric concerning the ‘‘social question,’’ and at the end of June,
Berlin’s radical leaders formed the new Republican Club, which was in-
tended to ‘‘strive openly for the goal of a republic.’’ Though this club
convened only a few times over the subsequent months, a number of its
members played leading roles in the democratic movement during the
remainder of the revolution.97
222 legacies

Despite the progressive radicalization of some left-wing revolutionary

leaders, the majority of delegates to both the Berlin and the Frankfurt
assembly remained unconvinced by the rhetoric of the democratic fac-
tion. Rather than calling for the abolition of monarchical sovereignty,
they favored the ‘‘union [Vereinbarung] of the monarch and the people.’’
The national representatives, wrote one liberal Prussian pamphleteer,
should serve as ‘‘advisers to the king’’ and as ‘‘mediators between king
and people.’’98 Another author declared his desire to ‘‘unite, as much as
possible, the two elements of monarchy and democracy’’ in the new
constitution.99
A study of voting patterns in the Frankfurt National Assembly con-
cluded that the moderate delegates broadly supported the ‘‘individualist
dogmas of nineteenth-century liberalism.’’ They voted by overwhelming
majorities in favor of principles such as equality before the law, freedom
of the press, the ‘‘career open to talent,’’ and the ‘‘inviolability of per-
sonal liberty.’’ Their liberalism, however, ‘‘faded at the point of abridging
the rights of the sovereign or of specifically attacking an aristocracy that
was associated with traditional monarchical sovereignty. . . . The truth is
that they were at least as strongly opposed to democracy as they were
to the old regime, and their challenge to the latter should not be over-
rated.’’100
Many historians have argued that the fear of socialism inhibited lib-
erals’ ability to organize effectively against monarchical authority in
1848. As had been the case among their conservative opponents during
the previous decades, liberals became terrified of the danger of an un-
checked revolution. In their view, writes one scholar, the republic came
to mean ‘‘civil war, anarchy, mob rule, the ruin of all civilization and
culture, the overthrow of any rational order in society.’’101 In March 1848,
Otto Camphausen, the brother of the minister president of the new liberal
Prussian government, declared: ‘‘Never in the history of the world has
there been an epoch in which dangers mounted up from so many sides.’’
It was vital, he argued, to erect ‘‘dams’’ against the ‘‘wild flood of spirits’’
that had been unleashed upon the outbreak of the revolution.102 This
terror of social upheaval, historians have observed, dampened liberals’
enthusiasm for challenging the authority of the monarchical state. View-
ing a strong monarchical executive as a necessary stabilizing factor in
politics, liberals made common cause with ‘‘the old powers, the dynas-
ties.’’ They thus rendered themselves ‘‘the subordinate partner of an
illiberal system of governance.’’103
These arguments about the defensive character of German liberalism
in 1848 have merit. It is essential to recognize, however, that liberals
were not motivated to support a strong monarchy solely for tactical rea-
 toward a democratic monarchy 223

sons. During this era, strong pro-monarchical sentiment persisted among

many sectors of the populace at large. Between 1847 and 1849, for ex-
ample, a series of riots broke out in the Prussian provinces on behalf of
‘‘church and king.’’104 For liberal activists as well, the monarchy fulfilled
critical symbolic and political functions. Symbolically, as Nees von Esen-
beck observed, the monarch personified the nation. This was a particu-
larly important function in the context of the national unification move-
ment. If Germany were to be unified, it would need both symbols and
institutions that would manifest the unity of the Volk. A ‘‘democratic
monarch’’ would perform precisely this role. Politically, the monarch
would serve as the chief executive of the state, as well as carrying out
certain responsibilities in the legislative process. The institution of mon-
archy, liberals believed, would help clarify and unify the exercise of
sovereign authority in the new pan–German state.

Conclusion: The Persistence of Enlightenment in

Nineteenth-century Prussia
The Frankfurt National Assembly of 1848–1849 has often been ridiculed
as a ‘‘professors’ parliament’’ that held interminable philosophical dis-
cussions, rather than acting decisively to forge a new constitution for
Germany. As table 8.1 indicates, however, there were good reasons why
the delegates to this assembly were unable to stop talking.
During the Revolution of 1848, fundamental debates about the nature
of the nation were occurring along many disparate axes. The column
‘‘Contested features’’ in table 8.1 indicates several points of controversy
that divided the revolutionary movement. First and foremost, delegates
to the Frankfurt Assembly argued over the borders of the new Germany,
specifically over whether Austria should be included in the new nation-
state. A Großdeutschland or ‘‘large Germany,’’ would include the German-
speaking territories of the Austrian Habsburg Empire. A Kleindeutsch-
land, or ‘‘small Germany,’’ would exclude Austria and center around
Prussia.
The argument over whether to establish a großdeutsch or a kleindeutsch
nation proved to be one of the most intractable dilemmas for the 1848
revolutionaries, in large part because of the Habsburg rulers’ intense
opposition to national unification. But the question of borders was only
one of a number of basic rifts regarding the composition of the national
community. Without Austria, the German nation would be primarily
Protestant; with Austria, it would be predominately Catholic. Thus, this
dispute over Germany’s borders was intimately linked to another con-
troversy over national religion. Moreover, the earlier arguments within
224 legacies

8.1 The Concept ‘‘Nation’’ in the German Revolution of 1848

Consensual features Contested features

The nation is a harmonious community Is the nation Groβdeutschland or
possessing one unified interest and will. Kleindeutschland?
The nation is Germany. Is it predominately Catholic or
The nation must possess one contiguous Protestant?
territory. Can Poles and Jews be citizens?
The nation must be linguistically and Can women be citizens?
culturally unified.
The nation must be politically educated.
All citizens must be equal before the Must the old corporate bodies (e.g.,
law. the aristocracy) be abolished?
Must all economic inequality and
private property be abolished?
Is the nation’s interest identical to
the king’s interest?
Who is sovereign: the nation or the
king?
or, can sovereignty peacefully be
shared between the nation and the
monarch?
What relationship should exist be-
tween the German nation and the
territorial states?
Are the individual territorial states
(e.g., Prussia, Bavaria) also
‘‘nations’’?

the nationalist movement over religion and ethnicity were still very
much unresolved. The extension of citizenship to Jews remained contro-
versial; likewise, nationalists argued over whether the ‘‘Polish question’’
should be handled through the Germanization of territories of mixed
German and Polish population. None of the leading revolutionaries of
1848 yet proposed extending voting rights to women. Nonetheless, the
question of female citizenship, which had been rarely discussed in Prus-
sia or in the other German states before that year, now emerged from
time to time in public debate. While women were excluded from mem-
bership in associations such as the Democratic Club, they attended meet-
ings in large numbers as guests, and organizations such as the Democratic
Women’s Association (Demokratischer Frauenverein), founded in Septem-
ber 1848, provided a forum for limited participation in revolutionary
politics.105
If the boundaries and membership of the national community were
hotly contested in 1848, so too were the principles of its social compo-
 toward a democratic monarchy 225

sition. Many—though far from all—liberals argued for the abolition of

the traditional estates, claiming that the existence of privileged classes
prevented the formation of a truly unified nation and that universal
equality was a fundamental prerequisite for the achievement of national
consciousness. The most radical of the socialist revolutionaries carried
this view to its logical conclusion, demanding the abolition of private
property. So long as economic inequalities existed within the populace,
they claimed, a true unity of the people was impossible.
A further set of issues that caused controversy during the Revolution
of 1848 pertained to the problem of sovereignty. On the extreme left of
the national assemblies, both in Frankfurt and Berlin, were republican
activists, who demanded the outright abolition of the monarchy. Far more
numerous, however, were those who sought a means of redistributing
sovereign authority between the monarch and the nation. Another prob-
lem for the revolutionaries of 1848, as for subsequent generations of
German political leaders, was the proper distribution of sovereign au-
thority between the nation and the territorial states. Though the leading
revolutionaries concurred that Germany should be unified, many be-
lieved that significant authority should remain vested within the indi-
vidual territorial states. Indeed, many Germans would continue to use
the word ‘‘nation’’ to describe Germany’s constituent states, such as Ba-
varia and Württemberg, through the decade of the 1860s. Even Prussia
had its own ‘‘national assembly’’ in 1848–1849. In Prussia, however, this
usage of the word ‘‘nation’’ seems to have been an anomaly of the 1848
Revolution. The term ‘‘Prussian nation’’ had appeared quite rarely in
public discourse since the Napoleonic era, and it virtually disappeared
after 1850.
With all of these political and social controversies in play, German
public discourse remained highly fractured and diffuse during the Rev-
olution of 1848. The revolutionary movement failed to crystallize around
a single central project, such as the abolition of monarchy or the redis-
tribution of wealth. This deeply divided revolutionary movement ulti-
mately proved no match for the conservative forces, which were deter-
mined to reassert monarchical authority in the German states. Thus, the
failure of the 1848 Revolution stemmed in part from the intensely con-
tested character of the concept ‘‘nation.’’

Though the revolutionary movement of 1848 displayed fundamental in-

ternal divisions, it was also handicapped by the very elements of con-
sensus that existed across the spectrum of the revolutionary movement.
Like earlier generations of political progressives, virtually all participants
in the revolution believed that the nation was an ideally harmonious
226 legacies

community, possessing a unified interest and will. Moreover, the revo-

lutionaries of 1848 emphasized the need to educate the nation in order
to prepare it for self-government. The ideal of political harmony had
been a fundamental element of the political thought of Enlightenment
philosophers, such as Turgot and Kant, as well as for the Prussian re-
formers of the Napoleonic era. All of these philosophers and political
leaders had emphasized the importance of reconciling monarchical sov-
ereignty with the new principle of popular self-rule. All of them had
also argued that the education of the populace was an essential precon-
dition for overcoming the contradiction between these two models of
government.
Enlightened nationalism initially appeared in Prussia as a response to
the challenges of the Napoleonic era. Through a program of social ra-
tionalization and popular education, the Prussian reformers hoped to
mobilize the populace politically without provoking a revolution on
German soil. Long after Napoleon’s demise, this agenda continued to
shape the political program of progressives in Prussia and other German
states. The establishment of rational administration, a rational social or-
der, and a reasonable citizenry, progressives argued, would make it pos-
sible to eliminate internal strife within the polity. In an enlightened na-
tion, they believed, public spirit would supplant egotism. Cooperation
among the citizenry would render unnecessary the arbitrary exercise of
political power from above.
The Prussian Revolution of 1848 must not be regarded as an unmiti-
gated failure. Indeed, in December 1848, Frederick William IV decreed
on his own initiative a constitution that included many of the measures
proposed by Prussian liberals. For example, this constitution established
protections for the liberties of all Prussian subjects, and it guaranteed
annual sessions of a bicameral legislature, though its suffrage provisions
heavily favored the upper classes.106 In 1848, Prussia was thus trans-
formed into a constitutional monarchy, a situation that endured until the
dissolution of the German Empire in 1918.
Even during the decades after the establishment of a constitution in
Prussia, however, the principle of monarchical sovereignty remained
largely unchallenged. The persistence of a strong monarchy in Prussia,
this study has shown, cannot be understood solely on the basis of the
purported backwardness of the bourgeoisie or the feudalization of the
capitalist elites. Rather than simply seeking to understand political be-
havior based on socioeconomic forces, it is essential to analyze the in-
teractions of these forces with the underlying discursive patterns that
frame and channel political debate.
 Nine

conclusion

This study has addressed two questions. First, can Prussian po-
litical culture of the early nineteenth century rightly be said to
have followed a Sonderweg, or special path, of historical develop-
ment? Second, to what extent were the political struggles in Prussia
during this era shaped by ideological as opposed to material forces?
Though the analysis here is confined to Prussia, it has important impli-
cations for understanding not only the history of nineteenth-century
Germany at large but also the evolution of modern political culture else-
where in Europe and the world.

The Distinctiveness of Nineteenth-century

Prussian Political Culture
Whereas many historians have argued that nineteenth-century Prussia
failed to modernize politically,1 I have shown that a profound and irre-
versible political transformation occurred in Prussia beginning in the
Napoleonic era. As a result of the humiliating military defeat of 1806–
1807, a group of leading civil servants sought to defend the Prussian
state against the threat of annihilation by mobilizing the nation. Over
the ensuing decades, the genie of nationalism proved impossible to return
to its bottle. I have analyzed how the political discourses and practices
of various groups—civil servants, aristocrats, bourgeois activists, and the
Hohenzollern kings—changed in response to the principle of a politically
active nation. All of these groups initially embraced this principle, be-
lieving that it would prove useful in furthering their own political agen-
das. Many of these initial hopes turned out to be ill-founded. Nonethe-
less, both the conservative and liberal movements in Prussia during the

227
228 conclusion

period 1815–1848 reflected the influence of these early experiments in

national politics. A true restoration of the old political and social order
was ultimately impossible to attain.
Although Prussian political culture of the early nineteenth century
cannot be understood as having been rooted in the feudal past, it may
be regarded as distinctive in two important respects. First, while most
members of Prussia’s educated elites favored some measure of social and
political reform during this era, virtually no one supported sudden and
drastic internal change. Unlike the French revolutionaries of 1789, who
sought to build an entirely new world on the ashes of the old, Prussian
political leaders consistently sought to reconcile new universalistic, egal-
itarian governing principles with older corporatist, hierarchical ones.
Civil servants, bourgeois activists, and even many aristocrats sought to
transform the traditional corporate social order but not to abolish it al-
together. Hardenberg, for example, favored the creation of a ‘‘rational
order of ranks’’ based on functional social distinctions, and even many
bourgeois popular nationalists, such as Görres and Jahn, supported the
preservation of the traditional estates in a modified form. A second note-
worthy feature of Prussian political culture involved the theory of sov-
ereignty. Rather than perceiving a sharp duality between monarchical
and popular sovereignty, politically active Prussians of the early nine-
teenth century sought to fuse together these two principles of govern-
ment.
Three factors explain these distinctive characteristics of nineteenth-
century Prussian political culture:

The eighteenth-century philosophical legacy. The absence of a systematic

critique of monarchical sovereignty in Prussia in the wake of the French
Revolution is partly attributable to the moderate character of the German
Enlightenment. Because the German states lacked a metropolis like Paris,
intellectual life in German-speaking Europe was more decentralized and
more deeply embedded in the structures of traditional society than was
the case in France. While the French revolutionaries derived their in-
spiration from independent iconoclasts, like Rousseau, the Prussian re-
formers built on the theories of more cautious figures, such as Kant, who
was a professor and a civil servant.
In addition to invoking Kantian philosophy, the Prussian reformers
drew on indigenous German governing traditions, such as cameralism,
as well as on the theories of eighteenth-century intellectuals elsewhere
in Europe, including the French physiocrats and the Scottish economist
Adam Smith. Through the adoption of rational governing principles,
they hoped to abolish the need for arbitrary acts of sovereign will. They
 conclusion 229

believed that, ideally, civil society would become largely self-regulating,

requiring little interference by state authorities. Political decisions, they
thought, would ultimately be made by deriving an informed consensus
of the citizenry and the government authorities concerning the public
good. In such a rational governing system, they believed, a sovereign
monarch could peacefully coexist with a politically active populace.

Prussia’s conquest by Napoleon. In France, the mobilization of the nation

initially occurred in the context of a revolutionary struggle to destroy
the power of old social and political elites. In Prussia, by contrast, na-
tional mobilization was a response to the country’s conquest by an ex-
ternal enemy. Moreover, the military defeat of 1806–1807 adversely af-
fected all segments of the Prussian population. The status of the
monarchy and civil service was jeopardized as Napoleon threatened to
abolish Prussia’s independence. Aristocrats lost land, money, and pres-
tige; peasants lost livestock and crops; and residents of the towns and
the countryside alike suffered from food shortages and epidemics. Thus,
early nationalist rhetoric in Prussia called for solidarity of the entire
population against a foreign foe. The nation was originally mobilized for
the king, not against him. ‘‘With God for King and Fatherland!’’ was the
rallying cry of Prussian patriots during the War of Liberation of 1813–
1814. This early ideal of solidarity between nation and king continued
to shape Prussian political culture long after Napoleon’s fall.

The challenge of national unification. The absence of any unified German

state before 1871 created distinctive challenges for German liberals. The
establishment of national unity, they recognized, would require both
symbols and political institutions around which the nation could be or-
ganized. During the Revolution of 1848, most delegates to the revolu-
tionary assemblies both in Frankfurt and in Berlin supported the pres-
ervation of monarchical authority. In part, this was because they believed
that a monarch would provide a necessary symbolic and institutional
center for the new unified German nation.

The three factors identified above meant that the nationalist movement
in nineteenth-century Prussia attempted to organize around a ‘‘high cen-
ter,’’2 that political activists strove to unify the nation in conjunction
with rather than in opposition to the monarchical state. The culture of
enlightened nationalism in Prussia was a product of this struggle to rec-
oncile a politically active nation with a sovereign monarch. This form of
nationalism was ‘‘enlightened’’ in the sense that it sought to educate the
nation for rational self-determination. In other words, it projected onto
230 conclusion

the collectivity certain attributes that, in eighteenth-century philosophy,

had been applied mainly to the individual human being. Whether or not
the Prussian reformers actually succeeded in enlightening the nation is
another issue; the term is meant to characterize their political ambitions
rather than their political achievements.
Enlightened nationalism manifested itself both at the level of political
discourse and at the level of political practice. Discursively, it involved
two fundamental premises, first, that the nation must be mobilized po-
litically, and second, that the will of the nation must be harmonized with
the will of the monarch. This harmonization was to be achieved both
through the education of the populace and through the rationalization
of political and social institutions. At the level of practice, enlightened
nationalism was reflected in various reform efforts, both successful and
unsuccessful, intended to accomplish the above objectives. These reform
efforts included the liberation of the serfs, Stein’s Municipal Ordinance,
Hardenberg’s free trade legislation, the establishment of universal public
schooling, and the various plans for a Prussian constitution.
The primary exponents of enlightened nationalist ideas in Prussia
were the reform-minded civil servants of the Napoleonic era and sub-
sequent generations of bourgeois liberals. The aristocratic nationalists
and romantic nationalists discussed in chapters 4 and 5 cannot be re-
garded as fitting neatly within the category of enlightened nationalism.
Neither of these two groups placed as much emphasis as the bureaucratic
reformers on the rationalization of social and administrative institutions
or on the necessity for harmony between the nation and the state. Many
aristocratic nationalists were concerned primarily with finding a new
language for justifying the preservation of their traditional social and
political prerogatives. Most romantic nationalists were influenced more
by Protestant pietism and the culture of romanticism than by the tutelary
ideals of the Aufklärung. Nonetheless, some common conceptual ground
existed across the spectrum of political debate in Prussia. Thus, for ex-
ample, the fervent anti–Semite Friedrich Ludwig Jahn articulated some
of the premises of enlightened nationalism: his teachings stressed the
ideals of political harmony, national education (Volkserziehung), and pop-
ular self-determination. Likewise, aristocratic activists who experimented
with speaking nationally generally depicted themselves as allies rather
than as antagonists of the monarchical state: they proclaimed their desire
for a cooperative relationship between the nation and its king. Certain
resonances of enlightened nationalist ideals were also evident in the
speeches and deeds of King Frederick William IV, who is often depicted
simply as a romantic reactionary. For example, by lifting press censorship
restrictions in the early 1840s and by convening the United Diet of 1847,
 conclusion 231

Frederick William IV sought to forge a popular monarchy, linking to-

gether his own will with the desires of the Volk.
The quest for a rational and harmonious national community had both
positive and negative consequences for Prussian political culture. On the
one hand, it gave birth to an intensely utopian strain of thinking that
persisted throughout the nineteenth century and beyond. Proponents of
national education, administrative rationalization, and constitutional rule
believed that these measures would help mobilize the citizenry while
averting the upheavals that had afflicted France during the revolutionary
era. ‘‘In the nineteenth century Germany became a land of schools,’’
writes one historian, and within the German states, ‘‘Prussia was the
model country for educational reform.’’3 As Stein argued, the mission of
the state was to make possible the ‘‘religious-moral, intellectual, and
political perfection’’ of its people. The establishment of a system of na-
tional schooling was an essential instrument toward this end.4 Likewise,
the reformers’ calls for administrative reform, which sought to transform
the civil service into a rational and politically impartial general estate,
were motivated by the desire to forge a durable union between an en-
lightened nation and its enlightened government. One might disparage
as naı̈ve the bureaucratic reformers’ dream of a harmonious national com-
munity. These leaders, however, grasped an essential truth about partic-
ipatory politics, namely, that parliamentary institutions alone cannot pro-
vide the basis for a vibrant public life. They recognized the need to
foster a commitment to the good of the whole community among the
populace at large.
While the culture of enlightened nationalism encouraged an admirable
commitment to developing public spirit, it also resulted in a problematic
tendency to avoid or suppress internal political conflict. During the Na-
poleonic era, for example, proponents of a constitution consistently
avoided specifying whether the new national representation would have
a deciding or merely a consultative role in the legislative process. Like-
wise, during the Revolution of 1848, Prussian liberals called for the
‘‘union’’ of the monarchy and the Volk. Thus, they avoided defining the
precise distribution of sovereign authority within the polity. In the words
of one scholar, many German liberals longed for an ‘‘unpolitical politics’’
that would move beyond partisan strife.5
The ideal of political harmony inhibited the effectiveness of the liberal
movement in nineteenth-century Prussia by making it difficult to form
a loyal opposition, as was traditional in England and elsewhere. The
quest for harmony also hindered efforts to develop a legitimate critique
of monarchical sovereignty. Indeed, most Prussian liberals remained
staunch monarchists until the collapse of the German Empire in 1918.6
232 conclusion

A parallel to this phenomenon may perhaps be found in contemporary

Germany: some political scientists and sociologists have remarked on the
continuing weakness of the ‘‘culture of political conflict’’ (politische
Streitkultur), especially in the lands of the former German Democratic
Republic. The desire to maintain consensus in political life, scholars have
argued, discourages the open expression of conflict and thereby inhibits
effective democratic decision making.7
The culture of enlightened nationalism also contributed to a far more
dangerous tendency in Prussian and German political life, namely, the
forcible suppression of internal conflict. Having postulated a utopian
condition of national unity and harmony, Prussian political leaders be-
came deeply disappointed by the failure to attain this ideal. Their dis-
appointment gave birth to fears of a potentially revolutionary and an-
archic nation; in effect, the dark side of the enlightened nationalists’
utopianism was a pervasive tendency to exaggerate the negative effects
of political strife. Such negative images of the nation were a dominant
element of conservative rhetoric during the 1820s and 1830s. It was not
only the members of a reactionary court camarilla, however, who ex-
pressed concern about a politically mobilized populace. In 1810, frus-
trated by aristocratic opposition to an income tax, Stein had lambasted
the ‘‘disobedient, degenerate, scheming nation.’’8 In 1819, Hardenberg
called for the establishment of strict censorship measures in Prussia and
the other German states, decrying the ‘‘incomplete cultivation [halbe Bil-
dung]’’ of the Prussian population that led to ‘‘abuses’’ and ‘‘deformities’’
of public opinion.9
This tendency to exaggerate the danger posed by domestic political
conflict manifested itself in subsequent German history as well. During
the late nineteenth century, for example, Chancellor Bismarck unleashed
blistering diatribes against the ‘‘red menace.’’10 Likewise, during the Wei-
mar era, many Germans were deeply unsettled by the pluralistic char-
acter of parliamentary politics. Rejecting the Anglo-American constitu-
tional principle of the balance of powers, German political theorists and
activists often argued that strong government required the concentration
of supreme authority in a single individual or institution.11 Such contin-
uing fears of internal strife may have weakened the legitimacy of the
Weimar Republic and contributed to the rise of the Nazi regime in 1933.

The introduction to this study identified three logical flaws associated

with the Sonderweg thesis: the essentialist, the teleological, and the nor-
mative fallacies. My analytical framework avoids each of these pitfalls.
The phrase ‘‘enlightened nationalism’’ is not intended to indicate a sin-
 conclusion 233

gularly Prussian or German phenomenon. The discursive patterns de-

scribed here had little to do with the ‘‘Prussian character.’’ Rather, they
resulted from specific dimensions of Prussia’s historical experience, for
example, its distinctive political situation following the defeats at Auer-
städt and Jena in 1806 and the decentralized nature of the German state
system throughout the early nineteenth century. Nor have I argued that
the rise of enlightened nationalism condemned Prussia and Germany to
the political disasters of the twentieth century. The discursive formations
of nineteenth-century political debate never provided more than an in-
tellectual framework for the articulation and negotiation of competing
interests. Ideas took shape in the play of everyday events, even as they
shaped perceptions of the meaning and significance of events. Finally, I
have not claimed that Prussia’s political development was pathologically
aberrant because it failed to conform to the French or British path of
constitutional evolution. Prussian political culture displayed notable
strengths, as well as notable weaknesses. Moreover, strong parallels ex-
isted between the way in which the nation came to be imagined as a
harmonious and unified community in both revolutionary France and
Napoleonic Prussia.
While enlightened nationalism was not a singularly Prussian or
German phenomenon, it is important to recognize that significant differ-
ences existed between nineteenth-century Prussian political culture and
that of many Western countries. Although the impulse to overcome in-
ternal strife through the rationalization of political life was hardly a
uniquely Prussian phenomenon, the Prussian government carried out a
more sustained experiment along these lines than most of its peers. For
example, the Stein-Hardenberg reforms were in some ways reminiscent
of the legislative initiatives of Louis XVI’s minister Turgot in France dur-
ing the 1770s. Seeking to unite a productive and patriotic citizenry with
an enlightened monarchy, Turgot proposed a wide variety of measures,
including tax reforms, the abolition of the guilds, the adoption of free
trade, and the establishment of a system of local and provincial repre-
sentative assemblies. These French experiments in monarchical reform,
however, ended abruptly with Turgot’s dismissal in 1776 and with
greater finality in 1789 upon the outbreak of the French Revolution. In
Prussia, by contrast, many profound legislative changes were success-
fully enacted while the monarchical state remained intact.
One need only turn to the writings of an American political theorist
of this period, James Madison, to perceive the distinctiveness of the
Prussian reformers’ project. Defending the new U.S. Constitution in 1787,
Madison declared:
234 conclusion

As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to

exercise it, different opinions will be formed. . . . The latent causes of
faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere
brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different cir-
cumstances of civil society. . . . It is in vain to say, that enlightened states-
men will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all
subservient to the public good.12

Because Madison viewed faction as an inevitable feature of any free so-

ciety, he argued that an effective government must be organized so as
to limit the negative effects of partisan strife. He thus argued that it was
vital to establish a balance of powers, a principle that has come to un-
dergird American constitutional theory.
The Prussian reformers, by contrast, focused less on controlling the
effects of faction than on eliminating its causes. They regarded themselves
as precisely those ‘‘enlightened statesmen’’ about whom Madison ex-
pressed such skepticism: they sought to adjust the ‘‘clashing interests’’
of civil society in order to ‘‘render them all subservient to the public
good.’’
The Anglo-American constitutional tradition, based on the balance of
powers, and the Prussian tradition of enlightened nationalism may prof-
itably be regarded as two ideal types of modern political culture. Many
twentieth-century historians and political scientists have presumed that
political modernization ideally entails the establishment of a pluralistic
system of parliamentary rule.13 Yet, there are good reasons to believe that
this vision of modernity is excessively restrictive. For example, com-
munist political leaders around the world, inspired by the Prussian social
theorist Karl Marx, have generally emphasized the value of attaining
social harmony and political consensus within the nation, more so than
the value of fostering the free exchange of opposing views. Furthermore,
some of the conditions that gave birth to enlightened nationalism in
Prussia have existed in numerous regions of the world over the past two
centuries, so it is likely that elements of enlightened nationalist culture
may be identified there, as well as in Prussia. In response to domination
by a foreign power, many countries have embarked on programs of social
modernization and popular political mobilization. It would be worth-
while to conduct comparative studies of the political culture in Prussia
and in some of these other states, for example, Russia, Spain, Italy, Japan,
China, and the newly independent nation-states in Latin America during
the early nineteenth century, and in postcolonial Africa and Asia during
the mid–twentieth century.
Further comparative studies of Prussia and the other German states
would also be useful.14 Certain conditions that shaped nineteenth-century
 conclusion 235

Prussian political culture existed elsewhere in German-speaking Europe

as well. For example, these regions shared a common cultural heritage,
and political activists throughout Germany had to contend with the ab-
sence of a unified nation-state before 1871. In other respects, however,
Prussia’s history differed from that of the rest of German-speaking Eu-
rope. In particular, its experience during the Napoleonic era was unique.
Unlike the states of the Rhine Confederation, Prussia was conquered by
France and faced the possibility of annihilation for several years after
1806. Therefore, the impulse toward fundamental political and social re-
form was far stronger in Prussia than in most of the rest of Germany.
Unlike other regions, such as Westphalia, Prussia retained its indepen-
dence throughout the Napoleonic era, which made such a reform move-
ment possible. Between 1806 and 1815, Prussia adopted more dramatic
social reforms, such as Hardenberg’s free trade legislation, than the other
German states. Politically, the Prussian government also worked more
aggressively to establish public spirit among the populace than was the
case elsewhere in Germany. Because of this early commitment to popular
political mobilization, the tensions resulting from the effort to fuse mo-
narchical and democratic forms of government may have become sharper
in Prussia than elsewhere in German-speaking Europe.

The Interdependence of Discourse and Action

Equally important as the substantive findings of this study are the meth-
odological foundations on which they rest. This book seeks to navigate
between the Scylla of socioeconomic determinism and the Charybdis of
idealism, exploring the ways in which interests and ideas mutually con-
dition each other. By confining the focus to a single concept—the na-
tion—in one German state over the years 1806–1848, my study illumi-
nates the complexity and fluidity of political discourses during this
pivotal era.
The initial chapters of this book depict the formation of the concept
nation as a process of intellectual patchwork, or bricolage. Theorists of
‘‘national’’ politics drew their inspiration from a variety of cultural and
political traditions: the constitutional structure of the Holy Roman
Empire, the Kantian ideal of the rational republic, the cameralists’ the-
ories of the well-ordered state, the literature of romanticism, the religious
revivalism of the pietists, and the mysticism of the Freemasons, along
with the rhetoric of the French revolutionaries and Napoleon. The dis-
courses of bureaucratic nationalism, aristocratic nationalism, and roman-
tic nationalism emphasized certain elements of these traditions and deem-
phasized others, depending on the nature of each group’s political
236 conclusion

objectives. The writings of Prussian civil servants, for example, reflected

the ideas of Kant and the cameralists, among other sources; bourgeois
popular activists, by contrast, tended to invoke romantic and pietist
ideals more than arid theories of administrative practice.
My analysis of these diverse political discourses of the Napoleonic era
has yielded several findings about the concept ‘‘nation.’’ First, certain
features of this concept were strongly contested in Prussia during this
period. Second, there were persistent ambiguities in the usage of this
concept, although the range of ambiguity varied over time. Third, ele-
ments of consensus about the nation existed across the spectrum of po-
litical debate. Each of these dimensions of the concept was shaped by
the struggle between competing interest groups; thus, the history of this
idea is inseparable from the political and social history of the era.
The contested features of the concept ‘‘nation’’ reflected the wide range
of purposes for which various constituencies invoked this term. For ex-
ample, intense conflicts occurred over whether, and to what extent, legal
and social hierarchies were compatible with the existence of a national
community. The bureaucratic reformers believed that it was essential to
create a degree of legal uniformity among all citizens in order to maxi-
mize their productivity, as well as to mobilize their energies most effec-
tively on behalf of the state. At the same time, these civil servants
wanted to enlist the support of Prussia’s privileged elites in the effort
against France, a necessity that dictated against taking an overly antag-
onistic line toward the aristocracy. Partly for these reasons, there were
ongoing debates among the bureaucratic reformers over whether uni-
versal civil equality was an essential feature of the nation. Aristocratic
nationalists, by contrast, generally held that the nation should be a hi-
erarchical association that preserved the social and political prerogatives
of the landed elites. Nonetheless, Prussian aristocrats were far from unan-
imous about precisely which traditional privileges were essential to main-
tain. For example, few nobles strenuously opposed the abolition of serf-
dom after Stein’s October Edict of 1807, in part because they recognized
the potential economic advantages that this legislation afforded them. In
both of these cases, the ways in which these groups defined the nation
corresponded to the ways in which they perceived their own self-
interest.

The persistent ambiguities within the concept ‘‘nation’’ resulted from the
efforts of Prussian leaders to pitch their rhetoric to disparate audiences
or to obscure potential conflicts or contradictions within their political
program. This discursive phenomenon—the systematic use of ambigu-
ity—has attracted relatively little attention by students of political rhet-
 conclusion 237

oric. Nonetheless, it is a phenomenon of tremendous importance, because

new political ideas often receive their initial articulation not as full-blown
doctrine but in the form of a tentative counterpoint to arguments based
on safer and more widely accepted premises.15 It is impossible to deter-
mine precisely to what extent such discursive ambivalences are inten-
tional and to what extent they are unconscious or accidental. Regardless
of the authors’ intentions, however, the presence of these ambiguities or
ambivalences can be a signal of deep-seated tensions within a political
system.
My analysis has focused primarily on two discursive ambiguities: first,
whether the nation was Germany or Prussia, and second, whether ulti-
mate sovereign authority resided in the nation or in the king. During
the Napoleonic era, the leading bureaucratic reformers rarely character-
ized the nation either as Germany or as Prussia. By refusing to specify
one or the other, they were able to pitch their rhetorical appeals as
broadly as possible without explicitly challenging the sovereign author-
ity of the other German states. Likewise, Hardenberg and other political
leaders frequently avoided indicating whether the new national repre-
sentation should have a deciding or merely a consultative vote in the
legislative process. As the king’s first minister, Hardenberg was in no
position to advocate the diminution of monarchical authority; by the
same token, however, he did not want to limit the new representative
assembly to a merely symbolic role. The romantic nationalists, for their
part, also generally steered clear of direct attacks on the principle of
monarchical sovereignty; instead, their rhetoric usually called for the
harmonious coexistence of a sovereign nation and its sovereign monarch.
In the discourse of romantic nationalism, one might identify radical re-
publicanism as the tentative counterpoint cropping up in the midst of
patriotic pledges of loyalty to the monarchical state.
While ambiguous rhetoric may be a universal feature of political de-
bate, at certain times the range of acceptable ambiguity concerning a
given issue can narrow dramatically. During such historical moments, as
concepts become clarified, the available choices for political action may
also become more sharply delineated.16 In this sense, the crystallization
of ideas can be an important force in driving historical change. This is
the phenomenon analyzed in chapter 6, which focuses on the years im-
mediately following the Vienna Settlement of 1815. Most historians have
described the triumph of the so-called Reaction between 1815 and 1820
as reflecting the dominance of the aristocracy and the monarchy over the
nascent bourgeoisie. At the level of discourse, however, this development
can be understood in terms of the sharpening of the conceptual frame-
work of political debate, specifically: (1) the identification of the nation
238 conclusion

as Germany, rather than Prussia, which made the concept ‘‘nation’’ prob-
lematic for Prussian political leaders; (2) the attenuation of aristocratic
rhetoric that depicted the nation as a hierarchical community, a devel-
opment that decreased the appeal of this concept for many members of
the privileged elites; and (3) the loss of ambiguity over the question of
whether the national representation should play a consultative or a de-
ciding role in politics, which made the king and other conservatives
highly fearful of a revolution.
Each of these three conceptual clarifications resulted from the inter-
action of competing political interests in Prussia following the Vienna
Congress. On the one hand, both bureaucrats and aristocrats possessed
less pressing motives to invoke the concept ‘‘nation’’ after 1815 than
during the previous decade. Prussian government officials no longer
needed to mobilize the populace against the French threat, and, by 1815,
Prussian aristocrats had succeeded in coopting or defeating some of the
reformers’ most serious challenges to their social privileges. On the other
hand, civil servants, aristocrats, and members of the royal family all
became acutely aware of the destabilizing potential of romantic nation-
alism. Not only was popular political activism causing difficulties for the
state’s efforts to assimilate the new territories of the Prussian Rhineland,
but government officials feared that the national unification movement
could undermine the Vienna Settlement by challenging the sovereignty
of the other German states. Likewise, many nobles came to fear that a
politically active nation would inevitably become a revolutionary force
that would destroy the aristocracy, as in France.
The political struggles of 1815–1820 culminated in an ironic result:
the conservative faction within the civil service and the aristocracy won
the immediate struggle over political policy, successfully suppressing the
popular nationalist movement by imposing stringent censorship mea-
sures. Yet this faction also effectively abandoned the struggle to define
the nation, which ultimately allowed elements of the popular nationalists’
definition of the nation to prevail. Thus, by the early 1820s, the ideas
of the ‘‘Prussian nation’’ and the hierarchical ‘‘nation of aristocrats’’ had
for the most part disappeared from mainstream political debate. The na-
tion had come to be widely understood as a pan–German community
organized according to the principle of universal civil equality.

While significant conflicts and ambiguities surrounded the concept ‘‘na-

tion,’’ the consensual features of this idea were equally important. For a
variety of reasons, virtually all politically active Prussians during the
Napoleonic era portrayed the nation as a harmonious community pos-
sessing a single unified interest and will. The premise that the nation
 conclusion 239

should be a harmonious and unified community was overdetermined, in

the sense that it was the product of a wide range of mutually reinforcing
causes. These causes were rooted both in elements of Prussia’s cultural
heritage, such as pietist spirituality, and in immediate political exigen-
cies, such as the need to present a united front against Napoleon. The
Prussians were not alone in imagining the nation in this way, indeed,
one important inspiration for their political theories was the rhetoric of
the French revolutionaries, who also emphasized the ideally unanimous
and harmonious character of the national will. Nonetheless, it is impor-
tant to recognize that there existed a variety of roads not taken in Prus-
sian political theory of the early nineteenth century. For example, the
‘‘nation’’ could conceivably have been imagined along the lines of the
medieval societas civilis, in which the king ruled in concert with his
nobles as ‘‘first among equals.’’17 Alternatively, it could have been mod-
eled on the Holy Roman Empire, which had a fragmented political struc-
ture based on multiple overlapping jurisdictions.18 Or, it could have been
envisioned as possessing a ‘‘mixed constitution,’’ such as those depicted
by Cicero, Montesquieu, or Burke, designed to temper the effects of
vigorous partisan struggle among competing factions. In point of fact,
however, each of these political traditions came to be overshadowed by
a vision of the nation that emphasized the importance of harmony and
internal unanimity.
This emphasis on the ideally harmonious nature of the national com-
munity remained a central feature of Prussian political culture well after
Napoleon’s final defeat in 1815. Although many conservatives came to
reject the principle of national representation altogether during this era,
others continued to lobby for the adoption of a constitution. Conserva-
tive activists between 1815 and 1848 tended to pursue one of two dis-
cursive options: either they attempted to dis-invent the nation (by de-
nying its very existence or by narrowly circumscribing its political
rights) or they recast their aristocratic nationalism in a new form. The
first approach made it difficult for conservatives to legitimate themselves
as a unified interest group possessing rights vis-à-vis the monarchical
state; the second approach created pressure to adopt new positions on
important social issues, for example, to acknowledge the principle of
universal civil equality.
Liberals during the period 1815–1848 faced a different set of chal-
lenges. Unlike conservatives, many of whom held strong reservations
concerning national unity and constitutional politics, liberals generally
embraced the ideals of national unification and constitutional rule. But
their insistence on the harmonious character of the national community
made it difficult for them to mount successful challenges to the unbridled
240 conclusion

authority of the monarchical state. Liberal discourse of the pre–1848 era,

and even of the Revolution of 1848 itself, tended to emphasize the im-
portance of popular education and the rationalization of state institu-
tions, and it acknowledged the legitimacy of the monarchical principle.
In sum, this study illuminates the highly complex relations that ex-
isted between class interests and political ideology in early nineteenth-
century Prussia. Pace Karl Marx, this was a time in which the ruling
ideas were not always the ideas of the ruling class. Indeed, ideas often
proved to be constitutive of class interests, as much as the converse,
because they composed the framework within which interests were con-
ceived and articulated. The intellectual framework of enlightened na-
tionalism did not foreclose the possibility of challenging the authority of
Prussia’s monarchical state. Nonetheless, it produced discursive conven-
tions that played a key role in structuring the political choices that were
feasible at a given time and in influencing the degree to which a given
argument was likely to persuade its intended audience. Thus, during the
Napoleonic era, only a tiny group of radicals, including Karl Follen,
demanded the establishment of a republic in Germany—and even Follen
hedged his bets by supporting the retention of an elected king along
with a legislative assembly. During the Revolution of 1848, while a va-
riety of democratic clubs demanded the establishment of a constitution
based on popular sovereignty, these activists remained internally divided
over the details of constitutional and social reform, and they were never
able to rally the majority of Prussian revolutionaries around the anti-
monarchical cause.
Not only has this study emphasized the central importance of discur-
sive conventions in politics, it has also stressed the diverse nature of the
material interests that motivate various political constituencies. It is es-
sential to avoid making global normative assumptions about how a given
class should speak or act politically; instead, one must attend to the
specific, contingent situations in which political rhetoric is deployed. For
example, Prussia’s East Elbian aristocrats—often identified by historians
as a notoriously conservative class—expressed a wide range of views
concerning the establishment of a national representation during the
early nineteenth century. The political attitudes of nobles in Branden-
burg’s Kurmark differed significantly from those of nobles in Silesia or
East Prussia. Moreover, these attitudes also changed dramatically over
brief spans of time. Between 1810 and 1815, chafing under French dom-
ination and alarmed by the assaults on their privileges by an aggressive
Prussian bureaucracy, many nobles embraced the cause of national rep-
resentation as a means of defending their traditional status. By 1820, no
longer as worried about the leveling designs of the Prussian state, but
 conclusion 241

newly fearful of the revolutionary threat, many of these same nobles

became staunch opponents of constitutional reform.
Although Prussian political discourse of the early nineteenth century
was highly fluid and complex, one overarching characteristic of this rhet-
oric was of critical importance. Unlike in certain other countries, such
as France, where nationalism initially emerged primarily out of internal
political struggles, in Prussia nationalism was first motivated by an ex-
ternal political threat. The culture of enlightened nationalism was in large
part the product of the Prussian monarchy’s effort to balance two poten-
tially contradictory goals: first, to mobilize the populace politically to
repel the Napoleonic threat, and second, to preserve the sovereign au-
thority of the Prussian state. The internal harmony of the nation assumed
paramount importance partly because it appeared to offer a means of
reconciling these two objectives.
Rather than viewing nineteenth-century Prussian history as a special
case of pathological historical development, the Prussian experience is
best understood as a specific example of a more general phenomenon in
the modern world. Over the past two centuries, political leaders around
the globe have grappled with the implications of nationalism and popular
demands for political participation. Everywhere, governments have
striven to exploit and to channel the energies of their citizens so as to
enhance rather than undermine constituted political authority. The
course of Prussian history illuminates the volatile and unpredictable po-
litical forces that are unleashed by such efforts to utilize a politically
mobilized populace to secure the supremacy of the state.
This page intentionally left blank
 notes

Abbreviations
ADB Allgemeine deutsche Biographie
BLHA Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv Potsdam (formerly Staatsarchiv
Potsdam)
CEH Central European History
FBPG Forschungen zur Brandenburgischen und Preußischen Geschichte
GG Geschichte und Gesellschaft
GStA BPH Brandenburg-Preußisches Hausarchiv (in the Geheimes Staatsarchiv, Ber-
lin)
GStA PK Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin-Dahlem (Note:
The designation ‘‘(M)’’ at the end of a citation indicates materials for-
merly held in the Zentrales Staatsarchiv, Dienststelle Merseburg)
HZ Historische Zeitschrift
JMH Journal of Modern History

Chapter 1
1. Wehler 1987, 1:398–405; Münchow-Pohl 1987, 49, 51, 55–56; Berdahl 1988,
107–08.
2. French political and administrative models had a greater direct impact on some
areas of western Germany, which would base their legal systems on the Code Na-
poléon until the end of the nineteenth century. In those regions, however, Napoleon
either annexed the territory outright or replaced traditional ruling structures with
puppet regimes that did not seek to mount an indigenous opposition. Berding 1973;
Fehrenbach 1974 and 1979; Blanning 1983; Weis 1984.
3. See, for example, Wehler 1987, 1:57–58, 1:363–485; Nipperdey 1983, 31–32.
The phrase ‘‘revolution from above’’ apparently originated with the Prussian minister
Johann Struensee, who told the French chargé d’affaires in 1799: ‘‘The creative rev-
olution was made in France from below; in Prussia it will be made slowly and from

243
244 notes to pages 4–9

above.’’ Hardenberg subsequently called for a ‘‘revolution in a positive sense,’’ to

be made ‘‘through the wisdom of the government,’’ in his Riga Memorandum of
1807. (Sheehan 1989, 294, 305).
4. Koselleck 1981. An excellent summary and critique of Koselleck’s analysis
is found in Sperber 1985, 278–96. Other scholars who present interpretations simi-
lar to Koselleck’s include Simon [1955] 1971; Fehrenbach 1979; Münchow-Pohl
1987.
5. Rosenberg [1958] 1966, 204, 203, 226. Analogous views are articulated by Kehr
1965 and Klein 1965.
6. Obenaus 1984; Vogel 1983a; Wehler 1987, 1:397–485. See also Vogel 1980;
Scheel 1982; Gray 1986; Blanning 1986 and 1989; Berdahl 1988; Nolte 1990; Büsch
and Neugebauer-Wölk 1991; Stamm-Kuhlmann 1992; Sösemann 1993; Brose 1993;
Dunlavy 1994; Barclay 1995.
7. Kohn 1960, 69–98.
8. Krieger 1957, 4, 3, 5.
9. Dahrendorf 1967.
10. For an assessment of old and new versions of the Sonderweg, see Blackbourn
and Eley 1984, 1–61; Faulenbach 1980; Stürmer 1983; Augustine 1994; Mommsen
1981; Groh 1983; Evans 1985; Grebing 1986; Kocka 1988; Hagen 1991; Beck 1995;
Wehler 1995; Blackbourn 1998; Brophy 1998; Rürup 2000.
11. France’s economic development during the eighteenth century is discussed
in Asselain 1984; Gayot and Hirsch 1989; Bergeron 1991; Colin Jones 1991 and 1996;
P. M. Jones 1995. On the vibrancy of the ‘‘public sphere’’ in the German states in
the late eighteenth century, see Bödeker and Herrmann 1987; Hellmuth 1990; La
Vopa 1992. The development of the German bourgeoisie during the nineteenth cen-
tury is analyzed in Blackbourn and Eley 1984; Kocka and Mitchell 1993; Lange-
wiesche 1993a; Wehler 1987 and 1995.
12. One prominent recent example of the essentialist fallacy is Daniel Jonah Gold-
hagen’s argument in Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holo-
caust (1996). According to Goldhagen’s analysis, anti–Semitism became a central el-
ement of German culture at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and the
Holocaust was the logical consequence of Germans’ intense hatred for Jews, which
had been building for more than a hundred years. (After World War II, for myste-
rious reasons, German culture was suddenly purged of its anti–Semitic tendencies,
Goldhagen maintains.)
13. McGovern 1941.
14. Blackbourn and Eley 1984, 10.
15. See, for example, Hintze 1962, 379; Brandt 1968, 5–7, 280–81. Jürgen Kocka
notes: ‘‘[O]ne can hardly overestimate the importance of the specific continuity of
the bureaucratic tradition in Germany: a strong and efficient Beamtentum; a long
record of reform from above; a strong Obrigkeitsstaat which could achieve much,
and which was widely admired (not without cause), but which had to be paid for
with a weakness of civic virtues and liberal practices’’ (1988, 13).
16. For example, Meinecke [1906] 1977 and 1911. For a more general account of
the idealist tradition in German historiography, see Iggers 1983.
17. Geertz 1973b, 218. See also Sahlins 1985, 153.
18. Hunt 1984, 10. (The quote is modified here from the past to the present tense.)
Keith Michael Baker defines political culture as ‘‘the set of discourses or symbolic
practices’’ through which ‘‘individuals and groups in any society articulate, nego-
 notes to pages 10–13 245

tiate, implement, and enforce the competing claims they make upon one another and
upon the whole’’ (1990, 4).
19. See, for example, Koselleck 1972 and 1985; Gumbrecht 1978; Reichardt and
Schmitt 1985, 1:64–70.
20. Eugenio Cosieru, ‘‘System, Norm, Rede,’’ in Sprachtheorie und allgemeine
Sprachwissenschaft: 5 studien (Munich: Fink, 1975), 88, quoted in Reichardt and
Schmitt 1985, 1:65.
21. Koselleck 1985, 90.
22. Canning 1996, 6.
23. To cite just a few of the many publications on this subject, see Toews 1987;
Geyer and Jarausch 1989; Childers 1989; Ankersmit 1989; Vernon 1994; Iggers 1995;
Jelavich 1995; Smith 1996; Schröttler 1997.
24. For example, Furet 1981; Hunt 1984; Baker 1990; Sewell 1994.
25. E. P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vin-
tage, 1963), while predating the debates over the linguistic turn, displays a great
sensitivity toward the linguistic dimensions of identity formation. More recent
works, which emphasize discourse more explicitly, include Wahrman 1995; Sewell
1980; Stedman Jones 1983; Canning 1996.
26. For example, Landes 1988; Herzog 1996; Hull 1996; Scott 1996; Frader and
Rose 1996.
27. Benedict Anderson’s seminal work Imagined Communities: Reflections on the
Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983) has been an important inspiration for the
anthropological study of nationalist movements. Anderson’s analysis, however, fo-
cuses less on nationalist discourse per se than on epochal shifts in consciousness
caused, for example, by the emergence of print capitalism in early modern Europe.
Works that explore the discursive dimensions of nationalist movements more ex-
plicitly include Bhabha 1990; Anthony Smith 1986 and 1991; Dubois 1991; Link and
Wülfing 1991; Kedourie 1993; Eley and Suny 1996; Pickett 1996; Brubaker 1996;
Calhoun 1998; Hall 1998; Levinger and Lytle, forthcoming 2000. The 1990s saw a
wave of scholarship on German nationalism in particular, much of which has also
emphasized the linguistic dimensions of this movement. See, for example, Schulze
1985 and 1996; James 1990; Brubaker 1992; Schieder 1992; Jeismann 1992; François,
Siegrist, and Vogel 1995; Helmut Smith 1995; Hettling and Nolte 1996; Dann 1996;
Burger, Klein, and Schrader 1996; Echternkamp 1998; Giesen 1998.
28. Koselleck 1985, 74.
29. Baker 1990, 13, 24.
30. Ibid., 8.
31. Koselleck notes that because of the complexity of the project, ‘‘Begriffsge-
schichte . . . in its reflection on concepts and their change, must initially disregard
their extralinguistic content—the specific sphere of social history’’ (1985, 81).
32. For a sympathetic but trenchant critique of Baker’s work along these lines,
see the introduction to Sewell 1994.
33. Baker 1990, 14.
34. Foucault 1972, 31–38, 126–31, 166–77.
35. Jürgen Habermas’s concept of ‘‘communicative action’’ reflects an analytical
approach somewhat analogous to Foucault’s notion of the historical a priori. Haber-
mas notes that ‘‘symbolic interaction . . . is governed by binding consensual norms,
which define reciprocal expectations about behavior and which must be understood
and recognized by at least two acting subjects. Social norms are enforced through
246 notes to pages 13–24

sanctions. Their meaning is objectified in ordinary language communication’’ (1970,

92). See also Habermas 1979, 187, 182–83.
36. On this point, see Levinger 1990b.

Chapter 2
1. Frederick II, L’Antimachiavel (1740), quoted in Klassen 1929, 115.
2. Vierhaus 1987, 33–49.
3. Brunner 1968, 160–78; Lovejoy 1950. In Prussia, it should be noted, the theory
of divine-right monarchy was never as fully developed as in many Western European
states (Barclay 1995, 51).
4. Brunner 1968, 179; Klassen 1929, 115–19.
5. Koselleck 1972, 1:xiii–xxvii.
6. The dissolution of the société d’ordres in France and the Ständegesellschaft in
Prussia is a central theme of Behrens 1985, esp. 7–23, 199–205. See also Raeff 1983,
174, 252–56.
7. My phrase ‘‘politics of harmony’’ is derived from the title of Lee 1980.
8. The figures for France and England are for the year 1800, from Wehler 1987,
1:69–70. The figure for Prussia is for the year 1816, from Rürup 1992, 32.
9. Wehler 1987, 1:180; Rürup 1992, 32; Sheehan 1989, 105, 115–16. Sheehan
gives the figure for Berlin’s population in 1800 as 150,000. The statistics on Paris
and London are from Mitchell 1992, 72–75.
10. Wehler (1987, 1:70) gives the population for Prussian territories within the
1688 boundaries as 2.3 million in 1750 and 3.2 million in 1800. Within the boundaries
of 1846, the population was 6.4 million in 1740 and 8.8 million in 1800. The other
figures are from Rürup 1992, 22, 32.
11. Knudsen 1986, 4, 186.
12. Rürup 1992, 60–84. For example, per capita annual economic production in
the territory of the future German Empire increased only 7 percent (from 250 marks
to 268 marks) between 1800 and 1850, but nearly 30 percent (to 347 marks) between
1850 and 1870 (65).
13. Sheehan 1989, 121–22, 498–501; Wehler 1987, 1:81–118.
14. Hartung 1954, 63–65, 93–99; Vierhaus 1984, 133–34.
15. The largest Spanish army of the mid–sixteenth century numbered between
100,000 and 150,000 soldiers. Frederick the Great’s army had about 150,000 soldiers
during the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) and about 200,000 soldiers by his death
in 1786. Parker 1996, 24, 147.
16. Behrens 1985, 38. On the intellectual and political background for the rise of
the absolutist state, see Raeff 1983, 1–42.
17. Vierhaus 1987, 33–34; Vierhaus 1984, 133–34; Behrens 1985, 32, 60.
18. Koselleck writes, ‘‘The sum of all princes, the imperial diet, and the emperor
never became a unified agent (Handlungseinheit) which, like the ‘King in Parliament,’
acted as sovereign. The empire never became a state in the French sense of the word’’
(Koselleck et al. 1990, 1; see also 2, 25–26). On the constitutional arrangements of
the Reich, see also Sheehan 1989, 14–24.
19. Pufendorf, Ueber die Verfassung des deutschen Reiches, chap. 6, par. 9, 94,
quoted in Knudsen 1986, 100. The first quote in this paragraph is from Eberhard
August Wilhelm von Zimmermann, A Political Survey of the Present State of Europe
(London: C. Dilly, 1787), quoted in Sheehan 1989, 15.
20. Quoted in Walker 1971, 195.
 notes to pages 24–31 247

21. Sheehan 1989, 18–20. Walker (1987) emphasizes that the Holy Roman Empire
served as an ‘‘incubator’’ for the freedoms of Germany’s municipalities.
22. Sheehan 1989, 14.
23. [eine vernünftige Rangordnung] Hardenberg, ‘‘Über die Reorganisation des
Preußischen Staats, verfaßt auf höchsten Befehl Sr. Majestät des Königs’’ (Riga Mem-
orandum), 12 Sept. 1807, in Winter 1931, 316.
24. Justi 1760, Vorrede; quoted in Walker 1971, 164. Concerning eighteenth-
century views of government, Keith Tribe writes:
[T]his process of regulation cannot be conceived in terms of state interven-
tion in the economy since the state and the economy have no independent
existence—or put another way, they are the same thing. . . . Staat and bür-
gerliche Gesellschaft are alternative ways of designating the same political
order, governed according to rules of prudence by a ruler. (1984, 266, 273)
See also Lindenfeld 1997, 1–45; Walker 1971, 161; Riedel 1975, 2:252–54. Definitions
of these terms are slippery: Walker defines cameralism as a separate enterprise from
Polizei; for Tribe, cameralism embraces Polizei.
25. Justi 1758, 1:65–66, quoted in Walker 1971, 164.
26. Quoted in Walker 1971, 164.
27. Tocqueville [1856] 1955, 227–28. On the provisions of the Allgemeines Land-
recht, see Koselleck 1981, 23–149.
28. For a discussion of traditional visions of the monarchical order in France, see
Baker 1990, 113–17.
29. Koselleck 1981, 70–77; Hintze 1896, 413–43; Müsebeck 1917, 115–46.
30. Tribe 1984, 282–83; Behrens 1985, 133–35, 159–60.
31. Behrens 1985, 150–51, 187; Tribe 1988, 133–48, 157–59; Treue 1951, 101–33;
Kühn 1902–03. On Kraus’s reworking of Smith’s doctrines, see Lindenfeld 1997, 62–
67.
32. Quoted in Behrens 1985, 187.
33. F. J. H. von Soden, Die Nazional-Oekonomie (Leipzig: J. A. Barth, 1805), 1:14,
18–19, quoted in Tribe 1988, 173.
34. Quoted in Behrens 1985, 160.
35. Humboldt [1791] 1969, 16; see also vii–viii, xxxvii–xxxviii; 28. On Hum-
boldt’s understanding of the concept Bildung, see Marchand 1996, 24–31.
36. Hellmuth 1982, 315–45; Dülmen 1977, 251–75.
37. See, for example, Makowski 1988; Janson 1963, 9–11.
38. Marchand 1996, xvii–xxiv, 3–35.
39. Koselleck 1973, 55–81; Krüger 1978, esp. 12–13, 34–38; Brose 1997, 19–
21; Reinalter 1986 (esp. the essays by Reinalter, Vierhaus, Schindler, and Mühlp-
fordt).
40. Krüger 1978, esp. 12–13, 34–38; Koselleck 1973, 74–80, 110–15; Brose 1997,
20.
41. Turgot, ‘‘Mémoire au Roi, sur les municipalités, sur la hiérarchie qu’on pour-
rait établir entre elles, et sur les services que le gouvernement en pourrait tirer,’’ in
Turgot 1844, 2:504. This memorandum was drafted by Turgot’s confidant Dupont de
Nemours. Also quoted in Baker 1990, 120.
42. Turgot 1844, 2:508; Baker 1990, 120.
43. My discussion of Turgot’s theory of representation follows Baker’s distinction
between the discourse of ‘‘reason’’ and the discourse of ‘‘will’’ in the debate over
sovereignty in prerevolutionary France (Baker 1990, 126, 162–66).
44. On Turgot’s term as controller general, see Baker 1990, 112, 120–23, 162–66;
248 notes to pages 31–35

Schama 1989, 81–88. Schama in particular focuses on the question of whether Tur-
got’s proposals could have provided a viable path toward political and social mod-
ernization in France, averting the need for a revolution.
45. Stein, ‘‘Darstellung der fehlerhaften Organisation des Kabinetts und der Not-
wendigkeit einer Ministerialkonferenz,’’ 26–27 Apr. 1806, in Botzenhart and Hu-
batsch 1957–74, 2:208–10, 213–14.
46. On the importance of Turgot’s ideas as a model for the Prussian reformers,
see esp. Adalbert Wahl, 1908; Heffter 1950, 91–92.
47. Kant’s influence on the Prussian reform movement is explored in Levinger
1998; Wagner [1922] 1956; and Lindenfeld 1997, 55–59, 84–85.
48. Hubatsch 1975, 48–63; Sheehan 1989, 342–46; Krüger 1978, 35–39; Sweet
1978, 1:38.
49. Kant, ‘‘An Answer to the Question: ‘What Is Enlightenment?’ ’’ in Reiss 1991,
55.
50. Krieger 1957, 124. Similar interpretations of Kant as an ‘‘apolitical German’’
appear in the works of Aris (1936) and Droz (1949), among others. Aris, for example,
declares: ‘‘When he first discussed political problems, sixty fruitful years lay behind
him, and neither his letters nor his great philosophic writings reveal that he had
been specially interested in political questions’’ (73). In recent years, Kant has re-
ceived more favorable reviews from scholars who have explored how he sought to
develop a liberal political theory within the highly constrained, fracturing intellec-
tual world of the Prussian Enlightenment during the 1780s and 1790s. Even this
newer scholarship, however, still generally holds that the Königsberg philosopher
exercised little practical effect on contemporary Prussian political leaders and that,
at best, his political theory should be read as evidence of a road not taken toward
the evolution of a German liberal tradition. See, for example, Beiser 1992, 8, 37, 364–
65; Lestition 1993; Stedman Jones 1994; Beiner and Booth 1993. A discussion of
recent literature on Kant’s political theory is found in Levinger 1998.
51. Among the most important of these essays were ‘‘An Answer to the Question:
‘What Is Enlightenment?’ ’’ (1784), On the Common Saying: ‘‘This May Be True in
Theory, but It Does Not Apply in Practice’’ (1792), Perpetual Peace (1795), and The
Contest of the Faculties (1798).
52. Kant, ‘‘Der Streit der Facultäten in drey Abschnitten,’’ in Kant 1968, 11:364–
65. See also Krieger 1957, 122–23.
53. Kant, Perpetual Peace, in Reiss 1991, 100–101.
54. Kant, ‘‘Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber
nicht für die Praxis,’’ in Kant 1968, 11:145.
55. Kant, Perpetual Peace, in Reiss 1991, 101.
56. Kant, The Contest of the Faculties, quoted in Stedman Jones 1994, 159.
57. Kant, Perpetual Peace, in Reiss 1991, 101
58. Beiser 1992, 36–38. For Kant’s refutation of the charge of Jacobinism, see The
Contest of the Faculties, in Reiss 1991, 182–83.
59. Kant, ‘‘Was ist Aufklärung?’’ in Kant 1968, 11:55. See also Beiser 1992, 44–
48.
60. See, esp., Beiser 1992, 48–53; and Lestition 1993.
61. Kant, ‘‘Über den Gemeinspruch,’’ in Kant 1968, 11:151, 143–44, 156.
62. Ibid., 11:161–62, 153.
63. Patrick Riley (1983) offers an insightful discussion of how Kant views the
republic as the culmination of an evolutionary process of moral and political devel-
opment.
 notes to pages 35–46 249

64. Jonathan Knudsen writes:

Against the omnipotence of the ruler Kant could only offer palliatives . . . :
the pressure of public opinion, the power of the pen, freedom of thought,
public education, and a belief in the gradual progress of the entire species.
Stressing these ‘civil rights,’ he argued for gradual justice through law: once
the state is constitutional, founded on public law, and once its citizens in-
still the moral law in themselves, an enlightened public will achieve what
revolution cannot. (1986, 181)
65. Fichte, ‘‘Einige Vorlesungen über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten 2’’ (1794),
quoted in Koselleck et al. 1990, 6:43–44.
66. [‘‘Demokratische Grundsätze in einer monarchischen Regierung: dieses
scheint mir die angemessene Form für den gegenwärtigen Zeitgeist’’]. Hardenberg,
Riga Memorandum, in Winter 1931, 306.
67. Frederick II, ‘‘Regierungsform und Herrscherpflichten,’’ quoted in Koselleck
et al. 1990, 6:27.
68. Svarez [1791–92] 1960, 12, 475.
69. Ibid., 12, 17.
70. Lehmann 1889, 444.
71. Svarez [1791–92] 1960, 218, 586, quoted in Koselleck 1981, 27.
72. Koselleck 1981, 26–28.
73. Fichte, Reden an die deutsche Nation, no. 11 (1808), quoted in Koselleck et al.
1990, 6:33. Concerning Fichte’s intellectual development, see also Meinecke 1911;
Neuhouser 1990; Schnabel [1929] 1987, 1:293–98; Schuurmans 1995, 347–52.
74. Quoted in Walker 1971, 149.
75. Sellin 1978, 4:831. See also Tribe 1984; Schuurmans 1995, 56–57.

Chapter 3
1. Gneisenau, letter to Heinrich von Beguelin, 27 May 1807, in Gneisenau 1911,
51; see also Hubatsch 1975, 55.
2. Wagner [1922] 1956, 137, 139; see also Hubatsch 1975, 55.
3. Sheehan 1989, 235–36, 246–50.
4. Stamm-Kuhlmann 1992, 267–311; Wehler 1987, 1:398; Münchow-Pohl 1987,
49, 51, 55–56; Behrens 1985, 190–91; Berdahl 1988, 107–8. The Clausewitz quote is
from Behrens 1985, 191.
5. A detailed discussion of the political dynamics within the Prussian government
during the decade leading up to 1806 is found in Simms 1997. See also Sheehan
1989, 295–99; Gray, 47–58; Stamm-Kuhlmann 1992, 207–14.
6. Sheehan 1989, 297, 303–5; Stamm-Kuhlmann 1992, 267–363; Brose 1993, 26–
71; Schuurmans 1995, 367–68.
7. On Hardenberg’s role in Prussian foreign policy deliberations before 1806, see
Simms 1997, esp. 142, 154–55, 222–24, 240–43, 264–65.
8. See, for example, Meinecke [1906] 1977.
9. Zeeden 1940, 88–89. For similar arguments, see Meinecke [1906] 1977, 53; Klein
1965, 313; Simon [1955] 1971, 52; Obenaus 1980, 252; and to some extent Wehler
1987, 1:446–53. More positive assessments of Hardenberg’s accomplishments include
Vogel 1983a; Stamm-Kuhlmann 1992; Hofmeister-Hunger 1994; Brose 1993 and 1997.
10. Obenaus 1984, 12. Other recent studies that suggest that the Prussian gov-
ernment sought to preserve monarchical power through the adoption of limited rep-
resentative institutions include Gray 1986 and Berdahl 1988, esp. 112, 126–32.
250 notes to pages 46–53

11. Klein 1965, 173–76, 313–17. See also Koselleck 1981, 170–71, 181–87; Rosen-
berg [1958] 1966, 203–4, 226; Kehr 1965.
12. Hardenberg, Riga Memorandum, in Winter 1931, 306.
13. Stein to Hardenberg, 7 Dec. 1807, in Botzenhart and Hubatsch 1957–74, 2/2:
562. See also Ritter [1958] 1983, 275.
14. Lévi-Strauss 1962, 18–19, 21. Regarding Lévi-Strauss’s concept of bricolage,
see Geertz 1973a; Koshar 1989.
15. For example, in Freud’s ‘‘The Aetiology of Hysteria’’ (1896), On Dreams
(1901), and Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (‘‘Dora’’) (1905). Freud
applies the concept of overdetermination not only in characterizing the symptoms
of hysteria but also in analyzing dreams: ‘‘[E]ach element in the content of a dream
is ‘overdetermined’ by material in the dream-thoughts; it is not derived from a single
element in the dream-thoughts, but may be traced back to a whole number’’ (Freud
1989, 154). A slightly earlier usage of the concept overdetermination occurs in Fried-
rich Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals, in which he argues that ‘‘punishment is over-
determined,’’ because it reflects a variety of impulses: the desire to render the of-
fender harmless, the desire for reparations, the desire for revenge, the desire to deter
future crimes by inspiring fear, the desire to mock an enemy, etc. ([1887] 1989, 80–
81). More recent scholarly works employing the concept of overdetermination in-
clude Althusser 1969; Lacan 1977, 59; Harootunian 1988, 226–28; Guha 1997, 60–
63.
16. Quoted in Sheehan 1989, 165. See also Gschnitzer et al. 1992, 7:316–19;
Schulze 1996, 156–57; Wehler 1987, 511, 514–15.
17. Quoted in Schulze 1996, 156.
18. Furet 1981, 33.
19. ‘‘Denkschrift Steins über den Finanzplan Hardenbergs von Sommer 1810,’’
12–13 Sept. 1810, in Botzenhart and Hubatsch 1957–74, 3:407.
20. Stein, Nassau Memorandum, in Botzenhart and Hubatsch 1957–74, 2/1:394.
(Stein is referring here to the formation of local and provincial assemblies, rather
than to a national representative assembly.)
21. Stein’s ‘‘Political Testament,’’ 24 Nov. 1808 (drafted by Schön, signed by Stein
on 5 Dec. 1808), in Scheel and Schmidt 1968, 3:1136–38. Concerning Schön’s role in
drafting this document, see Ritter [1958] 1983, 360. For a discussion of the evolution
of Hardenberg’s views on political reform, see Levinger 1990a, 257–77; Levinger
1992.
22. Ritter [1958] 1983, 145–55; Sheehan 1989, 233–34, 297–98.
23. Hardenberg, Riga Memorandum, in Winter 1931, 318.
24. Zeeden 1940, 64; Berdahl 1988, 107; Schönbeck 1907, 3–6.
25. Gray 1977, 133–34.
26. Cabinet order to the Generallandschaftsdirektion, 10 Sept. 1807, quoted in
Gray 1977, 134.
27. Zeeden 1940, 65; Gray 1977, 135, 138; Berdahl 1988, 113–14.
28. Frederick William III, cabinet order to Auerswald, 31 Jan. 1808, quoted in
Lehmann 1902–5, 2:204.
29. Auerswald, quoted in Lehmann 1902–5, 2:208.
30. [Nationalwohlstand]. Cabinet order to Auerswald, 31 Jan. 1808, in Scheel and
Schmidt 1966, 1:363.
31. Stein, cabinet order to Auerswald, 27 Feb. 1808, in Botzenhart and Hubatsch
1957–74, 2/2:673.
 notes to pages 53–60 251

32. Auerswald, ‘‘Plan zur Organisierung eines jährlichen Generallandtages für

Ostpreuen und Litauen,’’ in Scheel and Schmidt 1966–68, 2:573, 574–80, 572.
33. Zeeden 1940, 85–86, 88, 90.
34. ‘‘Auszug aus dem Finanzplan Hardenbergs,’’ 28 May 1810, in Botzenhart and
Hubatsch 1957–74, 3:376.
35. Quoted in Botzenhart and Hubatsch 1957–74, 3:385, 388.
36. Raumer, ‘‘Pro Memoria über den Finanzplan des vorigen und jetzigen Min-
isterii,’’ 11 Sept. 1810, quoted in Stern 1885, 167–68.
37. Huber 1978, 46.
38. Stein, Nassau Memorandum, in Botzenhart and Hubatsch 1957–74, 2/1:397.
39. Altenstein, Riga Memorandum, 1807, in Winter 1931, 403, quoted in Schuur-
mans 1995, 391–92. (Altenstein’s memorandum was intended as a draft for Har-
denberg’s use, but Hardenberg sent it, along with his own memorandum, to the
king.)
40. Edict of 9 Oct. 1807, in Huber 1978, 38, quoted in Sheehan 1989, 299–300.
41. ‘‘Edikt den erleichterten Besitz und den freien Gebrauch des Grundeigentums
sowie die persönlichen Verhältnisse der Landbewohner betreffend,’’ 9 Oct. 1807, in
Botzenhart and Hubatsch 1957–74, 2/1:458. See also Ritter [1958] 1983, 220.
42. Koselleck 1981, 140–42; Hintze 1896, 419–21.
43. Botzenhart and Hubatsch 1957–74, 2/2:458; Ritter [1958] 1983, 227–31.
44. Quoted in Ritter [1958] 1983, 227.
45. Ritter [1958] 1983, 228–29; Schissler 1978, 107–12; Stein 1918–34, 2:274–
306.
46. Botzenhart 1928, 218–24, 233–34; Ritter 1928, 31–32; Sheehan 1989, 300–
301. An analysis of recent scholarly perspectives on the October Edict is found in
Clemens Zimmermann, ‘‘Preußische Agrarreform in neuer Sicht: Kommentar zum Bei-
trag von Helmut Bleiber,’’ in Sösemann 1993, 127–36. Zimmermann emphasizes the
importance of domestic pressures, such as peasant revolts, as an additional motivating
factor for the liberation of the serfs.
47. Ritter [1958] 1983, 258.
48. ‘‘Ordnung für sämtliche Städte der preußischen Monarchie . . . ,’’ 19 Nov.
1808, in Botzenhart and Hubatsch 1957–74, 2/2:947–79; Ritter [1958] 1983, 256–70;
Koselleck 1981, 565; Ziekursch 1908.
49. Obenaus 1969, 135–36. See also Heffter 1950, 84–103; Ilja Mieck, ‘‘Die ver-
schlungenen Wege der Städtereform in Preußen (1806–1856),’’ in Sösemann 1993,
53–84.
50. Koselleck 1981, 75–76; Koselleck 1985, 75–79. Recent scholarly approaches
to Hardenberg’s economic reforms are discussed in the articles by Kaufhold and by
Baar in Sösemann 1993.
51. Vogel 1983a, 165–87; Koselleck 1981, 169, 189; Berdahl 1988, 124–25; Born-
hak 1890, 590–93; Sheehan 1989, 306.
52. Berdahl 1988, 107–23; Koselleck 1981, 169.
53. See chapter 4 below.
54. Two authors who have explored aspects of this link between the emergence
of a commercial economy and new conceptions of public virtue are Pocock (1985)
and Dickey (1987).
55. Soden, Die Nazional-Oekonomie, 1:14, 18–19, quoted in Tribe 1988, 173.
56. Hardenberg to Frederick William III, 17 June 1810, quoted in Zeeden 1940,
89.
252 notes to pages 61–72

57. See, for example, Berdahl 1988, 3–76; Vierhaus 1987, 33–49; Bornhak 1890,
555–68; Schönbeck 1912–13, 120–25; Schönbeck 1907, 62–103.
58. Quoted in Schönbeck 1912–13, 170; for Dohna’s views, see ibid., 173–74.
59. For example, Zeeden 1940, 86 (footnote); Ritter [1958] 1983, 377–85.
60. See, for example, ‘‘Bemerkungen Steins über den Finanzplan Hardenbergs
vom 28 Mai 1810,’’ 1–2 Aug. 1810, in Botzenhart and Hubatsch 1957–74, 3:377–80.
61. [‘‘weil wir den Provinzialismus nicht verewigen, sondern Nationalismus ein-
führen wollen’’]. Hardenberg, ‘‘Finanzplan nach den neueren Erwägungen,’’ [Aug.]
1810, in Botzenhart and Hubatsch 1957–74, 3:385.
62. Koselleck 1981, 185. (Koselleck is referring here to Hardenberg’s plan for the
state to unify the provincial debts.)
63. Gschnitzer et al. 1992, 7:316–19; Schulze 1996, 156–60.
64. Quoted in Krieger 1957, 489; see also Krieger 1957, 170–71; Jochen Hennig-
feld, ‘‘Volk, Staat und Nation bei Wilhelm von Humboldt,’’ in Burger, Klein, and
Schrader 1996, 77–90.
65. Frederick William III, ‘‘An Mein Volk,’’ 17 Mar. 1813, GStA PK, XII. HA, IV,
Nr. 5, Bl. 1 (printed copy); see also Huber 1978, 49.
66. Koselleck 1981, 58.
67. Quoted in Göbel et al. 1989, 46.
68. On the role of women in the new political order, see Hagemann 1996, 562–
91; Reder 1998; Hull 1996, 333–411. Hagemann argues that the nationalist movement
during the War of Liberation intensified the polarization of gender roles in Prussia
by defining the nation as a ‘‘family of the Volk [Volks-Familie] organized in a patri-
archal, hierarchical manner with a gender-specific division of labor’’ (1996, 588).
69. See chapter 5 below, esp. pp. 115–17.
70. See chapter 6 below, as well as Sheehan 1989, 398–400; Nipperdey 1983, 93–
94.
71. Quoted in Meusel 1908–13, 2/2:137–38.
72. For example, Stein’s close associate August Wilhelm Rehberg argued for fus-
ing elements of the pluralistic British constitution with the more unitary German
model. Even Rehberg, however, claimed that representative institutions in the
German states ‘‘can never become what Parliament is for the English nation.’’ Rather
than granting parliamentary bodies a ‘‘part in the government,’’ the new constitu-
tional system in the German states should serve to ‘‘bind the interests of the peoples
and their regents intimately together, to secure the power and prestige of the princes,
and thus to further the common good’’ (1807, 207–8).
73. For example, Furet 1981.
74. See chapter 5 below.

Chapter 4
1. ‘‘Verordnung, die veränderte Verfassung der obersten Verwaltungsbehörden in
der Preußischen Monarchie betreffend,’’ in Scheel and Schmidt 1968, 3:1089.
2. Ibid., 3:1089–90.
3. ‘‘Bemerkungen Steins über den Finanzplan Hardenbergs vom 28 Mai 1810,’’
1–2 Aug. 1810, in Botzenhart and Hubatsch 1957–74, 3:380.
4. ‘‘Denkschrift Steins über den Finanzplan Hardenbergs vom Sommer 1810,’’ 12–
13 Sept. 1810, in Botzenhart and Hubatsch 1957–74, 3:402–3. See also Vincke to
Stein, 26 Aug. 1810, ibid., 3:345; Sack to Stein, 31 Aug. 1810, ibid., 3:348–49.
5. Botzenhart and Hubatsch 1957–74, 3:405. See also Ritter [1958] 1983, 381–82.
 notes to pages 72–80 253

6. Botzenhart and Hubatsch 1957–74, 3:406, 405, 407.

7. Sack to Stein, 31 Aug. 1810, in Botzenhart and Hubatsch 1957–74, 3:348–49.
See also Vincke to Stein, 26 Aug. 1810, ibid., 3:345. Compare Sack’s views of 26 Oct.
1808, in Scheel and Schmidt 1968, 3:958, and Vincke [1808] 1848.
8. Stern 1885, 151, 197; see also Zeeden 1940, 152.
9. Stern 1885, 196–97.
10. Altenstein to Sack, 20 Mar. 1809, quoted in Zeeden 1940, 71–72.
11. See chapter 7 below, as well as Kondylis 1986, 63–206.
12. Behrens 1985, 150; Berdahl 1988, 77–90; Schissler 1978, 59–71.
13. On the history of these experiments in selecting representatives to serve in
the provincial administrative bodies, see Levinger 1992, 115–19; Zeeden 1940, 52–
61; Obenaus 1969, 153–58, 165–76.
14. Koselleck 1981, 318–32.
15. Obenaus 1969, 166.
16. On regional variations in aristocratic political views, see Levinger 1992, 145–
59; Obenaus 1988; Kehr 1977, 131; Treue 1951, 113–16; Hintze 1975, 46–48.
17. Eickenboom 1976, 63–66.
18. Obenaus 1969, 166. As Kondylis notes, the traditional role of the diets was
to defend the ‘‘freedoms and rights’’ (Freiheiten und Gerechtigkeiten) of the corporate
bodies of the realm. According to the traditional concept of representation, ‘‘the
estates are the land, they don’t represent it’’ (1986, 115, 118).
19. Rousseau [1762] 1966, 67.
20. Kant, ‘‘Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber
nicht für die Praxis,’’ in Kant 1968, 11:151, 143–44, 153; Kant, Perpetual Peace, in
Reiss 1991, 100–101.
21. Koselleck 1981, 188–89, 192–95.
22. ‘‘Vorstellung der Deputierten der Kurmärkischen Stände an den Staatskanzler
vom 22. Januar 1811,’’ in Meusel 1908–13, 2/1:229–35. Also, GStA PK, I. HA Rep.
92, Hardenberg, H 5, VII, Bl. 7–8 (M). The petition was written by Quast and
Bredow-Schwanebeck (Meusel 1908–13, 2/1:229). The authors enclosed along with
the petition passages from four royal proclamations: the Landtags-Rezeß of 26 July
1653, two documents of 1717 that acknowledged the Brandenburg nobles’ legal
rights, and the Assekurationsakte of 1798, in which Frederick William III reconfirmed
the ‘‘privileges and freedoms’’ of the nobility upon his accession to the throne.
23. Regarding the formation of military alliances, the estates had been granted
the right of ‘‘consent’’ (Bewilligung) (Meusel 1908–13, 2/1: 231).
24. Meusel 1908–13, 2/1:230.
25. Simon [1955] 1971, 76–78; Meusel 1908–13, 2/1:277–88, 308–13.
26. ‘‘Letzte Vorstellung der Stände des Lebusischen Kreises an den König, dem
sich der Beeskow- und Storkowsche anschloß,’’ in Meusel 1908–13, 2/2:3–23, ex-
cerpted in Simon 1955 [1971], 78–79. Marwitz completed this document on 22 Mar.
1811; it was accepted at the Kreistag in Frankfurt/Oder on 9 May, and delivered to
Albrecht, the king’s secretary, in Potsdam on 10 June (Meusel 1908–13, 2/1:3, n. 1).
27. Meusel 1908–13, 2/2:10.
28. On the ethos of paternalism, see Berdahl 1988, 131.
29. Meusel 1908–13, 2/2:12, 15, 17, 19–21.
30. Hardenberg, Immediatbericht to Frederick William III, 23 June 1811, in Meu-
sel 1908–13, 2/2:25.
31. Meusel 1908–13, 2/2:24–30; Simon [1955] 1971, 74–76, 79–81; Berdahl 1988,
135–36; Steffens 1907, 83–84; Schissler 1978, 124–25.
254 notes to pages 80–87

32. Berdahl 1988, 125–26. These and other East Prussian petitions from this pe-
riod are printed in Bujack 1889, 1–9, 11–17, 31–32, 35–36, 38–39, 45, 61–62.
33. Steffens 1907, 11–13, 28–29; also in Bujack 1888, 7ff. According to Steffens,
the strongest protests of 1810–1811 against Hardenberg’s reforms came from the
eastern provinces: East Prussia, West Prussia, Lithuania, and Silesia (1907, 11–12).
34. Steffens 1907, 28–29.
35. Rohrscheidt 1894–95, 213, 222–23, 236–52.
36. Rohrscheidt 1894–95, 230, 237; Koselleck 1981, 201–2. For an additional dis-
cussion of the guilds’ reactions to the Gewerbesteueredikt, see Vogel 1983a, 188–223.
37. On Hardenberg’s economic philosophy and his responses to protests against
his program, see, for example, Brose 1993, 33–41; Vogel 1983a, 135–97.
38. Steffens 1907, 18; also Simon [1955] 1971, 63.
39. Koselleck 1981, 193; see also Berdahl 1988, 126–27; Zeeden 1940, 161–62;
Simon [1955] 1971, 62–63.
40. ‘‘Fernerweite Edikt über die Finanzen des Staats,’’ quoted in Stern 1885, 172–
73.
41. In addition to the eighteen noble Rittergutsbesitzer, there were nine repre-
sentatives from the peasantry, each of whom was required to own at least one hide
(Hufe) of land, and fifteen representatives from the municipalities. Of the represen-
tatives from the municipalities, nine were elected by the provinces at large and six
by the individual cities of Berlin, Breslau (which was given two delegates), Königs-
berg, Elbing, and Stettin (Stern 1885, 173–74; see also Koselleck 1981, 194).
42. ‘‘Instruktion an die Regierungspräsidien vom 11 Februar 1812,’’ in Stern
1885, 173–74; Zeeden 1940, 127–28.
43. Stern 1885, 178–79; Zeeden 1940, 128; Dieterici 1875, 48ff.
44. GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 77, Titel 321, Nr. 1, Vol. I, Bl. 124–25 (M). See also
Stern 1885, 179–80.
45. Provisional National Representation to Hardenberg, 4 June 1812. GStA PK, I.
HA Rep. 77, Titel 321, Nr. 1, Vol. I, Bl. 129–30 (M). See also Stern 1885, 180–81.
46. Hardenberg to Count Dohna-Wundlacken, draft of 6 June 1812, quoted in
Stern 1885, 181.
47. GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 77, Titel 321, Nr. 1, Vol. I, Bl. 205 (M). Also in Stern
1885, 181–82.
48. Provisional National Representation to Hardenberg, 24 June 1812, quoted in
Stern 1885, 182.
49. Hardenberg to the delegates of the Provisional National Representation, 15
July 1812 (draft), in Stern 1885, 182.
50. Frederick William III, cabinet order of 1 Aug. 1812, quoted in Stern 1885,
183. See also Zeeden 1940, 130.
51. Frederick William III, instruction to the Provisional National Representation,
9 July 1812, quoted in Koselleck 1981, 195.
52. Berdahl 1988, 141–42; Koselleck 1981, 195–97, 204–7; Stern 1885, 183–84.
53. Gerlach, essay on the Gendarmerie Edict, 1 Sept. 1812, GStA PK, I. HA Rep.
77, Titel 321, Nr. 1, Vol. II, Bl. 112 (M).
54. Sanden, comments in debate of 19 Aug. 1812, ibid., Bl. 60.
55. Lange, memorandum of 17 Aug. 1812, quoted in Klein 1965, 183.
56. ‘‘Bemerkungen der National-Versammlung über das Edict vom 30. Juli 1812
wegen Errichtung einer Gensdarmerie,’’ 26 Sept. 1812, in Röpell 1848, 349–58.
57. Provisional National Representation to Frederick William III, GStA PK, I. HA
 notes to pages 87–90 255

Rep. 77, Titel 321, Nr. 1, Vol. II, Bl. 363–64 (M). Concerning this petition, see also
Stern 1885, 186–92.
58. The Gendarmerie Edict contained a provision that abolished the patrimonial
justice powers of the landholding nobility (a proposal that had been floated unsuc-
cessfully by Stein in 1808). In Sept. 1812, the Provisional National Representation
voted to petition the king to demand the retention of estate owners’ judicial powers
in civil cases. Seven delegates from the bourgeoisie and peasantry, however, ab-
stained from this resolution. Elsner, the representative of the Upper Silesian towns,
argued that these powers were inimical to the principle of ‘‘equality before the law’’
and that ‘‘the majority of the nation certainly desires the abolition of patrimonial
justice because it is an injustice to the greatest number of the citizens’’ (Bezzenberger
1898, 18). Ultimately, the nobles prevailed on this point, preserving their judicial
authority over their estates until 1848 and their police powers until 1872 (Röpell
1848, 349; Ritter [1958] 1983, 230–31).
59. The seven non-noble dissenters were Schmidt, Rosemann, Jacob, Müller,
Leist, Rump, and Ring. Of these, all except Ring (the delegate from the municipalities
of the Neumark) were representatives of the Bauernstand (GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 77,
Titel 321, Nr. 1, Vol. II, Bl. 315 [M].
60. Stern 1885, 219–20; see also 189, 206–7.
61. ‘‘Protocol of the Interimistische Landesrepräsentation,’’ 7 Ap. 1815, in Stern
1885, 216–21. Though the initial vote to send this petition to the king was 22–13,
a subsequent motion to address the petition to Hardenberg was approved 32–3.
Koselleck offers a somewhat misleading description of this debate (1981, 211).
62. Quast, ‘‘Auszüge aus meinem Aufsazze über National-Repräsentation,’’ BLHA,
Pr. Br. Rep. 37, v. Quast/Garz, Nr. 86, Bl. 41.
63. Marwitz, ‘‘Entwurf einer Vorstellung der Kurmärkischen Stände an den
König,’’ July or August 1806, in Meusel 1908–13, 2/1:132–34.
64. Marwitz to Hardenberg, 14 Sept. 1814, in Meinecke 1899, 100–101.
65. Compare Berdahl 1988, 130–31:
For the nobles, the constitution was contained in provincial law. . . . Because
of this understanding of the constitution, the nobility was itself, in a funda-
mental way, a provincial institution. The conflict between Hardenberg and
the aristocracy was, at one level, a conflict between Prussian nationalism
and Prussian provincialism.
66. Poselger, comments in debate of 13 Nov. 1812, GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 77, Titel
321, Nr. 1, Vol. II, Bl. 310–11 (M); also Stern 1885, 189.
67. Bock, comments in debate of 13 Nov. 1812, quoted in Stern 1885, 187–88.
68. Bock, ‘‘Über die Grundzüge der Constitution der National Repräsentation an-
zuzeigen,’’ 12 Nov. 1812, GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 77, Titel 321, Nr. 1, Vol. II, Bl. 327
(M). On the constitutional views of Bock, Poselger, and Elsner, see also Zeeden 1940,
129–30.
69. Elsner, speech to the Provisional National Representation, 21 Jan. 1813, GStA
PK, I. HA Rep. 77, Titel 321, Nr. 1, Vol. III, Bl. 48 (M).
70. Quast, speech of 21 Jan. 1813, ibid., Bl. 49.
71. Stern 1885, 197–200.
72. Provisional National Representation, ‘‘Aufruf an unsern Mitbürger,’’ 13 Feb.
1813, GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 77, Titel 321, Nr. 1, Vol. III, Bl. 259 (M); see also Stern
1885, 201–2.
73. Stern 1885, 203; also 197–202; Sheehan 1989, 314–15.
256 notes to pages 90–100

74. Quoted in Sheehan 1989, 315.

75. Sheehan 1989, 315–23.
76. Zeeden 1940, 134–35; Stern 1885, 203–4.
77. Stern 1885, 207; also 215–16.
78. [‘‘Heil und Segen unserer braven und rechtlichen Nation! Heil und Segen
unserem guten, braven und gerechten Könige!’’]. Immediatkommission (composed of
Schrötter, Kircheisen, Schuckmann, and Stägemann) to Frederick William III, 21 Feb.
1814, GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 77, Titel 524, Nr. 8, Bl. 11 (M).
79. Frederick William III to the Immediatkommission, 9 Mar. 1814, GStA PK, I.
HA Rep. 77, Titel 524, Nr. 8, Bl. 16 (M). Also ibid., Bl. 17–18; Stern 1885, 204–5;
Klein 1965, 186–87.
80. ‘‘Eingabe der National-Repräsentanten vom 16. Februar 1814. Betreffend das
Gens’darmerie-Edikt vom 30. Juli 1812,’’ in Röpell 1848, 359–60. Seven bourgeois
delegates (Brummer, Hübner, Ring, Leist, Müller, Schmidt, and Bock) partially dis-
sented from this petition in an accompanying letter to Hardenberg of 16 Feb. (Bez-
zenberger 1898, 23).
81. Koselleck 1981, 205–6; Bezzenberger 1898, 20, 23–25, 33, 40.
82. Stern 1885, 205–11, 221–22.
83. Dönhoff to Hardenberg, Mar. 1815, quoted in Koselleck 1981, 210.
84. Petition of the Committee of East Prussian and Lithuanian Estates, 5 Apr.
1815, quoted in Müsebeck 1918, 162.
85. Kurmärkische Ritterschaft to Frederick William III, 13 Aug. 1814, GStA PK,
I. HA Rep. 92, G. v. Rochow, A III, Nr. 1, Bl. 21, 24 (M); see also Müsebeck 1918,
159–61.
86. ‘‘Verordnung über die zu bildende Repräsentation des Volks,’’ in Huber 1978,
1:61–62.
87. Hardenberg to the Interimistische Landesrepräsentation, 10 July 1815, in Stern
1885, 213.
88. This interpretation is developed most elegantly in Koselleck 1981.
89. As Hanna Schissler points out, Hardenberg’s generous concessions to the ar-
istocracy were hardly necessary, given that the landowning nobility had been both
weakened economically and discredited politically by the military defeats of 1806–
1807 (1978, 143).
90. Cf. Koselleck 1981, 209, 298.

Chapter 5
1. Fichte 1846, 274; Fichte [1808] 1968, 7, 13, 117.
2. Sheehan 1989, 342–46, 376–78; Schuurmans 1995, 304–55.
3. Sheehan 1989, 332. In the words of Hugh Honour, the romantics were ‘‘united
only at their point of departure’’ (1979, 19). See also Sheehan 1989, 326–42; Lovejoy
1941, 257–78.
4. See, for example, Pinson 1934.
5. Brunschwig 1974, 247; also Kohn 1960, 50–51.
6. Kohn 1960, 49–68.
7. Sheehan 1989, 344.
8. Langewiesche 1996, 46–64.
9. Hroch 1996, 66; Deutsch 1953.
10. Anderson 1983, 47.
 notes to pages 100–111 257

11. For example, Kohn 1960; Brubaker 1992; Greenfeld 1992; Jeismann 1992;
François, Siegrist, and Vogel 1995; Hettling and Nolte 1996; Pickett 1996; Echtern-
kamp 1998; Giesen 1998.
12. Anderson 1983, 40.
13. See, for example, Clark 1995, 22–66, 83–102; Pinson 1934; Sheehan 1989,
174–76, 561–62; Ergang 1931, 40.
14. Greenfeld 1992, 277; see also Giesen 1998, 80–102; Vierhaus 1987, 216–34.
15. Craig 1982, 197.
16. Bruford 1965, 290; Toews 1980, 24–25; Brunschwig 1974, 119–63.
17. According to Liah Greenfeld, there were 3,000 people in the German states
with the profession of writer in 1771 and 10,650 in 1800 (1992, 298–99). See also
Woodmansee 1984.
18. Darnton 1982, 1–41.
19. Hunt 1984, 180–212.
20. Raab 1978, 19–20, 25–26, 30–47; Sheehan 1989, 374–75.
21. Görres, ‘‘Die künftige teutsche Verfassung,’’ in Raab 1978, 139–41.
22. Raab 1978, 48; Haake 1916, 29:327; Czygan 1911, 1:335–50.
23. ‘‘Verordnung über die zu bildende Repräsentation des Volks,’’ in Huber 1978,
1:61–62.
24. Raab 1978, 52.
25. Koblenz Address, in Görres 1929, 13:xxviii-xxix.
26. Jahn, Über die Beförderung des Patriotismus im preußischen Reich, quoted in
Kohn 1949, 419.
27. Kohn 1960, 91.
28. Quoted in Kluckhohn 1934, 158, 159.
29. Kohn 1960, 84–86; Schnabel [1932–37] 1987, 1:433–36. See also Düding 1984,
15–139.
30. Jahn [1810] 1991, 222.
31. ‘‘Thus will we preserve a free Empire, / By rank and estate everyone is equal!
/ Free Empire! Everyone equal! hurrah hurrah!’’ Quoted in Kohn 1949, 425.
32. Mosse 1975, 74–85; see also Jahn [1810] 1991, 230–38.
33. Schnabel [1932–37] 1987, 1:435–36; see also Pickett 1996, 78–94.
34. Jahn [1810] 1991, 193.
35. The party of the ‘‘olds’’ was known as the Altteutschen. Schulze-Wesen 1929,
56–62; Haupt 1907, 111–22.
36. Schnabel [1932–37] 1987, 2:253–55; Spevack 1997, 46–85; Sheehan 1989, 407;
Wehler 1987, 2:337; Haupt 1907, 119–20.
37. Arndt, ‘‘Über Preußens rheinische Mark und über Bundesfestungen,’’ in
Haake 1915, 28:211.
38. Müsebeck 1913–14, 147; see also Haake 1915, 28:210–11.
39. Arndt 1934, 248–49.
40. Jahn [1810] 1991, 96, 79, 133, 187.
41. Mosse 1975, 79; Sheehan 1989, 406; Steiger 1966, 183–84.
42. Reimann’s speech is quoted in Spevack 1997, 33. Fries Kluckhohn 1934, 133.
See also Sterling 1950, 118; is quoted in Mosse 1975, 77.
43. Quoted in Brose 1997, 78–79. The full text of the speech is found in Kieser
1818, 104–10.
44. Rödiger, speech at the Wartburg Festival, in Spevack 1997, 34; and Brose
1997, 87. See also Kieser 1818, 114–27.
258 notes to pages 112–122

45. Spevack 1997, 35; Brose 1997, 87.

46. [Hoffmeister] 1818, 53–55. A slightly different account is found in Schulze-
Wesen 1929, 85–86.
47. Arndt, Geist der Zeit, in Kluckhohn 1934, 141.
48. Quoted in Kohn 1960, 78–79, 76.
49. Arndt agreed with Jahn that race was an important factor in determining
nationality, but he considered Germany racially pure. In In 1812, Arndt wrote, ‘‘The
Germans have not been bastardized by foreign peoples, they have not become mon-
grels [Mischlinge]’’; instead, ‘‘the fortunate Germans are an original Volk.’’ Kluckhohn
1934, 136; see also Kohn 1960, 76–77.
50. Jahn [1810] 1991, 33–35.
51. Goldhagen 1996, 33, 77.
52. Wehler 1987, 1:377, 407–09; Stern 1885, 251–62.
53. Quoted in Stern 1885, 240. On the Emancipation Edict of 1812, see also Bram-
mer 1987, 34–70.
54. Stern 1885, 228–29.
55. Sorkin 1987, 20; Rürup 1975, 74–94. See also Brunschwig 1974, 249–92; Katz
1980, 1–33; Goldhagen 1996, 49–54.
56. Quoted in Goldhagen 1996, 56–57.
57. Hunt 1996, 99–101.
58. Rühs, Die Ansprüche der Juden an das deutsche Bürgerrecht, quoted in Kohn
1960, 93–94; see also Sorkin 1987, 37.
59. Fries 1816, 248, 254, 258, 251, 241. (Fries’s review was reissued the same year
in pamphlet form, under the title Über die Gefährdung des Wohlstands und Charakters
der Teutschen durch die Juden.)
60. [‘‘daß diese Kaste mit Stumpf und Stiel ausgerottet werde, indem sie offenbar
unter allen geheimen und öffentlichen politischen Gesellschaften und Staaten im
Staat die gefährlichste ist’’]. Fries 1816, 250, 244, 254, 256.
61. Fries 1816, 260–61.
62. Sterling 1950, 116. On Fries, see also Kohn 1960, 94.
63. Westfälische Anzeiger, 19 Oct. 1816, quoted in Steinschulte 1933, 214.
64. Menzel 1818, 52, 54–55. See also Kohn 1960, 95–96.
65. From a resolution adopted by the Heidelberg Burschenschaft in 1818, quoted
in Haupt 1907, 105.
66. Carové 1818, 67, 70, 140, 196–97; Toews 1980, 85, 134–36. On the romantic
nationalists’ response to Carové’s arguments, see Avineri 1963, 148–51.
67. Ascher 1991, 213, 215, 214. On Ascher’s biography, see Hacks 1991.
68. Sorkin 1987, 20; Rürup 1975.
69. Quoted in Schulze-Wesen 1929, 59–60.
70. [Oken] 1817, GStA PK, XII. HA IV Flugblätter, Nr. 318, cols. 1557–58. See
also Stacke 1881, 2: 684; Sterling 1950, 118.
71. [Oken] 1817, GStA PK, XII. HA IV Flugblätter, Nr. 318, cols. 1555–56.
72. See, for example, Hagen 1980.
73. Botzenhart and Hubatsch 1957–74, 2/1, 396–97; Hagen 1980, 76–77.
74. Wirth, speech at the Hambach Festival, 27 May 1832, in Müller and Schöne-
mann 1991, 37.
75. Speech to the Frankfurt National Assembly, 26 July 1848, in Müller and
Schönemann 1991, 30–31.
76. Müller and Schönemann 1991, 9, 11–15; Nipperdey 1983, 626–28.
 notes to pages 122–135 259

77. Sterling 1950, 107–13.

78. See, for example, Stern 1961.

Chapter 6
1. Branig 1972, 246–48; GStA BPH, Rep. 192, Wittgenstein, VII, K 6(e), Bl. 5, 7–9,
16–19, 33–37.
2. Branig 1972, 248 (n. 5), 249; GStA BPH, Rep. 192, Wittgenstein, VII, B, Nr.
6, Bl. 21–27; VII, K 6(e), Bl. 34–35. See also Müsebeck 1911, 151–94; Schoeps 1963,
217–66.
3. Plehwe to Frederick William III, undated (May 1819?), (handwritten copy),
GStA BPH, Rep. 192, Wittgenstein, VII, B, Nr. 6, Bl. 26. According to Plehwe’s friend
Ludwig von Gerlach, Plehwe had written an earlier letter to the king addressing him
as Du in Dec. 1817 (Schoeps 1963, 261–62).
4. Hardenberg to Wittgenstein, 3 June 1819, in Branig 1972, 249.
5. See pp. 63–65 and 74–83.
6. Schissler 1978, 130–44; Rosenberg [1958] 1966, 220–26.
7. Wehler 1987, 1:363–66.
8. The king of Württemberg proposed a constitution in 1815, but an elected
representative assembly rejected the document. A revised version was adopted by
royal decree in 1819. Bavaria and Baden both implemented constitutions in 1818.
Other German states that adopted constitutions during the decade after the Vienna
Congress were Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt (1816), Schaumburg-Lippe (1816), Waldeck
(1816), Sachsen-Weimar (1816), Sachsen-Hildburghausen (1818), Liechtenstein (1818),
Hanover (1819), Brunswick (1820), Hesse-Darmstadt (1820), and Sachsen-Meiningen
(1824, united with Hildburghausen in 1829). By 1848, only four German states re-
mained without constitutions: Austria, Prussia, Oldenburg, and Hesse-Homburg
(Sheehan 1989, 411–16, 393–99; also Haake 1921, 53).
9. Mager 1974, 343. On Hardenberg’s plans for the reorganization of Germany,
see also Sheehan 1989, 398–401; Botzenhart 1968, 26–32, 35–37.
10. Sheehan 1989, 400–403, 411, 417–19; Nipperdey 1983, 90–91; Aretin 1954,
718–27.
11. Haake 1915, 28:211; Müsebeck 1913–14, 147.
12. In Schmidt 1890, 100–121. See also Sheehan 1989, 398; Nipperdey 1983, 93–
94.
13. Schmidt 1890, 104–05. Humboldt argued that since the ‘‘old constitution’’ of
the Reich had been irretrievably lost, the ‘‘unification of Germany’’ would best be
achieved through an ‘‘association of states’’ (Staatenverein) through which states
would pool their resources for common defense and coordinate domestic policies.
Such an arrangement, he noted, would depend on the ‘‘firm, consistent, and un-
wavering agreement and friendship of Austria and Prussia’’ (Ibid., 105, 107–8).
14. In July 1814, Stein and Hardenberg met at Frankfurt, concurring that ‘‘in
every German state a ständische Verfassung should be established.’’ That October,
during the Vienna Treaty negotiations, Hardenberg supported an accord among Aus-
tria, Prussia, and Hanover, proposing Landstände with the right to assess taxes,
participate in government spending decisions, and vote on legislation (Haake 1921,
52–53; Sheehan 1989, 398–400).
15. In Mar. 1815, Hardenberg received a letter from Justus Gruner, the governor
of the Rhine district of Berg, requesting his support for a ‘‘secret association for
260 notes to pages 135–140

Germany.’’ Declaring that Germany must be ‘‘united as one people under one ruler,’’
Gruner called for the creation of a ‘‘constitutional bond’’ through the ‘‘unification
of the German nation’’ under the Hohenzollern dynasty. Gruner informed Harden-
berg of a secret organization led by Justizrat Carl Hoffmann, which sought to gather
support for this plan in the smaller German states. Hardenberg approved Gruner’s
request on 5 June, without having informed the king or anyone else; and the chan-
cellor secretly paid the costs of the organization out of Police Ministry funds. (Gruner
to Hardenberg, 25 Mar. 1815, in Gruner 1906, 491–92, 497, 507; Haake 1915, 28:
215–17).
16. For example, Sheehan 1989, 421; Klein 1965, 192. Only Paul Haake has given
a serious treatment of the ideas of Ancillon, who was by far the most intellectually
interesting figure associated with the Prussian Reaction (See Haake 1920; also Haake
1915, esp. 28:182–209).
17. Ancillon to Crown Prince Frederick William, 28 Oct. 1813, quoted in Haake
1920, 61.
18. Ancillon, ‘‘Denkschrift über Verfassung in Preußen,’’ undated (Apr. or May
1815), GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 92, Albrecht, Nr. 61, Bl. 2; also Haake 1913, 26:221.
The date is implied by Haake 1915, 28:180–82.
19. GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 92, Albrecht, Nr. 61, Bl. 2–11; Haake 1915, 28:187–89.
20. Haake 1921, 53–57; also Haake 1913, 26:561–62.
21. Huber 1978, 1:61–62; Haake 1921, 55, 63–65.
22. On this question, Hardenberg’s revisions to the original draft of the edict
(which was written by his assistant Friedrich August von Stägemann) provide a
partial answer. In several instances, Hardenberg replaced traditional political terms
that appeared in Stägemann’s draft with more modern and neutral ones. For example,
he substituted the newer word ‘‘provincial estates’’ (Provinzialstände) for the more
traditional ‘‘estates of the countryside’’ (landschaftlichen Stände). On the king’s insis-
tence, he used the word Landes-Repräsentanten in place of Reichsstände, because
Frederick William wanted to avoid implying a connection to the former Reichsstände
of the Holy Roman Empire (Koselleck 1981, 214–15).
23. On the fluidity of political alignments in Prussia during this era, see Levinger
1990a; Brose 1993.
24. Brose 1997, 84–85.
25. Quoted in Brose 1997, 88; see also Simon [1955] 1971, 134–35.
26. Hofmeister-Hunger 1994, esp. 201–3, 233–45.
27. Quoted in Haake 1917, 30:329–30.
28. GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 92, Hardenberg, H 15 1⁄2, Bl. 1 (M).
29. Ibid., Bl. 42 (M).
30. Hardenberg, draft of a royal response to the Koblenzer Address, 19 Feb. 1818,
ibid., Bl. 45 (M).
31. Kaufmann 1928, 33. Kaufmann does not identify the source of this remark.
32. Frederick William III to Hardenberg, 23 Feb. 1818, GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 92,
Hardenberg, H 15 1⁄2, Bl. 47 (M).
33. Hardenberg to Frederick William III, 10 Mar. 1818, GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 92,
Hardenberg, H 15 1/2, Bl. 70 (M).
34. In a letter to Görres of 31 Jan. 1818, Hardenberg called the pamphlet’s de-
scription of Görres’s discussion with Hardenberg ‘‘richtig und sehr schön,’’ with the
exception of a minor inaccuracy regarding the abolition of Leibeigenschaft in Prussia.
GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 92, Hardenberg, H 15 1/2, Bl. 39 (M).
35. Ibid., Bl. 63, 64 (M).
 notes to pages 140–147 261

36. Ibid., Bl. 65.

37. Frederick William III, ‘‘An die Einwohner der Stadt Coblenz und der Städte
und Gemeinde des Coblenzer Regierungs Departements,’’ 21 Mar. 1818 (draft), ibid.,
Bl. 91 (M); see also Haake 1916, 29:366–67.
38. Frederick William III to Hardenberg, 21 Mar. 1818, GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 92,
Hardenberg, H 15 1/2, Bl. 90 (M).
39. Haake 1917, 30:319–20.
40. Schnabel [1929–37] 1987, 2:253–55; Sheehan 1989, 407; Wehler 1987, 2:337.
On Sand, see Heydemann 1986, 7–77.
41. De Wette to Sand’s mother, 31 Mar. 1819, GStA BPH, Rep. 192, Wittgenstein,
V, 5, Nr. 19, Bl. 3.
42. Ibid. On de Wette, see also Schnabel [1929–37] 1987, 2:255; Nipperdey 1983,
281–82.
43. Eylert, opinion on de Wette’s letter (undated), GStA BPH, Rep. 192, Witt-
genstein, V, 5, Nr. 19, Bl. 14.
44. Ibid., Bl. 15–16.
45. Ibid., Bl. 35. See also Schnabel [1929–37] 1987, 2:262; Wehler 1987, 2:341.
46. Pauli 1819, 306.
47. Carové, Ueber die Ermordung Kotzebue’s, quoted in Pauli 1819, 314; see also
309–13.
48. Pauli 1819, 309.
49. Carové, Ueber die Ermordung, quoted in Pauli 1819, 314.
50. Hoffmeister 1969–77, 2:242–44, 455–68.
51. For example, Büssem 1974.
52. Hardenberg to Wittgenstein, 4 Apr. 1819, in Branig 1972, 248.
53. Wittgenstein, ‘‘Promemoria über Untersuchung der Umtriebe und Manahmen
gegen sie,’’ 24 June 1819, GStA BPH, Rep. 192, Wittgenstein, VII, B, Nr. 5, Bl. 2.
54. Quoted in Sheehan 1989, 407.
55. Simon [1955] 1971, 208.
56. Schoeps 1968, 169–210.
57. Cabinet order to the Staatsministerium, 11 Jan. 1819 (handwritten copy),
GStA BPH, Rep. 192, Wittgenstein, V, 5, Nr. 22, Bl. 1–10; see also Levinger 1990a,
270.
58. Wehler 1987, 2:340.
59. Teplitzer Punkatation, 1 Aug. 1819, in Treitschke 1894–99, 2:634.
60. As early as Nov. 1818, Metternich had warned Prussian police minister Witt-
genstein: ‘‘Central representation through deputies of the people means the disso-
lution of the Prussian state.’’ He had urged that the Prussian king ‘‘never go further
than the establishment of provincial estates,’’ which he considered less dangerous
than a central representative body (Metternich to Wittgenstein, 14 Nov. 1818, in
Metternich-Winneburg 1881, 3: 171). By the time of the Teplitz Conference, Metter-
nich had become convinced that ‘‘the most important positions in the Prussian state
administration . . . are occupied by pure revolutionaries’’ and that the impending
adoption of a ‘‘democratic constitution in Prussia’’ would seal the demise of that
state (Metternich to Kaiser Franz, 1 Aug. 1819, ibid., 3:362).
61. Treitschke 1894–99, 3:756–61.
62. Levinger 1992, 282–84.
63. Hardenberg to Frederick William III, 3 May 1819, in Haake 1917, 30:344.
64. Haake 1917, 30:345–46; Stern 1894, 1:649–53; GStA BPH, Rep. 192, Wittgen-
stein, V, 6, Nr. 1, Bl. 6–12.
262 notes to pages 148–153

65. Haake 1917, 30:347; Stern 1894, 1:571–72.

66. Bernstorff, ‘‘Gutachten über den Verfassungsentwurf,’’ undated (May 1819?),
GStA BPH, Rep. 192, Wittgenstein, V, 6, Nr. 2, Bl. 22–26. This is an unsigned copy
of the original, but it corresponds in its content to a memorandum attributed to
Bernstorff by Ancillon (Ancillon to Wittgenstein, 20 May 1819, ibid., Bl. 37).
67. Ancillon to Wittgenstein, 20 May 1819, GStA BPH, Rep. 192, Wittgenstein,
V, 6, Nr. 2, Bl. 35.
68. Albrecht, opinion on the constitutional question, undated (May or June
1819), quoted in Haake 1917, 30:351–52, note.
69. Schuckmann to Wittgenstein, 13 May 1819, GStA BPH, Rep. 192, Wittgen-
stein, V, 6, Nr. 2, Bl. 27. See also Büssem 1974, 232. For a more detailed discussion
of these memoranda, see Levinger 1992, 288–94.
70. Haake 1919, 142–43.
71.Gesetz-Sammlung 1820, 10.
72. Meisner 1913, 35–46, 120–29. For a comparative perspective on theories of
monarchical authority elsewhere in nineteenth-century Europe, see Kirsch 1999.
73. Quoted in Treitschke 1894–99, 3:21; see also Sheehan 1989, 408–9. Metternich
offered a slightly clearer definition in Nov. 1820; he described the monarchical prin-
ciple as ‘‘der Grundsatz, nach welchem die oberste Staats-Gewalt ungetheilt in den
Händen des Monarchen bleibt und anderen Behörden nur eine regelmäige Mitwir-
kung bey bestimmten Zweigen der Gesetzgebung oder Verwaltung zugestanden
wird’’ (Bailleu 1883, 190). Concerning the date of this document, see Treitschke 1894–
99, 3:759–60.
74. The Bavarian charter stated: ‘‘The King is the head of state; he unifies in his
person all the legitimate powers of the state and exercises them under the conditions
established by the present constitution’’ (Barclay 1995, 8; Boldt 1975, 19).
75. Gentz completed a revised version of this essay on 5 Aug. 1819; the Karlsbad
Conference began the following day (Meisner 1913, 184–85).
76. Gentz, ‘‘Ueber den Unterschied zwischen den landständischen und
Repräsentativ-Verfassungen,’’ in Klüber and Welcker 1844, 221–22, 225, 227.
77. Metternich to Wittgenstein, 14 Nov. 1818, in Metternich-Winneburg 1881,
3: 171.
78. Hardenberg, ‘‘Ideen zu einer landständischen Verfassung in Preußen,’’ 11
Aug. 1819, GStA BPH, Rep. 192, Wittgenstein, V, 6, Nr. 4, Bl. 85.
79. Humboldt, ‘‘Denkschrift über ständische Verfassung,’’ Oct. 1819, in Hum-
boldt 1903–20, 12:389, 391.
80. Meisner 1913, 198.
81. Treitschke 1894–99, 3:131–41, 151–60; Stern 1894–1924, 2:1–61, 103–17.
82. The various powers entered the congress with widely differing agendas. Tsar
Alexander favored a joint military campaign by all five Great Powers to quell the
uprisings both in Italy and on the Iberian Peninsula. France and England, in contrast,
expressed reluctance about any direct intervention and sent only subaltern officials
to attend the Congress of Troppau. Austria and Prussia supported a middle course
that would avoid any involvement in Spain or Portugal, seeking only to suppress
the Italian revolts. Neither German power favored a joint European military alliance:
Austria, whose Italian client states were among those involved in the uprisings,
wanted to act alone, and Prussia, still saddled by crushing war debts from the
Napoleonic era, was happy to remain on the sidelines (Treitschke 1894–99, 3:151–
60; Stern 1894–1924, 2:118–27).
83. Treitschke 1894–99, 3:164.
 notes to pages 153–155 263

84. Ibid., 3:160–83; Stern 1894–1924, 2:128–81.

85. For example, Büssem 1974; Obenaus 1984, 149. Stamm-Kuhlmann depicts
Frederick William III as extremely reluctant to establish a constitution from the time
of the Vienna Congress onward, though he acknowledges that the king made no
final decision on this matter until 1820 or 1821 (1992, 416–44, 458–64). Brose, while
emphasizing Frederick William’s opposition to parliamentary rule, portrays the king
as a moderate on social and economic issues (1993, 32–34, 38–50, 56–69). Two works
that explore in detail the political events of 1819–1820 are Haake 1919, 32:109–80;
and Treitschke 1894–99, 2:588–607, 3:68–130.
86. Frederick William III to Hardenberg, 2 Oct. 1820, quoted in Haake 1919, 32:
164.
87. Stern 1886, 330, 328, 329. See also Haake 1919, 32:177–80; GStA BPH, Rep.
192, Wittgenstein, V, 6, Nr. 4, Bl. 81–82, 87–89.
88. ADB, 40:358–61.
89. Below is the complete text of Oberhofmeister von Schilden’s note to Voß,
under the heading ‘‘Äußerungen Sr. Majestät des Königs über die Einführung einer
ständischen Verfassung’’ (handwritten copy), undated (written before 10 Oct. 1820),
GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 92, Otto von Voß-Buch, B 19, Bl. 1 (M).
‘‘I. Das Versprechen hiezu sey zwar gegeben, da aber über die Art und Weise
seiner Erfüllung nichts bestimt sey, so ließen es sich durch eine, die Monarchie am
wenigsten beschränkende Form der Verfaßung lösen.
‘‘II. Die alten Stände wären ihrer früheren großen Rechte wegen, und durch
gründete Verhältnisse nicht ganz wiederherzustellen. Sr. Majestät könnte sich aber
ebensowenig entschließen, eine auf den neuen staatsrechtlichen Theorien gegründete
Constitution zu bewilligen.
‘‘III. Der König hält berathende Provinzialstände, die sich in wenig zahlreichen
Ausschüssen versammeln, dem Zustande und der Lage des Staates am an-
gemeßensten. Diese Provinzialstände würden sich nur mit den Gegenständen bes-
chäftigen, die ihnen vom Könige zur Berathung vorgelegt würden. Bey ihrer Ein-
führung wären die Verhältnisse der verschiedenen Provinzen sehr zu
berücksichtigen.
‘‘IV. Sr. Majestät urtheilten sehr besorglich über eine Versammlung von Reichs-
ständen. Sie hielten solche für einen gefährlichen Centralpunct in welchem revolu-
tionaire Absichten leise sich entwickeln könnten.
‘‘V. Der König äußerte: sich nie entschlieen zu können, eine ständische Verfas-
sung, die von ihm allein, aus gnädiger Absicht verliehen würde, beschwören(?) zu
können. Jede neue Bekräftigung landesväterlicher Pflichten, die ihn während seiner
während seiner ganzen Regierung geleitet hätten, wäre ihm ganz unmöglich.
‘‘Es fanden hierbey noch sehr richtige und lebhafte Bemerkungen gegen die Bair-
ischen und Würtembergschen neuen Verfassungen statt.
‘‘Sr. Majestät berührten die gute Stimmung des größten Theils der Königl. Un-
terthanen, aber auch daß Vieles geschehen sey um von Seiten der Administration
diese Stimmung zu verderben.
‘‘Diese nachtheilige Würkung sey nicht ganz leicht zu heben.
‘‘Die Gesetze der letzten Jahre wären zum Theil im neueren Geiste abgefaßt; ein
förmlicher Rückschritt sey nicht möglich, wohl aber eine zweckmäßige Leitung und
Anwendung dieser Gesetze, um größeren Nachtheil zu verhindern.
‘‘VI. Es war dem König angenehm zu vernehmen, daß das Resultat meiner Un-
terredung mit dem Herrn Minister von Voß, mit dem Ansichten Sr. Majestät über-
einstimmen.
264 notes to page 156

‘‘Besonders erfreulich war Sr. Majestät, was ich über des Herrn Ministers Mei-
nung: wegen Vermeidung des ganz Alten und ganz neuen in ständischen Angele-
genheiten sagen konnte, da der König bisher nur das Eine oder Andere Extreme in
dieser Materie gefunden hätte, wenn er den Fürsten Metternich und einige wenige
ausnähme.
‘‘Der König wünscht also, in gerechter Anerkennung der bewährten Einsichten
und der genauen Landeskenntniß des Herrn Minister von Voß, daß derselbe seine
Ansichten über die zweckmäßige Einführung einer ständischen Verfassung, in einem
kurzen Aufsatze, so schnell, als es die Wichtigkeit des Gegenstandes nur irgend
zulasse, Sr. Majestät vorlegen wolle.
‘‘Der König äußerte sich sehr gnädig und vertrauensvoll über den Herrn Minister
von Voß und dessen bekannte Ergebenheit für Seine Person.’’
90. Voß-Buch, ‘‘Ueber Constitution und Central Repraesentation’’ (handwritten
copy), 10 Oct. 1820, GStA BPH, Rep. 50, Frederick William IV, E 2, Nr. 1, Bl. 61
(M). (Another copy of this document is contained in GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 92, Otto
von Voß-Buch, B 19, Bl. 2–3 (M).)
91. Below is the complete text of Schilden’s letter to Voß, 9 Nov. 1820 (hand-
written copy), GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 92, Otto von Voß-Buch, B 19, Bl. 4 (M).
‘‘Euer Excellenz den Dank des Königs Majestät für den letzthin überreichten
Aufsatz zu erneuern, ist die erste und sehr erfreuliche Veranlassung dieses Schrei-
bens.
‘‘Sr. Majestät haben in jenem Aufsatze Euer Excellenz vieljährige treue Anhän-
glichkeit an Ihre Höchste Person und an den Staat mit wahrem Wohlgefallen und
gerechter Anerkennung wiedergefunden. Sie äußerten: der Minister von Voß hat
Recht, aber man ist schon zu weit gegangen.
‘‘Der König stimmt also für consultative Stände und deutet zuweilen auch auf
einen wenig zahlreichen Central-Ausschuß hin, dessen Berufung ihm Allein ver-
bliebe.
‘‘Die zweite Veranlassung dieses Schreibens ist: die Mittheilung der dem Könige
eingereichten Communal-Ordnungen. Euer Excellenz Gutachten darüber zu erhalten,
ist der Wünsch des Königs.
‘‘Mit ebenso merkbarem als wohlgegrundetem Vertrauen zu Euer Excellenz, hat
der König mir befohlen, diesen Wünsch auszudrücken. Zugleich darf Euer Excellenz
ich bemerken: wie(?) bei den nächsten Umgebungen des Königs die Ansicht befahl(?),
daß eine Commission zur Revision der eingereichten Communal-Ordnungen, auch
Untersuchung dessen, was hierin zur Ausführung kommen solle, und zur Einleitung
ständischer Verfassungen gebildet werde, Euer Excellenz aber an der Spitze dieser
Commission Sich befinden möchten.
‘‘Ob Euer Excellenz dem Könige anheim stellen wollten: eine solche Commission
zu ernennen, und Sich zu deren Leitung entschließen könnten, davon hängt nicht
allein deren Gründung, sondern ganz besonders ihr Erfolg ab.
‘‘Von den fünf Mitgliedern der bisherigen Communal-Commission, deren Arbeiten
Euer Excellenz vorliegen, würde keines sich in der neuen Commission befinden, wohl
aber Euer Excellenz Vorschläge von großem Einfluß auf ihre Zusammensetzung sein
können.
‘‘Euer Excellenz kennen die Lage der Sachen und die Stellung der Personen so
genau, um Selbst einzusehen: wie entscheidend Ihr Entschluß und wie höchst wün-
schenswerth Ihre Einwürkung in diese so wichtige Angelegenheit sein wird. Geneh-
migen Euer Excellenz den erneuerten Ausdruck meiner höchsten Verehrung, mit
welcher ich die Ehre habe zu sein.’’
 notes to pages 156–159 265

92. Hardenberg noted in his diary on 11 Nov. 1820: ‘‘Plan du roi d’abdiquer que
W[ittgenstein] m’a communiqué. C’est de peur de la constitution et de ses suites, de
ses difficultés’’ (quoted in Haake 1919, 32:165; see also Treitschke 1894–99, 3:171–
73).
93. Voß, opinion on the proposals for a communal ordinance, 16 Nov. 1820, GStA
PK, I. HA Rep. 92, Otto von Voß-Buch, B 19, Bl. 5 (M).
94. Below is the complete text of Schilden’s letter to Voß, 3 Dec. 1820 (hand-
written copy), GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 92, Otto von Voß-Buch, B 19, Bl. 10 (M).
‘‘Euer Excellenz Gutachten über die Communal-Ordnungen habe ich gleich nach
der Rückkehr des Königs, Höchstdemselben zu überreichen die Ehre gehabt. Es hat
solches im höchsten Grade den Beyfall des Königs erhalten.
‘‘Sr. Majestät fanden es, zu Ihrem sichtbaren Wohlgefallen, mit Ihren eigenen
Ansichten übereinstimmend. Äußerten aber, daß nicht Alle solche theilten.
‘‘Dringender und wünschenswerther als je, scheint es mir daher, daß diesem
entgegengewirkt werde. Von diesem, für das Wohl des Königs und des Ganzen, so
wichtigen Gesichtspuncte auch früher schon geleitet, bin ich vielleicht in meinen
Wünschen gegen Euer Excellenz in jener Beziehung zu weit gegangen und habe ich
mich in den Mitteln zum guten Zwecke täuschen können. Eurer Excellenz besserer
Einsicht unterwerfe ich mich gerne.
‘‘Ich darf aber Ihnen nicht verhehlen, daß die Gefahr fortwährend sehr groß
ist, und daß unter den bestehenden Persönlichkeiten und Umständen Vieles ge-
wonnen seyn würde, weitere Nachtheile zu verhindern. Diese Ansicht allein ver-
mochte mich(?) einer Commission zu erwähnen. Sie sollte nicht eigentlich der Ver-
waltung gegenüber, sondern mit ihr verschmolzen, zusammenberufen werden.
Vielleicht gelänge es den Wunsch des Prinzen wegen einer Staatshaushaltungs-
Commission mit der zur Einführung ständischer Verfassungen zu vereinigen. Das
erste Geschäft würde dann das zweite wenigstens verschieben, und Zeit gewonnen
werden.
‘‘Euer Excellenz hoffe ich bald persönlich hier in Berlin aufwarten zu dürfen.
Herzog Carl, Fürst Wittgenstein, Ancillon rechnen auch auf Ihre Ankunft.
‘‘Euer Excellenz soll ich noch ganz besonders den Dank des Königs für die jüng-
sten Beweise Ihrer Anhänglichkeit, für das Gutachten, auszudrücken die Ehre haben.
Zugleich gereicht es mir zur größten Freude Euer Excellenz noch die Gesinnungen
von Wohlwollen und höchst gerechtem Vertrauen mitzutheilen, welche der König
bei dieser Veranlassung mir auch das Neue für Sie äußerte.
‘‘Genehmigen Sie den erneuerten Ausdruck der höchsten Verehrung, mit welcher
ich zu verharren die Ehre habe.’’
95. Treitschke 1894–99, 3:173–74, 226; Haake 1919, 32:170.
96. On this point, see, for example, Brose 1993, 68–71; Stamm-Kuhlmann 1992,
555.
97. Wehler writes:
The late absolutist German state [of the eighteenth century] embodied any-
thing but an unrestricted absolutist regime in which . . . all impulses origi-
nated with the monarch. In the Old Reich, absolutism remained always a
tendency rather than a full reality. Everywhere a dualism persisted between
the monarchical state [Fürstenstaat] and a nobility that was accustomed to
the exercise of power. (1987, 1:339)
See also Blänkner 1993.
98. This discursive triumph of ‘‘Germany’’ over ‘‘Prussia’’ was not yet complete:
for example, during the Revolution of 1848, the representative assembly convening
266 notes to pages 163–166

in Berlin was called the Prussian National Assembly. Such occurrences of the word,
however, were rare after 1820.

Chapter 7
1. ‘‘Opinion concerning the Kreis- and Kommunalordnung,’’ GStA BPH, Rep. 192,
Wittgenstein, V, 6, Nr. 8, Bl. 15. This document is an undated and unsigned copy;
‘‘Minister v. Voß Januar 1821’’ is written in pencil at the top of the first page.
2. Branig 1965, 184, 191–92; Obenaus 1971, 1:415.
3. Developments in the Prussian Rhineland varied somewhat from the pattern
analyzed here, both because the government faced challenges in integrating these
new territories into the Prussian state after 1815 and because the Rhenish provinces
had generally preserved a more vigorous system of local and regional self-
government during the eighteenth century than was the case in the older Prussian
provinces. Moreover, the political experience of the Rhineland during the Napoleonic
era was strikingly different from that of the core Prussian provinces. As part of the
Confederation of the Rhine, this region adopted the Napoleonic Code and reforms of
the French Revolution, such as the abolition of feudalism and the introduction of a
new system of municipal government. Much of this new legislation remained in force
in the Rhineland after 1815. On developments in the Rhineland, see Sperber 1991,
12–136; Weitz 1970. On the neighboring province of Westphalia, which was politi-
cally similar to the Rhineland, see Reif 1979.
4. While there was significant overlap between the conservatism of the aristoc-
racy and that of the civil service, important differences also existed, both in terms
of these groups’ motives and in terms of the theories they expressed. On the evo-
lution of conservatism within the Prussian civil service, see the excellent works by
Dittmer (1992) and Vogel (1983b), along with Rosenberg’s classic Bureaucracy, Aris-
tocracy, and Autocracy ([1958] 1966a).
5. Mannheim 1953, 95, 98–99, 117, 102, 115
6. Some insightful work has begun to move away from this view, arguing that
conservatism must be understood as a fundamentally innovative and modern phe-
nomenon. See, for example, Berdahl 1988; Neugebauer 1992; Dittmer 1992; Beck
1995; Ullmann and Zimmermann 1996. Berdahl, for example, writes that
the Prussian nobility traditionally justified, or ‘‘euphemized,’’ its domination
of the peasantry by means of an ideology of paternalism, that this paternal-
istic model of social relations began to dissolve under the capitalist transfor-
mation of agriculture at the end of the eighteenth century, and that the con-
servative politics of the nobility during the first half of the nineteenth
century were determined by an effort to reestablish the lineaments of patri-
monial rule and a paternalist ideology. (1988, 5)
7. For example, Ribhegge 1989.
8. For example, Valjavec 1951; Epstein 1966a, 12–20; Greiffenhagen 1967;
Schoeps 1958, 22.
9. Especially Kondylis 1986, 63–206; Neugebauer 1992; Schoeps 1964, 28–45;
Wehler 1987, 2:440–57; Christopher Clark 1993, 31–60.
10. Berdahl 1988, 6–7.
11. On this point, compare the interpretation of Kondylis, who argues that the
first half of the nineteenth century marked the ‘‘downfall’’ of conservatism, coin-
ciding with the demise of traditional hierarchical notions of the societas civilis
(1986, 387–507). This is an insightful but also an idiosyncratic claim, because it
 notes to pages 166–169 267

suggests that authentic conservatism disappeared forever at the very historical mo-
ment (the 1830s and 1840s) that the words ‘‘conservative’’ and ‘‘conservatism’’
were coined in Germany. (On the etymology of these words, see Vierhaus 1982, 3:
537–41.)
12. Brose 1993, 222–28, 239; Barclay 1995, 47–48, 84–98, 115–16, 120–26.
13. Sheehan 1989, 403–4.
14. On the malleability of tradition, see Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983.
15. See pp. 149–57.
16. The initial members of the Crown Prince’s Commission, which was established
on 19 Dec. 1820, were Crown Prince Frederick William, Wilhelm Ludwig Georg von
Sayn-Wittgenstein-Hohenstein, Johann Peter Friedrich Ancillon, Kaspar Friedrich
von Schuckmann, Daniel Ludwig Albrecht, and Friedrich von Bülow (Treitschke
1894–99, 3:173). The members of the second commission, which was established on
30 Oct. 1821, were the crown prince, Otto von Voß-Buch, Wittgenstein, Schuck-
mann, Friedrich Ludwig von Vincke, Albrecht, Ancillon, Regierungspräsident Schön-
berg, and Dunker (GStA BPH, Rep. 192, Wittgenstein, V, 6, Nr. 9, Bl. 1–21; Obenaus
1971, 411–12; Haake 1919, 32:170).
17. Letter of the Crown Prince’s Commission to Frederick William III, Jan. 1822,
GStA BPH, Rep. 192, Wittgenstein, V, 6, Nr. 9, Bl. 1–2, 21.
18. For example, Kurmärkische Ritterschaft to Frederick William III, 13 Aug.
1814, GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 92, G. v. Rochow, A III, Nr. 1, Bl. 21 (M); Deputies of
the Großen Ausschußes der Kur- und Neumärkischen Ritterschaft to Frederick William
III, 17 Mar. 1818, GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 74, H IX, Nr. 20, Bl. 23–24 (M).
19. Petition of the Ritterschaftlichen Stände des Westhavelländischen und der
Zauchischen Kreises to Frederick William III, 15 Nov. 1819 (handwritten copy), GStA
PK, I. HA Rep. 92, Hardenberg, H 28, Bl. 4–5 (M). See also Müsebeck 1918, 344–46;
Treitschke 1872, 431–32.
20. Frederick William III to the nobles of Zauche and Westhavelland, 28 Dec.
1819, in Müsebeck 1918, 366.
21. See, for example, the petition by the Kurmärkische Ritterschaft to the king
dated 29 Mar. 1820, protesting the abolition of the Brandenburg provincial credit
association (Landschaft). The nobles of the Kurmark were deeply upset by this law,
because the Landschaft was one of the only important provincial institutions that
remained under the direct control of the estates, and they complained that the mon-
archy had ‘‘seized property of the estates without promising any compensation.’’ But
in this petition, composed at the height of the Spanish Revolution of 1820, the
Kurmark nobles qualified their theoretical claims. Having repeated all of their ar-
guments about the contractual basis of monarchical rule, they concluded their plea
as follows: ‘‘Should Your Royal Majesty, for reasons unknown to us, reject the deed
[Verhandlung] and contract with your faithful estates, then we ask, for now, only the
protection of our property. We also request, in the near future, a hearing in Your
Majesty’s district court [Landes Gerichte].’’ The Kurmark nobles, in other words,
equivocated about the status of the contract between the king and the estates. They
now conceded that this contract might legitimately be overriden by a ‘‘law of the
land,’’ provided that this law were properly reviewed by the State Council and the
Ministry of State. Deputies of the Ritterschaft der Kurmärkischen Kreise to Frederick
William III, 29 Mar. 1820, GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 92, G. v. Rochow, A III, Nr. 5, Bl.
36, 39 (M).
22. For example, Frederick William III to Hardenberg, 16 Sept. 1822, GStA BPH,
Rep. 192, Wittgenstein, V, 6, Nr. 12, Bl. 1; also Brose 1993, 63–64.
268 notes to pages 169–172

23. Koselleck 1981, 515–17; Rosenberg [1958] 1966, 221; Berdahl 1988, 374–80;
Görlitz 1981, 218–20.
24. Brose 1993, 64. Other works that argue that the Prussian nobility was in
decline by the early nineteenth century include Hagen 1989, 302–35; Botzenhart
1983, 450.
25. Brose 1993, 62–65; Koselleck 1981, 80–83, 515; Berdahl 1988, 77–90, 273–80.
26. Brose gives the following figures for the percentages of bourgeois appointees
to various branches of the Prussian government: officer corps: 46 percent bourgeois
in 1818; foreign service: 50 percent in 1830; top provincial administration: 76 percent
in 1820; business department: 100 percent in 1824; leading Seehandlung staff: 88
percent in 1824; artillery officer corps: 58 percent in 1830 (1993, 58). See also Ko-
selleck 1981, 680–90.
27. Koselleck 1981, 689.
28. Sitzungsprotokolle der Kommission des Kronprinzen, Dec. 1821, GStA BPH, Rep.
192, Wittgenstein, V, 6, Nr. 9, Bl. 15. In practice, there was some variation from this
principle. In Brandenburg’s Kurmark, this principle was observed: the nobility was
granted twenty-two delegates, the towns fourteen delegates, and the peasantry eight.
In West Prussia, however, the nobility received fifteen delegates, the towns thirteen
delegates, and the peasantry seven delegates. In Saxony, the nobility received thirty-
five delegates and the towns and peasantry a combined total of thirty-seven. In the
Rhine provinces, the towns and peasantry received a greater representation than
elsewhere: the nobility was awarded twenty-nine delegates, the towns twenty-five
delegates, and the peasantry twenty-five delegates (Gesetz-Sammlung 1823, 131; 1824,
71, 102).
29. GStA BPH, Rep. 192, Wittgenstein, V, 6, Nr. 9, Bl. 18, 20. On the hybrid of
traditional and modern logic in the Provincial Estates Law, see also Obenaus 1984,
202–9.
30. Stahl, quoted in Obenaus 1984, 203–4; see also Berdahl 1988, 221–22.
31. Quoted in Berdahl 1988, 222.
32. Rochow, ‘‘Was kann geschehen um dem Adel aufzuhelfen?’’ 1 Oct. 1823,
GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 92, G. v. Rochow, A III, Nr. 10, Bl. 5 (M); see also Berdahl
1988, 225.
33. Petition of the Deputies of the Großen Ausschußes der Kur- und Neumärkischen
Ritterschaft to Frederick William III, 17 Mar. 1818, GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 92, G. v.
Rochow, A III, Nr. 1, Bl. 35 (M).
34. Brose 1993, 59–60, 65–66; Obenaus 1984, 486–91; Koselleck 1981, 589–99;
Mieck 1965. The quote is from a letter by Frederick William III of 30 Nov. 1824,
GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 92, Müffling, A 9, Bl. 2 (M), quoted in Brose 1993, 59.
35. The term Verbürgerlichung des Adels appears in Fehrenbach 1994; see also
Vierhaus 1987, 235–48. Obenaus concurs that a ‘‘partial modernization’’ of Prussian
society was achieved during the early nineteenth century (1984, 450). For similar
arguments about the transformation of the social identity of the nobility, see Schissler
1978; Reif 1979; Koselleck 1981; Vetter 1978. On the ‘‘feudalization thesis,’’ see
Kocka, ‘‘The European Pattern and the German Case,’’ in Kocka and Mitchell 1993,
25–27, as well as the various works in chapter 1, n. 10, of this study.
36. Rosenberg 1966b, 295.
37. See, for example, Eickenboom 1976, 68–76.
38. Marwitz to Hardenberg, 14 Sept. 1814, in Meusel 1908–13, 2/2:223, quoted
in Kondylis 1986, 294.
39. Quast, ‘‘Auszüge aus meinem Aufsazze über National-Repräsentation,’’ 28
 notes to pages 172–179 269

June 1812 (?), BLHA, Pr. Br. Rep. 37, v. Quast/Garz, Nr. 86, Bl. 41. The document,
which is in Quast’s handwriting, is unsigned and undated, but it appears to be a
copy of a memorandum to which Marwitz later refers in a letter to Quast of 25 Dec.
1812 (Meusel 1908–13, 2/2:168–71).
40. Voβ to Quast, 2 Mar. 1812, BLHA, Pr. Br. Rep. 37, v. Quast/Garz, Nr. 134,
Bl. 15. This letter appears to be the response to a letter from Quast, dated 24 Feb.
1812 (unsigned handwritten copy), ibid., Bl. 18.
41. See also Marwitz’s memorandum of 1812, which declared that the landowning
nobility was the ‘‘first member of the nation’’ and that it should ‘‘return to its original
vocation’’ by becoming a ‘‘caste of warriors’’ that would lead the realm to victory
in a patriotic war (Marwitz, ‘‘Über eine Reform des Adels,’’ Jan. 1812, in Meusel
1908–13, 2/2:156–57).
42. ‘‘Marwitz über den ersten Brandenburgischen Provinziallandtag,’’ 1824, in
Meusel 1908–13, 2/2:343.
43. Quast, letter to the Ritterschaft of the Ruppinschen Kreis, 18 May 1820, BLHA,
Pr. Br. Rep. 37, v. Quast/Garz, Nr. 91, Bl. 114–16.
44. Quast, memorandum of 30 Jan. 1822, in ‘‘Protokolle der Kommission zur
Zusammensetzung der Provinzialstände,’’ 1822, BLHA, Pr. Br. Rep. 37, v. Quast/Garz,
Nr. 95, Bl. 7, 8, 9. On patterns of landownership, see Schissler 1978, 72–73, 159–85.
45. Obenaus identifies the provincial diets of Brandenburg, Pomerania, and Sax-
ony as the most rigidly conservative ones during this period and those of the prov-
inces of the Rhineland and Prussia (formerly East Prussia and West Prussia) as the
most liberal (1988, 304).
46. See, for example, Schoeps 1968, 173–77, 183–86, 189–92, 195–97.
47. Klüber and Welcker 1844, 225, 221; see also chapter 6 above.
48. Haller [1820] 1964, 1:172, 1:359, quoted in Berdahl 1988, 234, 236. See also
Sheehan 1989, 591–93; Nipperdey 1983, 317–18; Barclay 1995, 36; Wehler 1987, 2:
445–46.
49. Berdahl 1988, 236–45. The quotes are from Haller [1820] 1964, in Berdahl
1988, 238–39.
50. Berliner Politisches Wochenblatt, 6 Apr. 1833, 83, quoted in Beck 1995, 47.
51. Barclay 1995, 33–34, 40–41; Berdahl 1988, 246–55; Beck 1995, 43–45, 79–81;
Schoeps 1964, 11–21; Kondylis 1986, 276–86, 305–6.
52. Tocqueville [1856] 1955.
53. Schoeps 1964, 31–32; see also Berdahl 1988, 255.
54. Stahl [1845] 1927, 6, 5, 8. On Stahl more generally, see Berdahl 1988, 348–
73; Sheehan 1989, 593–96; Nipperdey 1983, 379–80; Wehler 1987, 2:452–54; Toews
1980, 248, 254; Füßl 1988.
55. Berdahl 1988, 367, 371–72.
56. Stahl [1845] 1927, 25–26, 31.
57. Stahl [1845] 1927, 8, 37–40, 44–47, 55–57; also Sheehan 1989, 595; Berdahl
1988, 369–70.
58. Schoeps 1964, 31.
59. Berdahl 1988, 256–63.
60. GStA BPH, Rep. 192, Wittgenstein, V, 6, Nr. 9, Bl. 2.
61. Ibid., Bl. 8, 10, 16–17, 19–20. See also ‘‘Allgemeines Gesetz wegen Anordnung
der Provinzialstände,’’ 5 June 1823, Gesetz-Sammlung, 1823, 129–45; Obenaus 1971,
412.
62. Neugebauer 1992, 326–27, 336–41.
63. Obenaus 1971, 412; see also 428–29, 437; Obenaus 1984, 419–47; Arndt 1902.
270 notes to pages 180–187

64. Rosenberg [1958] 1966, 203.

65. Schissler 1978, 130–44; Rosenberg [1958] 1966, 220–26.
66. Schissler 1978, 144.
67. Brose notes that King Frederick William III, ‘‘never convinced of his own
infallibility,’’ did not oppose a single recommendation of the Council of State from
its formation in 1817 until his death in 1840 (1993, 63).
68. Obenaus 1971; Obenaus 1984, 516–51; Stamm-Kuhlmann 1992, 416–581; Bar-
clay 1995, 49–126; Blasius 1992, 57–112.
69. See, for example, Dittmer 1992, 238.
70. Obenaus 1984, 205–6.
71. Neugebauer 1992, 390–98, 414–15; Obenaus 1984, 407–10, 583–94.
72. Dohna, letter of 24 Oct. 1824, quoted in Neugebauer 1992, 389–90.
73. Neugebauer 1992, 391–92.
74. The main historiographical approaches to this question are reviewed in
Obenaus 1988, 305–8.
75. Obenaus 1988, 322–28.
76. Quoted in Obenaus 1984, 412.
77. Treitschke 1894–99, 5:141; quoted in Neugebauer 1992, 415.
78. Neugebauer 1992, 414–15, 435–37; Dittmer 1992, 194–95 (the quote is from
Dittmer).
79. Quoted in Neugebauer 1992, 461–62.
80. The Rittergutsbesitzer Waner of Lissnau, petition of 9 Mar. 1843, quoted in
Neugebauer 1992, 436–37.
81. Dittmer 1992, 239.
82. Quoted in Dittmer 1992, 177.
83. Dittmer 1992, 181–82.
84. ‘‘Allgemeines Gesetz wegen Anordnung der Provinzialstände,’’ 5 June 1823,
Gesetz-Sammlung 1823, 130.
85. See pp. 135–36 and 146–49, as well as Levinger 1990a.
86. Ancillon, ‘‘Gutachten über den Bericht der Kommission des Kronprinzen über
den Entwurf Hardenbergs,’’ 12 Jan. 1821, GStA BPH, Rep. 192, Wittgenstein, V, 6,
Nr. 8, Bl. 22–23.
87. Wittgenstein, ‘‘Bemerkungen zu dem Entwurfe des Gesetzes für die Branden-
burgischen Provinzial Stände,’’ unsigned and undated (but contained in the same
folder with the draft version of the law and the commission report of 14 Sept. 1822),
GStA BPH, Rep. 192, Wittgenstein, V, 6, Nr. 15, Bl. 11.
88. Compare also the views of Voß, who declared on 5 Apr. 1818 that the adop-
tion of a constitution was both ‘‘desirable’’ and ‘‘nearly inevitable’’: ‘‘Eine Konsti-
tution [ist] für den Staat nach dem sich entwickelnden Geiste der Zeit, und für die
Möglichkeit, daß doch in später Zukunft einmal irgend ein Regent demselben nicht
entsprechen könne, allerdings wünschenswerth, und fast unvermeidlich.’’ GStA PK,
I. HA Rep. 77, Titel 514, Nr. 28, Bl. 256 (M).
89. Quoted in Sheehan 1989, 727.
90. Stahl [1845] 1927, 8; Barclay 1995, 96, 129, 187, 248–50; Füßl 1988.
91. Radowitz, quoted in Beck 1995, 66; see also Barclay 1995, 185–213; Sheehan
1989, 711–15.
92. Frederick William IV to Ernst Senfft von Pilsach, 9 July 1854, GStA PK, I.
HA Rep. 92, Ernst Freiherr Senfft von Pilsach, B, Nr. 8, Bl 12 (M), quoted in Barclay
1993, 152.
93. Grünthal 1987, 46; see also Schwentker 1988; Retallack 1991.
 notes to pages 187–199 271

94. On this point, see, for example, Barclay 1995, 49–55.

95. In this connection, it is noteworthy that nobles from East and West Prussia,
many of whom strongly advocated a constitution during this era, were also generally
more willing than aristocrats from other provinces to accept modifications to their
traditional privileges, such as the abolition of patrimonial justice powers. (Obenaus
1988, 304–20). See also Neugebauer 1992, 415.
96. Dittmer 1992, 244.

Chapter 8
1. Henry E. Dwight, Travels in the North of Germany (New York: G. & C. & H.
Carvill, 1829), 166, quoted in Knudsen 1990, 113.
2. Knudsen 1990 130, 114, 131.
3. Toews 1980, 211, 213, 216; Sheehan 1978, 20–21.
4. See chapter 3 above.
5. Langewiesche 1988, 28. On Hegel’s theory of civil society, see also Sheehan
1978, 33–34; Manfred Riedel’s essays ‘‘Hegels Begriff der ‘bürgerlichen Gesellschaft’ ’’
and ‘‘Natur und Freiheit in Hegels Rechtsphilosophie,’’ in Riedel 1975.
6. Hegel 1821, §182, §183, §185.
7. Ibid., §185, addendum to §185; §205.
8. Sietze, Grundbegriff preussischer Staats- und Rechtsgeschichte als Einleitung in
die Wissenschaft des preussischen Rechts (Berlin: F. Laue, 1829), quoted in Toews 1980,
120.
9. On the traditions of Right, Center, and Left Hegelianism, the standard work
is Toews 1980.
10. Whitman 1990, 233, 95.
11. Toews 1980, 357–59. (This quote dates from the autumn of 1841.)
12. Ruge, ‘‘Der preußische Absolutismus und seine Entwickelung’’ (1841), in
Ruge 1988, 4:1–59.
13. Ruge 1988, 4:18, 58–59.
14. See chapter 2, n. 52.
15. Toews 1980, 357–58, 361.
16. Ruge, ‘‘Der preußische Absolutismus,’’ in Ruge 1988, 4:58.
17. Brandt 1968, 5–7, 280–81.
18. Langewiesche 1988, 21.
19. Schneider 1952; Haake 1916, 29:305–10; Haake 1914, 247, 265; Brose 1993,
63.
20. Quoted in Langewiesche 1988, 26.
21. Quoted in Sheehan 1978, 39.
22. Schleunes 1979, 315–16; Baumgart 1990, 103; Nipperdey 1983, 451–82; Weh-
ler 1987, 1:472–85; Schnabel [1929–37] 1987, 1:408–57; König 1972.
23. Schleunes 1979, 322, 323, 340. The most thorough recent account of
nineteenth-century Prussian elementary schooling is Kuhlemann 1992.
24. Quoted in Langewiesche 1988, 18.
25. See chapter 3, n. 1, and chapter 4, n. 3.
26. ‘‘Proklamation an sämtliche Bewohner des preußischen Staates,’’ 21 Oct. 1808,
quoted in Baumgart 1990, 35.
27. In Winter 1931, 371.
28. ‘‘Promemoria’’ to Süvern’s draft of an educational reform bill, 1819, quoted
in Schleunes 1979, 332.
272 notes to pages 199–209

29. Draft of the school reform bill, 1819, quoted in Baumgart 1990, 79.
30. Schleunes 1979, 326–32. See also chapter 4, n. 6.
31. Barkin 1983, 33. The reference here is to a remark by David Landes (1969).
32. Quoted in Barkin 1983, 41. The second quote is from the Pennsylvania ed-
ucator Enoch Wines, ibid., 48.
33. Report of the Erziehungskommission to Frederick William III, 5 Feb. 1821
(signed by Bishop Eylert, Regierungsrath Shulz, Regierungsrath Beckedorff, and Con-
sistorialrath and Director Snethlage), GStA BPH, Rep. 192, Wittgenstein, V, 5, Nr.
26, Bl. 37, 38, 39, 50.
34. Beckedorff ’s opinion on Süvern’s education reform bill, quoted in Schleunes
1979, 333.
35. Schleunes 1979, 333–34. The quote is from Beckedorff 1825, 32.
36. Beckedorff 1825, 32.
37. H. Brunnengräber, Ludolf von Beckedorff: Ein Volksschulpädagoge des 19. Jahr-
hunderts (Düsseldorf, 1929), 28, quoted in Schleunes 1979, 333.
38. Schleunes 1979, 332–35; Baumgart 1990, 88–102.
39. In Botzenhart and Hubatsch 1957–74, 2/1:394. See also chapter 3, n. 38.
40. On the several proposals for a Prussian Kreisordnung, see Unruh 1968.
41. Treitschke, ‘‘Der erste Verfassungskampf,’’ 438–41; Deutsche Geschichte, 3:98–
113.
42. Report of the third constituent committee (Friese, Köhler, Eichhorn, von Ber-
nuth, Streckfuds, Daniels, Vincke), 7 Aug. 1820, GStA BPH, Rep. 192, Wittgenstein,
V, 6, Nr. 4, Bl. 188, 159, 160. Part of this document is reprinted in Unruh 1968, 31–41.
43. Kant, ‘‘Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?’’ in Kant 1968, 11:53.
44. GStA BPH, Rep. 192, Wittgenstein, V, 6, Nr. 4, Bl. 159.
45. Hagen 1980, 82–117. (The quote from Altenstein is on 82.)
46. See, for example, chapter 6, n. 21 and n. 22.
47. Humboldt, ‘‘Denkschrift über Preußens ständische Verfassung,’’ 4 Feb. 1819,
in Humboldt 1903–20, 12:232–35, 12:279–81; Treitschke 1894–99, 2:498–500.
48. Humboldt 1903–20, 12:293–94; Treitschke 1894–99, 2:499–500.
49. Hardenberg, ‘‘Ideen zu einer landständischen Verfassung in Preußen,’’ 11
Aug. 1819, GStA BPH, Rep. 192, Wittgenstein, V, 6, Nr. 4, Bl. 84–85; reprinted in
Treitschke 1894–99, 2:637.
50. Humboldt, ‘‘Denkschrift über ständische Verfassung,’’ Oct. 1819, in Hum-
boldt 1903–20, 12:389, 391.
51. Gesetz-Sammlung 1820, 10.
52. Heymann 1925, 157.
53. Quoted in Barclay 1995, 49.
54. Botzenhart and Hubatsch 1957–74, 2:208; see also chapter 2.
55. Barclay 1995, 51.
56. For a further discussion of these themes, see pp. 184–87 above and Barclay
1995.
57. Barclay 1995, 49, 51.
58. Quoted in Barclay 1995, 50.
59. I thank Dr. Eva Bliembach for calling this engraving to my attention and for
explaining its iconography. Concerning radical political activism in Cologne during
the early 1840s, see Sperber 1991, esp. 87–99, 105–20.
60. Obenaus 1984, 563–648.
61. Ibid., 521–51, 594–617.
62. Ibid., 649–50; Barclay 1995, 122.
 notes to pages 209–217 273

63. Barclay 1995, 127–29.

64. ‘‘Thronrede Sr. Maj. des Königs von Preußen, bei Eröffnung des Vereinigten
Landtages am 11. April 1847’’ (Leipzig: E. Pöhnecke & Sohn, 1847), 4, 11, 14, in
GStA PK, XII. HA IV, Nr. 12. Concerning Stein and Hardenberg’s views on represen-
tation, see, for example, chapter 3, n. 29.
65. GStA PK, XII. HA IV, Nr. 12, p. 5.
66. Trauttmansdorff to Metternich, 16 Apr. 1847, quoted in Barclay 1995, 128–
29.
67. ‘‘Adresse des Vereinigten Landtages an Se. Majestät den König,’’ in Bleich
[1847] 1977, 1:26–27.
68. Bleich [1847] 1977, 1:28; see also Barclay 1995, 130.
69. Bleich [1847] 1977, 2:271; see also Balster 1848, 33–36.
70. Quoted in Sheehan 1989, 628.
71. Sheehan 1989, 628; Barclay 1996, 131–41; Obenaus 1984, 649–716.
72. Nor did any of the hundreds of petitions received by the United Diet directly
challenge the principle of monarchical sovereignty. For a list of the titles of 474 such
petitions, see Bleich [1847] 1977, 1:585–606.
73. Siemann 1985, 70.
74. On women’s participation in the Revolution of 1848 through democratic
women’s associations, see Hachtmann 1997, 514–22.
75. Frederick William’s own words were more prosaic and less fervently nation-
alistic: ‘‘Ich habe heute die alten deutschen Farben angenommen, und Mich und
Mein Volk unter das ehrwürdige Banner des deutschen Reiches gestellet’’ (Siemann
1985, 70).
76. ‘‘Der deutsche Michel kann sich nur schwer zwischen Schlaf- und Jakobi-
nermütze entscheiden.’’ This title is found on the photograph of this print in the
Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz. The caption at the bottom of the picture reads:
‘‘Der deutsche Michel ist uneinig mit sich auseinander gegangen, wird sich aber bald
wieder zusammenfügen.’’ Anonymous lithograph, Leipzig, 1848.
77. Jahn, speeches to the Frankfurt Assembly, 15 Jan. and 17 Feb. 1849, in Jahn
1887, 2:1031–32, 1034. The vote regarding the abolition of hereditary nobility took
place on 2 Aug. 1848.
78. Jahn 1887, 2:1021–22.
79. Though Jahn’s position on the establishment of a hereditary Kaiser placed
him in the conservative minority in the Frankfurt Assembly, on other issues he
ranked as a moderate. A study of voting patterns in the Frankfurt Assembly of 1848
placed Jahn squarely in the middle of the political spectrum. Using a scale of 0 to
9, where 0 represented the most conservative delegates and 9 the most radical, Jahn’s
overall score was 5 (Matthiesen 1979, 130, note).
80. The vote count of 27 Mar. 1849 was 267–263 in favor of establishing a
hereditary title of Kaiser (Siemann 1985, 197).
81. Speech to the Frankfurt Assembly, in Jahn 1887, 2:1035, 1038.
82. Sperber 1991, 124–25.
83. Boldt 1971, 75–76. Similarly, concerning the 1848 revolutionaries, Rudolf Sta-
delmann declares:
But even these people who had their minds made up only wanted a cooper-
ation, a division of power between the people and the government, between
the legislation and the administration, between the chamber and the king.
An aspiration to establish, over and above this liberal dualism, an absolute
responsibility of the governed, an actual popular sovereignty, was only out-
274 notes to pages 217–231

lined by a very small circle of radicals, and even they had no clear concep-
tion of which organs must develop first to support a true self-government.
(1975, 44).
84. Sperber 1991, 266. On the democratic monarchists, see also Seypel 1988, 153–
57.
85. Sperber 1991, 226–27.
86. See chapters 5 and 6 above.
87. Carové 1848, 52, x.
88. Ibid., 77, 83, 55.
89. Proskauer 1974, 10:11–12. The most comprehensive study of Nees is Höpfner
1994, 9–102. I thank Dr. Höpfner for calling Nees’s writings to my attention.
90. Nees von Esenbeck 1848, 8.
91. Proskauer 1974, 10:12.
92. Nees von Esenbeck 1848, 12–13, 5–6.
93. Langewiesche 1993b, 43–44.
94. Hachtmann 1997, 273–74.
95. Ibid., 274–78, 514.
96. Ibid., 581; see also 555–82.
97. Ibid., 624–27, 866–67, 884–85. (The quote is from 626.)
98. Oettrich 1848, 3–4.
99. Kletke 1848, 4. Langewiesche describes ‘‘democratic monarchy’’ as an unsuc-
cessful ‘‘compromise formula’’ in 1848 (1988, 57).
100. Mattheisen 1979, 141–42.
101. Langewiesche 1988, 46.
102. Letter of 26 Mar. 1848, quoted in Langewiesche 1988, 47. The new Prussian
government, headed by Ludolf Camphausen, was formed on 29 Mar. 1848.
103. Boldt 1973, 621. See also Boldt 1971; Mattheisen 1979, 124–26.
104. Gailus 1990, 129–32, 431–57; Schwentker 1988, 72–117, 144–81.
105. Hachtmann 1997, 514–22.
106. A revised version of this Prussian constitution was promulgated in Jan.
1850. On the question of whether the Prussian Revolution of 1848 should be regarded
as a ‘‘failure,’’ see esp. Grebing 1986, 93–95; Wehler 1987, 2:778–89; Hachtmann
1997, 887–92.

Chapter 9
1. See the review of recent historical scholarship on this issue on pp. 4–9.
2. Anderson uses the term ‘‘high center’’ to refer to the nature of political and
religious authority in the premodern world, before the era of nation-states (1983,
40). My analysis suggests that this term may also be applied to the era of modern
nationalism, at least in the case of Prussia.
3. Nipperdey 1983, 451–52.
4. Quoted in Jeismann 1996, 1:294; see also 1:291.
5. Sheehan 1978, 282. Sheehan asserts that for German liberals prior to the Rev-
olution of 1848, ‘‘party is not an institution or even an entirely political category;
it describes a shared inner, moral condition and a way of viewing the world. . . .
The uncertainty that hangs over liberal views of the distribution of power between
Volk and Staat was generated by the deep ambivalence many of them felt about the
role of the state in German life’’ (1974, 163, 169). In a similar vein, Faber has argued
 notes to pages 231–241 275

that the nineteenth-century liberals attempted a ‘‘dubious symbiosis between civil

society and authoritarian state’’ (1975, 227).
6. Wolfgang Hardtwig makes this point in a study of public monuments erected
in Germany between 1871 and 1914. These monuments, he argues, reveal that the
German bourgeoisie continued to associate itself closely with the monarchy through-
out the imperial era. He interprets this iconography as evidence of a general ‘‘bour-
geois deficit’’ (Defizit an Bürgerlichkeit) in Germany (1990: 285–90).
7. For example, Sarcinelli 1990 (esp. the articles by Sarcinelli, Leggewie, Präto-
rius, and Oberreuter).
8. Botzenhart and Hubatsch 1957–74, 3:380. See also pp. 71–72.
9. Cabinet order to the Staatsministerium, 11 Jan. 1819 (drafted by Altenstein
and revised by Hardenberg), GStA BPH, Rep. 192, Wittgenstein, V, 5, Nr. 22, Bl. 1;
also Hardenberg to Wittgenstein, 28 Oct. 1818, in Branig 1972, 243. See also chapter
6 above.
10. Wehler 1985, 95–96.
11. For example, in a 1922 treatise, the prominent conservative legal theorist Carl
Schmitt expressed his scorn for the chaotic nature of parliamentary rule:
The essence of liberalism is negotiation, a cautious half-measure, in the hope
that the definitive dispute, the decisive bloody battle, can be transformed
into a parliamentary debate and permit the decision to be suspended forever
in an everlasting discussion. Dictatorship is the opposite of discussion.
([1922] 1985, 63)
Concerning the unhappiness of many members of the German political elite with
pluralistic parliamentary rule during the Weimar era, see also Dahrendorf 1967, 3–
16, 188–203, 314–27, 348–80; Fritzsche 1990, 6–13, 230–36; Kershaw 1987, 254–55;
Jarausch and Jones 1990, 303–6, 319–21.
12. Madison, Federalist 10, in Hamilton, Jay, and Madison [1787] 1901, 45–47.
13. This interpretive tendency is most pronounced among exponents of modern-
ization theory, who present a normative model under which a premodern order,
characterized by a feudal society and a monarchical political system, is ideally suc-
ceeded by a modern order defined by a capitalist economy and a government based
on representative democracy. These analyses often depict societies that do not con-
form to this model as following a deviant or pathological course of historical devel-
opment. The literature of modernization theory is discussed in Huntington 1976;
Wehler 1975; Brose 1993, 3–8.
14. One excellent such comparative study already exists: Nolte 1990.
15. See, for example, Levinger 1990b.
16. On this point, compare Baker’s definition of a revolution as a moment ‘‘in
which signification itself seems to be at issue in social life, in which there is a
consciousness of contested representations of the world in play’’ and ‘‘in which social
action takes the form of more or less explicit efforts to order or reorder the world
through the articulation and deployment of competing systems of meaning’’ (1990,
17).
17. On the concept of the societas civilis, see esp., Kondylis 1986.
18. See, for example, Sheehan 1989, 14–24.
This page intentionally left blank
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Hauptabteilung I: Die alten preußischen Reposituren
Rep. 74 H, Staatskanzleramt, Generalia und Staatskanzleramt (M)
II (Organisation der Behörden in den Provinzen)
IX (Stände)
X (Höhere Polizei)
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IV (Landschaftliche und ständische Verfassung)
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Albrecht
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Karl von Voß-Buch (M)
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 index

Page numbers followed by t. indicate tables

absolutism 1837), 135–36, 138, 148, 151, 168,

aims of Prussian, 23–24 185–86, 267n.16
as ally of revolution, 175–76 Anderson, Benedict, 100, 245n.27
Dahlmann’s view of, 197 anti-Semitism, 7, 8, 79, 112, 115–20,
Haller’s vs. Gerlach’s views, 175–76, 121, 122, 124, 230, 244n.12
178 ‘‘Appeal to Our Fellow Citizens’’ (13
Hegelian philosophy and, 194 February 1813), 90
Kant’s view of, 32–36 Archaeology of Knowledge, The
monarchical principle vs., 151–52 (Foucault), 13
nobility vs., 23–24, 158 aristocracy. See nobility
Prussian post-Napoleonic Wars Aristotle (384–322 B.C.), 20, 33, 36, 38
movement, 158–59 army, Prussian, 23, 41–42, 44, 74, 170
Prussian vs. French, 61 Arndt, Ernst Moritz (1769–1860), 105,
Ruge’s view of, 195–96 108–9, 113–14, 120, 134
Svarez’s defense of, 36–37 Articles of Confederation of 1815, 104,
See also enlightened absolutism; 139, 140, 167
monarchy, absolute Ascher, Saul (1767–1822), 112, 119,
Addresses to the German Nation (Fichte), 120
37, 63, 97–98 assemblies
Adelung, Johann Christoph (1732– aristocratic activism and, 75, 172
1806), 48 bicameral, 147, 203–4, 226
agricultural crises, 169, 182, 193 conservatives and, 185–87
Albrecht, Daniel Ludwig (1766–1835), Prussian experiments (1808–1815),
148, 149, 267n.16 51, 73, 74–76, 83–85, 89–95, 183,
Allgemeine Nationalrepräsentation. See 201–2
central representative assembly Prussian historical, 23, 24, 76
Allgemeines Landrecht, 26 reactionaries and, 158
Altenstein, Karl Freiherr von Stein zum Turgot’s proposed hierarchy of, 30
(1770–1840), 44, 45, 53, 55, 71, 73, unicameral, 219
75, 146 See also central representative
Carové’s letter and, 143, 144 assembly; provincial assemblies;
financial policies, 60, 61 specific bodies
on lack of social unity, 198 Assembly of Notables (1811; Berlin), 66,
Polish minority policies, 121, 203 75, 77, 82, 83, 84, 85–86, 183
Ancillon, Johann Peter Friedrich (1767– assimilation, 117

299
300 index

Association for Democratic Monarchy, bourgeoisie, 7, 26, 228

217 anti-Semitism of, 115–18, 124
Auerstädt, battle of (1806), 1, 31, 41, bureaucratic and military
233 appointments, 170
Auerswald, Hans von (1792–1848), 52, citizen militia plan, 74
53 citizenship qualifications, 57–58, 62,
Austria, 90, 131, 133–34, 135, 137, 153, 170
162 Democratic Club of Berlin members,
inclusion in unified Germany issue, 221
133, 223 intellectuals’ rhetoric, 98–99
Teplitz Accord, 146 landed estates purchases, 169, 171,
See also Metternich, Clemens Lothar 181
Graf Municipal Ordinance and, 57–58,
authoritarian government. See 62
absolutism national assembly delegates, 87
authoritarian personality, 7–8 nationalist discourse of, 97–125, 127–
Awakening, 175 29, 141–45
petitions by, 184
Baden, 90, 103, 133, 136, 168, 214 socially marginalized status, 99, 101
Baker, Keith Michael, 11 Stein’s reforms and, 55–58
balance of powers, 175, 197, 232, 234 university enrollment increases, 193
Barclay, David, 205, 207 See also popular nationalism;
Bauer, Bruno (1809–1882), 194 romantic nationalism
Bavaria, 90, 103, 133, 136 Boyen, Hermann von (1771–1848), 41
constitutional charter, 150, 155, 168 Brand, Johann Friedrich (1766–1842),
Becher, Johann Joachim (1635–1682), 116
37–38 Brandenburg, 53, 61, 72, 75, 77, 93, 96
Beckedorff, Ludolf von, 200–201 central representative assembly and,
Berlin 88
assembly, 222, 225 nobles’ petitions, 78–80, 81, 168–69,
cultural effects of repression, 191 171
Democratic Club membership, 220– provincial assembly and, 173, 182
221, 222 Bredow (noble), 87–88
French occupation of, 41, 44 Bremen, 139
Mittwochsgesellschaft, 28 Breslau, 81, 87, 89, 90, 212
Revolution of 1848 and, 212–13, 221 ceremonial entry of King and Queen
Berlin Assembly (1811). See Assembly into, 206
of Notables Nees von Esenbeck and, 219
Berliner Politisches Wochenblatt Breslau Workers’ Club, 219
(newspaper), 175, 177–78 bricolage, 47–49, 235
Bernstorff, Christian Günther Graf von Bülow, Friedrich von, 267n.16
(1769–1835), 148–49 Bundesakte of 1815, 150
bicameral assembly, 147, 203–4, 226 bureaucracy, 42, 44–45, 49–68, 75, 198–
Bildung. See educated citizenry 99, 231
Bismarck, Otto von (1815–1898), 232 aristocrats’ declining influence in,
Blackbourn, David, 8 169–70
Bock (justice commissioner), 84–85 aristocrats’ ruling alliance with, 179–
Bonald, Louis Gabriel Ambroise, 80
vicomte de (1754–1840), 150 bourgeois activists seen as threat by,
book burning, 111–12, 121 108
 index 301

bourgeois activist views vs., 98, 123, post-1815 policies, 103–4

124 protest against Gendarmerie Edict, 87
crystallization of nation concept, 129– Prussian misgivings about, 135–36,
59 151–52, 157, 238
Hegelian definition, 194 Raumer plan, 54
key reform features, 66–68, 230 Staatsrat and, 49, 71, 180, 197
popular political participation Stahl’s view of, 177
advocacy, 201–4 United Diet of 1847, 166, 185, 209–
public opinion appeals, 184, 188–89 12, 230
reform program influences, 233–36 War of Liberation and, 90
reform program motivation, 193, 227 See also constitutions; Frankfurt
Bürger. See bourgeoisie, citizenship National Assembly of 1848;
bürgerliche Freiheit (civil freedom), 92 provincial assemblies; Provisional
Burgsdorf (noble), 87–88 National Representation
Burke, Edmund (1729–1797), 25, 239 Christianity, 175, 178, 195, 200, 219
Burschenschaft movement, 105, 106–7, Jewish conversion advocacy, 117–18
108, 110, 112–13, 119, 120, 127, See also Catholicism; Protestantism
128, 138, 141, 143, 145, 214, 217 cities
anti-Semitism in, 122
cameralists, 25, 38, 47, 193, 228, 236 assembly delegates, 58, 88
Camphausen, Otto, 222 Napoleonic threats to, 229
Canning, Kathleen, 10 post–1815 Prussian urbanization, 21–
capitalism. See free market economy 22, 167
Carové, Friedrich Wilhelm (1789–1852), protests against Hardenberg reforms,
119, 120, 143–44, 217–18 81–82
Catholicism, 65, 114, 124, 133, 134, romantic nationalist activists and,
219, 223, 224t. 100
censorship, 34, 103, 139, 141–42, 144, self-government rights, 88–89
145, 146, 232 See also Municipal Ordinance of 1808
book burning, 111–12, 121 citizenship
easing of, 181, 184, 207–8, 230 French Jewish, 117
factors behind, 157, 158, 169, 217, German Revolution of 1848 issues,
238 224t.
Karlsbad Decrees establishing, 191 Jewish exclusion from, 67, 224
popular nationalist movement effects Prussian expansion of, 57–58
of, 158 women’s exclusion from, 65
central representative assembly, 12 civil servants. See bureaucracy
bureaucratic reformers and, 49–54, class struggle, 196
68, 71, 72, 83–86, 89–94, 137, 147– Clausewitz, Carl von (1770–1831), 44
48, 172, 203–4, 237 cockade, national, 65
conservative views of, 185, 186 collectivism, 6–7, 38
delegates’ petitions for, 87–88, 172 nationalistic movement and, 229–30
direct election proposal, 204 as romantic nationalist ideal, 98, 100,
Frederick William III and, 12, 83–84, 105, 124
85, 91–95, 103–4, 135–36, 156, Cologne, 212
157, 167, 204 Cologne Cathedral, 207
Frederick William IV and, 12, 209–12 Committee of East Prussian and
nobility and, 57, 76–78, 172, 178 Lithuanian Estates, 81, 92, 179,
popular political education and, 203– 181
5 common good, 20, 25–26, 38, 49, 76
302 index

communal life. See collectivism Hegel on, 24

communicative action, 245–46n.35 landständische vs. representative, 150–
communism, 214–15, 217, 234 51, 173
‘‘Concerning the Difference between mixed, 239
Constitutions Based on Estates and monarchical principle and rejection
Representative Constitutions’’ of, 149–57
(Gentz), 150 national sovereignty and, 230
Concordia, 28 nobility and, 72, 76–78, 84–85, 87,
Confederation of the Rhine, 1, 42–44, 89, 92, 168
116 romantic nationalists and, 103, 104,
Congress of Troppau. See Troppau, 105, 110, 111, 112–13
Congress of Spanish, 152, 153
conservativism, 163–89, 227–28 Stahl on, 177
ambivalence on representative Turgot on, 29–30
politics, 185–87 Voß’s arguments against, 155–56
attacks on educational reforms, 200, Contest of the Faculties, The (Kant), 32–
201 33
and ‘‘dis-invention’’ of nation, 165, copyright, 101
173–78, 239 Cortes constitution of 1812 (Spain), 152,
and failure of Revolution of 1848, 153
225 Council of State (Staatsrat), 49, 71, 180,
Hegelians and, 194 197
old vs. new, 172, 187–88 Craig, Gordon, 101
popular nationalism and, 238, 239 credit associations. See Landschaften
Prussian modernization process and, Critique of Pure Reason (Kant), 32
165 Crown Prince’s Commission (1820–21),
‘‘pseudoconstitutionalization’’ of, 187 167–68, 170, 171, 178, 186
public opinion appeals by, 184–85, ‘‘culture of political conflict,’’ 232
188, 189
Stahl theory and, 176–77, 185 Dahlmann, Friedrich Christoph (1785–
traditionalism vs., 165–67 1860), 197
constitutional monarchy, 187, 197, 226 Dahrendorf, Ralf, 7
constitutions Darnton, Robert, 101
Anglo-American tradition, 233–34, Darstellung (portrayal), 76
252n. 72 debt. See national debt; war tribute
conservative ambivalencies, 185–86 Declaration of the Rights of Man
debates over Prussian, 146–49, 156– (France; 1791), 26
57 deism, 27
decisive factor against national Delivery of the Address of the City
Prussian, 157 Koblenz, The (Görres), 139, 140
Frederick William III and, 104, 130, Demagogenverfolgung, 144
135, 136–37, 147–48, 149, 152–58, Demands of the Jews for German
181, 185, 203 Citizenship, The (Rühs), 117–18
Frederick William IV and, 12, 209– democracy
212, 226 Kantian view of, 33
French, 26 monarchical sovereignty and, 192,
German states and, 133, 136, 138, 217, 222
139, 140, 141, 150 Nees’s radical view of, 219
Hardenberg, Stein, and Humboldt romantic nationalist view of, 109–10
proposals, 54, 68, 135, 203–4 Democratic Club of Berlin, 220–21, 224
 index 303

Democratic Women’s Associations, 224 participatory politics and, 36, 163,

Demokratische Monarchie, Die (Nees), 201–203
219 Polish minority and, 202–3
Deutsch, Karl, 100 Prussian liberalism and, 192, 198–201
Deutsches Volkstum (Jahn), 114, 120 as Prussian reformers’ commitment,
diets. See assemblies 163
dissent, German fears of, viii, 16, 232. Prussian system as Western
See also harmony, politics of; educational reform model, 198–
repression 200, 231
divine-right monarchy, 13, 19–20, 166, revolutionary movement and, 213,
205, 206 218, 224t., 226
Dohm, Christian Wilhelm (1751–1820), as self-government basis, 36, 163,
28, 117 229
Dohna, Alexander von (1771–1831), 45, Stahl on, 176–77
53, 60, 61, 71, 75, 181 Stein on, 72
Dohna, Fabian von, 181–82 egalitarianism, 19, 58, 62–63, 67
Dönhoff, Count, 92 pietist, 128
Du (informal form of address), 107, 128, popular nationalist, 99, 102–108, 119,
144 120, 123, 144–45
‘‘Eine feste Burg ist unser Gott’’
East Elbian aristocrats, 75–76, 164, (Luther), 110, 127
240 Elba, 91, 136
East Prussia, 42, 44, 182 Eley, Geoff, 8
aristocratic complaints against Elsner (delegate from Silesia), 88, 90,
Hardenberg, 80–81 255n.58
aristocratic liberalism, 75, 93, 173 enlightened absolutism, 19–20, 31–39,
diet assemblage, 52, 60, 75, 81, 92, 68, 72
179, 181 Frederick the Great and, 5, 19–20
Landschaft, 52 Kant on, 33–36
East Prussian Committee of April 1815, paradoxes of, 37–39
92–93, 179 Prussian reform movement and, 31–
economy and economic theory 32
Enlightenment, 26–28, 38 see also monarchical principle,
German-Jewish friction, 122 monarchy
Hardenberg measures, 53, 54, 58–62, enlightened nationalism
71–72, 77, 78–79, 82, 95, 149, 163, aims of, viii, 5–6, 229–30
171, 205 distinctiveness of nineteenth-century
industrialization effects, 7, 193 Prussian political culture and, 233
plight of occupied Prussia, 44, 45– fundamental premises, 230
46, 51, 53 Hardenberg and Humboldt’s faith in,
Prussian liberal views, 182 204–5
See also free market economy initial appearance of, 226, 241
educated citizenry, 28, 29, 30, 35, 42, Left Hegelianism and Marxism as
46, 92 departures from, 196
Fichte program, 97, 106 legacy of, 16, 230–32, 240
Hardenberg on, 116 persistence of, 223–26
Jews and, 116, 117 premises underlying Revolution of
Marx on, 196–97 1848, 212
national sovereignty and, 63, 67, romantic nationalists and, 99, 123
213, 218, 226, 230 source of, 241
304 index

Enlightenment Finance Edict of 27 October 1810, 54,

blurred boundaries with 58–59, 77
romanticism, 99 Finckenstein, Friedrich Ludwig Karl
common good ideal, 38 Graf Finck von (1745–1818), 80,
economic theory, 26–28 82, 94
German vs. French, 22, 228 Follen, Karl (1795–1840), 108, 120, 123,
Kantian definition, 202 141, 240
political harmony ideal, 226 Foucault, Michel (1926–1984), 13, 14
Prussian conservative response to, France, 101, 131, 153
163, 165–66, 171 Jewish rights, 117
as influence on Prussian reform ‘‘monarchical principle’’ origination,
movement, viii, 5, 46, 55, 58, 76, 150
163, 228–29 Revolution of 1848, 212, 214, 221
equality before the law, 36, 58, 67, 74, Turgot and physiocrats, 5, 27, 29–31,
116, 123, 124t., 222, 224t., 255n.58 36, 38, 49, 60, 68, 226, 233
Erbuntertänigkeit, 23 See also French Revolution; Napoleon
Erziehungsstaat, 37 I; Napoleonic era
essentialist fallacy, 7, 8, 232–33, Francis II, Holy Roman emperor and
244n.12 emperor of Austria as Francis I
estates (land). See landed estates (1765–1838), 42
estates (social classes) Francke, August Hermann (1663–1727),
assemblies of, 36–37, 87 100
erosion of distinctions among, 183 Frankfurt National Assembly of 1848,
growing permeability of, 59, 74, 163, 121–122, 214, 215–16, 217–18,
169–71 221, 222, 223, 225
liberal argument for abolition of, 225 Frederick II (the Great), king of Prussia
moderate approach to changing, 155 (1712–1786), 5, 44, 68, 75
permanent disruption of, 200–201 absolute monarchy of, 34, 36, 159,
political ideology and interests of, 195
240 anti-Polish sentiment and, 121
political rights demands, 80–82 aristocratic ministerial appointments,
reformers’ approaches to, 228 169–70
traditional, 26, 62 army size, 23
See also bourgeoisie; hierarchical Freemasonry and, 28
society; nobility; peasantry Landschaften, 52
ethnic Poles. See Polish minority ruling philosophy of, 19–20
evangelicalism, 175 Frederick William, the Great Elector
Eximierten (‘‘exempted’’ burghers), 57 (1620–1688), 21
Eylert, Rulemann Friedrich (1770–1852), Frederick William I, king of Prussia
142–43, 145 (1688–1740), 51
Frederick William III, king of Prussia
fatherland, 64, 172 (1770–1840)
Ferdinand VII, king of Spain (1784– archconservative court camarilla of,
1833), 152 137–38
feudalism, 56, 117, 155, 178, 228 constitutional movement and, 104,
Feuerbach, Ludwig (1804–1872), 194, 130, 135, 136–37, 147–48, 149, 152–
196 58, 181, 185, 203, 263n.85, 263n.89,
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb (1762–1814), 264n.91, 265n.94
28, 32, 35, 37, 63, 105, 106 defensive political stance of, 205
background and views, 97–98, 99 education commission and, 200
 index 305

feudal reforms by, 56 Hardenberg trade legislation, 58–60,

German identity and, 65 82, 95, 171, 230, 235
Hardenberg and, 45, 60, 137, 141, Marxist philosophy vs., 196–97
157, 171 Freemasonry, 28–29, 32, 47, 235
Koblenz Address reaction by, 141 French Enlightenment, 22, 26–27, 228
Last Testament of 1827, 205 French physiocrats. See physiocrats
local representation and, 202 French Revolution, 7, 31, 47, 92, 131,
municipal protests to, 81–82 144, 153, 228, 233
nation concept and, 129, 130 citizenship rights, 117
nature of conservativism of, 166 fall of monarchy, 135
perceived threats by, 108, 138–41, intellectual bourgeoisie and, 101, 102
155, 157 Kant’s support for, 34
Plehwe’s letter to, 127–29 nationhood concept, 48–49, 67
post-1819 political views of, 146, 157 philosophical bases, 228
provincial diets and, 51, 104, 179 Prussian conservative response to,
relations with nobility, 168–69 165–66, 175–76
representative assembly views of, 12, as Prussian reform influence, viii, 55,
83–84, 85, 91–95, 103–4, 135–36, 58, 235
156, 157, 167, 204 French revolutionary wars, 5, 49
social changes and, 155–57 French Terror of 1793–1794, 221
Stein dismissal by, 59, 71 Freud, Sigmund (1856–1939), 47, 48
Stein reform proposal and, 31–32 Frey, Johann Gottfried (1762–1831), 28,
Svarez political theory and, 36–37 32
Treaty of Tilsit signing, 42 Fries, Jakob Friedrich (1773–1843), 111,
War of Liberation and, 89–90, 91 118, 119, 120
Frederick William IV, king of Prussia Friesen, Friedrich (1785–1814), 106
(1795–1861) Furet, François, 48–49
censorship easing and, 181, 184, 207–
8, 230 Gans, Eduard (1801–1877), 170
central assembly policies, 12, 209–12 Geertz, Clifford, 9
Christian state and, 195, 206 Geist der Zeit (Arndt), 108, 113–14, 120
constitution and, 12, 209–12, 226 Gendarmerie Edict of 1812, 86, 87, 91–
Crown Prince’s Commission, 167–68, 92, 95, 130, 255n.58
170, 171, 178, 186 Genealogy of Morals (Nietzsche),
enlightened nationalism and, 230 250n.15
fourth constituent committee and, General Assembly (proposed Prussian),
156–57 159
hopes raised by accession, 184 General Code of 1794, 38
monarchical offensive of, 187, 205– general will, 48–49, 76
13, 230 Gentz, Friedrich von (1764–1832), 150,
nature of conservativism of, 166 151, 152, 157, 173
Polish minority and, 122 Gerechtigkeit, 82
representative assemblies and, 207 Gerlach, Ernst Ludwig von (1795–
romantic sensibility of, 166 1877), 87, 174, 175–76, 177–78
United Diet of 1847, 185 German Confederation, 103, 104, 139,
free labor market, 59, 60, 81 140
freelance writers, 100, 101, 221 extent of, 167
free market economy, 27, 38, 60, 95, Hardenberg and Stein advocacy, 65,
163, 164, 167 133, 134, 135
conservative attacks on, 178 See also Germany
306 index

German Democratic Republic, 232 Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah, 115, 244n.12

German Enlightenment. See Görres, Joseph (1776–1848), 102–5, 113,
Enlightenment 114, 120, 124, 139–40, 141, 145,
German language, 203 228
Germanomie, Die (Ascher), 112, 119 Gottesgnadentum, 206
Germany Gottschalk, Andreas (1815–1849), 217
anti-Semitism, 7, 8, 115–20 Great Britain, 153
Articles of Confederation of 1815, defeat of Napoleon, 90, 131
104, 139, 140, 167 free market theory, 27, 38
authoritarian personality limited monarchy, 33
characterization, 7–8 parliamentary system, 147, 197,
book burning, 111–12, 121 252n.72
borders controversy, 223, 224t. undemocratic school system, 199
bourgeois popular activists, 97, 98– Greek ideals, 28, 106
125 Großdeutschland, 223, 224t.
common fatherland idea, 64, 172 guilds, 57, 95t.
definitions of, 113–14 challenges to dominance of, 22, 58
hereditary emperor proposal, 214, loss of monopoly rights, 59, 74, 81,
215–16 82, 171
member states, 131, 133, 137 reestablishment impracticality, 188
mobility of intellectuals, 100 Gumbrecht, Hans-Ulrich, 10
monarchical principle first articulated Gymnasien, 198, 203
in, 150 Gymnasium (Berlin-Kölln), 106, 127
outgroups, 115–20 gymnastics movement, 105, 106–7, 127,
pan-Germanism, 105, 159, 164, 223, 144–45, 146, 214
238
patriotism, 63–65, 88
Prussian identity vs., 63–65, 68, 96, Habermas, Jürgen, 245–46n.35
108, 124t., 129, 224t., 237 Habsburg Empire, 137, 138, 223
Sonderweg thesis, vii, 6–9, 232–37 Hachtmann, Rüdiger, 221
state constitutions, 133, 136, 138, Haller, Carl Ludwig von (1768–1854),
139, 140, 141, 150 174–75, 176, 177, 178
symbols of, 207, 223 Hardenberg, Friedrich (writer). See
unification movement, 102, 103, 108, Novalis
110, 113–15, 120, 124, 129, 131, Hardenberg, Friedrich August Burchard
135, 137, 159, 187, 213, 223–25, von (Silesian estate owner), 86
229, 238 Hardenberg, Karl August Fürst von
See also Prussia; specific states (1750–1822), 4, 5, 28, 29, 124, 138,
Gewerbesteueredikt of 2 November 1810, 144, 156, 192
58–59, 76, 77, 81, 82 background, 44–45
Glückseligkeit. See common good central representative assembly and,
Gneisenau, August Neithardt Graf von 93, 137, 157, 203–5
(1760–1831), 41, 74, 145, 158, 198– on citizen petition rights, 140–41
99 communal and country representative
God assemblies proposal, 167, 186, 210
monarchy based on, 13, 19–20, 166, death of, 163
205, 206 economic proposals, 53–54, 149, 163,
as ‘‘watchmaker,’’ 27 171, 205
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749– fears of popular nationalist
1832), 28, 219 movements, 158
 index 307

fiscal reforms, 54, 58–62, 71–72, 77, philosophical support for, 192–93,
78–79, 82 226
free trade legislation, 58–60, 82, 95, public education as fostering, 198, 200
171, 230, 235 repressive measures and, 232
German confederation advocacy, 65, revolutionary movement and, 213,
133, 134, 135 225–26
Görres relationship, 139, 140 romantic nationalists and, 98, 100,
hierarchical society views, 228 106, 108–13, 123, 124t., 237
Jewish education views, 116 Stein on, 201
Karlsbad Conference and, 146 Harmony Society, 28
Karlsbad Decrees and, 158 Haugwitz, Heinrich Christian Kurt Graf
longevity in office, 45–46 von (1752–1832), 45
motivation for reforms, 193 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770–
nationalistic aims, 62, 204–5, 237 1831), 24, 118, 119, 143, 192, 217
opponents, 79–81, 94–95, 135, 163, on state and civil society, 193, 194,
185–86 195
political demonstrators and, 127, 128 Herder, Johann Gottfried (1744–1803),
provisional assembly’s petitions to, 28, 47, 48, 63
85–86, 87, 91–92, 163 Hermann (journal), 118–19
Prussian constitution and, 54, 68, hierarchical society, 25, 38, 62–63, 79,
135, 136–37, 147–49, 151, 154, 95t., 129, 236, 238
157, 203–4 Beckedorff ’s program and, 200–201
public education beliefs, 199, 201–2 conservative justifications, 163, 164,
reform aims, 25, 49, 50, 52, 55, 66– 173, 178, 200–201
68, 74–76, 84, 94–95, 116, 163, as divinely ordained, 176
192, 204–5, 233 fluidity of estate membership as
reform reversals, 163–64 challenge to, 170–71
repressive measures, 79–80, 96, 145, Frederick the Great and, 19–20
146, 157, 158, 232 Hardenberg’s views on, 228
on revolutionary threats, 138–39 medieval acceptance of, 19
Riga Memorandum of 1807, 36, 46, post-1815 reestablishment efforts, 165
52, 109 revolutionary critics of, 217
romantic nationalists and, 103, 104 romantic nationalist threat to, 108
on state society, 193–94 See also estates; specific classes
Voß as successor, 163 Hippel, Theodor Gottlieb von (1741–
War of Liberation and, 89 1796), 72–73
harmony, politics of historical a priori, 13–14, 93–94,
aristocratic nationalist discourse and, 245n.35
93–96, 123 Hitler, Adolf (1889–1945), 8
Becher on, 38 Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary
centrality in Prussia, 239 Germans and the Holocaust
as consensual basis of nation (Goldhagen), 244n.12
concept, 47–50, 67t. Hobbes, Thomas (1588–1679), 35, 38
consequences of, viii, 231–32, 234 Hoffmann, Carl, 135, 137
eighteenth-century, 19–21, 28 Hohenzollern dynasty, 19, 21, 23, 24
enlightened nationalism and, viii, Hölderlin, Freidrich (1770–1843), 98
230 Holocaust, 115, 244n.12
Marxist philosophy and, 196–97 Holy Roman Empire, 23, 47, 76, 235,
monarchical authority and, 108–113 239
nation concept and, 164, 239–40 abolition, 1, 25, 42, 103, 131
308 index

Holy Roman Empire (continued) German identity and, 115–19

abolition implications, 166–67 land purchase rights, 79
described, 24–25 political defenders of, 118–19
German unification movement and, See also anti-Semitism
114 journalism, 100, 101, 193
Hroch, Miroslav, 100 judicial authority (nobility), 255n.58
Huber, Viktor Aimé (1800–1869), 185 June violence (1848), 221
human perfectibility, 163 Justi, Johann (1705?-1771), 25–26, 38
human rights, 38
Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1767–1835), Kamptz, Karl Christoph Albert Heinrich
32, 44, 63, 65, 135, 145, 151 von (1769–1849), 144
central representative assembly Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804), 5, 14, 20,
proposal, 203–4 49, 97
political theory, 28 Enlightenment definition by, 202
Hunt, Lynn, 101 Freemasonry and, 28, 32
political theory, 32–36, 38, 46, 47,
idealism, 9, 199 60, 76, 195, 218, 226, 236
Illuminati, 29 Prussian military disciples of, 41
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the as Prussian reform influence, viii,
Origin and Spread of Nationalism 228
(Anderson), 244n.27 Karl-August, duke of Saxe-Weimar
imperial diet, 24 (1757–1828), 111
income tax, 51–52, 60–61, 71–72, 85, Karlsbad Conference (1819), 146, 149,
94, 130, 232 150, 151
industrialization, 7, 22, 193, 198 Frederick William III’s outlook
intellectuals. See under bourgeoisie following, 157
‘‘invisible hand’’ theory, 27 Karlsbad Decrees (1819), 145, 146, 152,
iron jewelry, 64–65 158, 168, 191, 203
Isis (journal), 121 Kircheisen, Friedrich Leopold von (1749–
Italy, 152, 153, 214 1825), 144
Kleindeutschland, 223, 224t.
Jacobinism, 139, 195 Kleist, Heinrich von (1777–1811), 98
Jahn, Friedrich Ludwig (1778–1852), Koblenz, 103
102, 113, 119, 120, 123, 127 Koblenz Address of 1817, 104–8, 138,
background and youth movements, 139, 140–41
105–8 Kohn, Hans, 6, 9
enlightened nationalism and, 230 Königsberg, 81, 82, 212
gymnasts’ egalitarianism, 108, 144–45 Koselleck, Reinhart, 4, 10, 11, 20, 62,
preservation of traditional estates 75
advocacy, 228 Kotzebue, August von (1761–1819), 127
on racial purity, 114, 124 assassination of, 141–42, 143–44, 145,
revolutionary movement and, 214–16 147, 217
on Volk unity, 108–9 Kraus, Christian Jakob (1753–1807), 27
Janus (journal), 185 Kreistage, 23
Jena, battle of (1806), 1, 31, 233 Krieger, Leonard, 6–7, 9, 32
Jews, 115–20 Kulturkampf, 124
citizenship question, 67, 95t., 124t., Kulturnation, 47, 63
224, 224t. Kurmark (Brandenburg), 53, 72, 77, 78–
emancipation decree of 1812, 65, 115, 80, 81, 88, 93, 168–69
116 Kurmärkische Ritterschaft, 154, 179
 index 309

Landarmenkassen, 78–79 Lithuanian territories, 64

landed estates, 22, 26 Locke, John (1632–1704), 32
aristocratic rights retention, 95t. Louis XIV, king of France (1638–1715),
conservative policy reversal, 168 23
equal taxation, 30, 56, 59 Louis XVI, king of France (1754–1793),
loosened sales restrictions, 56, 74, 29, 153, 233
164, 167, 169, 171, 182 Louis-Philippe, king of France (1773–
Provincial Estates Law of 1823, 170, 1850), 214
178–79, 181, 186, 211 loyal opposition, 231
royal lands sales, 51 Luise, queen of Prussia (1776–1810), 60
Stein reforms, 56–58 Luther, Martin (1483–1546), 8, 110,
Landrat, 86 111, 127
Landschaften, xiii–xiv, 51, 52–53 Lutheranism, 134
Landstände, xiii, xiv, 19, 23, 52, 175
landständische constitutions Madison, James (1751–1836), 233–34
Crown Prince’s Commission and, 178 Maistre, Joseph de (1753–1821), 150
Gentz’s essay on, 173 Mallinckrodt, Arnold (1768–1825), 119
vs. representative, 150–51 Mann, Horace (1796–1859), 199
Langewiesche, Dieter, 197, 274n.99 Mannheim, Karl, 165, 166
Last Testament of 1827 (Frederick Marchand, Suzanne, 28
William III), 205 Marianne, princess of Prussia (1785–
Latin American revolutions, 152 1846), 64–65
Left Hegelian movement, 194, 195–97 Marwitz, Friedrich August Ludwig Graf
legislature. See assemblies; central von der (1777–1837), 78–80, 88,
representative assembly; Staatsrat 96, 159, 173, 181
Leibeigenschaft, 23 on common German fatherland, 172
Leipzig, battle of (1813), 90, 104, 110, petition and imprisonment of, 79–80,
111, 135 82, 94
Lessing, Gotthold Emphraim (1729– Marx, Karl (1818–1883), 192–93, 194,
1781), 28 196–97, 234, 240
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 47 Masonic orders. See Freemasonry
liberalism, 28, 75, 93, 182, 227–29, 239– Meinecke, Friedrich (1862–1954), 9
40 Meisner, Heinrich Otto, 151–52
distinctive characteristics of Prussian, Mendelssohn, Moses (1729–1786), 28
191–92 Menzel, Karl Adolf, 119, 120
fears of anarchy, 222 Metternich, Clemens Lothar Graf (1773–
Frankfurt National Assembly voting 1859)
pattern and, 222 aims for Austria, 133, 134, 135, 137,
Frederick William IV’s constitution 138
and, 226 alliance against Napoleon, 90
national educational system and, 199– on Cologne Cathedral event, 207
201 fear of revolution, 139, 144, 145, 173
political ambivalence of, 197–98 fears of ethnic divisions, 137
political harmony ideal of, 231–32 metaphors for revolution, 173
promonarchical sentiments of, 222– opposition to constitutional
23, 231–32 government, 146–47, 149, 150,
Revolution of 1848 and, 212, 222, 151, 152, 156, 157
225, 239–40 suppression of southern European
Limits of State Action, The (Humboldt), uprisings, 153
28 warnings against United Diet, 212
310 index

Mill, John Stuart (1806–1873), 28 constitutional, 187, 197, 226

mob rule, fears of, 222 democratic, 192, 217, 219–20
modernization theory, 275n.13 divine-right, 13, 19–20, 166, 205, 206
monarchical principle, 149–59 duration of German, 8
aristocratic principle and, 158, 168, enlightened, 20, 31–32, 34, 35, 36,
174 37–39
bureaucratic restraints on, 180 fall of French, 135
citizen petition rights, 140, 141 as first among equals, 239
as conservative belief, 201, 225 hereditary German emperor proposal,
conservative debates over, 172 214, 215–16
constitutions and, 89, 144, 149–50, limited vs. absolute, 33, 95t., 96
151, 187 municipal protests to, 81–82
enlightened nationalism and, viii, 240 nobility’s power struggle with, 23–
Frederick William IV’s view of, 205– 24, 158–59, 168
8, 210–11 nobility’s traditional ‘‘contracts’’
liberal activists and, 192 with, 73, 77–79
national interests as identical with, as personifying nationhood, 223, 229
67, 90, 95t., 96, 124t., 229, 230 republican, 195, 220
nationalist ideas as threat to, 129, Spanish, 152
135–36 See also enlightened absolutism;
parliamentary institutions and, 197, Frederick William III; Frederick
203 William IV; monarchical principle
philosophical views of, 195–96, 197, Montesquieu, baron de La Brède et de
226 (1689–1753), 30, 32, 33, 175, 239
political activists’ widespread Montgelas, Maximilian von (1759–
acceptance of, 197 1838), 29
popular sovereignty vs., 228 Möser, Justus (1720–1794), 25
private character of authority, 174–75 Municipal Ordinance of 1808, 25, 55,
Prussian consolidation of power, 158– 57–58, 59, 88, 163, 201, 202–3,
59 230
Prussian persistent support for (1847– Müsebeck, Ernst, 109
1849), 223
Prussian Right’s recasting of, 187 Napoleonic era
as rationalistic definition of enlightened nationalism’s initial
sovereignty, 166 appearance during, 226, 241
as reconciled with popular self-rule, national will and, 49
158, 226 nation concept and, 129, 236
Revolution of 1848 and, 192, 212–13, Prussian educational reform and, 198
220–22, 225, 229, 240 Prussian liberalism as legacy of, 192
romantic stress on harmony and, 108– Prussia’s defeat and occupation, 1–5,
13, 123 41–46, 49, 51, 52, 74–75, 229. See
sovereign authority struggle and, also war tribute
110, 138, 146, 175 Prussia’s experience as unique, 235
Stahl’s view of, 177, 178 Prussia’s War of Liberation, 65, 89–
as unchallenged in Prussia, 217, 223, 93, 131
226, 231–32, 240–41 See also Prussian reform movement;
United Diet petition on, 211 War of Liberation of 1813–1814
monarchy Napoleon I, emperor of France (1769–
absolute, 23–24, 33–34, 36–37, 38, 1821)
151–52 allied defeat of, 90–91, 130, 131, 193
 index 311

Confederation of the Rhine, 1, 42– national will, 48–49

44 nation concept, 14, 15, 66–67, 68, 235
dismissal of Hardenberg, 45 ambiguities in, 236–37
retreat from Moscow, 89 aristocratic, 71, 73–96, 129, 131, 159,
return from Elba, 91, 136 164, 178, 187–88, 236, 238
Nassau Memorandum of 1807 and aristocratic consensual vs. contested
Stein’s Political Testament, 49–51, features, 95t.
55, 71, 121, 201 as bricolage process, 47, 235
national bank, 60, 61–62 bureaucratic approaches, 42–68, 236,
national debt, 53, 59–61, 83, 185, 205, 238
209 bureaucratic consensual vs. contested
national economy. See economy and features, 67t.
economic theory conservative approaches, 164–87
national education system. See educated construction of, 47–48, 235–36
citizenry contested features, 236
national identity crystallization of, 129–59, 238
contested features of, 55–63 cultural definitions of, 48, 63
German outgroups, 115–20 dis-invention attempts, 165, 173–81,
monarchy symbolizing, 223, 229 187–88, 239
peaceful coexistence and, 48 harmony as consensual basis of, 47–
Prussian vs. German, 63–65, 68, 96 50, 67t.
racial theories, 114, 118, 122 monarchy as personifying, 223
regional unification under, 100 pan-German community definition
religion as marker of, 124 (1806–1820), 164, 238
War of Liberation and, 89–93 political concepts of, 48–49
See also nation concept Reaction and, 237
national interest, 67, 90, 95t., 96, 124t., revolutionary process and, 218
229, 230 Revolution of 1848 and, 223–26,
nationalism, 227–28 224t., 225
aristocratic, 71, 73–96, 159, 172, 230, romantic nationalist consensual vs.
236, 240 contested features, 124t.
aristocratic changes after 1820, 183 sovereign authority distribution
aristocratic intensification of, 89–93 within, 225
Hardenberg’s earliest use of term, 62 natural law, 29, 165, 175, 176
Marx’s rejection of, 196–97 natural rights, 26
Nazi, 112 Nazism, 7, 8, 112, 118, 232
as oppositional ideology, 131 Nees von Esenbeck, Christian Gottfried
as response to Napoleon, 229 (1776–1858), 217, 218–20, 223
See also enlightened nationalism; Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844–1900),
national identity; nation concept; 250n.15
popular nationalism; romantic nobility, 7, 25, 26, 62, 117
nationalism bourgeois activists and, 98, 108, 123
Nationalökonomie, 27–28, 38, 60 bureaucratic reforms and, 55–57, 59,
national representation 130–31
monarchical promises, 12 bureaucratic ruling alliance, 179–80,
as suspicious term, 203, 209 181
See also central representative concept of nationally united, 88
assembly conservativism and, 166, 174–78, 239
National Socialism. See Nazism crystallization of nation concept, 129–
national spirit, 60, 198 59, 238
312 index

nobility (continued) pan-Germanism, 105, 159, 164, 223, 238

declining influence of, 74, 76, 169–73 parliamentary systems, viii, 147, 197,
economic liberal views, 182 220, 232, 252n.72
‘‘embourgeoisement’’ of, 171 Patent of 3 February 1847, 209
enlightened absolutism vs., 19 paternalistic institutions, 28, 130, 174,
fears of revolution, 168 176, 178
Hardenberg’s reforms and, 58, 59, 71– patrimonial justice, 255n.58
72, 76, 94–95 patriotism, 63–65, 88, 97, 111
historical Prussian monarchical policy Paul (apostle and saint), 112
toward, 23–24 Peace of Westphalia of 1648, 106
monarch as ‘‘first among equals,’’ 239 peasantry, 26, 56–57, 58, 59, 62, 88
monarchical principle linked with, Napoleonic threats to, 229
168, 230 petitions by, 184
Napoleonic threats to, 229 post-Napoleonic changes in, 171
nationalism of Napoleonic era vs. See also serfdom
post-1820, 183 people. See Volk
nationalist strategies, 71, 73–96, 159, personal liberties, 92, 226
172, 230, 236, 240 Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich (1746–
nation concept, 71, 73–96, 129, 131, 1827), 72, 199, 200
159, 164, 178, 187–88, 236, 238 philosophy, 193–94, 228–29. See also
power struggle with monarchy, 23– specific philosophers
24, 158–59, 168 Philosophy of Right (Hegel), 193
privilege preservation arguments, 38, physiocrats, 27, 29–31, 38, 60, 228
129, 130–31, 174–75, 255n.58 pietism, 123, 128, 230, 235, 236, 239
provincial assembly restrictions and, founding and beliefs, 100
179–80 Plehwe, Rudolph von, 127–29, 135
provincial credit associations, 52–53 Poland, 42, 64, 134, 136
public opinion appeals by, 183–84 police
redefinition of nature of, 170 function of, 25–26
reform rhetoric, 92–93 nobility’s powers, 23, 56, 130, 174,
status post-1815, 157, 169–70, 180 255n.58
status revitalization efforts, 181–87 Polish minority, 115, 120–123, 124, 134,
traditional privileges and curbs, 22, 202–203, 224
23, 56, 130, 167, 174, 180 ‘‘Polish question,’’ 65, 121, 224
War of Liberation and, 89–93 political amnesties, 207
See also estates; hierarchical society political culture, 227–35
normative fallacy, 7–8, 232–33 Political Testament (Stein), 50. See also
Novalis (Friedrich Hardenberg) (1772– Stein, Karl
1801), 98 Pomerania, 75
poor relief funds, 78–79
Obenaus, Herbert, 4, 75 popular education. See educated
October Edict of 1807, 55–58, 169, 236 citizenry
October Finance Edict of 1810, 54, 58– popular nationalism, 96, 99, 100–12,
59, 77, 78–79 124, 127–29, 131, 159, 228, 235–36
Oken, Lorenz (1779–1851), 121 definition of nation, 238
Old Reich. See Holy Roman Empire Hardenberg’s fears of, 158
On the Civic Improvement of the Jews repressive measures against, 158, 238
(von Dohm), 117 See also romantic nationalism
overdetermination, 47, 48, 49, 67, 238– popular sovereignty, monarchical
39, 250n.15 principle vs., 228
 index 313

population growth, 167 map of territories (1815), 132

Portuguese revolution, 152, 153 political consensual features, 14
press censorship. See censorship territorial ambitions, 133
press freedom, 222 territorial extent, 21, 65
proletariat, 196, 221 territorial losses, 42–44
property ownership. See landed estates Troppau Congress, 154, 156, 262n.82
protected residents (Schutzverwandten), See also Prussian reform movement
57 Prussian Absolutism and Its
Protestantism, 100, 110, 114, 120, 123, Development (Ruge), 195
124, 134, 223, 224t. See also Prussian General Code of 1794, 26
pietism Prussian reform movement, 2–6, 20
provincial assemblies, 51–53, 75, 103, administrative district, 86
137, 156, 185 archconservative reaction, 137–38
bourgeois estate-owner background and overview, 227–36
representation, 170 bureaucratic motivation, 193, 227
conservative fears and, 178 common consensual grounds, 230
Crown Prince’s Commission, 167–68, conservative retraction efforts, 168,
170, 171, 178, 186 171
differences among, 181–82 Council of State concept, 49, 71, 180,
as educated citizenry aim, 201–2 197
Frederick William III and, 51, 104, economic pressures, 46
179 egalitarian vs. hierarchical
Frederick William IV and, 207, 208 tendencies, 62–63
guild trade monopolies and, 171 enlightened nationalism beliefs, 5–6,
Landstände, 19, 23, 52, 175 204–5, 223–26, 229–30
nobility’s changing views of, 173 Enlightenment’s influence on, viii, 5,
petitions to, 184 46, 55, 58, 76, 163, 228–29
severely restricted powers of, 178– factors in, 228–30
79, 181 French physiocrats’ influence on, 29–
Special Commission for Estate Affairs, 32, 228
183–84 gradualist approach, 117
as United Diet, 209–12 irreversibility of many changes, 171
Provincial Estates Law of 1823, 170, Kant’s influence on, viii, 32–36
178–79, 181, 186, 211 later theorists and, 192
Provisional National Representation military and, 41–42
(1812–1813), 75, 83–90, 94, 172, nationalistic impulses behind, 41–42,
183, 255n.58 47, 228–29
Provisional Representation of the Land nation construct, 47–48, 129–59
(1814–1815), 83, 91–92 open public educational system and,
Prussia 199–200
artificial nature of state, 63, 205 participatory politics and, 201–2, 203–
citizenship restrictions, 57–58 4
demographic characteristics, 21–22 representation theory, 76
distinctiveness of political culture, Restoration-era positions, 158–59,
227–35 163–64, 166–67
first European state-run public shared fears of revolution, 180–81
schools, 198 socioeconomic changes, 164, 169–71
German identity vs., 63–65, 68, 96, summer of 1819 defeats, 146–49
108, 124t., 129, 206–7, 237 See also bureaucracy; nobility;
map of territories (1806–1807), 43 romantic nationalism
314 index

public education. See educated citizenry Restauration der Staatswissenschaft

public good, 33, 36 (Haller), 174
public opinion, 181, 183–87, 188, 189 Restoration (Prussia, 1815–1848), 15,
Pufendorf, Samuel, 24 73, 137–59, 167–72, 188, 237–38.
connotations, 163–64
as misleading characterization, 152
Quast-Garz, Otto Christoph Leopold
rhetoric vs. reality of, 169–72
von, 87–88, 90, 172–73
See also specific issues
Quesnay, François (1694–1774), 27
revolution
absolutism seen as ally of, 175–76
racial theories, 114, 118, 122, 124 Austrian fears of, 139, 144, 145, 173
Radowitz, Joseph Maria von (1897– conservative responses to fears of,
1853), 186–87 165, 178, 187–88
railroads, 166, 178, 205, 209 fears linked with constitution
Ranke, Leopold von (1795–1886), 186 rejection, 157
rational governance, 48, 66, 67, 166, Kant on rights to, 34
175, 228–29, 230, 236 Left Hegelians and, 194
Raumer, Friedrich von (1781–1873), 54 liberals’ fears of unchecked, 222
Reaction (Prussian faction), 137–38, Prussian fears of, 135, 144–45, 155,
144, 149, 153–54, 158, 163, 237 173, 180–81, 185, 205, 232, 238
Frederick William III’s constitutional repressive countermeasures, 169
promise and, 185 rhetoric of, 127–29
as misleading characterization, 152, romantic nationalists linked with, 99,
157 138–39, 144–45, 158
monarchical authority and, 157 See also French Revolution;
See also Restoration Revolution of 1848
reading societies, 28 Revolution of 1848, 12, 122, 186, 187,
Recess of the Diet of 1653, 78 212–23, 231, 239–40
Reformation, 110 achievements of, 226
Rehberg, August Wilhelm, 25, 252n.72 beliefs of, 225–26
Reichardt, Rolf, 10 commitment to monarchy, 192, 212–
Reichsstädte, 131, 155, 185, 203–4 13, 229, 240
Reichstag, 24 factions and controversies, 214–24,
Repräsentation, meanings of, 76 224–26, 224t.
representation. See assemblies; central factors in failure, 192, 225–26
representative assembly; factors in outbreak, 166, 212, 214
parliamentary systemes June violence, 221
repression, 79–80, 96, 145, 146, 157, outbreaks throughout Europe, 212,
158, 191, 231, 238 214
easing of measures, 207 radical rhetoric, 217–24
politics of harmony and, 232 Revolutions of 1820, 152–53, 169
See also censorship Rheinische Merkur (newspaper), 102,
republic, as synonym for diffuse social 103, 139
demands, 221 Rhine Confederation, 235
Republican Club of Berlin, 221 Rhineland, 21, 65, 75, 102, 118, 133,
republicanism, 125 217, 238
as abstraction in 1848 era, 217 constitution petition, 139–40, 141,
Carové on, 218 184
Kant on, 33–35, 38, 47, 218 landed estate delegates, 181
retention of monarchy and, 195, 220 liberation from Napoleonic rule, 102
 index 315

pressures for loosened censorship, Schilden, Friedrich von, 154–55, 156,

181, 184 263n.89, 264n.91, 265n.94
Prussian rule, 103, 134 Schlegel, August Wilhelm von (1767–
Richelieu, Cardinal and duc de (1585– 1845), 98
1642), 72 Schlegel, Friedrich von (1772–1829), 98
Riemann, Heinrich Hermann, 111 Schmitt, Carl, 275n.11
Riga Memorandum of 1807, 36, 46, 52, Schnabel, Franz, 107
109 Schön, Heinrich Theodor von (1773–
Right Hegelians, 194 1856), 28, 32, 44, 50
rights of man, 30 Schrötter, Friedrich Leopold von (1743–
Rittergüter. See landed estates 1815), 32, 116
Ritterschaft, 76, 170. See also nobility Schuckmann, Kaspar Friedrich von
Rochow, Adolf von, 171 (1755–1834), 144, 148, 149,
Rödiger, Ludwig, 111 267n.16
Roman law, 194 Schutzverwandten, 57
romanticism, 47, 101, 235 Scottish Enlightenment, 26–27
romantic nationalism, 97, 98–125, 236 self-determination, 218, 229, 230
anti-Semitism of, 115–18, 119–20, self-government, 36, 163, 202, 218, 226
122, 124 self-regulating society, 38
book burning, 111–12, 121 separation of powers. See balance of
genesis of, 99–101 powers
German unification and, 113–15, 120, serfdom, 22–23, 38
124, 129 abolishment of, 55, 56–57, 59, 74,
monarchical sovereignty and, 108–13, 130, 163, 164, 167, 171, 230, 236
128–29, 138–39, 237 Sheehan, James, 99
obscurity of political thought, 129 Sicily, 214
Plehwe’s letter to Frederick William Sietze, Karl Friedrich, 194
III, 128 Silesia, 42, 46, 59, 75, 81, 82, 86
Prussian sympathies, 134 Smith, Adam (1723–1790), viii, 5, 27,
religious influences on, 120, 230 38, 60, 228
sovereign authority view, 146 social classes. See estates
Rosenberg, Hans, 4, 171, 179–80 social contract, 174
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712–1778), Social Contract (Rousseau), 48, 76
32, 34, 48, 76, 109, 228 social equality. See egalitarianism
royal land sales, 51 social harmony. See harmony, politics of
Ruge, Arnold (1803–1880), 121–122, socialism, 216, 225
194, 195–96 social ranks. See hierarchical society
Rühs, Christian, 117–18, 119 societas civilis, 239, 266n.11
Russia, 89, 90, 131, 134, 141, 152, 153 société d’ordres, 20
Sonderweg thesis, vii, 6–9, 232–37
Sack, Johann August (1764–1831), 44, sovereign authority. See monarchical
72 principle; monarchy; nobility
Sand, Karl Ludwig (1795–1820), 141– Sovereignty of the German Nation and
42, 145 the Competence of its Constituent
Sanden (national representative), 87 Assembly (Carové), 217–18
Savigny, Karl Friedrich von (1779– Spain, 131, 152
1861), 194–95 Special Commission for Estate Affairs,
Saxony, 133, 181 183–84
Scharnhorst, Gerhard Johann David Spener, Philip (1635–1705), 100
von (1755–1813), 41, 74 Staatsbürger, 64, 92
316 index

Staatsgesellschaft, 62 Svarez, Carl Gottlieb (1746–1798), 26,

Staatsrat, 49, 71, 180, 197 28, 36–37, 49, 50, 76
Städteordnung. See Municipal Ordinance Sweden, 90
of 1808
Staegemann, Friedrich August von Tapiau County (East Prussia), 80–81
(1763–1840), 44, 260n.22 taxation
Stahl, Friedrich Julius (1802–1861), 174, equality of, 30, 58
176–77, 184–85, 186 nobility exemptions, 56, 58
Ständegesellschaft, 20 nobility exemptions loss, 59, 77
State Debt Law of January 1820, 149, proposed income tax, 51–52, 60–61,
185, 205, 211 71–72, 85, 94, 130, 232
State Opera (Berlin), 212–213 United Diet and, 209
state society, civil society and, 193– teleological fallacy, 8, 232–33
94 Teplitz Accord of 1 August 1819, 146
Stein, Karl Reichsfreiherr vom und zum Teutschland und die Revolution (Görres),
(1757–1831), 4, 5, 27, 62, 124, 138, 120
192, 232 Tilsit, Treaty of (1807), 1, 41–44, 45–
administrative reform proposal, 31– 46, 51
32, 71 terms of treaty, 1, 42–44, 45–46, 51
background, 44, 45 Tocqueville, Alexis de (1805–1859), 26,
conservative opposition, 163 175
dismissal, 59, 71 traditionalism, conservativism vs., 165–
educational aims, 72, 199, 201–2, 231 67
German confederation advocacy, 65, Trauttmansdorff, Count, 211
135 Treitschke, Heinrich von (1834–1896),
income tax proposal, 60–61 183–84
Kant as influence, 32 Trier’sche Zeitung (newspaper), 217
memoranda on Hardenberg’s fiscal Troppau, Congress of (1820), 153, 154,
reform plan, 71–72 156, 262n.82
Municipal Ordinance of 1808, 25, 55, Turgot, Anne-Robert-Jacques (1727–
57–58, 59, 163, 201–3, 230 1781), 5, 29–31, 36, 49, 68, 226,
Nassau Memorandum, 49–50, 55, 233
121, 201 Turnerschaft (gymnastics movement),
October Edict of 1807, 55–58, 169, 105, 106–7, 127, 144–45, 146,
236 214
Political Testament, 50 tutelary state (Erziehungsstaat), 37
popular government advocacy, 46 two-chamber assembly. See bicameral
provincial assembly and, 52, 53, 75, assembly
210
radical threat and, 145 unicameral legislative assembly, 219
reform goals and measures, 55–58, 66– United Diet of 1847, 166, 185, 209–12,
68, 74, 192, 233 230
reversals of reforms, 163–64 United States Constitution, 233–34
social cohesion aims, 199, 205 universal education, 197, 198–201
traditional estate retention and, universal human rights. See human
204 rights
student movement. See Burschenschaft University of Berlin, 98, 117, 142, 176,
movement 217
Süvern, Johann Wilhelm (1775–1829), University of Breslau, 219
199, 200 University of Göttingen, 27
 index 317

University of Jena, 97, 111, 113, 118, social and political aims, 163, 164
218–19 voting rights, 57–58, 226
University of Königsberg, 27, 32, 34,
41, 97 Wahrman, Dror, 11
university system, 198 War of Liberation of 1813–1814, 65, 89–
urban areas. See cities 93, 111, 131, 135, 149, 153, 229
utopian ideal, viii, 98, 231, 232 Wartburg Festival (1817), 110–13, 120–
21, 138, 139
Vaterland, 64, 172 war tribute, 45–46, 51, 53, 59, 60–61,
Vertretung, 76 62, 74–75, 149, 262n.82
veto power, 72 ‘‘watchmaker God,’’ 27
Vienna Congress of 1814–1815, 131, Waterloo, battle of (1815), 91
133–34, 137, 238 Wealth of Nations (Smith), 27
fluidity of political alignments Wehler, Hans-Ulrich, 4
following, 158 Weimar circle, 219
German Confederation creation, 167 Weimar Republic, 9, 232
Vienna Final Acts of June 1820, 150 Westfälische Anzeiger (journal), 118–19
Vienna Settlement of 1815, 15, 103, Westphalia, 21, 133, 235
131, 132, 133 Westphalia, Peace of (1648), 106
Vincke, Friedrich Ludwig Wilhelm Wette, Wilhelm de, 142, 143, 145
Philipp Freiherr von (1774–1844), ‘‘What Is Enlightenment?’’ (Kant), 32
27, 44, 72, 168, 267n.16 Wilhelm, prince of Prussia, later
Vogel, Barbara, 4 Wilhelm I, king of Prussia and
Volk, xiii, 103, 134 German emperor (1797–1888), 217
factionalization, 114 Wittgenstein, Wilhelm Ludwig Georg
Herder’s portrayal of, 48 Fürst (1770–1851), 138, 142, 144,
Jahn’s nationalism and, 105–6, 107, 145, 148, 151, 156, 168, 185–86,
109–10 267n.16
monarchy based on will of, 13, 108– women
9, 157, 206–7, 219, 220, 222, 231 citizenship rights, 224, 224t.
relationship to state, 141 political awareness of, 212, 221, 224
representative constitutions and, 150– status in Prussia, 64–65
51 working classes, 196, 221
romantic nationalist idealization of, World War I, 8
124–25 World War II, 207
as sole legislative power, 219 Württemberg, 90, 103, 133, 136, 138
Volkserziehung, 109 constitution, 155, 168
Voß-Buch, Otto Karl Friedrich Freiherr
von (1755–1823), 154, 168, 172, Yorck von Wartenburg, Johann David
267n.16 Ludwig Graf (1759–1830), 89
arguments against constitution, 155– youth movements. See Burschenschaft
56, 157 movement; gymnastics movement