Download The National Movements: Germany

The National
Movements:
Germany
Section 10. 50
Questions to Consider
• Of what significance was the Napoleonic age for
the development of nationalism? What different
form did nationalist feelings take?
• Describe the change in German nationalmindedness that set in about 1780. How did the
ideas emerging in Germany differ from the ideas
characteristics of the Enlightenment?
• Discuss the development of nationalist political
thought in Napoleonic Germany. In what sense
was it “democratic”? What manifestations of
German nationalist activities appeared?
• Describe the principal aims of the army reformers
in Prussia and the political philosophy and reforms
of Baron Stein.
Terms to Know
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Herder
Romanticism
Volksgeist
“Father” Jahn
Germany in Its Deep
Humiliation
• Fichte
• Addresses to the
German Nation
• Closed Commercial
State
• Gneisenau
• Baron Stein
• Tugendbund
The Resistance to Napoleon: Nationalism
• Reasons for resentment
– Army plundering, requisitions
– New states required to pay
tribute of men and money
– policies dictated by French
representatives
– Continental System benefits
French manufacturers
– Feel they are being used by
France as tools against
England
– People tired of war, rumors of
war, conscription, taxes, loss
of lives and local liberties
– Began to see Napoleon as
megalomaniac
Confederation of the Rhine
1806-1813
Result was a rise in nationalistic feeling
• Nationalism developed as a reaction against
internationalism and empire
• Internationalism=French culture, Empire
=Napoleon’s autocracy
• A mixture of conservative and liberal interests
– insisted on value of their own customs,
folkways: conservative
– self-determination, participation in government:
liberal
• Nationalistic movements took various shapes
• England: powerful unifying force for all classes
against ‘Boney’
– Even thou England is experiencing dislocation,
misery or Industrial Revolution
Spain: divisive force
Took form of absolute resistance to French
Liberal bourgeois
Conservative: clergy and Bourbons
Drew greatest strength from
counterrevolutionary, restoration of clergy,
Bourbons
Italy: begins a conception of unity under
Napoleon
Liked Napoleon and had less nationalism
Liked efficiency of Enlightenment
Nap consolidated peninsula into 3 parts
Movement of Thought in Napoleonic
Germany
• Most monumental national movement
• Rebelled against Napoleon and French
civilization
– against armies , against the French flavor
of the Enlightenment
• German ideas fell in with the romantic
movement that was a growing reaction to
the dry abstraction of the Enlightenment
(classical)
Germany did not exist as a place
Germany only existed as a culture
After Westphalia, German were least
nationally minded of all, had cosmopolitan
outlook
Not conscious of Germany
Borders, areas of language seemed
indefinable (faded into Poland or Alsace)
During the Enlightenment the culture of
Germany was muted as Europe identified with
French culture
Upper classes & Frederick the Great
embraced French culture (language, dress, …)
Herder’s Cultural Nationalism
• Nationalism set in 1780
• Ideas on the Philosophy of the
History of Mankind (1784)
• Protestant pastor, theologian, critical
of French
• true culture rises from native and
common roots (Volk)
• rejected the superficiality of
cosmopolitan upper classes (French)
• said it made people superficial,
shallow
• a culture needs to express its
Volksgeist (spirit of the people)
Herder
Common people is where national character
existed
Opposite of Voltaire and the Philosophes
Volt said all people to progress toward same
civilization
Herder said each person should develop their
own way and avoid distortions by outside
influence
didn’t think that German culture was better
but different
Modern History Sourcebook: Johann Gottfried
von Herder: Materials for the Philosophy of
the History of Mankind, 1784 (Ideas on the
Philosophy of the History of Mankind, 1784)
Romanticism
• emphasized genius or intuition
over reason
• feeling over thinking
• stressed differences of
mankind over similarities
• rejected the rigid rules of
classical literature
• regionalism over universalism
• local law over natural law
• good laws reflected local
conditions
German nationalism ferments (1800)
• Germans began to feel humiliation at
paternalism of government
• rejection of squabbling princes
(disgraced themselves)
• rejection of “Frenchified” upper classes
• G. embraced the prospect of nationhood
• But the task of defining what German
meant was difficult
• Father Jahn:
– organized a youth movement
– political gymnastics
– did calisthenics for the Fatherland,
made fun of aristocrats in French
costumes, suspicion of foreigners
(Jews, internationalists); i.e., things
that might corrupt the purity of the
German Volk
Father Jahn
German nationalism ferments (1800)
• Germany in its Deep Humiliation (unknown
author)
– Anti French pamphlet
– called on Germans to resist France by force
of arms
– called the French army "cannibals" and
"drunks" and personally vilified Napoleon
and the King of Bavaria
– Johann Philipp Palm the publisher was
executed
• Given mock trial and shot within 24 hours
• Tugendbund
– League of Virtue and Manliness
• members developed their own German
moral character to pass on
Fichte and the German National Spirit
• J. G. Fichte: a moral, and metaphysical
philosopher, professor at U of Jena
• had supported the Rev at first (until French
armies came)
• Thought it would emancipate the human
spirit
• Even accepted the Terror (Rousseau idea
of “forcing men to be free”)
• Closed Commercial state (1800) outlined a
totalitarian system in which the state
planned and operated whole economy in
isolationist fashion, thus protecting national
character
After Napoleon’s invasion Fichte became
nationalistic. He wrote Johann Gottlieb Fichte:
Address To The German Nation, 1807, in which
he said there was an ineradicable German spirit,
primordial, to be kept pure at all costs, within
each German’s inner moral universe. In short,
German spirit is better than others!!!
Reforms in Prussia
• Prussia leads the political revolt
against French
• Had been humiliated by Nap in 1806
at Jena-Auerstadt
• Lost territory, French occupation
(even in Berlin)
• But to German nationalist, Prussia
was least compromised by
collaboration with French
• Remains of Prussia serve as a
beacon for German patriots who
streamed there
• East Elbian Prussia had been least
German land became center for
movement
• Leaders of the rebuilding of Prussia
tended to come from outside and
were not Prussian
Prussia before Jena/
Auerstadt
(1805)
Prussia after its defeat
by
Napoleon
Military reform
• Prussian state’s character is shaped by
the army
• But army soldiers had no hope of
promotion, felt no patriotism
• need to inspire nationalistic pride
Baron Stein:
• was imperial knight in HRE and could see
8 different domains from his bridge near
castle (Germany was stateless)
• loved Fichte, Kant
• fostered the concepts of duty, service,
character, and responsibility
Baron Stein:
believed in equality of duty than of rights
outcome would lead to self-determination and
sense of community membership that was
lacking under Frederick the Great
gave burghers extensive freedom in cities to
govern
Interchangeable property, self government in
the cities
abolition of serfdom
gave peasants right to move, migrate, marry,
learn trade without Junker permission,
freedom of movement
still bound to the lord if they stayed on the
manor
Strength of the Junkers increases, but
condition of the serfs is eased