Germany, present and past

Preface

. Germany, her institutions and culture, are daily attract ing more attention in England, France, and Russia. In military matters the two latter are content to copy her, with alterations of their own which are not improvements. There is much in the institutions which surprises, some thing in the culture which shocks, a foreigner. It is impossible for him to understand the former, unjust to judge the latter, without a knowledge of the history of German civilisation. With nations, as with individuals, the features of maturity are the features stamped in childhood, but modified by circumstance. The factors of German national life are powers which must be reduced to their roots to be understood. Results without a hint of their causes are as unsatisfactory in social science as are miracles in the economy of nature.

A traveller notes facts that appear strange to him. This is not a book of travels, and therefore I do not content myself with recording observations — I attempt to explain the cause of Preface. VI the existence of those features which have attracted my observation. German culture has been treated in the same way as German institutions. The culture of a nation is not to be measured by that of another nation, but by the standards attained at different epochs in its own history. The adolescence of one nation has been favoured, that of another has not. One goes to school every day, and acquires every accomplishment without a break in the continuity of its schooling ; another has to learn its lessons by snatches. This has not been borne in mind by certain recent American and English writers on German social life.

They have noted defects and forgotten the causes, or have not paused to inquire into them. For three centuries Germany has been a battlefield, and constant warfare roughens manners, checks education, and cripples art. In estimating German culture we should wonder, not that there is not more, but that there is so much, after the Thirty Years' war, the war of the Spanish Succession, the Seven Years' war, and the wars of Napoleon. Culture, again, is not of manner only, but also of mind. If Germans fall short of the English standard in one particular, they shoot far ahead of it in the other. The English traveller carries abroad with him some thing of the Pharisee. He thanks God that he is not as these foreigners : he does not put his knife into his mouth nor talk noisily, and he always answers letters.

But it is a pity that he does not occasionally take the place of the publican, and beat on his breast and say : ' God be Preface. VII merciful to me a sinner, in that I have neglected to secure sound education for the middle classes ; and to me a fool, for having squandered, and for squandering still, so much money on my army to so little military purpose.' I have not concealed my view of the deficiencies in German culture, but I have pointed out the causes and suggested remedies. Most intelligent Germans are like Cromwell — they desire to be painted with their warts, if they must be painted at all. Some of the subjects dealt with in these volumes are of such importance that one class of readers may complain that I have treated them too cursorily. My purpose has not been to deal comprehensively with each — to say all that might, or indeed ought, to have been said on each— but to squeeze into single chapters just sufficient information as will give the reader a general outline and idea of the subject, and for the sake of specialists I have added an appendix of authors who will enable them to master the details of the matter they desire to study.

Though each subject has been treated lightly, I trust it has not been dealt with superficially. That there are imperfections in the work no one is more conscious than myself. Each subject touched is so full of interest, and has so many ramifications, that my difficulty has been rather what to leave unsaid than what to say ; and here the judgment may not be always just. VOL. I. a CONTENTS THE FIRST VOLUME. CHAPTER PA OK I. THE UPPER NOBILITY ..... 1 II. THE LOWER NOBILITY . . . 33 III. THE LAWS OF SUCCESSION . . . . .68 IV. PEASANT PROPRIETORS . . . . IKS V. MARRIAGE . . . . . . .130 VI. WOMEN ... . . . . . 169 VII. FOREST ROYALTY ...... 232 VIII. EDUCATION . . . . . . . 258 IX. THE UNIVERSITIES ...... 300 X. THE ARMY . . . . . . 33S

Chapter I. The Upper Nobility

There are but two families in the world, as my grandmother used to say : the Haves and the Havenots, and she always stuck to the former. — Ban Quixote.' ' Here Baron ! Thank you,' said a waiter to a traveller, on receiving payment of the bill. ' I am not a Baron, mein Ueber ! ' remarked the latter. ' Oh, Sir ! we call every one Baron who tips with a ha'penny,' answered the Kellner, contemptuously pocket ing the five-pfennig piece. An Englishman is somewhat impatient to find barons abroad as thick as blackberries, and looking equally ragged. He is not a little amaasd to find he has offended his tailor by not addressing him as ' Well-born,' and startled to hear that a daughter of one of our oldest and noblest families is not deemed well-born enough to mate with a lack-land German prince, whose ancestors a hun dred and fifty years ago were gentlemen about court, and nothing more.

A tradesman is ' well-born,' but the VOL. I. B daughter of an Anglo-Norman house, who marries the sixth son of Prince Potztausend, is doomed to bear her maiden name, and know that out of England the union is regarded as morganatic, and her children as illegitimate. Germans, like Frenchmen, are quite incapable of understanding English aristocratic distinctions. I have known a lady refuse to allow her daughter to dance with sons of some of our first county families, and heirs to baronetcies, because they bore no ' von ' before their sur names, and therefore could be no gentlemen. In a drama of one of the best German playwrights, laid in England, an ' esquir ' (sic) is addressed as 'milord,' an earl's wife is entitled ' Lady Harriot.' and the eldest son of a peer is Sir Jones, Baronet. Englishmen too often speak with con tempt of the German nobility, because titles are common and the majority of the bearers of them have no estates.

As a fact the majority of nobles without estates have flowing in their veins the bluest blood in Germany, where as some of the princes, who can only mate with royalty, are mere parvenus. The stratification of the German classes, and of the aristocracy, is most peculiar, and quite unlike what we meet with in England. It is absolutely inexplicable without an historic sketch of its growth and alteration. When the mist clears off early German history, we find the inhabitants of the land divided into two strongly marked classes, the Free and the Not-Free. The not-free class constituted most certainly a con quered people, distinct in blood from the Germans who subjugated them. The conquered race remained bound to the soil, and were denied the right of bearing arms, and pleading in a court. They were like the Rayas in Turkey.

They were neither ' wehrfahig ' nor ' rechtsfahig.' The serf tilled the soil, the freeman held jurisdiction over it, and fought in its defence. Between the classes hovered a swarm of Lazzi or Freilazzi (i.e. Frei-gelassene), men emancipated from serfdom, that they might become ' wehrfahig,' capable of wielding a sword, and fight for their lords. But it took three descents to convert a Lazzus into a Freeman. One sharp law kept the classes apart as castes — this was the law of ' Ebenbiirtigkeit,' which forbade a freeman marrying below his class. If he did so, both he and his children ceased to be free, and were numbered among serfs. The freewomau who married a serf became herself a serf. This gave occasion to a common speculation in the early Middle Ages, which had to be checked by law. Nobles sent their serfs out into the world to pretend to be freemen, and so to pick up free wives.

Then the lord asserted his prerogative, and the deluded wife found her self suddenly degraded. Among the Saxons the serf who acted thus was punished with death. The object of the law of ' Ebenbiirtigkeit ' was to keep Teutonic blood pure from various and villein strains. Salic law, and the law of the Ripuarian Franks, knew nothingof a nobility. Only two birth ranks were recognised — the free and the not-free. Nobility and freedom were equivalent ideas. All free-born were ' ebenburtig.' But though in the Frank empire there was no privileged class among freemen, there were personal privileges enjoyed by a favoured few. These were the men who stood in close relation to the king, and acted as his officers in the administration of justice. These officers were noble, in so far that they were raised above their fellow freemen, but this ministerial nobility lacked the essential element of aristocracy — it was personal, not hereditary.

These officers, whether temporal or spiritual, held their B nobility for life only. Such were the bishops, chief abbots, dukes and counts, the royal butler, sewer, forester, and marshal. The great bulk of freemen lived on their estates, and let them out to free or servile farmers. As enjoying freeholds, they were entitled Freiherren — free lords — or Barons. Baro is an old German word meaning a man, that is a man of substance, exercising all the rights of a freeman. The holder of an allodial estate was an adeliger, a gentleman. If he lost his estate he ceased to be an adeliger, but not to be a freeman. But I am not now going to speak of the landed gentry who con stituted the lower nobility, but of the royal officers who have formed themselves into a superior caste. The Empire under Charlemagne was this.

The whole country was parcelled into shires. A shire (gau) usually took its name from the river that flowed through it, or from the conspicuous object in it; as a frontier it was called a mark. Over every 'gau'and 'mark' was acount — 'graf.' Over the royal stable was a Stallgraff (constable or mar shal). Over the crown land, a steward called Pfalzgraf or Count Palatine, held rule. The Grenzgrafen or Mark grafen (margraves) kept the frontiers against Sclavonic barbarians. The Burgraves held the royal castles ; Wood graves, Saltgraves, Dykegraves, Millgraves, and Hansgraves saw after imperial rights in later times in forests and salt mines ; looked to the condition of the mills, canals and the trade of the Hanseatic towns. There was even a Spielgraf, with jurisdiction over the tumblers, jugglers minstrels and clowns of the royal household.

A Graf was a minister of the king, and on his death his office and title were given by the crown to another favourite. The title is derived from gerefa, judex, exactor fiscalis ; and it retains in England some of its old significance as applied to the sheriff of thecounty (scire-gerefa) and the portreve (port-gerefa). Among the ancient Germans a duke — ' Herzog ' — was the general in command in time of war, and with the cessation of war his office and title expired. Dukes, however, soon retained their titles, and remained as permanent centres round whom the country could be mobibsed. When, as with the Alamanni and the Bavarians, they ruled over distinct races, the rank of duke became hereditary in a family, and with the break up of the empire the dukes became independent. It was by crushingthe dukes that the Carlovingian monarchy was founded.

Under Charles the Great there were none ; but with the fall of the Empire they reappeared, the holders of several counties and possessors of large estates. Conrad I. endeavoured to reduce them. Henry I. issued from their midst, and thenceforth their position was recognised. There were dukes in Saxony, Franconia, Bavaria, Austria, Swabia, and Lorraine. The kings used their utmost endeavours to bring the duchies into their own families. Thus the duchies of Swabia and of the Alamanni, Elsass and Franconia fell to Austria through the extinction of the Hoheustaufen. That of Lorraine was weakened by division. The Bavarian alone maintained its independence and integrity till the thirteenth century, when it also fell a prey to division. At the same time the Sclavonic princes assumed the title, fresh duchies were created, and the ducal office became titular, nothing more.

But to return to the Counts. The office of count was, as already said, given for life only. But as, on the death of a count, the transfer of the office to another family caused jealousy and discontent, it was soon found advisable to make these offices hereditary. With the office went very generally crown lands given in feof. These were also continued now in a family, and became hereditary like the office, by tail male. Even in the last days of the Frank monarchy there was no hereditary nobility in Germany, other than that of the Freiherren ; but the germ of a court aristocracy was laid, which from generation to generation received from the crown great benefices, and appropriated the most lucrative offices in the realm. This ' Beamten ' aristocracy was, no doubt, in part recruited from the landed gentry, the Free-lords seated on their allodial estates, but far more from the flunkies of court favour, emancipated serfs, and all the rabble who hang about a court.

As soon as these benefices and offices became heredi tary, the division between the nobility and the gentry was completed. Every crown officer had originally represented the sovereign in his ' gau or ' mark,' and acted for the king as source of justice in it, responsible to none save the king. Thus he became ' immediate ' (unmittelbar). All other freemen, however large their estates, were ' mediate ' (mit telbar), subject to the jurisdiction of the crown, acting through the count. It was natural that the families of these imperial officers should hold their heads high above the ordinary landed gentry, over whom they, in the name of the king, exercised authority. ' Beamten ' insolence has been the bane of Germany in all ages. When the offices became hereditary, the dignity which was at one time personal passed imperceptibly to the family, and thus arose the conception of a noble race towering above the simple Freiherren living on their estates and with pedi grees purer and more ancient than those of these minions, or soldiers of fortune, who lorded it over them and dis dained to associate with them in marriage.

But in the eye of the law, for a long while, there were still but two classes — freemen and serfs. The nobles were the first only among their equals, primi inter pares, nothing more. The Sachsen-Spiegel, drawn up about 1215, classes all together : ' princes, barons, and ordinary freemen are alike in fine and wehrgeld.' And though, in documents of the twelfth century, the same person is termed indiscriminately princeps, nobilis, and liber, the great feudal vassals of the crown persisted in distinguishing themselves as princes, and in cutting themselves off from the true landed nobility on the soil. The Schwaben-Spiegel, drawn up a century later than the Sachsen-Spiegel, shows us how successful they had been. In it the freemen are divided into three dis tinct classes, the Semper freien — the great vassals holding ' immediately ' from the crown ; the Mittel freien — the gentry living on their freeholds, or serving in the courts of the great vassals ; and the Landsassen, the yeomen, farming their own small properties, or renting those of landlords.

But the surest token of a cleavage of ranks is found in the lack of ' Ebenbiirtigkeit.' Now, whereas the Sachsen- Spiegel makes all freemen, from the yoeman to the duke, ebenbiirtig — able, that is, to contract marriages with each other's families, without loss of rank — the Schwaben- Spiegel makes an union between a Semper frei and a Mittel frei so great a mesalliance, that it disqualifies the chddren from inheriting their father's rank and dignities. Step by step an hereditary nobility had established itself among the officers of the crown, enjoying special immunities and sovereign dignities. It was no longer a class of freemen devoting itself to serve the crown, but a close corporation of princes (Fiirsten), whose members, whether high up or low down, could intermarry, but who could not unite with those who were ' mediate.' The title of Prince (Princeps, Fiirst) had, till the close of the twelfth century, no technical signification, but was applied to rulers generally, that is, to all who bore authority.

It was only at the end of the twelfth century that the Imperial Chancery gave it a special signification, and made it applicable only to those exercising direct control over their lordships — to Dukes, Margraves, Counts Palatine, and such counts as remained invested with ' immunitas,' as those of Tyrol and Henneberg, and to bishops, abbots and abbesses, who also enjoyed this prerogative, as the Provost of Berchtesgaden, and the Abbess cf Ganders heim. When the duchies of Swabia, Franconia, and Elsass fell into abeyance through the extinction of the Hohenstaufen, the small barons, or lords of manors, were left pretty much their own masters, and they took advantage of the occasion to assert, and, where possible, to establish their sove reignty over their petty estates. The Emperors experienced so much opposition from their great vassals, that they favoured these small landholders, who always held by the Imperial crown in its contests with the Electors.

At the close of the fourteenth century there were organised con federacies of the knightly lords of manors in Swabia, Franconia, and on the Rhine, and in 1422 the Emperor Sigismund took them under his protection and confirmed them in their immunity. They also were ' immediate.' But the princes would not allow them to be ' ebenbiirtig ' with themselves, for the Free-imperial-knights were sovereign on their own estates ; whereas the princes were so on estates held in feof from the Emperor, and exercised their jurisdiction over other families who were 'mittelbar.' The real reason was, however, that there were too many of them. The Free Knights of the Rhine formed themselves in 1527 into the cantons of the Upper, Middle, and Lower Rhine. Following this example, in 1543, the Swabian knights organised themselves into five cantons.

In England the Crown was sufficiently strong to prevent the great vassals from breaking loose from the constitution. In France, the duchies of Normandy, Brittany, Guienne, and Burgundy, the counties of Tou louse, Champagne, Flanders, 6cc, established their independence under the last feeble Carlovingians. But the Crown of France had the good fortune to be able to gather them in, one after another, under its sovereignty, so that only a few — as Bouillon, Doubes, Orange, Avignon, and Venaissin — were able to maintain themselves to a late period in partial independence. Finally, the hand of Richelieu, under Louis XIIL, reduced them all to subjec tion. But it was different in Germany ; the Crown there was much more truly elective than in England and France, where it was so in theory rather than in fact.

In Germany it passed from the Frank to the Saxon, to the Bavarian, the Swabian, and the Austrian houses. Elec tions were disputed, and rival candidates maintained brief authority. The princes, electors, and great vassals became all-powerful, and the supremacy of the Emperor existed more in name than in reality. The princes — that is, the great feudal vassals — had their own code of laws, the Furstenrecht ; and by means of that established themselves as a class apart from all others, as the highest stratum of the social lump. In the Volksrechte of the several German races, the principle prevailed that 'the child should follow the inferior hand ;' that, for instance, in a marriage between free men and serfs, the child should be servile. But this principle was not intended to go further. The Fiirstenrecht gave it another character altogether, by making it applicable to the intercourse of princes with the gentry and burgers.

Gentry and burgers were free men ; but the princes began to treat them as the free men had treated the serfs — to forbid intermarriage with them. The Volksrechte established the law to keep Teutonic blood from intermixture. The Furstenrecht used it for the purpose of glorifying the class of crown vassals at the expense of others. Nothing of tbe sort existed elsewhere. In France no law of the sort was known. The Princes of Vendome, Verneuil, Vermandois, Maine, Penthievre, &c. were legi timatised, not because they sprang from the union of a sovereign with a woman of another class, but because they were the children of mistresses. Among the noble families the children proved their blood by their father's pedigree. It is the same in England. James II. married the daughter of Chancellor Hyde, and their daughters, Mary and Anne, came to the throne.

This could not have been in Germany. Mary and Anne would have been esteemed illegitimate. As English peers were not ' immediate,' ex ercising legal jurisdiction within their counties and duchies, the German high nobility never have acknowledged, and do not at the present day acknowledge, them as their equals in birth. Marriage was allowed with only six French families, which, although not enjoying sovereign rights, were yet related to reigning families, or were descended from houses once sovereign. These were the houses of Lorraine, Savoy, Grimaldi (princes of Monaco), Rohan, Tremouille, and La Tour d'Auvergne (Dukes of Bouillon). The title of Fiirst or Prince belonged to the holder of a feof under the crown, who exercised immediate juris diction in his principality. Consequently landgraves, margraves, counts palatine, burggraves, as well as dukes, were princes.

So also were all such counts as had acquired independence in troublous times, and had wrung from the emperors acknowledgment of it, even though they did not acquire a right to sit in the Imperial Diet. When a count who was a prince died, he left, we will The Upper ATobility. 11 say, six sons. Then the estates of the family, and, after a time, the crown feofs, were divided equally among them all ; but one son only, or at the utmost two, remained re sponsible for the feudal lands to the crown, and this one son inherited the title of prince, whereas his brothers did not. They remained counts, calling themselves after the estates they inherited, but were not princely counts. Beside the princes, temporal and spiritual, were the free imperial cities. In these the council (Rath) exercised ' immediate ' jurisdiction, and delegates from these free cities sat with the princely electors in the Diet.

In 1512, under the Emperor Maximilian, the Diet (Reichstag) was a body of three ranks, or classes — the electors, the princes, and the free cities. The electors alone had a voice in the nomination of the Emperor. At this date the Diet was composed of about a thousand ' immediate ' princely powers, secular and ecclesiastical. Ofthe latter there were seventy-four. In the course of the next three hundred years a great number of illustrious princely and countly houses died out ; as, for instance, the dukes of Pomerania, of Juliers-Cleves- Berg, of Saxe-Lauenburg, the margraves of Anspach and Baireuth, the princely counts of Henneberg, and the counts of Mansfeld, Gleichen, Hanau, Schaumburg, Diep holz, &c. But the Emperors of Austria set to work recruit ing the ranks, in a manner not creditable to themselves.

Already, at the end of the fifteenth century, they had begun issuing patents to their favourites conferring on them the titles and prerogatives of princes. The very first to receive such a diploma was the Count of Croy, an ancient house in the Netherlands. In 1486 it was made princely. But it was not till late, in 1803, that it was admitted to a place in the Diet. The Arembergs, who obtaineM title and seat in 1 583, sat next to the dukes of Wurtemberg, and older families by far, such as those ot Orange and Hohenzollern, took very subordinate places. After the Thirty Years' war new princes were created by the dozen — as the Liechtenstein s, the Diedrichsteins, the Auer spergs, and the Esterhazys. Many of these families were of no antiquity or were insignificant ; they received their princely coronets as rewards for conversion from Protes tantism.

A needy Italian, Count della Torre del Tasso, came to the court of Frederick III. and was made chief forester. He then organised a postal service, and his grandson, in 15U0, was created postmaster-general; and this office and the farming of the post-office were made hereditary in the family. The post-office was a great success, and made the fortune of the masters. Torre del Tasso became, in German, Thurn und Taxis ; in 1605, Leonard von Taxis was made a baron, and in 1621 his son was created a count. He established a riding post between Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands. The income brought in by the post mounted to a million of florins annually. In 1686 the house was made princely, but did not gain a place in the college of princes of the empire till 1754. Though thus made to rank with sove reigns, they never possessed ' immediate 'jurisdiction.

The Auerspergs, Liechtensteins, Esterhazys, and Trautmann dorfs were made princes as a reward for abandoning Protestantism. I have said that, when a prince had several sons, the estates were divided among them, but that one only retained the title and dignity of prince. This was the case till the end of the Thirty Years' war, when every petty count could obtain from the Emperor recognition of the independency which was virtually his. The following table of the branchings of the family of Nassau will show how one small countly house could become a nursery of princes : — Freiherren of Laurenberg. Counts of Nassau. 1250 Line Walram. Line Otto. Line Nassau-Weilburg, —Idstein— Saarburg Netherland Line : German Line : 1605 Cron-n of England 1689 Counts of Nassau, Dillenburg ! Exp. 1702. and Katzenellenbogen.

Ijf Made princely in 1650. Counts of Counts of Counts of Seat in Diet in 1655. Saarburg. Idstein. Weilburg. | £ 'Princes, 1688. F j j | Exp. 1721. Princes of __ Princes of __ Princes of __ Princes of Nassau- Siegen. Nassau- Nassau-Diotz. Nassau- | I Exp. 1743. Dillenburg. Hadamar. __ Princes of __ Princes of __ Princes of Exp. 1739. Exp. 1711. Saarburg Ottweiler Usingen 1688. 1688. 1688. 1 si Present Kings Exp. 1723. Exp. 1728. Counts of Nassau-Weilburg, of Netherlands Dillenburg and Hadamar. crown 1815. __ Princes 1737. _f Princes of __ Princes of Duke 1806 Usingen. Saarburg. (created by Napoleon), Exp. 1816. Exp. 1797. mediatised by Prussia 1866. After the fashion of the Emperor, each Elector con stituted his court, with sewers, butlers, foresters and marshals, chosen from among the landed gentry of his province.

And just as in the Empire such officers were made hereditary, so was it in the provinces. A Prince Palatinate held his court with as great splendour as the Emperor; and the best families in the Palatinate minis tered to the Elector as to their king. The present house of Schonborn is descended from a Ehineland family in which was the hereditary office of butler to the Arch bishop of Mainz. The Metternichs were hereditary chancellors to the Archbishop of Cologne. The Stadions, sewers to the see of Augsburg. The Wurmbrands, cooks to the counts of Styria. The Count von der Lippe held the basin, and Count Bentheim poured the rose-water, at table, over the fingers of the Elector of Hesse-Cassel.1 The law of ' Ebenbiirtigkeit ' has been already spoken of. We shall see now its working in the families of the princes.

According to this law, a prince, or a count of the Empire, if he married beneath him, even with a daughter of one of the old noble families of the land which was 'mediate,' could not leave his titles and office to his children by her. The children followed their mother, bore her name, and were, in the eye of the law, illegitimate. The Elector Frederic of the Palatinate, in 1462, married Clara Detten, an Augsburg damsel, lady-in waiting and singer at the court in Munich. His son by her, Ludwig, was, at his request, made Count of Lowenstein by the Emperor Maximilian, and is the ancestor of the princely house of that name in Wurtemberg, which can • All these families are now princely, and can only mate morga natically into our great houses. now only mate with sovereign houses. It was in vain that Frederic tried to obtain recognition of his burger wife, and of his son as his legitimate heir.

Ludwig was obliged to content himself with the county of Lowenstein bought for him. The Archduke Ferdinand of Austria married the beautiful Philippina Welser, a member of one of the wealthiest citizen families in Augsburg. The Emperor created her Margravine of Burgau, and Ferdinand's sons took their mother's title. Succession to the Austrian dukedom or any of their father's titles was not possible. One house in Germany has been conspicuous for its mesalliances. This is the house of Anhalt-Dessau. We will look at its history and see the curious consequences of this law of ' Ebenbiirtigkeit.' Leopold I., ' the old Dessauer,' insisted on marrying Anna-Louise Fohse, daughter of an apothecary, in spite of his mother's remonstrances. To save the house from extinction, the Emperor, in 1701, raised Anna-Louise to the rank of Princess of the Empire, so as to legitimatise her children.