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Hegel's Württemberg Commentary: Intellectuals and the Construction of Civil Society in Revolutionary-Napoleonic Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Ian F. McNeely
Ian F. McNeely
Affiliation:
University of Oregon
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Extract

G. W. F. Hegel's “Commentary on the Published Proceedings of the Estates Assembly in the Kingdom of Württemberg, 1815–1816” is the notoriously recondite philosopher's most lucid account of Germany's political transformation after the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. Written in a punchy, polemical style, yet brimming with philosophical distinctions, the 130–page essay features concrete analyses of political institutions, social groups, and parliamentary debates in Hegel's home state. He published it in the 1817 Heidelberg Yearbooks, hoping to reach the educated public and influence the shape of Germany's constitutional order after Napoleon's defeat. The work has never been fully translated or adequately interpreted; it earns but a few, albeit astute, remarks in Terry Pinkard's recent biography. The 1999 Cambridge edition of Hegel's Political Writings omits it entirely, citing its focus on “esoteric and antiquarian matters peculiar to the political history of Württemberg.” As Hegel himself realized, however, Württemberg's experience dramatized the most profound civic upheaval of the age: the shift from a corporate society composed of particular estates (Stände) to a civil society governed by universal precepts and a “rational” state.

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Articles
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Central European History , Volume 37 , Issue 3 , September 2004 , pp. 345 - 364
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Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 2004

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References

1. Hegel, G. W. F., “Beurteilung der in Druck erschienenen Verhandlungen in der Versammlung der Landstände des Königreichs Württemberg im Jahre 1815 u. 1816,” in Werke, ed. Moldenhauer, E. and Michel, K. M. (Frankfurt am Main, 1986), 4: 464–597Google Scholar; originally published in the Heidelbergische Jahrbücher der Literatur 66–68, 73–77 (1817). I have translated “Beurteilung” as “Commentary.” An abridged and highly flawed English translation is available in Hegel's Political Writings, trans. Knox, T. M. (Oxford, 1971), 246–94.Google Scholar See Pinkard, Terry P., Hegel: A Biography (Cambridge, 2000), 399–411Google Scholar for a discussion of the Commentary; and Dickey, Laurence, ed., G. W F. Hegel — Political Writings (Cambridge, 1999), xxxiv n. 13 for the quotation.Google Scholar

2. See Hull, Isabel V., Sexuality, Stare, and Civil Society in Germany, 1700–1815 (Ithaca, 1996)Google Scholar, and the works cited therein, as well as the classic works by Koselleck, Reinhart, Preussen zwischen Reform und Revolution: Allgemeines Landrecht, Verwaltung und soziale Bewegung von 1791 bis 1848 (Stuttgart, 1967)Google Scholar and Walker, Mack, German Home Towns: Community, State, and General Estate, 1648–1871 (Ithaca, 1971)Google Scholar, all discussed in the conclusion. A sampling of other, recent works on the post-Napoleonic period includes Levinger, Matthew, Enlightened Nationalism: Tlie Transformation of Prussian Political Culture, 1806–1848 (Oxford, 2000)Google Scholar; Green, Abigail, Fatherlands: State-Building and Nationhood in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Cambridge, 2001)Google Scholar; and Hagen, William, Ordinary Prussians: Brandenburg Junkers and Villagers, 1500–1840 (Cambridge, 2003), chap. 10.Google Scholar On middle-class culture, see the works reviewed in Sperber, Jonathan, “Bürger, Bürgertum, Bürgerlichkeit, bürgerliche Gesellschaft: Studies of the German (Upper) Middle Class and its Sociocultural World,” Journal of Modern History 69 (06 1997): 271–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Finally, on the intellectual history of the period see Dickey, Laurence, Hegel: Religion, Economics, and the Politics of Spirit, 1770–1807 (Cambridge, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Beiser, Frederick C., Enlightenment, Revolution, and Romanticism: The Genesis of Modern German Political Thought, 1790–1800 (Cambridge, Mass., 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Toews, John, Hegelianism: The Path Toward Dialectical Humanism, 1805–1841 (Cambridge, 1980).Google Scholar

3. McNeely, Ian F., The Emancipation of Writing: German Civil Society in the Making, 1790s–1820s (Berkeley, 2003).Google Scholar

4. Hegel, , “Beurteilung,” 574.Google Scholar

5. Ibid., 576.

6. Ibid., 570–71, for the terms “Schreibleibeigenschaft” and “Schreibhörigkeit”

7. See McNeely, , Emancipation, 28–34 on the Schreiberei.Google Scholar

8. Bernritter, Friedrich, Wirtemberg. Pietismus, Schreiber, Schulen und Erziehung und Aufklärung überhaupt (n.p., 1787), 58–59.Google Scholar

9. Bäuerlen, J. G., Taschenbuch für angehende Wirtembergische Rechtsgelehrte und für Schreiber (Stuttgart, 1795–1794), 1794 vol., 124.Google Scholar

10. Again it was their lack of status, in particular their lack of membership in the city councils that prevented them from participating, actively and in the open at least, in politics. See documents from September-October 1796 on scribes Lang at Maulbronn and Wagner at Sindelfingen, Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart (hereafter: HStAS) L 6 Bü 2. 6.

11. Hegel, , “Beurteilung,” 482–83 (both quotations).Google Scholar

12. Ibid., 535.

13. Ibid., 471; see also 504–6.

14. Ibid., 531–33.

15. Communal constitutions often trumped statewide policy and law. See Grube, Walter, “Dorfgemeinde und Amtsversammlung in Altwürttemberg,” Zeitschrift für württembergische Landesgeschichte 13 (1954): 194–219.Google Scholar

16. Benzing, Fritz, “Die Vertretung von ‘Stadt und Amt’ im altwürttembergischen Landtag” (Ph. D. diss., University of Tübingen, 1924).Google Scholar

17. In a fascinating twist, these citizens, fed up with their scribe, drafted their complaints as a formal instruction against him, improvising their own, completely spurious legal formulas, complete with paragraph markers (§) and subsections, to call attention to his patronizing abuses. Anschuldigungen gegen Stadt- und Amtsschreiber Schorndorf Schmid, Entwurf einer Instruction, §4 (a)-(c), 8 September 1780, HStAS A 213 Bü 8532.

18. Acta, die gegen den Magistrat und den Stadt- und Amtsschreiber Schmid zu Wmnenden wegen Einlegung einer respectswidrigen Protestation… betr. geführte Untersuchung (1805), HStAS A 213 Bü 6509.

19. Bitte des Stadtschreibers Theuss von Waiblingen, um Revision der Untersuchung wegen einer im Jahr 1806 im Namen Stadt und Amts Waiblingen verfertigten unmittelbaren Eingabe, 13 January 1806; and report from investigator Schott; 20 March 1806, government expert opinion, HStAS A 213 Bü 6511.

20. Petition from Waiblingen Amtsschultheissen to duke, 13 September 1796; for attribution to Bolley, rival petition from Waiblingen Magistrat to Landtag's Standing Committee, 14 September 1796, HStAS L 6 Bü 2.6.

21. [Bolley, Heinrich], “Noch ein Beitrag zu der Frage: Wer kann zum württembergischen Landtag abgeordnet werden?” in Württembergische Landtagsschriften (Stuttgart, 1796)Google Scholar, with a full-page quotation from Kant.

22. Hegel, , “Beurteilung,” 559, using the term “Koryphäen”Google Scholar

23. Cahier (Zusammenstellung von Beschwerden) und Instruktion für den Landtagsdeputierten von Stadt und Amt Wildberg, HStAS A 573 Bü 5377.

24. The cahier itself was never published. See Instruktion from Wildberg, 14 March 1797, HStAS A 573 Bü 5371. For a contemporary account corroborating this interpretation, see von Normann, Philipp Christian and Ostertag, Johann Jakob, Bemerkungen über den wirtembergischen Landtag von 1797–1799: Ein Beitrag zu Erläuterung der Wirtembergischen Geschichte und Verfassung (n.p., 1800), 108–27.Google Scholar

25. See his unpublished pamphlet “Dass die Magistrate von den Bürgern gewählt werden müssen” (ca. 1798), translated in Dickey, , ed., Politicai Writings.Google Scholar

26. Bolley Protestation, #1 Lit. O, excerpt of 26 September 1796, HStAS A 213 Bü 3001; on Bolley's continuing involvement, see his testimony in the government report plus Beilage Lit. A fol 4b, 20 March 1806, HStAS A 213 Bü 6511; and on the constitutional revision, Vergleich in Amtsversammlungsprotokolle, 5 April 1800, Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg F 210 II Bü 7.

27. Dass die Wahl eines Amtsdeputierten durch eine Stadt- und Amtsversammlung geschehen soll, Tübingen #1–18 (1771), HStAS A 213 Bü 2895.

28. For further elaboration on this argument, McNeely, , Emancipation, 112–13.Google Scholar Other precedents are mentioned in documents #9–13 from the Tübingen case cited above, as well as Bestimmung der Votantenzahl bei den in Amtsversammlungen zu verhandelnden Wahlen und gemeinschaftlichen Gegenständen, 1786–87, HStAS A 213 Bü 2159, from Backnang, itself used as a precedent in the Waiblingen case.

29. The term “elective affinities” comes from Max Weber, and is well explained by Gerth, Hans H. and Mills, C. Wright in their introduction to From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (Oxford, 1946), 61–65.Google Scholar

30. This conception of practice owes many debts to Bourdieu, Pierre, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge, 1977), 1–9, 16–22, 78–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31. On the complex and confusing period under Friedrich's absolutism, from 1806 to 1815, see McNeely, , Emancipation, 132–43.Google Scholar

32. On the timing and causal sequence, see parliament's Eingabe der Ständeversammlung wegen des Schreibereiwesens, Königlich-Württembergisches Staats- und Regierungsblatt, 21/22 11 1816, 391–92Google Scholar; the king's (personal) response in Kann das Schreiber-Institut nach dem Beispiele anderer deutschen Staaten ganz aufgehoben werden? #3, 2/9 December 1816, HStAS E 301 Bü 280; the empowerment of the state Kommission zur Untersuchung der Gebrechen des Schreibereiwesens, Staats- und Regierungsblatt, 11 09 1816, 392–95Google Scholar; and the commission's comprehensive findings in Hauptbericht der Kommission zum Schreibereiwesen, July-August 1817, HStAS E 31 Bü 281.

33. Staats- und Regierungsblatt 20 08 1817, 413–15; 5 09 1817, 441–42; and 10 09 1817, 456–459 (all Königliche Verordnungen)Google Scholar; also 31 December 1818 [1819 volume], 28 (Organisationsedikt); 29 August 1819, 561 (Notariatsedikt); 30 June 1821, 469–89 (Landtagsabschied); 1 March 1822, 131 (Verwaltungsedikt); and, for the edict abolishing the Schreiberei altogether, 17 April 1826, 211–18.

34. Hegel, , “Beurteilung,” 462–63 (both quotations; emphasis in original)Google Scholar; also 468–69 for more on “Öffentlichkeit.”

35. Verhandlungen in der Versammlung der Landstände des Königreiches Württemberg, 22 January-21 October 1816, Abt. 18–32, especially representative Kurz vs. scribe von Olnhausen at Horb (6/9 February 1816); representative Seybold vs. scribe Nast at Gmünd (19 August 1816); representative Reiter vs. scribes in Hohenrechberg at Geislingen (21/24 October 1816, including the quotation, from Reiter, in Beilage 5); see also the cases at Ellwangen, Mergentheim, and Tuttlingen. For additional, archivally preserved petitions, Eingaben der Ständeversammlung from 1815 and 1816, HStAS E 31 Bü 294–295.

36. Hegel, , “Beurteilung,” 533 (emphasis added).Google Scholar

37. Berichte der Landvogtei- und Oberämter über die Stimmung des Volkes wegen Vertagung der Landstände Versammlung, August–December 1815, HStAS E 141 Bd. 145, esp. part #5, expert opinion of 6 December 1815 on “disturbers of the peace,” illegal petition drives, unallowed communications, and government surveillance methods (including quotations); also part #2, Ulm and Gamerschwang assemblies of August–September 1815; part #4, assemblies in Besigheim, Metzingen, and Nagold in September–October 1815.

38. See McNeely, , Emancipation, 148–52 for descriptions of these maneuvers.Google Scholar

39. Beschwerden und Vorstellungen der in Schreiberei-Sachen Verordnungen, 1817–1819, HStAS E 31 Bü 285 for early complaints; die Vorstellung mehrerer Stadt- und Amtsschreiber wegen Schmälerung ihres Einkommens durch die ergangenen Verordnungen in Schreibereisachen, 1819–1822, HStAS E 146/2 Bü 2163 for later ones (including Bolley's assertion of his own Dienst-Vertrags-Rechte on 28 November 1817); for still later complaints, after 1822, see HStAS E 301 Bü 96.

40. Akten der Kommission wegen des Schreibereiwesens, Subfasz.: Beschuldigungen gegen den Actuar der Commission, Rechnungsrath List, HStAS E 31 Bü 287; on Bolley, essays in HStAS E 7 Bü 88. See Hettling, Manfred, Reform ohne Revolution: Bürgertum, Bürokratie und kommunale Selbst-verwaltung in Württemberg von 1800 bis 1850 (Göttingen, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar for more on the reform effort. The concept of an intra-administrative public sphere is developed in Koselleck, , Preussen, 262–66.Google Scholar

41. Organisations-Vollziehungs-Kommission (OVK) instruction for collection of income information 2 Oct. 1821, HStAS E 301 Bü 106; for scribes' Dienst-Einkommens-Berechnungen, HStAS E 301 Bü 107–118, based on templates on Pensiomrung und Entschädigungs-Ansprüche der Stadt- und Amtsschreiber, 1821–1826, HStAS E 31 Bü 286; for Einkommens-Erklärungen and Entschädigung, 1822–1834, HStAS E 7 Bü 84.

42. Subfasz. F6a, die Steuer Fassionen der Stadt- und Amtsschreiber und ihre Differenz mit den Diensteinkommens Berechnungen von 1821, HStAS E 301 Bü 106, esp. tables #5 ad 3 and #6 used to compare reported 1821 incomes, compensation incomes, and reported taxable incomes from 1821–1825.

43. See McNeely, , Emancipation, 175–91 for more on the OVK and its methodology.Google Scholar

44. Scott, James C.. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, 1998).Google Scholar

45. While Walker makes the guilds his thesis and then turns to constitution-making and citizenship law, Koselleck instead begins with the Allgemeines Landrecht and then moves to economic development and “social movement.” Though mirror images, both arguments are similarly dialectical.

46. Culture also enters Walker's argument (chap. 10) as Biedermeier Romanticism: an ersatz bourgeois philistinism to take the place of the guild-enforced burgher morality of the eighteenth-century hometown. Here, another dialectical synthesis emerges, between the particularist guild moralism of the premodern burgher Gemeinschaft and the originally liberal, cosmopolitan universalism of German Volk nationalism, producing a xenophobic, philistine hybrid anticipating the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft.

47. In less overtly Hegelian forms, these methods and approaches, particularly the focus on the bourgeois intelligentsia forming the kernel of the universal estate, inform the entire historiography on this period in German history. This literature concentrates overwhelmingly on political and constitutional reforms, on the one hand, and intellectual currents (idealism, neohumanism, Romanticism, nationalism) on the other.

48. Kienitz, Sabine, Sexualität, Macht und Moral: Prostitution und Geschlechterbe ziehungen Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts in Württemberg (Berlin, 1995).Google Scholar

49. See Collins, Randall' elegant definition in The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change (Cambridge, Mass., 1998), 19.Google Scholar