Hankering after continuity

Anti-Napoleonic feeling suffused all of Germany, from north to south, from high to low. Even the Brothers Grimm, who at the time were just emerging as fairytale collectors, contributed their bit: they brought out an edition of the ancient German tale Poor Heinrich (1813) with a preface stating that the proceeds of the sales would go to the support of the militias. And within the Brothers’ collection of folk- and fairytales, there was a tale that was generally interpreted as a political allegory: the story of the poor fisherman, who (thanks to his capture of a magic fish) can wish for greater and greater riches and splendour – until he finally overreaches himself and is reduced to his original destitution. Many contemporaries read it as a parable on the rise and fall of Napoleon.

The cult of the native German past was a natural reaction to the innovations that had been sweeping across Europe in the wake of Napoleon's armies. Everywhere in Germany, a nostalgic cultivation of traditions sprang up in the teeth of historical change. The dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in particular was felt as a traumatic self-estrangement, and the historicist impulse that we have noted in the reactions of Fichte and Schlegel made itself felt in the field of letters and learning everywhere. Three reactions to the fatal year 1806 can be noted by way of an example.

The first of these involved the Bavarian Crown Prince Ludwig. He conceived, in 1807 – that is to say: at the height of Napoleon's power and at the nadir of Germany’s subjection – a plan to enshrine the great German past in nothing less than a national Pantheon. The original Pantheon, at Paris, had already been reconstituted into a shrine of heroes of the French nation, such as Rousseau and Voltaire. Ludwig wanted to establish a great temple, to be filled with busts and plaques honouring the great representatives of the German nation. Once he mounted the Bavarian throne, he was in a position to put his ideas into practice. National architecture flourished under his rule.