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Gustav Freytag, the Reichsgründung, and the National Liberal Origins of the Sonderweg

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2013

Larry L. Ping
Larry L. Ping*
Affiliation:
Southern Utah University
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Extract

In the opening passage of his memoirs, Gustav Freytag (1816–95) mused that the secret of his literary success came down to the fact that his life “on the whole, resembles the life experience (Bildungsgang) of thousands of my contemporaries.” A century of scholarship on the Kaiserreich has validated Freytag's claim to serve as crown witness for the mentalité of his generation.

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Articles
Information
Central European History , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , December 2012 , pp. 605 - 630
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 2012

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References

1 Freytag, Gustav, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1887), 3Google Scholar. See Bussmann, Walter, “Gustav Freytag, Maßtäbe seiner Zeitkritik,” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 34 (1952): 261–287CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Lorenz, Ottokar, Staatsmänner und Geschichtschreiber des 19. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Hetz, 1896)Google Scholar. For a guide to the modern monograph literature, see Ping, Larry L., Gustav Freytag and the Prussian Gospel: Novels, Liberalism, and History (Oxford and Bern: Peter Lang, 2006)Google Scholar; as well as Lonner, Alyssa, Mediating the Past: Gustav Freytag, Progress, and German Historical Identity, 1848–1871 (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2005)Google Scholar.

2 See Anderson, Margaret Lavinia and Barkin, Kenneth D., “The Myth of the Puttkamer Purge and the Reality of the Kulturkampf: Some Reflections on the Historiography of Imperial Germany,” The Journal of Modern History 54, no. 4 (Dec. 1982), 674CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Margaret Anderson and Kenneth Barkin maintained in 1982 that the proponents of the Sonderweg view reflected a critical “left-liberal cosmology” whose roots could be traced back to the “National Liberals writers and their intellectual scion Max Weber.”

3 Blackbourn, David and Eley, Geoff, The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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5 Woolf, Virginia, Collected Essays, 4 vols. (London: Hogarth Press, 1966), vol. I, 335Google Scholar. It is no accident that Freytag cited Lord Macaulay as his favorite historian among the British Whigs.

6 Freytag, Gustav, Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1859–66)Google Scholar. For the balance of this essay, I will abbreviate the title to Bilder. See the introduction to White, Hayden, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973)Google Scholar. See also Tatlock, Lynne, “Realist Historiography and the Historiography of Realism: Gustav Freytag's Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit,” German Quarterly 63 (1990): 59–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Smith, Helmut Walser, The Continuities of German History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Jarausch, Konrad H. and Jones, Larry Eugene, In Search of a Liberal Germany: Studies in the History of German Liberalism from 1789 to the Present (New York: Berg, 1990)Google Scholar, 22.

8 Freytag, Gustav, “Die Stimmung in Preußen,” in Freytag, Gustav, Aufsätze zur Politik, Geschichte, Literatur und Kunst (Leipzig: Fikentscher, n.d.), 253Google Scholar.

9 I am indebted to Professor Roger Chickering for his comments on an earlier version of this piece presented at the 2010 German Studies Association Conference. The characterization of Freytag's views is Chickering's. See also Lynne Tatlock, “Realist Historiography.”

10 Lindau, Hans, Gustav Freytag (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1907), 386Google Scholar. See also Sheehan, James J., German Liberalism in the 19th Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 106Google Scholar.

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12 See Heyderhoff, Julius and Wentzcke, Paul, eds., Deutscher Liberalismus im Zeitalter Bismarcks. Eine politische Briefsammlung (Osnabrück: Biblio-Verlag, 1970)Google Scholar, 133 note. See also Dorpalen, Andreas, “Emperor Frederick III and the German Liberal Movement,” American Historical Review LIV, no. 1 (October 1948): 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Freytag, Bilder, vol. IV, 490.

14 See Chevalier Bunsen's introduction to Freytag, Gusatv, Debit and Credit (New York: Harper & Bros., 1858), xxiiGoogle Scholar.

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18 Freytag, Bilder, vol. IV, 491.

19 Kocka, Jürgen, “Asymmetrical Historical Comparison: The Case of the German Sonderweg,” History and Theory 38, no. 1 (Feb. 1999): 44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Spengler, Oswald, The Decline of the West, vol. II (New York: Knopf, 1939), 403Google Scholar.

21 Gustav Freytag, “Die Pflichten eines Mitgliedes der Liberalen Preußischen Partei,” (1866), in Freytag, Aufsätze zur Politik, 229. See also Seiler, Friedrich, Gustav Freytag (Leipzig: R. Voigtländer, 1898), 153Google Scholar.

22 Helmholt, ed., Gustav Freytags Briefe an Albrecht von Stosch, 10.

23 Dove, Alfred, ed., Gustav Freytag und Heinrich von Treitschke im Briefwechsel (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1900), 58Google Scholar.

24 Nipperdey, Thomas, Germany From Napoleon to Bismarck, 1800–1866 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 710Google Scholar. Nipperdey insisted, “The historian and his readers must give back to the past what it once had, what every period has, our own included, namely an open future.” Quoted in Evans, Richard J., Rereading German History: From Unification to Reunification 1800–1996 (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 24Google Scholar. See also Mommsen, Wolfgang, Imperial Germany 1867–1918: Politics, Culture, and Society in an Authoritarian State (London: Hodder, 1995), 7Google Scholar. Wolfgang Mommsen suggested that at the cost of “a system of skirted decisions,” a “legal and political framework was created that gave the parties a substantial measure of real influence.”

25 Freytag, Gustav, “Der Reichstag und die Kriegesverfassung des Bundes,” Die Grenzboten 2, no. 18 (1867): 167Google Scholar.

26 Templetey, ed., Gustav Freytag und Herzog Ernst, 237.

27 Helmholt, ed., Gustav Freytags Briefe an Albrecht von Stosch, 52.

28 von Stosch, Ulrich, ed., Denkwürdigkeiten des Generals und Admirals Albrecht von Stosch. Briefe und Tagebuchblätter (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlag, 1904), 150Google Scholar.

29 Ibid., 181.

30 Ibid., 153.

31 Dove, Gustav Freytag und Heinrich von Treitschke im Briefwechsel, 16–17.

32 Heyderhoff and Wentzcke, eds., Deutscher Liberalismus, vol. II, 400–401Google Scholar.

33 Blackbourn and Eley, The Peculiarities of German History, 84.

34 Dove, Gustav Freytag und Heinrich von Treitschke im Briefwechsel, 55. See also Barkin, Kenneth D., “1878–1879: The Second Founding of the Reich, A Perspective,” German Studies Review 10, no. 2 (May 1987): 235CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Barkin dismissed that frame of mind as “the National Liberal self-deception of 1866–67, that Bismarck was their man and would pull all of the chestnuts out of the fire,” 235.

35 Ibid.

36 Freytag, Erinnerungen, 221. See also Sheehan, German Liberalism, 55–56. Sheehan wrote that many liberals exhibited the “siege mentality” of men who saw their political interests threatened by the great unwashed.

37 Templetey, ed., Gustav Freytag und Herzog Ernst, 213–16.

38 Helmholt, ed., Gustav Freytags Briefe an Albrecht von Stosch, 268. See also Blackbourn and Eley, The Peculiarities of German History, 125.

39 Helmholt, ed., Gustav Freytags Briefe an Albrecht von Stosch, 289.

40 Freytag, Erinnerungen, 329–30.

41 Helmholt, ed., Gustav Freytags Briefe an Albrecht von Stosch, 21–22.

42 Templetey, ed., Gustav Freytag und Herzog Ernst, 237.

43 Freytag, “Der Reichstag und die Kriegesverfassung des Bundes,” 167.

44 Allinson, A. R., ed., The War Diary of the Emperor Frederick III, 1870–1871 (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1926), 50Google Scholar.

45 Stosch, ed., Denkwürdigkeiten, 181.

46 Cramer, Kevin, The Thirty Years' War and German Memory in the Nineteenth Century (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2010), 2Google Scholar. “The collective memory of this seventeenth-century war,” Cramer argues, “shaped every debate in the nineteenth century over the ideal form of the German nation.”

47 Gustav Freytag, “Die Regenten in Frankreich und die Friedensbedingungen,” in Freytag, Aufsätze zur Politik, 342.

48 Freytag, Gustav, Der Kronprinz und die deutsche Kaiserkrone. Erinnerungsblätter von Gustav Freytag (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1889), 44Google Scholar.

49 Gustav Freytag, “Der Tod des Kaisers Napoleon,” in Freytag, Aufsätze zur Politik, 449. The crown prince gleefully remarked that some French prisoners had referred to Napoleon as “the old woman.” Allinson, ed., The War Diary of the Emperor Frederick III, 43.

50 Freytag, “Die Regenten in Frankreich und die Friedensbedingungen,” 346. Freytag was not a solo voice employing such arguments. The noted American historian George Bancroft, who represented the United States in Berlin, agreed with Freytag's analysis. For an account of attitudes in the circle around Otto von Bismarck, see also De Wolfe Howe, M. A., The Life and Letters of George Bancroft, vol. II (New York: Scribners, 1908), 246–47Google Scholar. See also Healy, Róisín, The Jesuit Specter in Imperial Germany (Boston: Brill, 2003), 50Google Scholar.

51 Gustav Freytag, “Nach Weißenburg und Wörth,” (Sulz im Elsaß, den 7. August, 1870), in Freytag, Aufsätze zur Politik, 312–315. Of this battle and the subsequent victory of Wörth, the crown prince wrote in his diary, “[This] is a victory of historical significance, for, apart from its importance as a military triumph, it is notable for the French having been beaten for the first time since 1815 in a pitched battle.” Allinson, The War Diary of the Emperor Frederick III, 49.

52 Freytag, “Nach Weißenburg und Wörth,” 313.

53 Ibid., 318. The historiography of the American Civil War provides some interesting parallels to this line of reasoning. See McWhiney, Grady and Jamiesson, Perry D., Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage (Tuscaloosa, LA: University of Alabama Press, 1984)Google Scholar.

54 Gustav Freytag, “Die Französische Volksbewaffung,” in Freytag, Aufsätze zur Politik, 356.

55 Gustav Freytag, “Nach Sedan,” in Freytag, Aufsätze zur Politik, 335.

56 Ibid.

57 Freytag, Bilder, vol. III, 64. He wrote Ernst II that “For three hundred years this heaven-branded house has worked against the German nation with Spaniards, Walloons, Croatians, and Jesuits; they have ravaged their own tribe and made it ridiculous.” Templetey, ed., Gustav Freytag und Herzog Ernst, 131.

58 Freytag, “Nach Weißenburg und Wörth,” 316. See also Freytag, Der Kronprinz und die deutsche Kaiserkrone, 14. For further discussion of this issue, see Wawro, Geoffrey, The Franco-Prussian War: The German Conquest of France in 1870–1871 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 103CrossRefGoogle Scholar. “Most of the German troops were riveted by their first sight of Africans; they peered curiously at the dead or captured Turcos ‘as if at zoo animals,’ and hesitantly touched their ‘poodle hair.’”

59 Gustav Freytag, “Das ‘Retten’ und ‘Rollen.’ Bitte an unser Heer,” in Freytag, Aufsätze zur Politik, 402.

60 The phrase is that of Isabel Hull. See Hull, Isabel V., Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 2005), 105Google Scholar.

61 Freytag, Erinnerungen, 324.

62 Freytag, Der Kronprinz und die deutsche Kaiserkrone, 60–61. Goethe wrote of the outcome of Valmy that “From this place and from this day forth commences a new era in the world's history, and you can all say you were present at its birth.” See Creasy, E. S., The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World from Marathon to Waterloo (New York: Harper & Brothers, n.d.), 344Google Scholar.

63 Freytag, Erinnerungen, 372.

64 Bleibtreu's painting is reproduced in Müller-Bohn, Hermann, Kaiser Friedrich der Gütige. Vaterländisches Ehrenbuch (Berlin: Kittel, n.d.)Google Scholar.

65 Gustav Freytag, “Der Preuße aus dem Jahre 1813 vor der Siegessäule,” in Freytag, Aufsätze zur Politik, 459.

66 Ibid., 455–56.

67 Because of a series of family tragedies, including the long illness and death of his first wife, the death of his son Gustav, and the mental illness of his second wife, those six weeks also marked his longest period away from his home in the years 1869–1882. For a contemporary evaluation of his wartime journalism, see Lorenz, Staatsmänner und Geschichtschreiber, 353.

68 Freytag, Erinnerungen, 248, 371.

69 Eley, Geoff, “Bismarckian Germany,” in Modern Germany Reconsidered 1870–1945, ed. Martel, G. (London: Routledge, 1992), 19Google Scholar.

70 Mehring, Franz, Aufsätze zur deutschen Literatur von Hebbel bis Schweichel (Berlin: Dietz, 1980), 66–67Google Scholar.

71 Helmholt, ed., Gustav Freytags Briefe an Albrecht von Stosch, 80.

72 Stosch, ed., Denkwürdigkeiten, 182.

73 See Windell, George, “The Bismarckian Empire as a Federal State, 1866–1880,” Central European History 2 (1969): 302CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74 Templetey, ed., Gustav Freytag und Herzog Ernst, 250. Freytag is referring to the circle around the crown prince here.

75 Dove, Gustav Freytag und Heinrich von Treitschke im Briefwechsel, 162.

76 Helmholt, ed., Gustav Freytags Briefe an Albrecht von Stosch, 80.

77 Wehler, Hans-Ulrich, The German Empire, 1871–1918 (Leamington Spa: Berg Publishers, 1985), 29Google Scholar.

78 Gustav Freytag, “Das Deutsche Reich als Großmacht,” Im Neuen Reich 1871, no. 26, in Freytag, Aufsätze zur Politik, 443.

79 Templetey, ed., Gustav Freytag und Herzog Ernst, 248.

80 Freytag, “Das Deutsche Reich als Großmacht,” 448. See Smith, The Continuities of German History, 172. Helmut Walser Smith wrote, “The civilizing state thus created a homogenous and modern nation.” He also summarized the extravagant liberal vision of the cultural and political mission of the state, “not the reverse.”

81 Eley, “Bismarckian Germany,” 21. See also Gross, Michael B., The War Against Catholicism: Liberalism and the Anti-Catholic Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 254Google Scholar. For a contrasting view on the political origins of the Kulturkampf, see Clark, Christopher, Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600–1947 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006), 568–76Google Scholar. See also Anderson, Margaret L., Windthorst: A Political Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 198Google Scholar.

82 Helmholt, ed., Gustav Freytags Briefe an Albrecht von Stosch, 53.

83 Ibid.

84 Chickering, Roger, Karl Lamprecht: A German Academic Life, 1856–1915 (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1993), 219Google Scholar.

85 Freytag, “Das Deutsche Reich als Großmacht,” 443.

86 Helmholt, ed., Gustav Freytags Briefe an Albrecht von Stosch, 53.

87 von Treitschke, Heinrich, Deutsche Geschichte im neunzehnten Jahrhundert, vol. I (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1904), 56Google Scholar.

88 Helmholt, ed., Gustav Freytags Briefe an Albrecht von Stosch, 53.

89 Templetey, ed., Gustav Freytag und Herzog Ernst, 254.

90 Kocka, “Asymmetrical Historical Comparison,” 46.

91 Ibid., 45.

92 Steinberg, Jonathan, Bismarck: A Life (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 321Google Scholar. Steinberg wrote, “Falk believed in the state as an abstract entity, what Bornkamm called, ‘practical Hegelianism.’”

93 Helmholt, ed., Gustav Freytags Briefe an Albrecht von Stosch, 133.

94 Freytag developed the theme of bourgeois unworldliness and immaturity at length in his 1865 novel of academic life, Die verlorene Handschrift (Berlin: Knauer, n.d.)Google Scholar.

95 Helmholt, ed., Gustav Freytags Briefe an Albrecht von Stosch, 78.

96 Ibid., 137. See also Gall, Lothar, Bismarck: The White Revolutionary, vol. II (London: Allen & Unwin, 1986), 131Google Scholar.

97 For a full discussion of the idea of Caesarism, see Stürmer, Michael, “Bismarck in Perspective,” Central European History 4, no. 4 (December 1971): 308CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It should be remembered that Theodor Mommsen dedicated his Römische Geschichte with its famous character study of Julius Caesar to Gustav Freytag.

98 Helmholt, ed., Gustav Freytags Briefe an Albrecht von Stosch, 81. Mommsen, Wolfgang J., Max Weber and German Politics 1890–1920 (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), 87Google Scholar. Mommsen concluded, “It was not the weakness of the liberal idea or the lack of liberal leadership personalities, but exclusively Bismarck's caesarist regime, which had survived ‘by expediently covering itself with monarchical legitimacy,’ that was the cause of the failure of the liberal movement.”

99 Helmholt, ed., Gustav Freytags Briefe an Albrecht von Stosch, 136; Freytag, Erinnerungen, 331.

100 Helmholt, ed., Gustav Freytags Briefe an Albrecht von Stosch, 40. Gordon Craig praised this “highly original” analysis. See Craig, Gordon A., Germany 1866–1945 (New York: Oxford, 1978), 59–60Google Scholar.

101 Wentzcke, Paul, ed., Im Neuen Reich 1871–1890 (Osnabrück: Biblio, 1967), 390Google Scholar.

102 Lorenz, Staatsmänner und Geschichtschreiber, 331. The characterization of Freytag's views is that of Lorenz.

103 Langewiesche, Dieter, Liberalism in Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 214Google Scholar.

104 Templetey, ed., Gustav Freytag und Herzog Ernst, 329.

105 Quoted in W. J. Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics, 14.

106 Freytag, Erinnerungen, 309–10.

107 See Templetey, ed., Gustav Freytag und Herzog Ernst, 326 note. Templetey wrote, “Between no. 233 and no. 234 Freytag's letter to the Herzog in which he sent The Crown Prince and the Imperial Throne is missing. It is regrettable that this letter cannot be found, because there Freytag clarified how and why he decided [to write the book]. In brief, a motive can be found in a letter to his publisher Heinrich Hirzel of September 10, 1889: ‘I could not avoid this small but unpleasant work, [simply] because I have indications of unreasonable literary expectations imposed on me by the Kaiserin Friedrich.’”

108 Freytag, Der Kronprinz und die deutsche Kaiserkrone, 3.

109 Gustav Freytag, Briefe an Seine Gattin (Berlin: Lehmann, 1913), 225.

110 Freytag, Der Kronprinz und die deutsche Kaiserkrone, 81–82. For a contrasting current evaluation of the crown prince as a commander, see Steinberg, Bismarck: A Life, 252–53.

111 Freytag, Der Kronprinz und die deutsche Kaiserkrone, 38.

112 Ibid., 41–42. See Dove, Alfred, “Gustav Freytag,” Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, vol. 48 (Leipzig: Duncker, 1904), 219Google Scholar. Dove declared that Kaiser Wilhelm II had read the text before publication and “took no offense” at Freytag's characterization of his father.

113 Freytag, Der Kronprinz und die deutsche Kaiserkrone, 47–48.

114 Sir Ponsonby, Frederick, ed., Letters of the Empress Frederick (London: MacMillan, 1928), 395–95Google Scholar. Ponsonby argued, “The safest accusation to bring against her was that she was an Englishwoman intriguing against Germany; this brought together all patriotic Germans, no matter what their politics might be, and created a feeling of distrust for the Empress.”

115 See Gross, The War against Catholicism, 199–203. See also von Sybel, Heinrich, “Über die Emancipation der Frauen,” in von Sybel, Heinrich, Vorträge und Aufsätze (Berlin: A. Hoffmann, 1874)Google Scholar, 73.

116 Freytag, Der Kronprinz und die deutsche Kaiserkrone, 118.

117 Ibid., 30.

118 Ibid., 82.

119 Freytag, Erinnerungen, 248, 371.

120 Ibid., vi-vii.

121 Freytag, “Der Preuße aus dem Jahre 1813 vor der Siegessäule,” in Freytag, Aufsätze zur Politik. See note 65.

122 Freytag, Erinnerungen, 308.

123 See Retallack, James, The German Right 1860–1920: The Limits of the Authoritarian Imagination (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 123–24Google Scholar.

124 Franz Mehring, Aufsätze zur deutschen Literatur, 76. For an interesting assessment of Freytag's status within the royal family, see Wilhelm, II, My Early Life (New York: Doran, 1926), 28Google Scholar. Kaiser William II recalled, “Freytag's rather weak personality was a shock: his works, especially [The] ‘Ancestors’ which I had read with enthusiasm, had given me quite a different impression of him. Hinzpeter records that in 1870 he disappointed my father, too, though in another way. He had taken him on his staff in the hopes that he would produce some great war descriptions: they were not forthcoming.” William could certainly claim familiarity with Freytag's works since his mother assigned large portions of his writing to him as a fundamental aspect of his education. John Röhl wrote, “She then recommended the trilogy Die Ahnen by Gustav Freytag, which had just been published. ‘You ought to begin by reading Freitags [sic] books, reading the three beautiful novels, as they are written in succession: Das Nest der Zaunkönige, then Ingo u. Ingraban, and lastly Die Brüder des Deutschen Hauses.” He was then to read Freytag's novel Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit, she urged, notwithstanding the fact that this was a work that spanned five volumes and a total of 2,427 pages, which, together with the Ahnen novels, meant 3,785 pages in all.” Röhl, John C. G., Wilhelm II: The Kaiser's Personal Monarchy, 1888–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 231Google Scholar.

125 Freytag, Der Kronprinz und die deutsche Kaiserkrone, 61–62.

126 Ibid., 85. Echoing this view in his biography of Bismarck, Erich Eyck mused, “A whole generation, the one which was young in 1848 and in its prime at the time of the Prussian constitutional conflict and the movement towards national unity, a generation grown up under the influence of liberal ideas, was passed over.” See Eyck, Erich, Bismarck and the German Empire (New York: Norton, 1964), 299Google Scholar.

127 Helmholt, ed., Gustav Freytags Briefe an Albrecht von Stosch, 289.