Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 6. Young Germany

by Georg Brandes

But for the most part it was with men of science and artists that the Crown Prince consorted—scholars such as Humboldt, historians like Ranke, painters like Cornelius, sculptors like Rauch. He was much interested in architecture, made a study of the antique styles in their application to ecclesiastical architecture of the Byzantine type, sketched plans, tried to produce imposing effects by means of colonnades and halls. He projected ideal landscapes, resembling scenes on the Italian shores of the Mediterranean. He criticised music and poetry. He specially encouraged and patronised the study of ancient German customs and of all ancient art which had devoted itself to the service of religion; and all this occupation with the past increased his distaste for the time in which he lived, and developed his inclination to restore the old order of things, or at any rate to oppose reforms inspired by the modern spirit.

This inclination could not but be strengthened by the young prince's intercourse with clergymen, and with the small circle of romantically disposed aristocrats who were his familiar associates. From his childhood he had been religious. As a boy he had, during the war with Napoleon, learnt to believe in the sacredness of the old system of government, in the divine right of kings, and in the mission of Austria as heir of the Holy Roman Empire. He adopted the whole system of ideas and enthusiasms of which Joseph de Maistre was the first and ablest exponent. He studied Haller's Restauration der Staatswissenschaft. Ere long he came to look upon the crown as a mystic jewel, a combination of the priestly fillet of old with the dictator's golden wreath; the kingly office became in his eyes a sacred calling, the king himself a divinely inspired being. His ideal was a patriarchal relation between the king and his people, much the same ideal as that which was aimed at during the same period by the so-called Young England, the followers of Disraeli.

Frederick William IV. was received by his people with all the confident expectation with which a nation that is still in its political childhood welcomes a new king. They believed of him what is believed of all crown princes, that his principles were more liberal than his father's. The hopes and expectations of the nation surrounded him with a sort of halo. He began, as kings are wont to do, with an act which appeared to justify the popular estimate of his character; he proclaimed a general amnesty for political offences. This led all to hope that he would fulfil the political desire of the country, that he would confer on Prussia that benefit which was regarded as a necessary condition of all progress, constitutional government.

As already stated, the Prussian people were in possession of a distinct, definite, royal promise of a constitution, a promise the fulfilment of which had been dishonestly delayed. This made their hope all the stronger; they felt sure that this promise would now be redeemed.

Soon after the new king's accession, the Estates of the Provinces of Posen and East and West Prussia were summoned to meet at Königsberg, for the purpose of paying homage to him. The Estates of East and West Prussia replied to the announcement of this meeting by sending in a most humble petition to the king, in which they besought him to maintain and to complete the system of representative government inaugurated by his glorious father, who, in this as in all else faithful to his promise, had introduced representative government in the provinces, but had left the completion of the work to his royal successor "whom the nation loves with the truest devotion, and on whom its dearest hopes are set" (in welchem die treueste Liebe und die innigsten Wünsche des Landes sich begegnen).

The lower classes of citizens, all those who hoped that their trades and industries would profit by the approaching festivities at Königsberg, were highly incensed by this proceeding, which they considered calculated to offend the king. The higher classes, on the contrary, imagined that their gifted monarch would at once gladly accede to the legitimate desire of his people; no one was in a better position than he to understand the defects of the old system of representation. But neither those who dreaded an outburst of royal indignation nor those who expected a manifestation of royal liberal-mindedness proved to be right.

Frederick William's vague answer was to the effect that the constitution of the Estates rested upon a national, historic foundation, that the king took a deep interest in the said institution, that he was firmly determined to pursue the path entered on by his predecessors, and that his faithful Estates might "place absolute confidence in his intentions" with regard to the institution of the Landtag (Parliament).

Little of positive assurance as there was in this message, it was received with joy; it relieved one party from the dread of a stern rebuff, and encouraged the sanguine hopes of the other. The festival at Königsberg went off successfully, and was marked by general enthusiasm. Its most imposing incident occurred immediately after the deputies had repeated, word for word, the oath of allegiance read out to them. Hardly had the echo of the loud Amen pronounced by the four hundred voices died away, when the king was seen to rise from the throne, which stood upon an open balcony, come forward to the rails, raise his arm as if he were taking an oath, and begin to address the assembly. Every word of his speech was clearly audible. He promised to be a just judge, a faithful, painstaking, and merciful ruler, a Christian king like his ever-to-be-remembered father. The concluding sentence bears witness to his literary gift: "May God preserve our Prussian fatherland, for its own sake, for Germany's, and for the world's—our fatherland, which is made up of many parts, and yet is one whole, like that noble metal, a mixture of many others, but itself one metal, liable to no rust but the beautifying rust of centuries!"

Astonishment that a King of Prussia should thus of his own free will give a promise to his people in return for theirs to him, combined with the impression produced by this ostensibly improvised address from such an animated and winning royal personage, to create a feeling of excited jubilation. Above on the balcony the queen burst into tears, down below the people wept, smiled through their tears, and pressed each other's hands. In the transport of the moment it was not observed that there was no definite political promise in the speech, nothing but liberal generalities and romantic phraseology.

But the Königsberg festival was only a prelude to the great one held in Berlin. In the minds of the inhabitants of his capital a halo of golden promises still surrounded the person of the king. They were determined to do everything in their power to show their devotion, and to give the festival a character that was likely to be agreeable to him. The military element was not allowed to preponderate; something in the style of a medieval German municipal pageant was aimed at. The different guilds, numbering in all about 10,000 men, marched in procession, carrying their banners and emblems. As an agreeable little surprise for the king, a great projecting piece of masonry at the Rathaus (town hall) with which his carriage had come into collision one day when he was Crown Prince, was altogether removed.