The Online Library of Liberty

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• Travels In Germany.
• Chapter I.: Courts For the Administration of Justice.
• Chapter II.: Hannover—civil Laws and Processes.
• Chapter III.: Criminal Laws—processes and Punishments.
• Chapter IV.: Hannover.—appropriation of Landed Property.
• Chapter V.: Hannover—agriculture.
• Chapter VI.: Hannover.—manufactories.
• Chapter VII.: Hannover.—commerce.
• Chapter VIII.: Hannover—schools.
• Chapter IX.: University of GÖttingen.
• Chapter X.: On the German Language.
• Chapter XI.: Literature.
• Chapter XII.: Influence of the Situation of the Germans On Their Literature.
• Chapter XIII.: Private Life and Morals.
• Chapter XIV.: Alteration of Morals.
• Chapter XV.: Cassel and Frankfort.
• Appendix.
• Appendix.: No. I.
• No. II. Persons Composing the States of Hannover.
• No. III.: Translation. Regulations For the Meeting of the General States At Hannover, the 15 Th December 1814.
• No. IV. List of the Public Lectures Given In One Year At Göttingen, For the Half Year Beginning In April 1818.
• No. V. Measures, Weights, and Monies, Mentioned In This Work.

CHAPTER XII.

influence of the situation of the germans on their literature.

It has been already remarked, that the Germans have few ennobling historical recollections. They have been so divided into petty states, that they have never had a national existence. If they remember the prowess of their ancient knights, they feel it was the prowess of robbers, of which they are now ashamed. They have long fought more as mercenaries than for their country, and they therefore want all those glowing and ardent recollections which belong to men who have had a continued national and free existence. Proud historical recollections are some of the principal ingredients in a national sublimity of character, and the want of them has had a pernicious influence on the national character, and, through that, on the literature of the Germans. Facts support this opinion. The present Saxons were more distinguished by the share they took in the Reformation than any other people of Germany. It was a victory and a triumph for them, and gave an impulse to their minds which has almost ever since made their country the classic ground of Germany. The victories of Frederic the Great did something of the same kind for Prussia. They gave the Prussians a feeling of superiority which has ever since remained. “The Prussian party,” says Goethe, speaking of these victories, “gained a treasure for their literature which the other party wanted, and which no trouble could afterwards gain for them.” Frederic first gave the Prussians a national existence and a national character. A feeling of superiority amongst individuals, and amongst nations, when not proceeding from sheer vanity, is a powerful ingredient in sublimity of character. This feeling was acquired by the Saxons at the period of the Reformation, and by the Prussians in the days of their great king. It has ever belonged in some measure to the inhabitants of the free towns, and has ever given them a greater name in the world, and greater talents, than are possessed by the rest of their countrymen. When Spain, France, and England, had long been great united nations, the Germans remained in their ancient divided state. They lived under many petty tyrannical governments. This is, in fact, the great historical distinction between the Germans and the rest of the nations of Europe, and it has prevented them from attaining that eminence and that force of character to which, from their numbers, from their central situation, from the happy fertility of their country, and from their progress in civilization, they ought to rise.

To the want of ennobling historical recollections, and of a feeling of national importance, must be added the sad influence of a state of political servitude. Social regulations have always, in Germany, fixed the station of man in society, have left no opening for active talents, and have deprived individuals of those energies for wanting which the nation is conspicuous. Till the revival of their literature, which they themselves date from 1740, there was no means of rising to distinction or obtaining public honours. Their social regulations, their casts, guilds, and restrictions, have been fetters on their talents and genius so well as on their industry. The understanding and character of men are refined, strengthened, and corrected, by free, manly, and public discussion and competition. The Germans have never possessed these; and their character has proportionately suffered in strength, vigour, and acuteness.

They have been excluded, by their situation, from all participation in those naval enterprises which, from the time of Columbus to our last polar expedition, have inspired young minds with much ardour, and have given a bolder character, a greatness, and a glory, to the nations who have achieved them. Their influence on national character may be known from their effects on the Portuguese, and Spaniards, and Dutchmen. For a long period the former were two of the most conspicuous nations of Europe; their naval discoveries and conquests brought them wealth and dignity, gave them pride and power, and saved them for many years from that utter degradation to which their miserable governments and superstitions have at length brought them. Naval expeditions have always been attended with dangers, distress, and sufferings, and the noble exertions of the individuals who have achieved them have spread a lustre, not only over themselves, but on all the people who bear the common name. The Germans have had no participation in those adventurous exploits which have thus ennobled some of the other nations of Europe, and have given to their poetry, particularly to the poetry of Britain, many new and beautiful incidents and images. No German could ever have conceived or executed any thing analogous to the Shipwreck of Falconer or the Corsair of Byron. They have never “danced in triumph o’er the waters wide,” never felt

“The exulting sense, the pulse’s maddening play, That glads the wanderer on that trackless way;”

and the whole nation wants all those feelings which are connected with great and daring enterprise, and wants a great and daring character.

Scholastic education, with a taste for music, and other elegant accomplishments, have long been general in Germany; and, although they amuse and charm us, it will be readily conceded that they rather take from than give strength of mind to the persons who make them their chief pursuit. They weaken and dilute the passions by constantly occupying them all. Those persons whose whole existence is employed in learning sciences and languages, and who live in a society where there is a constant demand for all the pleasures which these accomplishments supply, can rarely possess those lordly passions which constitute what is called force of character. When the sciences and languages are regarded as mere objects of curiosity, no deep feelings can ever be connected with them. A love for freedom may serve as a sort of master-passion to bind a variety of knowledge into a beautiful whole; but the Germans have lived for ages without any such master-passion, and their learning seems therefore to have been only a beautiful statue, which no ethereal fire has ever animated. I am far from supposing that the most extensive knowledge and education, which is not a monastic or a Spartan education, can ever impede the flow of the imagination, or render the literature of a people less beautiful. Such an education, if men have room to act, and are allowed to feel, will only add to the beauty of an imaginative literature. But if both feelings and actions are prescribed, an extensive education will invariably only teach them to value too highly the mechanical parts of science, such as classifying butterflies and weighing atoms. Such knowledge and pursuits as these may please adepts, but they have nothing to interest the mass of men, and those who are conversant with them are little likely to write what will please the world. The mightiest talents of Germany are employed in the trifles of science, or in the subtleties of laws, and such employments are well calculated to make acute and attentive observers of trifles, but not to make great and dignified men.

We learn from the life of Goethe, (Aus Meinem Leben,) that he learnt ancient and modern languages, dancing, fighting, music, riding, painting, engraving; in short, he studied almost every thing that had any relation either to science or art, or that could tend to make an accomplished man. The same practice is common to most young men. The industry which I have described as distinguishing the students at the university, they carry into every part of their pursuits. They are in general anxious to acquire all sorts of knowledge, and seek, by every possible method, to become learned, or, in their favourite phrase, Ausgebildet. They have ausgebildete classes, ausgebildete men, and every young man who studies talks of his Ausbildung. This comprises a vast fund of accomplishments, which nothing but a youth void of every vivid and evil passion could enable them to acquire. They do acquire them, while they at the same time mix with the world, and, as far as my observations have extended, the individuals of the ausgebildete, or learned classes, appear to unite more accomplishments than most other Europeans.

These are to be considered as causes of some of the distinguishing characteristics both of the Germans and of their poetry. They are a calm, gentle, learned, and laborious people; but they are not a deep feeling and a noble people. Their morality is rather to enjoy than to suffer. Their religion teaches the same principle, and has nothing in it either austere or solemn. Imaginative literature derives the greater part of its value from describing natural, general, and strong feelings. An individual, and consequently a nation, who does not possess strong feelings, who is ignorant of them and their effects, can never describe them accurately. He may versify very well, but he wants one of the excellencies of a poet. The French versify very well, but their poetry wants all those tempestuous flashes of the soul, that poignant grief, that penitence and bitterness of heart, which we conceive to be so essential to poetry. The knowledge and education of the Germans enables a vast number of them to make very pretty verses; but wanting natural sublimity of character, they rarely or never infuse it into their writings. Their efforts to be sublime appear to be one great cause of all those perversions of sentiment which have, within a few years, rather disgraced their literature. It is not, as I have heard, suggested that their imaginations are slow and not easily affected, that their authors have multiplied horrors, but because, having themselves no real sublimity of character, they have employed them as a means of producing a sublime effect.

One of the opinions of the Germans, which, indeed, they only share with many other people, is—that reality is not fit for poetry. Mr Müllner tells his readers this in an address prefixed to Yngurd: “Die Wirklichkeit taugt selten zum Gedicht.” It is only the dreams which the muses bring before the mind’s eye which are fit, in the opinion of the poet, for the purpose of amusing and instructing mankind. This has undoubtedly had a great influence on the quantity of nonsense which has been written. Another opinion, which is nearly peculiar to them, is—that literature is a matter of trade; and they learn the art of book-making as other people learn to make shoes or hats. They are manufacturers of good articles rather than writers from feeling or sentiment, or a conviction that they have something important to communicate. I have known more than one young man who resolved to be a tragic author. Kant, as a boy, resolved to be Kant the professor and philosopher; and Schlegel studies criticism and fine writing, that he may be a critic. This is an admirable principle for improving in knowledge. “You may always write,” says Dr Johnson, “if you will but go doggedly to it.” Study may make critics philosophers and men of science. It may correct and reform genius; but too much of it tends to model men after pre-existing authors—to deprive genius of originality, and literature of warmth. Bookmakers by profession make very saleable good articles; but if they did not begin the trade from the impulse of genius, they seldom write any thing pleasing or new.

This principle seems to have had an influence on German literature. It stimulates to acquire learning and to multiply books, without imparting any thing new. The gentle dispositions of the Germans allow every thing which is said in conversation to be heard with attention and politeness. They appear to think they may write just as they speak: and hence they send into the world a vast number of volumes, on subjects which are trifling and not amusing.

A new literature is not necessarily a faulty literature; but some of the errors of the German literature may undoubtedly be traced to the recent date of its origin. From wanting a literature there was also a want of a literary public. Those German works which are intended only for learned men, such as historical, philosophical, and philological works, are equally as well written as similar works in other languages; but the works destined for the great mass of the people, the common mental food of the society, participated in the dispositions and the failures of the society, and were often faulty because it wanted a correct taste. A new literature, when the people are also new, may be rude, but it will be energetic; and it could only be the new literature of an old people that could be both rude and weak. If the Germans would leave out theories, leave off imitating other people, and write after their own hearts, and according to the manner in which they observe life and nature, they would write the most gentle and pleasing poetry of any people in Europe. They are not a sublime people; and till some alterations in their political condition shall give them sublimity of character, they will essay in vain to write lofty and noble poetry.

Whatever may be the opinion entertained of German literature, it can hardly be denied that Hannover and the very northern part of Germany contribute a very fair proportion of the whole. The coteries and sonneteers of Dresden and Weimar would fain persuade the world that there is no poetical talents in “the cold and sandy north.” They give the natives of the north the praise of being solid, deep thinkers, but deny them the vivacity of genius, and the fire of poetry. The Hannoverians are certainly not so lightly enthusiastic and easily moved; nor do they write so many trifles as their southern brethren. They do not constantly trill, like the Saxons, the same unmeaning tones on their harps, and imagine flowing hair, a flushed cheek, and disordered robes, to be mental enthusiasm. You do not meet in Hannover, as in other parts of Germany, with a set of young men who are unwashed and unshaved; and who, though they never wrote any thing beyond an occasional ode to procure them admittance to a literary society, imagine it is necessary to be negligent and dirty as an evidence of genius. Leibnitz, with all the great names that have been inscribed at Göttingen, are proofs of the powerful capacity for thought which belongs to the people of the north, and which is a merit that their southern countrymen most readily allow them.

When a large proportion of the resources of a country are monopolized by the sovereign, his patronage is necessary to the existence of learned men and of literature. But, from the sovereign residing out of the country, there has been no patronage of this kind in Hannover other than what has been bestowed on Göttingen. Courts are, in modern times, the nurseries of polite literature. Hannover has wanted a court, and has not therefore shone in this branch so much as in some others. Yet Iffland, the father of German comedy, was a Hannoverian. No names stand at present higher in the polite literature of Europe than those of the Schlegels, and they are natives of Hannover. Bürger was, I believe, born in Saxony, but a great part of his life was passed in Göttingen and its neighbourhood. A valley there, in which he loved to pass his time, still bears the name of Bürger Thal; and he must be considered as a poet of the north. I am unacquainted with any living poet of Hannover who is celebrated. A Mr Blumenhagen is sometimes spoken of as a writer of occasional verses. Ernest Schluze, who has been mentioned as the author of two poems of some merit, was also born and educated in the dominions of Hannover.

It is probably owing to the want of patronage in Hannover that many clever natives of this country seek reputation and wealth in other parts of Germany. The Schlegels and Mr Thaer have been mentioned; and when, to their names, are added those of Mr Luden, a celebrated professor of history in the university of Jena—of Prince Hardenberg—of General Benningsen—and of General Scharnhorst, who was killed while serving in the armies of Prussia at the battle of Leipsic—it will assuredly not be supposed that the Hannoverians are deficient in talents of any description.

There is not a single sculptor of the least eminence, and not one good gallery either of pictures or statues, in the whole of Hannover. Count Walmoden had a collection of pictures, but that is now dispersed. The only painter of the least reputation is a Mr Ramberg, who was educated in England and in Rome at the expence of the sovereign. He is chiefly celebrated for the numerous and well-executed devices with which he has enriched many of the almanacks, the Titanias, Uranias, and pocket-books of literature, which yearly issue from the presses of Germany. It is a curious circumstance of this painter, which has been remarked by several people, that he has never been able to paint a female who possessed the characteristics of modesty. There is not a single good engraver in the kingdom. In these points Hannover differs much from the other parts of Germany. Berlin, Vienna, Dresden, Cassel, abound with sculptors, painters, and artists of all descriptions. There has been no demand for such persons in Hannover, and there are none, and never have been any. Should the Duke of Cambridge continue to reside there, he will occasion a small demand; and then Hannover will, in these points as in others, equal the other countries of Germany. The taste of his Royal Highness is chiefly directed to music; and the orchestra of Hannover is not the worst of Germany, which boasts so many of the first musicians of Europe.

A large portion of the literature of Europe now consists of periodical publications. This is particularly the case in Germany, where novels, comedies, tragedies, histories, are all published as pocket-books, and as almanacks. The political periodical literature of the present time is perhaps, in point of effect, the most important of all literature. It would, therefore, be unpardonable to pass over that of Hannover in silence, though little or nothing can be said of it. It is necessary to record its non-existence. “Die gelehrte Anzeigen” of Göttingen, or Literary Notices, is the only periodical paper published in Hannover that deserves an encomium. It is a duodecimo, of which four numbers are published weekly. Each number contains either a half or a whole sheet of print. It is published by the members of the university. Heyne was the editor for more than 40 years, and Eichhorn succeeded him. It gives an account of such books only as are purchased for the university library. And, generally, the observations it contains are confined to the work noticed rather than to giving new and enlarged views. I have given one or two extracts from it in the course of this work. The side of politics it generally takes is that of liberality and reason. The contributors are the professors; and the greatest part of the political articles of importance are written, I believe, by Professor Sartorious. From such a man nothing can be expected but what is scientific and rational, well weighed and calmly delivered. It contains none of the floating half-formed opinions of the moment, which find their way into daily newspapers. It contains nothing which appeals to popular prejudices, or which can be considered as an index of popular opinion. All its political articles are more scientific than popular. It is the vehicle, also, for much of the discussion which takes place in Germany on the subject of legislation. In this point, and in philological remarks, it is surpassed by none of the numerous journals of Germany. The town of Hannover does not boast a single journal that can be called exclusively political. The Advertiser is a sort of gazette belonging to the crown. There is a meagre chronicle of the theatre, and a sort of weekly paper which announces the comings and goings of illustrious persons. With Hamburg on one side, and Jena, Brunswick, Weimar, and Leipsic on the other, in which places some of the best political works of Germany are published, there is less occasion to print any in Hannover. It is, in this point, much behind. Its people appear hitherto never to have busied themselves with their dearest interests, though, at last, they begin to be political.

It is sometimes stated that the press is free in Hannover. This is entirely a mistake. It is totally free in no part of Germany, though it is subject to less restrictions in Weimar, Hamburg, and Bavaria, than in other parts. But even in these places books are suppressed at the whim of the governors, or by the representations of ambassadors. What a weak cause must that be which requires to be supported by forbidding human thought and speech to attack it! A regulation, made in 1705, forbids any native of Hannover from printing any work, either in the land or out of the land, for the purpose of circulating it in the land, till it had been approved of by the censor. All works published at Göttingen must be submitted to the censorship of the members of the university. No printer is allowed to print a work unless it has been approved of by the censor, under penalty of losing the privilege of printing, and of being otherwise punished. For works published out of Göttingen there are other censors. One who is charged with the inspection of all works of poetry and literature is dependent on the justice-chancery; another, to whom all political works must be submitted, is dependent on one of the departments of the ministry. The consistoriums take care that the doctrines of the church remain unassailed. There is a control established over the press, which, when it is complete, is but another name for absolute dominion. This is, however, a nugatory power. For what is offensive to the government of one country is printed in another, and thus the separate governments of Germany have in some measure served to secure a free press to the whole of the country. Their jealousy of each other has allowed attacks on each which have ultimately weakened the power of all.∗

[∗]It must now be said this was the case. The conferences of Carlsbad have endeavoured to destroy the liberties of Germany and Europe. Without these conferences, and their subsequent measures of harshness, there would undoubtedly have been a great reform in the political institutions of Europe,—now, unfortunately, we may expect, not reform, but revolution.